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Jan. 6th, 2012 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparklightTitle: Aftermath
Rating: Adult (one instance of tactile)
Continuity: Dreamwave G1 (AU)
Characters: Starscream, Jetfire
Summary: A relationship as seen through various "afters"... and a beginning.
Notes: A series of interconnected ficlets that form a full story.
I - After Aborted Destinies
"---I don't believe in destiny!"
There shouldn't have been enough time to have tossed Sunstorm away from himself, cut his boosters and free-fall away as the explosion bloomed above. Bloomed, and then slammed into Jetfire, giving him an extra push he certainly did not need.
Luckily, it was simply the shockwave, and while engaging his full flight-systems didn't immediately stop his descent, that hadn't been Jetfire's goal, either. He just needed some sort of braking of his speed. The wind seared past his slightly, slowly, slowing chassis, tearing into wounds and ripping off tiny shards of metal that were just hanging on by paint. The landing would be uncomfortable.
Very uncomfortable.
Jetfire hoped Starscream had taken Bumblebee out of that pit.
*
"Starscream?" Vents protesting, spewing sand out of them, Jetfire groaned as he attempted to move, collapsed back down, and grunted as he was kicked in his lower leg. Comparatively gently, yes, but kicked nonetheless.
"Starscream..." Jetfire muttered, relieved he'd got an arm under his helm as he dropped down again, because otherwise there'd be sanding collecting in his mouth, and while it didn't exactly have anywhere to go...
"You. are. an. idiot." Starscream punctuated his words with, thankfully, not kicks this time, but pokes to the arm not trapped under Jetfire, before he grabbed it and helped the larger jet at least sit upright.
"This is the last time I dig you out of anything. One could think you have an affinity for this dirtball, Jetfire, the way you end up buried in various strata and materials of it!" Starscream sneered, then collapsed heavily down beside Jetfire, grumbling, surprisingly quietly as he tapped sand out of his afterburners.
Rubbing the side of his helm, Jetfire looked around even as he cast a glance at his internal HUD. Boosters almost completely burned out, remaining capacity at 19.8% percent. They'd need to be repaired. There were further various breaches in his armour, wiring ripped out or half-melted, and an uncomfortable hole in his cockpit, though the sharp edges of the glass had melted. Basically, he was a wreck.
But what had Starscream meant by having to dig him out..? A quick look around easily answered that question; he must, despite having attempted to slow his descent, crashed-landed hard into the beach.
There was a track half as deep as Jetfire was tall viciously torn through the ground, leading a fair bit in from the water's edge and small waves of sand packed up on either side of the newly-made ditch. The mounds of sand around the area Jetfire and Starscream now sat in had clearly been moved there; he was lying in what had become a pit, and sand was continually falling down in thin veils on them when gusts of wind danced over the now-decimated beach.
"Thank you, Starscream," Jetfire sighed and rubbed the back of his helm again; what else was there to say? He'd probably have been able to get out from under all the sand himself, but who knows how long it would have taken him to online again on his own? Starscream scoffed, then frowned up at Jetfire, finally putting down the leg he'd been trying to get all the sand out of the thruster of.
"Don't expect the same treatment again. I left the little yellow one on another beach. Unharmed." The Seeker frowned and looked away, fingers tapping on his thighs. Before Jetfire could open his mouth again, however, Starscream whirled back around, jabbing Jetfire in the chestplates.
"You're a mess. Don't you dare get such a slagging stupid idea again. Prime's the idiotically heroic and self-sacrificing one! Just because you feel left out of their little cultist circle is no reason to take after the worst Autobot traits," Starscream huffed and then immediately scowled and turned away to stare at one of the mounds he'd created himself by digging the large jet out.
"... Cultist circle? Honestly, Starscream," Jetfire murmured after several kliks of silence and slid slightly lower in his seat in the sand. He felt brittle. He hoped he'd be able to convince the Autobots to get him the materials he needed to repair his armour... Maybe he could even take the time to research and do further refining on it...
"Stop doing that," Starscream snapped, and then stood up, crossing his arms. "Not that it matters. You can go off into your scientific la-la-land as much as you want to as soon as I'm gone." With that, he turned away, but didn't get very far as his wrist... or rather, hand and part of his lower arm, considering the size difference, was snagged. And in comparision with Bumblebee's grip, even this weakened one was hard to jerk out of.
"A moment, Starscream," Jetfire said with a frown, and then unceremoniously showed he had enough strength to not just pull the Seeker off his balance (though dry sand doesn't make for good traction or something stable to struggle on), but to pull him down between his legs and trap him in his arms.
"Jetfire! Release me at once! If you think you can take me back to the Autobots, you've got ano--"
"No, that's not what it's about. Just... Sit still for a while." It was probably revealing too much, making his new-found revelation too clear, but... Well. Starscream was Starscream, but he seemed decidedly... more pleasant than in the beginning of the war.
Jetfire had no idea what happened there; the Seeker he'd known in the Academy was more like the one he'd been talking to after being thawed, the one he was currently hugging, than the one he'd been fighting on Cybertron, especially early on. Starscream proved this observation to be true by actually stilling with the loudest, most put-upon sigh ever heard.
"You're softer than a kitten, Jetfire. What do you even want to get out of this?" Starscream squirmed an arm free of Jetfire's embrace to be able to properly wave it around, scowling at the broken off and melted piece of null-ray stuck to it.
"... Kitten?" Jetfire frowned, and after a few tries and a satellite link connection managed to hook up to the local/global information network - the internet, the local dominant species apparently called it - and find out what a 'kitten' was. Shaking his helm at the images and information that called up - though he understood what Starscream was after with the comparsion, Autobot ideals and such things - Jetfire offlined his optics.
"Just a moment, Starscream. No shooting at each other, no out-maneuvering---"
"No slamming me into the ground."
"No slamming you into the ground," Jetfire agreed, chuckling slightly. "I don't think I'm in any condition to do that at the moment." Relatively sure Starscream wouldn't take off immediately, Jetfire broke his hold/embrace and allowed Starscream to get out of it, sitting down beside him again instead.
"I don't know what sort of Autobot revelation you had while flying to your guaranteed doom like an overgrown glitch, but I hope you remember we're supposed to be enemies," Starscream sneered, but there was only half the heat there could have been in there. Jetfire shook his helm and leaned forward to rest his arms on his thighs.
"Call it a pre-Autobot memory dump. But I suppose you'd consider the part where I decided that what mattered... was that we were friends. Not the fighting, to be an 'Autobot sensitivity'." Jetfire vented a sigh, adjusting his visual feed so he could look at Starscream through the side of it while allowing the diagnostic scan being run to take up the rest of the HUD.
Starscream had opened his mouth, sneer firmly on his faceplates, but then just... snapped it closed again and groaned, dragging a hand over his face.
"Is all that scientific babble clogging up your processor and making it slow? That doesn't matter anymore, Jetfire. It can't," Starscream snapped, first crossing his arms and then relaxing them so he could gesticulate to underscore his point, he'd also angled away slightly.
Despite this, one leg's pede was up against Jetfire's, and the way Starscream had angled himself, while increasing the general distance between them, now allowed Starscream's wing to be pressed up against Jetfire's.
Always so full of contradictions, always so dramatic.
"Maybe not," Jetfire agreed, pausing long enough for Starscream to relax slightly from his stiff posture, wings brushing gently against each other as he did so. "Maybe not for you. I don't like it, and I certainly can't say I appreciate all the back-and-forth of earlier, but I'm not going to go out of my way to attack you. It's not worth it. I may not agree with you, but I would prefer you alive," Jetfire frowned at the ground and then jerked slightly as Starscream slapped him harshly on the arm, growling.
"And what about your Autobot friends? Even if you don't kill me, the war might. Not that I'm going to let it, mind you! I've gotten rid of Megatron, and Shockwave's languishing somewhere on Cybertron, the Decepticons are mine now!" Starscream smirked, and Jetfire finally raised his helm and turned it to look at Starscream, expression mild.
"To what end? Now that you have them, what will you do? If I understand it right from what Bumblebee said, the Autobots effectively have Cybertron." Jetfire shook his helm and then sat back, slumping slightly and offlining his optics.
He was tired.
There was the noise of sliding metal, and a barrel pressed into the front of his helm. Starscream's other hand was pressing into and around the hole in his cockpit.
"I could kill you, you know," Starscream hissed, and Jetfire could easily imagine the narrow-opticked, pinched expression that was as much frustration as it was real anger.
"You could, yes. Are you going to?" Oh, he didn't want to die, even less here and now after escaping what had seemed a certain deactivation in a very... explosive way, but...
"No. If I do that, you're not going to be around to see my total victory, are you?" Starscream removed the hand that had been folded away to reveal the wrist-gun, digging his fingers into the vent on Jetfire's shoulder instead. His other hand was still uncomfortably pressed up against the hole in Jetfire's cockpit.
"I'm sure you could gloat to me either way." Jetfire finally onlined his optics and leaned forward, Starscream reading him and... for once not being difficult and just leaned forward himself, the front of their helms touching.
"It wouldn't be nearly as satisfying. Especially if I could have you kneeling by my throne," Starscream said with a smirk, tone light, and Jetfire shook his helm gently, so as to not dislodge their touch.
"Whatever happens, I have doubts about that being the most possible outcome. Especially with the calculated odds against you, Starscream."
"Shush, you glorified calculation drone," Starscream admonished, patting the still-whole cockpit glass above the hole. Jetfire snorted and bumped his helm against Starscream's.
"I may be injured, but I'm still stronger than you, so insulting me while you're sitting practically on top of me isn't something I recommend." All Jetfire did, however, was to briefly raise in hands and lightly run a few fingers down the outer edges of Starscream's wings. The Seeker chuckled faintly, disguising his light shiver with a bump of his own.
They stayed like that for several minutes until Starscream got off - he had, indeed, been sitting on Jetfire - and crossed his arms.
"You stay there. I'll find the yellow insect for you and send him your way. Don't expect any more help though," Starscream said, walking past Jetfire long enough for their fingers to brush briefly before he took to the sky.
Jetfire tilted his helm back to watch Starscream tear straight up, circle the area, and then take off.
***
II - After a Fight
"Is that what you want?!" The bellow, the first from Jetfire during their post-battle argument, caused the heated air to vanish with a near-audible pop, as if someone had taken a needle to a balloon and exploded it.
Silence wrapped itself, bold and aggressive, about the two flyers as Starscream's expression went from unbridled, offended rage into something less... certain. The humming null-ray quieted just as Jetfire squeezed the hand he'd earlier caught and let it go.
The moment they'd had on the beach after the fight with Sunstorm seemed not only thousand of hics away, but also millions of years. This was familiar, old and worn and not what he'd wanted to retread. But... There was a slight difference here. Starscream was - no matter if he was stuck because of Jetfire holding him in place or not - actually listening.
He'd never done that before.
"Is that what you would have wanted, what you want? For me to have stayed? I'd have to change, to become someone else entirely, you understand this, right? That's what you're demanding by saying I shouldn't have left, Starscream," Jetfire said quietly, staring down into lambent red optics, his expression solemn rather than livid. He'd already run out of anger.
While every angry snap of denouncement, every verbal slash of "traitor!" hurt, it was old. When he left, he'd only known he couldn't stay. He'd tried, after the enchantment with Decepticon ideals and philosophies had faded, for Starscream, for their friendship, but even that loyalty couldn't last forever. He'd been angry, then, at the lack of comprehension, if not acceptance. They'd fought enough to exemplify their factions' ire against the other.
Later, he'd realized he couldn't have stayed if he was to be himself, but Starscream...
Well, Jetfire couldn't say he was surprised the Seeker hadn't considered this, merely seen the personal insult as all that mattered.
"I tried, Starscream, but---"
"Let go," Starscream hissed, tugging on the arm that was still caught in Jetfire's other hand. The arm Jetfire had grabbed when Starscream flung it up, powering up the null-ray and then yanked it closer, pressing the barrel to the side of his helm while throwing his last few sentences out. "This isn't about you, you weak-sparked, fence-sitting trai---" Starscream's expression when Jetfire actually interrupted him - a tactic he hadn't used more than, perhaps, two handful of times, even with all the time they'd known each other - would have been, in any other situation, amusing.
"No? And if this isn't about me, you, and us, what are we doing this for, then? If this isn't about what you feel I have been, or should have been doing, but about something as simple as a defection... Why not go after Grimlock?" Jetfire could have snapped the words out, harsh and short, but instead they came out quiet and soft, but all the more unbending for that.
"He has, by now, joined, left and rejoined both our factions quite a lot more than I have." The quiet words and bald, narrow stare from Jetfire had Starscream sputtering before he yanked on his arm again, and this time it was let go. And while Starscream's flight systems powered up again, and there was an initial whine from his transformation cog, he didn't immediately leave.
"So maybe it is." But Starscream didn't elaborate on what was supposed to be something, but considering their topic, Jetfire didn't need the elaboration. "That doesn't mean you aren't a---rrgh." Starscream cut himself off this time, scowling at Jetfire's cocked helm and look.
How dare he make this about him?
He had left, thrown it all--- Well, that was what Jetfire was saying wasn't it?
No!
He wouldn't let the overgrown flying grounder get to him with his stupid arguments... With a snarl, Starscream fisted one hand and slammed it against the Autobrand above Jetfire's cockpit. The larger jet just looked at him, the beginnings of a frown teasing his faceplates.
"Starscream..."
"No. Shut up. Just..." He wasn't even sure what he wanted with this. He hadn't even considered that Jetfire might feel that he would need to change to stay... But if that was so, maybe he should have!
Starscream couldn't even convince himself, right now, that that was what he'd want, no matter what a weak, Autobot sympathizer Jetfire was.
"We're not talking about this any more," Starscream finally snapped, pushing himself back by activating his afterburners some more. Jetfire tilted his helm in a brief nod, and for a moment, Starscream wanted to shoot that insufferably patient expression of Jetfire's faceplates. But that patience was also why the idiot---
No, he was just amazing, and Jetfire knew that. Starscream huffed and Jetfire shook his helm, crossing his arms.
"Well, if you're done listening to me, I assume the battle's long over. I don't know about you, but I have a few pings and messages I've ignored."
Starscream grimaced and looked away. Thundercracker and Skywarp knew not to bother him after the first order to stay away, and if it had truly been some sort of emergency or whatever, Skywarp could have been ordered to find him, and would have been able to. Nonetheless, he did have a scathing message pointedly asking him to join back up on the Nemesis for debriefing.
"Don't let me catch you flying out alone, Jetfire." Starscream finally turned back to glare at the larger jet, and then took off, leaving the foolish Autobot to hover far above their previous battleground.
***
III - After a Show
He should have ended it.
With a grimace, Starscream lowered his arms and leaned back against the pile of rocks, arms crossed, as the large white shape - small from this distance - shot away with a muted roar and bluish-tinted flame from the boosters.
Jetfire should have known he was there. Starscream hadn't exactly hidden after all, and he was sure he'd felt a brief, deliberate push of Jetfire's field against his own when the jet had roared impressively - there was no one here, no one could tell he'd admitted this - close to the ground before taking off towards the sky again, twirling around his own axis. He'd caught the idiot out flying over the badlands, and hadn't shot him down.
Starscream ground one afterburner down into the relatively soft ground, aggravated. He should have. What was wrong with him? Jetfire's usefulness was ended. He ignored that he'd dug the jet out of the beach after the battle with Sunstorm... his reasoning had still been glitched due to that loo--- due to Sunstorm and all his blathering!
If he could just have Jetfire where he wanted him, if everything could just slot neatly where he needed it to be, this would be a non-issue!
That he'd almost shot - but the null-rays hadn't been on maximum, though it would of course have caused Jetfire to crash - didn't matter. It didn't matter, since he'd stopped and just stared as the overgrown model plane had flown through some arbitrarily decided-upon restricted desert airspace, both in alt and root mode.
He had not gotten caught by the display of skill, power and the sort of competence only a good flyer could show in the air.
He hadn't.
Starscream growled and dragged a hand down his face harshly.
This was stupid.
He was being unreasonable. This. would. not. work.
Whirling around, Starscream kicked the rock formation, stalked off, and then turned around, blasting the large formation into pieces before he took off. Next time, he'd do what he should do.
***
IV - After the End
"Jetfire---" The finger against his lips hardly stopped him from speaking, but Starscream fell quiet anyway, annoyance raw over circuits, lingering with pain. He needed a medic. Matrix alight, they both did.
And what was the silly jet doing?
Sitting on the ground in this newly carved ravine on Earth's moon, Starscream pulled up against him, half curled around the smaller jet as if this would solve anything. There was a thin trail of energon slowly forming a miniature river as it worked over the surface of the moon, trickling by Jetfire's thigh. That came from his boosters, and the idiot was just sitting there as if there wasn't a chance something could take spark and explode.
Attempting to pull away was useless; Jetfire, despite the ripped up armour on one arm and the torn cables leading up to the elbow joint, was strong enough to keep Starscream in place, and it wasn't as if Starscream himself wasn't running extremely low on energy.
"This is exceedingly stupid and we both need medics!" Starscream snapped, but was obliged to pull his legs under him, for his own comfort, obviously not because this brought him closer to the spark humming away underneath its protective plating, both of their cockpits cracked and splintered.
"I know." And that was all the overgrown toy jet would say, hugging Starscream closer, hands warm against abused back plating that had taken more than one glancing brush of energy from the purple maniac's orange cannon.
Who the slag had a paintjob like that, anyway?
Above them, far beyond the reach of the Moon's negligible gravity, pieces of foreign metal spun in space, the last traces of the tear in space-time flickering, collapsing in on itself, the planet eater gone with the tear, pushed and fallen through it.
Starscream huffed and snaked an arm under Jetfire's right, clutching the back of it, pleased (but would never admit to that) to find some place that didn't have a crack, tear, lacking plating or dripping energon.
His other hand nestled, after some hesitation, up against the plating above Jetfire's broken cockpit, and he pretended not to hear the soft hum... or the quiet, purring noise from the powerful engine housed within. They hadn't been this close in a long time. Not even after Starscream had dug Jetfire up from the beach where he'd crashed after fighting Sunstorm.
They could sit here a bit longer.
As long as no one shot at them (no one even knew they were here), Jetfire was unlikely to explode from the compromised boosters, and if they hadn't died yet, visits to their corresponding medics could wait a bit longer.
"You're going to get us both killed," Starscream muttered and offlined his optics, relaxing slightly and slowly rubbing over the singed but otherwise unharmed Autobrand on Jetfire's chestplates. There was a brief, slightly statick-laced chuckle from above, and a brush of lips on the top of his helm. Yes... Just a few more kliks couldn't harm anything. He needed to gather enough energy to fly anyway.
***
V - After First Contact
This was beginning to get familiar. Jetfire dove, angled himself and transformed, sweeping Starscream up with one arm and shooting the group of... sharkticons to pieces with the rifle in his other one, before flying up in the air again. Of course he'd hardly cleared ground before Starscream started to complain, despite the injured wings.
"Put me down, Jetfire! Now! I don't need your help," Starscream snapped, pushing against the frame holding him, more embarrassed than actually angry. Then there was the fact that someone could have seen.
"In a minute. If you have to, consider it a return favour for the help you gave me earlier." Jetfire circled the battlefield, picking off stray enemies from above, apparently unconcerned about the Seeker he was holding to himself in the fashion remniscent of a human girl lugging around a doll in one arm. At the mention of that incident, Starscream flinched and scowled, giving one more token push before settling down.
"That was a---" He couldn't say it was a mistake, because it (unfortunately because it should have been one) hadn't been. "If anyone's killing you, it'll be me. And not now anyway." Banging his helm against the closest bit of plating, Starscream attempted to justify it.
But really, if he was supposed to justify anything, he'd have to go back to 'got Jetfire out of the ice and later thawed him', because no matter the... probable advantages to him from that, he should have killed him. But he hadn't. He was even listening to Jetfire! Not that he'd wanted to, but the point Jetfire had made from That Argument had... stuck.
Very pointedly and aggressively, and it annoyed him.
There were the other lapses, of course. That he hadn't immediately left afer digging Jetfire out of the sand.
That he hadn't killed him during the argument... or the earlier fight.
That he hadn't worked a bit harder to get out of Jetfire's... grasp... back after the fight with Unicron on the Moon.
That he wasn't now doing more. With a huff, Starscream cuffed the shoulder to the arm that was holding him, that being the part of Jetfire most easily reached the way he was held.
"You're insufferable. Now put. me. down. before someone notices." Even if they had - marginally - been working together at the sudden attack that had descended on them during a nearly... lazily routine battle. Things hadn't really been the same since the confrontation with that giant transforming planet that was apparently an evil, planet-eating and dimension-destroying god - not that Starscream believed that part, of course - but they were getting there, and now... this.
"Of course. It seems it's mostly over now---er." Jetfire's optics flickered as he broke off, staring slightly unfocused down on the ground far below, the water in the dam glittering in the light. The humans were lucky the giant (by human standards, of course) had held and been kept safe from being destroyed by the Decepticons, or the attacking Quintesson forces alike.
"What? Stop staring like a sparkless drone and tell me!" Starscream banged his fist against white armour in frustration, but even as Jetfire slowly began to speak, Starscream got a message telling him to not murder the giant jet he was "clearly" holding hostage "in some fashion, surely", because...
"Er, well... It seems that, despite our... ah, differences, there'll be... Negotiations. Over a cease-fire. And---"
"Potential alliance against the five-faced freaks who're behind these... rejects that're attacking us. Megatron has completely lost it!" Starscream flung his hand out and then almost hit Jetfire again, only barely aborting that motion due to the narrow stare directed down at him. It didn't matter that he would probably, maybe, have done the same if expedient, what mattered was that Megatron shouldn't get such ideas! Jetfire's stare spoke clearly of the hypocrisy he could see and then he shook his helm.
"If it works, I don't see the issue, despite the odds against a... er, smooth alliance considering everything." Jetfire shrugged as he descended and put Starscream down. The Seeker frowned and then strutted over to stand beside Megatron, while Jetfire simply stood off to the side by the rest of the Autobots, as they had apparently decided the best place to at least keep the initial discussion was right there on the battlefield at the dam.
Not that it was a... completely unsound decision, considering that neither would agree to meet in, or near their respective bases (which would be hard to accomplish with the Nemesis, anyway), and thus Earth in general, or, perhaps, the Moon, was currently the most "neutral" ground to be found.
Crossing his arms, Jetfire cocked his helm and simply listened, though he was amazed that neither side took to arms as the... barely... discussion as well as tempers flared. There was, something, somewhere, that hoped this would be the lead-in to something more, something that would abort what would surely happen and change the course they seemed to be set on, repeating or making worse the past conditons of battle and when any one side "won".
Of course, nothing might come from this. There was already skepticism being put forth about these Quintessons being enough of a threat - compared to Unicron, which they had, after all, defeated while merely forced to work together in a most slap-dash manner - to justify even a cease-fire.
"--- You're a fool, Prime! This planet isn't even ours, and no matter the resources, if it would be expedient to let the Quintessons have it while we regroup---"
"Oh, mighty leader... didn't you say something about our rightful past a while ago? Something about 'protection'... I'm sure I remember---eck." Starscream brought one hand up to attempt to - silently and remarkably restrained - bend the black hand around his neck away; the dark rage on Megatron's faceplates from being... interrupted as well as have had that flung at him wasn't promising at all. Which, suddenly, smoothed to a scowl as he flung the Seeker away.
"You can't expect us to hold something that's untenable, we do have our own planet, too, and from what I know, they would be all too happy to wrest it away from us," Megatron finally said, arms crossed, and Prime stared quietly for several minutes, optics narrowed, and then inclined his helm.
"We'll see, Megatron. We can't leave the humans to fend for themselves."
Jetfire turned his attention away from the discussion - it was being logged and he could review it later - to where Starscream was getting to his pedes, a thunderous scowl on his dark faceplates. Then he actually looked up, blue and red optics met, and the expression smoothed out into something a lot more haughtier. Jetfire just barely kept his sigh inside and instead just cocked his helm slightly.
//Nothing good will come from this.// Starscream's expression was surprisingly even as he took his place again, and the doomsday proclamation was probbaly a lot more... neutral than it would otherwise have been if it weren't for the blue and white frame on Megatron's other side.
//No need to be that pessimistic... But I do think it relies on how much of a threat they turn out to be.// Jetfire twitched his shoulders, and privately hoped that, no matter what, some sort of predicate would be set by this.
Right now, with this discussion going on, the gap between the amassed Autobots and Decepticons had never seemed both so obvious and unnecessary both. Despite the things done and said since he'd been thawed, the differences between the then on Cybertron and the now on Earth, especially Starscream... taunted Jetfire.
His earlier realization had been made under pressure, and Starscream's... mellowed behaviour hadn't really mattered back then. Not with what was going on, since had merely been the sort of (nostalgic, though still important - driving, really) realization that went deeper than taking any current changes into mind.
Now, though?
It stood out even more, especially against the arguments they had had since Starscream thawed him.
//I'll be as realistic as I want. This is completely unnecessary, and absolutely foolish! If I was---// Starscream cut himself off, optics briefly narrowing before his expression smoothed out again. Jetfire did his outmost best to keep the smile that wanted to slip out unexpressed.
//Whatever happens, I'm sure you'll get the most out of it.// Jetfire finally acceded quietly, and he knew he shouldn't, but the tiny smirk on Starscream's faceplates that his words elicted was - to Jetfire, at least - almost embarrassingly charming.
Most would probably have questioned it, but well. There was a reason Jetfire had befriended the Seeker in the beginning, and it had, perhaps surprisingly, had nothing to do with his projects and research results, and all to do with Starscream's very interesting way of going about it. Not exactly the correct way, but facinating in its own way.
//Of course I will.// Starscream briefly looked Jetfire in the face, that smirk still in place, before he turned the tiny bit away from the larger jet towards the actual discussion going on; not enough of a difference anyone else would have noticed he'd even been turned towards Jetfire, but enough that Jetfire saw the difference.
No one needed to what that difference meant, however, and Jetfire looked back at Optimus, actively listening again, even as Blaster reported an incoming message relayed from the local authorities about the... situation.
***
VI - After a Betrayal
They were probably lucky they had negotiated - or begun to, anyway - a cease-fire and a sort-of alliance before the greater bulk of the Quintesson forces started to arrive. That didn't nearly help the humans as much as it helped the Cybertronians, even if the Decepticons weren't going out of their way - or even at all, currently - of attacking humans. And they weren't helpless; there was that Centurion project.
This didn't make them safe, and despite the fact that Jetfire could feel the injury in his back as well as all the other ones, he couldn't - even as he went down on his knees, barely avoiding slamming into a building and killing however many were still inside - regret having stood in the way.
He just had to...
The hand he was not currently using to hold himself up went to the shattered cockpit, and then above, to the torn-up chestplates, shielding the light spilling out from between gaps in metal that ought not be there.
"Jetfire!"
No. No, that wasn't good at all. Setting his jaw, Jetfire attempted to straighten up as fast as he could, but the stabbing flare of pain over his sensornet as well as something creaking threateningly kept him in place as Starscream, engines booming in this limited space, landed on the street in front of him before he wedged himself in beside Jetfire.
"Starscream, don't, there's---" Jetfire grimaced and attempted to get to his pedes again, since that would leave more space for them both as well as no chance of crumbling the buildings on either side of the road.
"Shut up. I saw that. They don't deserve your protection!" Starscream looked down the road behind Jetfire, the humans who had barely avoided being destroyed by the sharkticon and Quintesson Jetfire had taken care of now standing around Ratchet's pedes as he had been interrupted in his attempt to get to Jetfire by a brief surge in the battle.
Starscream sneered, as much vindicated in his (and, in general Decepticon attitudes about humans) opinion of the "dominant species" as he was angry. No one got to shoot the idiot jet besides him. Especially not potentially fatally enough to kill him. Even if the shot from behind hadn't done more than crack the boosters, the energon leaking from them was dangerous on its own.
"Starscream, enough. That won't--- help. Anything." Jetfire frowned, briefly lifting his hand away from the hole now partly baring his spark to the world in a way it most definitely shouldn't be bared, clamping down on the arm Starscream had raised to force it down. The null-ray quieted.
"It would help me," Starscream said with a huff, cast another narrow glance behind him before he leaned down, pulling and then pushing at Jetfire's hand to make him remove it from his arm and put it over the hole in his chestplates instead.
"And don't you dare deactivate." The snarl was underlined by a brief, harsh rev from Starscream's engines as he leaned forward, pressing the fronts of their helms together before he abruptly got to his pedes, flight systems powering up.
"All yours, Autobot. I'm amazed any of you are even still functioning as soft-sparked as you are, not letting the fatally wounded die on the field!" With that, and ignoring that Ratchet must have seen what he'd done, Starscream lifted off from the ground and - perhaps miraculously - only attacked the Quintesson forces still present, instead of any humans.
***
VII - After Reunification
It was, all things considered, a rather solemn affair. But then, with their history, the past and differences that had... still did, divide them, there wasn't much else it could be. It was a symbol, and symbols were important. As for right now, the majority of the population, the part that had been happy enough to settle once Shockwave structured things, were obviously pleased at the decreased risk of a new civil war.
The fighting wasn't over, the Quintessons were still metaphorically and sometimes literally, banging on the gates, but Jetfire hoped that if they survived this, in the end, this unification would hold beyond needing a reason to be around, and would stay just because... it was.
"That's the ugliest thing I've ever seen," Starscream said with a sneer as he landed on the balcony, scowling across the plaza and the collected crowd to the entrance to the Chamber of the Ancients, where two familiar frames stood, side by side. Jetfire followed Starscream's glare and hummed softly.
"The colour's chosen since it isn't at all connected to either of our faction insignias." Deliberately misinterpreting what Starscream was commenting on, Jetfire nonetheless studied the insignia now emblazoned on the structure above the entrance.
The insignia, he knew, both Optimus Prime and Megatron had consented to wear as a symbol of the reunification of their divided species, as the ancient symbol - somehow - incorporated both the Autobot and Decepticon brands.
"Yes, yes, that too." There was an annoyed grumble as Starscream briefly glared at his wings where the new brand had been emblazoned and he crossed his arms. Jetfire made sure to not be looking at Starscream as he continued, a faint smile undeniably tugging on his lips.
"You're just upset its not you there, with a crown and everything," Jetfire said, voice mild, and while he was sorely pressed to not turn around to get a proper look on Starscream's expression...
"Yes, exa---what, no! How'd you even... Jetfire," Starscream snapped, storming up to the railing and wedging himself between the railing and the larger jet, who stepped back to be able to look at him properly.
"You should have locked that door to the lab more often; at least it would have paused me for a second or so until I unlocked it. I don't really see how you could consider a crown a suitable thing to wear at a stipulated ceremony to recognize your efforts in science and your exploratory successes." Jetfire tilted his helm, and he really should not be smiling, but it was hard not to.
"You. are insufferable." Starscream glared and then used the railing to actually become a little taller than Jetfire, grabbed his chinguard with one hand, and put the other at the back of his helm and yanked Jetfire forward.
Resting one hand on the railing and the other along Starscream's side, Jetfire tilted his helm into the kiss and didn't bother being annoyed that Starscream was trying to use his new leverage in a very annoying and overly domineering way. He could let the Seeker have this; it wasn't as if he could stand on something to be taller than Jetfire all the time.
Setting the thinner, malleable plating of his lips vibrating with a soft hum, Jetfire smirked as Starscream shuddered slightly beneath his hand, and he stroked his thumb along the edge of the cockpit. Giving Jetfire a narrow, smoldering-red glare, Starscream moved the hand he had at the back of Jetfire's helm to pluck and stroke down his throat cables, smirking as the larger jet breathed out a moan between them. Straightening up, Starscream nonchalantly turned around and, still standing on the railing, leaned back against Jetfire.
"Don't expect that all the time." Starscream crossed his arms and stared down at Megatron and Prime, not yet back to his earlier levels of annoyance as Jetfire just snorted.
"No, of course not. I'd estimate a... hm, thirty-five point twelve percent uptime? Maybe. You'll certainly be busy, and I as well, and this isn't considering in the factors of future battles or attacks that you'd need to participate in or help organize the aerial defense against--- Starscream." Jetfire looked up at Starscream with a frown, attempting to jerk his wing out of reach, but Starscream was rather comfortably in rage where he was, and just gave the appendage another pinch before removing his hand.
"Shut up, Jetfire. We won't be that busy. Even if Skywarp will be useless and I look at his appointment with Thundercracker and I as merely necessary because he's trine, Thundercracker, at least, is capable enough to be counted on to do some things on his own."
Jetfire might have argued the point, but it wasn't as if we wasn't willing to adjust his position. To be honest, though, that was the number he'd got, from merely curiously running simulations and calculations to see what sort of free-time Starscream probably should expect. This hadn't even, in fact, taken into account Skywarp's... lazy or otherwise rather... unsuitable-to-leadership, nature. And he wasn't thinking of the fact that Skywarp wasn't exactly the sharpest processor around.
"If you say so, Starcsream," Jetfire murmured, resting one hand at Starscream's hip and smiled slightly when a smaller hand landed on top of it, Starscream still studiously staring down with a narrow glare at the two prominent figures on the other side of the plaza.
"I do. Now mute it so I can listen to this foolishness; I don't trust Thundercracker not to be busy keeping Skywarp in line so he doesn't embarrass us to actually remember to log this." There was a sneer on his faceplates as he spoke; clearly he didn't think whatever the Prime of Cybertron and the High Lord Megatron had to say would be interesting or useful at all, but some prudence told the one-third of the new rulers of Vos that there might be something he might need to actually know. Megatron hadn't gotten a longer temper after all.
"Yes, Starscream." Jetfire smiled and shook his helm, earning a huff and a rap on the back of his hand in 'punishment' before that hand settled back against his, fingers wedging between his own. Maybe it was slightly too optimistic to hope for something lasting from this, but...
Jetfire turned his helm and dropped a brief kiss on the side of the nearest vent, ignoring the stare he got as he turned back to the speech. But he'd rather hope that in the aftermath of the current war against the Quintessons, this reunification would hold, instead of preparing for another war.
That, Jetfire decided, as Starscream, staring down at the plaza himself squeezed their joined hands, would be worth ignoring the number of simulations and calculations that pointed at a less than twenty percent chance that it would hold. Not even half of the simulations and calculations showed that result anyway. Merely by joining together against first Unicron and then the Quintessons had they broken any earlier pattern of conflict. He wasn't always right, after all.
Rating: Adult (one instance of tactile)
Continuity: Dreamwave G1 (AU)
Characters: Starscream, Jetfire
Summary: A relationship as seen through various "afters"... and a beginning.
Notes: A series of interconnected ficlets that form a full story.
I - After Aborted Destinies
"---I don't believe in destiny!"
There shouldn't have been enough time to have tossed Sunstorm away from himself, cut his boosters and free-fall away as the explosion bloomed above. Bloomed, and then slammed into Jetfire, giving him an extra push he certainly did not need.
Luckily, it was simply the shockwave, and while engaging his full flight-systems didn't immediately stop his descent, that hadn't been Jetfire's goal, either. He just needed some sort of braking of his speed. The wind seared past his slightly, slowly, slowing chassis, tearing into wounds and ripping off tiny shards of metal that were just hanging on by paint. The landing would be uncomfortable.
Very uncomfortable.
Jetfire hoped Starscream had taken Bumblebee out of that pit.
*
"Starscream?" Vents protesting, spewing sand out of them, Jetfire groaned as he attempted to move, collapsed back down, and grunted as he was kicked in his lower leg. Comparatively gently, yes, but kicked nonetheless.
"Starscream..." Jetfire muttered, relieved he'd got an arm under his helm as he dropped down again, because otherwise there'd be sanding collecting in his mouth, and while it didn't exactly have anywhere to go...
"You. are. an. idiot." Starscream punctuated his words with, thankfully, not kicks this time, but pokes to the arm not trapped under Jetfire, before he grabbed it and helped the larger jet at least sit upright.
"This is the last time I dig you out of anything. One could think you have an affinity for this dirtball, Jetfire, the way you end up buried in various strata and materials of it!" Starscream sneered, then collapsed heavily down beside Jetfire, grumbling, surprisingly quietly as he tapped sand out of his afterburners.
Rubbing the side of his helm, Jetfire looked around even as he cast a glance at his internal HUD. Boosters almost completely burned out, remaining capacity at 19.8% percent. They'd need to be repaired. There were further various breaches in his armour, wiring ripped out or half-melted, and an uncomfortable hole in his cockpit, though the sharp edges of the glass had melted. Basically, he was a wreck.
But what had Starscream meant by having to dig him out..? A quick look around easily answered that question; he must, despite having attempted to slow his descent, crashed-landed hard into the beach.
There was a track half as deep as Jetfire was tall viciously torn through the ground, leading a fair bit in from the water's edge and small waves of sand packed up on either side of the newly-made ditch. The mounds of sand around the area Jetfire and Starscream now sat in had clearly been moved there; he was lying in what had become a pit, and sand was continually falling down in thin veils on them when gusts of wind danced over the now-decimated beach.
"Thank you, Starscream," Jetfire sighed and rubbed the back of his helm again; what else was there to say? He'd probably have been able to get out from under all the sand himself, but who knows how long it would have taken him to online again on his own? Starscream scoffed, then frowned up at Jetfire, finally putting down the leg he'd been trying to get all the sand out of the thruster of.
"Don't expect the same treatment again. I left the little yellow one on another beach. Unharmed." The Seeker frowned and looked away, fingers tapping on his thighs. Before Jetfire could open his mouth again, however, Starscream whirled back around, jabbing Jetfire in the chestplates.
"You're a mess. Don't you dare get such a slagging stupid idea again. Prime's the idiotically heroic and self-sacrificing one! Just because you feel left out of their little cultist circle is no reason to take after the worst Autobot traits," Starscream huffed and then immediately scowled and turned away to stare at one of the mounds he'd created himself by digging the large jet out.
"... Cultist circle? Honestly, Starscream," Jetfire murmured after several kliks of silence and slid slightly lower in his seat in the sand. He felt brittle. He hoped he'd be able to convince the Autobots to get him the materials he needed to repair his armour... Maybe he could even take the time to research and do further refining on it...
"Stop doing that," Starscream snapped, and then stood up, crossing his arms. "Not that it matters. You can go off into your scientific la-la-land as much as you want to as soon as I'm gone." With that, he turned away, but didn't get very far as his wrist... or rather, hand and part of his lower arm, considering the size difference, was snagged. And in comparision with Bumblebee's grip, even this weakened one was hard to jerk out of.
"A moment, Starscream," Jetfire said with a frown, and then unceremoniously showed he had enough strength to not just pull the Seeker off his balance (though dry sand doesn't make for good traction or something stable to struggle on), but to pull him down between his legs and trap him in his arms.
"Jetfire! Release me at once! If you think you can take me back to the Autobots, you've got ano--"
"No, that's not what it's about. Just... Sit still for a while." It was probably revealing too much, making his new-found revelation too clear, but... Well. Starscream was Starscream, but he seemed decidedly... more pleasant than in the beginning of the war.
Jetfire had no idea what happened there; the Seeker he'd known in the Academy was more like the one he'd been talking to after being thawed, the one he was currently hugging, than the one he'd been fighting on Cybertron, especially early on. Starscream proved this observation to be true by actually stilling with the loudest, most put-upon sigh ever heard.
"You're softer than a kitten, Jetfire. What do you even want to get out of this?" Starscream squirmed an arm free of Jetfire's embrace to be able to properly wave it around, scowling at the broken off and melted piece of null-ray stuck to it.
"... Kitten?" Jetfire frowned, and after a few tries and a satellite link connection managed to hook up to the local/global information network - the internet, the local dominant species apparently called it - and find out what a 'kitten' was. Shaking his helm at the images and information that called up - though he understood what Starscream was after with the comparsion, Autobot ideals and such things - Jetfire offlined his optics.
"Just a moment, Starscream. No shooting at each other, no out-maneuvering---"
"No slamming me into the ground."
"No slamming you into the ground," Jetfire agreed, chuckling slightly. "I don't think I'm in any condition to do that at the moment." Relatively sure Starscream wouldn't take off immediately, Jetfire broke his hold/embrace and allowed Starscream to get out of it, sitting down beside him again instead.
"I don't know what sort of Autobot revelation you had while flying to your guaranteed doom like an overgrown glitch, but I hope you remember we're supposed to be enemies," Starscream sneered, but there was only half the heat there could have been in there. Jetfire shook his helm and leaned forward to rest his arms on his thighs.
"Call it a pre-Autobot memory dump. But I suppose you'd consider the part where I decided that what mattered... was that we were friends. Not the fighting, to be an 'Autobot sensitivity'." Jetfire vented a sigh, adjusting his visual feed so he could look at Starscream through the side of it while allowing the diagnostic scan being run to take up the rest of the HUD.
Starscream had opened his mouth, sneer firmly on his faceplates, but then just... snapped it closed again and groaned, dragging a hand over his face.
"Is all that scientific babble clogging up your processor and making it slow? That doesn't matter anymore, Jetfire. It can't," Starscream snapped, first crossing his arms and then relaxing them so he could gesticulate to underscore his point, he'd also angled away slightly.
Despite this, one leg's pede was up against Jetfire's, and the way Starscream had angled himself, while increasing the general distance between them, now allowed Starscream's wing to be pressed up against Jetfire's.
Always so full of contradictions, always so dramatic.
"Maybe not," Jetfire agreed, pausing long enough for Starscream to relax slightly from his stiff posture, wings brushing gently against each other as he did so. "Maybe not for you. I don't like it, and I certainly can't say I appreciate all the back-and-forth of earlier, but I'm not going to go out of my way to attack you. It's not worth it. I may not agree with you, but I would prefer you alive," Jetfire frowned at the ground and then jerked slightly as Starscream slapped him harshly on the arm, growling.
"And what about your Autobot friends? Even if you don't kill me, the war might. Not that I'm going to let it, mind you! I've gotten rid of Megatron, and Shockwave's languishing somewhere on Cybertron, the Decepticons are mine now!" Starscream smirked, and Jetfire finally raised his helm and turned it to look at Starscream, expression mild.
"To what end? Now that you have them, what will you do? If I understand it right from what Bumblebee said, the Autobots effectively have Cybertron." Jetfire shook his helm and then sat back, slumping slightly and offlining his optics.
He was tired.
There was the noise of sliding metal, and a barrel pressed into the front of his helm. Starscream's other hand was pressing into and around the hole in his cockpit.
"I could kill you, you know," Starscream hissed, and Jetfire could easily imagine the narrow-opticked, pinched expression that was as much frustration as it was real anger.
"You could, yes. Are you going to?" Oh, he didn't want to die, even less here and now after escaping what had seemed a certain deactivation in a very... explosive way, but...
"No. If I do that, you're not going to be around to see my total victory, are you?" Starscream removed the hand that had been folded away to reveal the wrist-gun, digging his fingers into the vent on Jetfire's shoulder instead. His other hand was still uncomfortably pressed up against the hole in Jetfire's cockpit.
"I'm sure you could gloat to me either way." Jetfire finally onlined his optics and leaned forward, Starscream reading him and... for once not being difficult and just leaned forward himself, the front of their helms touching.
"It wouldn't be nearly as satisfying. Especially if I could have you kneeling by my throne," Starscream said with a smirk, tone light, and Jetfire shook his helm gently, so as to not dislodge their touch.
"Whatever happens, I have doubts about that being the most possible outcome. Especially with the calculated odds against you, Starscream."
"Shush, you glorified calculation drone," Starscream admonished, patting the still-whole cockpit glass above the hole. Jetfire snorted and bumped his helm against Starscream's.
"I may be injured, but I'm still stronger than you, so insulting me while you're sitting practically on top of me isn't something I recommend." All Jetfire did, however, was to briefly raise in hands and lightly run a few fingers down the outer edges of Starscream's wings. The Seeker chuckled faintly, disguising his light shiver with a bump of his own.
They stayed like that for several minutes until Starscream got off - he had, indeed, been sitting on Jetfire - and crossed his arms.
"You stay there. I'll find the yellow insect for you and send him your way. Don't expect any more help though," Starscream said, walking past Jetfire long enough for their fingers to brush briefly before he took to the sky.
Jetfire tilted his helm back to watch Starscream tear straight up, circle the area, and then take off.
***
II - After a Fight
"Is that what you want?!" The bellow, the first from Jetfire during their post-battle argument, caused the heated air to vanish with a near-audible pop, as if someone had taken a needle to a balloon and exploded it.
Silence wrapped itself, bold and aggressive, about the two flyers as Starscream's expression went from unbridled, offended rage into something less... certain. The humming null-ray quieted just as Jetfire squeezed the hand he'd earlier caught and let it go.
The moment they'd had on the beach after the fight with Sunstorm seemed not only thousand of hics away, but also millions of years. This was familiar, old and worn and not what he'd wanted to retread. But... There was a slight difference here. Starscream was - no matter if he was stuck because of Jetfire holding him in place or not - actually listening.
He'd never done that before.
"Is that what you would have wanted, what you want? For me to have stayed? I'd have to change, to become someone else entirely, you understand this, right? That's what you're demanding by saying I shouldn't have left, Starscream," Jetfire said quietly, staring down into lambent red optics, his expression solemn rather than livid. He'd already run out of anger.
While every angry snap of denouncement, every verbal slash of "traitor!" hurt, it was old. When he left, he'd only known he couldn't stay. He'd tried, after the enchantment with Decepticon ideals and philosophies had faded, for Starscream, for their friendship, but even that loyalty couldn't last forever. He'd been angry, then, at the lack of comprehension, if not acceptance. They'd fought enough to exemplify their factions' ire against the other.
Later, he'd realized he couldn't have stayed if he was to be himself, but Starscream...
Well, Jetfire couldn't say he was surprised the Seeker hadn't considered this, merely seen the personal insult as all that mattered.
"I tried, Starscream, but---"
"Let go," Starscream hissed, tugging on the arm that was still caught in Jetfire's other hand. The arm Jetfire had grabbed when Starscream flung it up, powering up the null-ray and then yanked it closer, pressing the barrel to the side of his helm while throwing his last few sentences out. "This isn't about you, you weak-sparked, fence-sitting trai---" Starscream's expression when Jetfire actually interrupted him - a tactic he hadn't used more than, perhaps, two handful of times, even with all the time they'd known each other - would have been, in any other situation, amusing.
"No? And if this isn't about me, you, and us, what are we doing this for, then? If this isn't about what you feel I have been, or should have been doing, but about something as simple as a defection... Why not go after Grimlock?" Jetfire could have snapped the words out, harsh and short, but instead they came out quiet and soft, but all the more unbending for that.
"He has, by now, joined, left and rejoined both our factions quite a lot more than I have." The quiet words and bald, narrow stare from Jetfire had Starscream sputtering before he yanked on his arm again, and this time it was let go. And while Starscream's flight systems powered up again, and there was an initial whine from his transformation cog, he didn't immediately leave.
"So maybe it is." But Starscream didn't elaborate on what was supposed to be something, but considering their topic, Jetfire didn't need the elaboration. "That doesn't mean you aren't a---rrgh." Starscream cut himself off this time, scowling at Jetfire's cocked helm and look.
How dare he make this about him?
He had left, thrown it all--- Well, that was what Jetfire was saying wasn't it?
No!
He wouldn't let the overgrown flying grounder get to him with his stupid arguments... With a snarl, Starscream fisted one hand and slammed it against the Autobrand above Jetfire's cockpit. The larger jet just looked at him, the beginnings of a frown teasing his faceplates.
"Starscream..."
"No. Shut up. Just..." He wasn't even sure what he wanted with this. He hadn't even considered that Jetfire might feel that he would need to change to stay... But if that was so, maybe he should have!
Starscream couldn't even convince himself, right now, that that was what he'd want, no matter what a weak, Autobot sympathizer Jetfire was.
"We're not talking about this any more," Starscream finally snapped, pushing himself back by activating his afterburners some more. Jetfire tilted his helm in a brief nod, and for a moment, Starscream wanted to shoot that insufferably patient expression of Jetfire's faceplates. But that patience was also why the idiot---
No, he was just amazing, and Jetfire knew that. Starscream huffed and Jetfire shook his helm, crossing his arms.
"Well, if you're done listening to me, I assume the battle's long over. I don't know about you, but I have a few pings and messages I've ignored."
Starscream grimaced and looked away. Thundercracker and Skywarp knew not to bother him after the first order to stay away, and if it had truly been some sort of emergency or whatever, Skywarp could have been ordered to find him, and would have been able to. Nonetheless, he did have a scathing message pointedly asking him to join back up on the Nemesis for debriefing.
"Don't let me catch you flying out alone, Jetfire." Starscream finally turned back to glare at the larger jet, and then took off, leaving the foolish Autobot to hover far above their previous battleground.
***
III - After a Show
He should have ended it.
With a grimace, Starscream lowered his arms and leaned back against the pile of rocks, arms crossed, as the large white shape - small from this distance - shot away with a muted roar and bluish-tinted flame from the boosters.
Jetfire should have known he was there. Starscream hadn't exactly hidden after all, and he was sure he'd felt a brief, deliberate push of Jetfire's field against his own when the jet had roared impressively - there was no one here, no one could tell he'd admitted this - close to the ground before taking off towards the sky again, twirling around his own axis. He'd caught the idiot out flying over the badlands, and hadn't shot him down.
Starscream ground one afterburner down into the relatively soft ground, aggravated. He should have. What was wrong with him? Jetfire's usefulness was ended. He ignored that he'd dug the jet out of the beach after the battle with Sunstorm... his reasoning had still been glitched due to that loo--- due to Sunstorm and all his blathering!
If he could just have Jetfire where he wanted him, if everything could just slot neatly where he needed it to be, this would be a non-issue!
That he'd almost shot - but the null-rays hadn't been on maximum, though it would of course have caused Jetfire to crash - didn't matter. It didn't matter, since he'd stopped and just stared as the overgrown model plane had flown through some arbitrarily decided-upon restricted desert airspace, both in alt and root mode.
He had not gotten caught by the display of skill, power and the sort of competence only a good flyer could show in the air.
He hadn't.
Starscream growled and dragged a hand down his face harshly.
This was stupid.
He was being unreasonable. This. would. not. work.
Whirling around, Starscream kicked the rock formation, stalked off, and then turned around, blasting the large formation into pieces before he took off. Next time, he'd do what he should do.
***
IV - After the End
"Jetfire---" The finger against his lips hardly stopped him from speaking, but Starscream fell quiet anyway, annoyance raw over circuits, lingering with pain. He needed a medic. Matrix alight, they both did.
And what was the silly jet doing?
Sitting on the ground in this newly carved ravine on Earth's moon, Starscream pulled up against him, half curled around the smaller jet as if this would solve anything. There was a thin trail of energon slowly forming a miniature river as it worked over the surface of the moon, trickling by Jetfire's thigh. That came from his boosters, and the idiot was just sitting there as if there wasn't a chance something could take spark and explode.
Attempting to pull away was useless; Jetfire, despite the ripped up armour on one arm and the torn cables leading up to the elbow joint, was strong enough to keep Starscream in place, and it wasn't as if Starscream himself wasn't running extremely low on energy.
"This is exceedingly stupid and we both need medics!" Starscream snapped, but was obliged to pull his legs under him, for his own comfort, obviously not because this brought him closer to the spark humming away underneath its protective plating, both of their cockpits cracked and splintered.
"I know." And that was all the overgrown toy jet would say, hugging Starscream closer, hands warm against abused back plating that had taken more than one glancing brush of energy from the purple maniac's orange cannon.
Who the slag had a paintjob like that, anyway?
Above them, far beyond the reach of the Moon's negligible gravity, pieces of foreign metal spun in space, the last traces of the tear in space-time flickering, collapsing in on itself, the planet eater gone with the tear, pushed and fallen through it.
Starscream huffed and snaked an arm under Jetfire's right, clutching the back of it, pleased (but would never admit to that) to find some place that didn't have a crack, tear, lacking plating or dripping energon.
His other hand nestled, after some hesitation, up against the plating above Jetfire's broken cockpit, and he pretended not to hear the soft hum... or the quiet, purring noise from the powerful engine housed within. They hadn't been this close in a long time. Not even after Starscream had dug Jetfire up from the beach where he'd crashed after fighting Sunstorm.
They could sit here a bit longer.
As long as no one shot at them (no one even knew they were here), Jetfire was unlikely to explode from the compromised boosters, and if they hadn't died yet, visits to their corresponding medics could wait a bit longer.
"You're going to get us both killed," Starscream muttered and offlined his optics, relaxing slightly and slowly rubbing over the singed but otherwise unharmed Autobrand on Jetfire's chestplates. There was a brief, slightly statick-laced chuckle from above, and a brush of lips on the top of his helm. Yes... Just a few more kliks couldn't harm anything. He needed to gather enough energy to fly anyway.
***
V - After First Contact
This was beginning to get familiar. Jetfire dove, angled himself and transformed, sweeping Starscream up with one arm and shooting the group of... sharkticons to pieces with the rifle in his other one, before flying up in the air again. Of course he'd hardly cleared ground before Starscream started to complain, despite the injured wings.
"Put me down, Jetfire! Now! I don't need your help," Starscream snapped, pushing against the frame holding him, more embarrassed than actually angry. Then there was the fact that someone could have seen.
"In a minute. If you have to, consider it a return favour for the help you gave me earlier." Jetfire circled the battlefield, picking off stray enemies from above, apparently unconcerned about the Seeker he was holding to himself in the fashion remniscent of a human girl lugging around a doll in one arm. At the mention of that incident, Starscream flinched and scowled, giving one more token push before settling down.
"That was a---" He couldn't say it was a mistake, because it (unfortunately because it should have been one) hadn't been. "If anyone's killing you, it'll be me. And not now anyway." Banging his helm against the closest bit of plating, Starscream attempted to justify it.
But really, if he was supposed to justify anything, he'd have to go back to 'got Jetfire out of the ice and later thawed him', because no matter the... probable advantages to him from that, he should have killed him. But he hadn't. He was even listening to Jetfire! Not that he'd wanted to, but the point Jetfire had made from That Argument had... stuck.
Very pointedly and aggressively, and it annoyed him.
There were the other lapses, of course. That he hadn't immediately left afer digging Jetfire out of the sand.
That he hadn't killed him during the argument... or the earlier fight.
That he hadn't worked a bit harder to get out of Jetfire's... grasp... back after the fight with Unicron on the Moon.
That he wasn't now doing more. With a huff, Starscream cuffed the shoulder to the arm that was holding him, that being the part of Jetfire most easily reached the way he was held.
"You're insufferable. Now put. me. down. before someone notices." Even if they had - marginally - been working together at the sudden attack that had descended on them during a nearly... lazily routine battle. Things hadn't really been the same since the confrontation with that giant transforming planet that was apparently an evil, planet-eating and dimension-destroying god - not that Starscream believed that part, of course - but they were getting there, and now... this.
"Of course. It seems it's mostly over now---er." Jetfire's optics flickered as he broke off, staring slightly unfocused down on the ground far below, the water in the dam glittering in the light. The humans were lucky the giant (by human standards, of course) had held and been kept safe from being destroyed by the Decepticons, or the attacking Quintesson forces alike.
"What? Stop staring like a sparkless drone and tell me!" Starscream banged his fist against white armour in frustration, but even as Jetfire slowly began to speak, Starscream got a message telling him to not murder the giant jet he was "clearly" holding hostage "in some fashion, surely", because...
"Er, well... It seems that, despite our... ah, differences, there'll be... Negotiations. Over a cease-fire. And---"
"Potential alliance against the five-faced freaks who're behind these... rejects that're attacking us. Megatron has completely lost it!" Starscream flung his hand out and then almost hit Jetfire again, only barely aborting that motion due to the narrow stare directed down at him. It didn't matter that he would probably, maybe, have done the same if expedient, what mattered was that Megatron shouldn't get such ideas! Jetfire's stare spoke clearly of the hypocrisy he could see and then he shook his helm.
"If it works, I don't see the issue, despite the odds against a... er, smooth alliance considering everything." Jetfire shrugged as he descended and put Starscream down. The Seeker frowned and then strutted over to stand beside Megatron, while Jetfire simply stood off to the side by the rest of the Autobots, as they had apparently decided the best place to at least keep the initial discussion was right there on the battlefield at the dam.
Not that it was a... completely unsound decision, considering that neither would agree to meet in, or near their respective bases (which would be hard to accomplish with the Nemesis, anyway), and thus Earth in general, or, perhaps, the Moon, was currently the most "neutral" ground to be found.
Crossing his arms, Jetfire cocked his helm and simply listened, though he was amazed that neither side took to arms as the... barely... discussion as well as tempers flared. There was, something, somewhere, that hoped this would be the lead-in to something more, something that would abort what would surely happen and change the course they seemed to be set on, repeating or making worse the past conditons of battle and when any one side "won".
Of course, nothing might come from this. There was already skepticism being put forth about these Quintessons being enough of a threat - compared to Unicron, which they had, after all, defeated while merely forced to work together in a most slap-dash manner - to justify even a cease-fire.
"--- You're a fool, Prime! This planet isn't even ours, and no matter the resources, if it would be expedient to let the Quintessons have it while we regroup---"
"Oh, mighty leader... didn't you say something about our rightful past a while ago? Something about 'protection'... I'm sure I remember---eck." Starscream brought one hand up to attempt to - silently and remarkably restrained - bend the black hand around his neck away; the dark rage on Megatron's faceplates from being... interrupted as well as have had that flung at him wasn't promising at all. Which, suddenly, smoothed to a scowl as he flung the Seeker away.
"You can't expect us to hold something that's untenable, we do have our own planet, too, and from what I know, they would be all too happy to wrest it away from us," Megatron finally said, arms crossed, and Prime stared quietly for several minutes, optics narrowed, and then inclined his helm.
"We'll see, Megatron. We can't leave the humans to fend for themselves."
Jetfire turned his attention away from the discussion - it was being logged and he could review it later - to where Starscream was getting to his pedes, a thunderous scowl on his dark faceplates. Then he actually looked up, blue and red optics met, and the expression smoothed out into something a lot more haughtier. Jetfire just barely kept his sigh inside and instead just cocked his helm slightly.
//Nothing good will come from this.// Starscream's expression was surprisingly even as he took his place again, and the doomsday proclamation was probbaly a lot more... neutral than it would otherwise have been if it weren't for the blue and white frame on Megatron's other side.
//No need to be that pessimistic... But I do think it relies on how much of a threat they turn out to be.// Jetfire twitched his shoulders, and privately hoped that, no matter what, some sort of predicate would be set by this.
Right now, with this discussion going on, the gap between the amassed Autobots and Decepticons had never seemed both so obvious and unnecessary both. Despite the things done and said since he'd been thawed, the differences between the then on Cybertron and the now on Earth, especially Starscream... taunted Jetfire.
His earlier realization had been made under pressure, and Starscream's... mellowed behaviour hadn't really mattered back then. Not with what was going on, since had merely been the sort of (nostalgic, though still important - driving, really) realization that went deeper than taking any current changes into mind.
Now, though?
It stood out even more, especially against the arguments they had had since Starscream thawed him.
//I'll be as realistic as I want. This is completely unnecessary, and absolutely foolish! If I was---// Starscream cut himself off, optics briefly narrowing before his expression smoothed out again. Jetfire did his outmost best to keep the smile that wanted to slip out unexpressed.
//Whatever happens, I'm sure you'll get the most out of it.// Jetfire finally acceded quietly, and he knew he shouldn't, but the tiny smirk on Starscream's faceplates that his words elicted was - to Jetfire, at least - almost embarrassingly charming.
Most would probably have questioned it, but well. There was a reason Jetfire had befriended the Seeker in the beginning, and it had, perhaps surprisingly, had nothing to do with his projects and research results, and all to do with Starscream's very interesting way of going about it. Not exactly the correct way, but facinating in its own way.
//Of course I will.// Starscream briefly looked Jetfire in the face, that smirk still in place, before he turned the tiny bit away from the larger jet towards the actual discussion going on; not enough of a difference anyone else would have noticed he'd even been turned towards Jetfire, but enough that Jetfire saw the difference.
No one needed to what that difference meant, however, and Jetfire looked back at Optimus, actively listening again, even as Blaster reported an incoming message relayed from the local authorities about the... situation.
***
VI - After a Betrayal
They were probably lucky they had negotiated - or begun to, anyway - a cease-fire and a sort-of alliance before the greater bulk of the Quintesson forces started to arrive. That didn't nearly help the humans as much as it helped the Cybertronians, even if the Decepticons weren't going out of their way - or even at all, currently - of attacking humans. And they weren't helpless; there was that Centurion project.
This didn't make them safe, and despite the fact that Jetfire could feel the injury in his back as well as all the other ones, he couldn't - even as he went down on his knees, barely avoiding slamming into a building and killing however many were still inside - regret having stood in the way.
He just had to...
The hand he was not currently using to hold himself up went to the shattered cockpit, and then above, to the torn-up chestplates, shielding the light spilling out from between gaps in metal that ought not be there.
"Jetfire!"
No. No, that wasn't good at all. Setting his jaw, Jetfire attempted to straighten up as fast as he could, but the stabbing flare of pain over his sensornet as well as something creaking threateningly kept him in place as Starscream, engines booming in this limited space, landed on the street in front of him before he wedged himself in beside Jetfire.
"Starscream, don't, there's---" Jetfire grimaced and attempted to get to his pedes again, since that would leave more space for them both as well as no chance of crumbling the buildings on either side of the road.
"Shut up. I saw that. They don't deserve your protection!" Starscream looked down the road behind Jetfire, the humans who had barely avoided being destroyed by the sharkticon and Quintesson Jetfire had taken care of now standing around Ratchet's pedes as he had been interrupted in his attempt to get to Jetfire by a brief surge in the battle.
Starscream sneered, as much vindicated in his (and, in general Decepticon attitudes about humans) opinion of the "dominant species" as he was angry. No one got to shoot the idiot jet besides him. Especially not potentially fatally enough to kill him. Even if the shot from behind hadn't done more than crack the boosters, the energon leaking from them was dangerous on its own.
"Starscream, enough. That won't--- help. Anything." Jetfire frowned, briefly lifting his hand away from the hole now partly baring his spark to the world in a way it most definitely shouldn't be bared, clamping down on the arm Starscream had raised to force it down. The null-ray quieted.
"It would help me," Starscream said with a huff, cast another narrow glance behind him before he leaned down, pulling and then pushing at Jetfire's hand to make him remove it from his arm and put it over the hole in his chestplates instead.
"And don't you dare deactivate." The snarl was underlined by a brief, harsh rev from Starscream's engines as he leaned forward, pressing the fronts of their helms together before he abruptly got to his pedes, flight systems powering up.
"All yours, Autobot. I'm amazed any of you are even still functioning as soft-sparked as you are, not letting the fatally wounded die on the field!" With that, and ignoring that Ratchet must have seen what he'd done, Starscream lifted off from the ground and - perhaps miraculously - only attacked the Quintesson forces still present, instead of any humans.
***
VII - After Reunification
It was, all things considered, a rather solemn affair. But then, with their history, the past and differences that had... still did, divide them, there wasn't much else it could be. It was a symbol, and symbols were important. As for right now, the majority of the population, the part that had been happy enough to settle once Shockwave structured things, were obviously pleased at the decreased risk of a new civil war.
The fighting wasn't over, the Quintessons were still metaphorically and sometimes literally, banging on the gates, but Jetfire hoped that if they survived this, in the end, this unification would hold beyond needing a reason to be around, and would stay just because... it was.
"That's the ugliest thing I've ever seen," Starscream said with a sneer as he landed on the balcony, scowling across the plaza and the collected crowd to the entrance to the Chamber of the Ancients, where two familiar frames stood, side by side. Jetfire followed Starscream's glare and hummed softly.
"The colour's chosen since it isn't at all connected to either of our faction insignias." Deliberately misinterpreting what Starscream was commenting on, Jetfire nonetheless studied the insignia now emblazoned on the structure above the entrance.
The insignia, he knew, both Optimus Prime and Megatron had consented to wear as a symbol of the reunification of their divided species, as the ancient symbol - somehow - incorporated both the Autobot and Decepticon brands.
"Yes, yes, that too." There was an annoyed grumble as Starscream briefly glared at his wings where the new brand had been emblazoned and he crossed his arms. Jetfire made sure to not be looking at Starscream as he continued, a faint smile undeniably tugging on his lips.
"You're just upset its not you there, with a crown and everything," Jetfire said, voice mild, and while he was sorely pressed to not turn around to get a proper look on Starscream's expression...
"Yes, exa---what, no! How'd you even... Jetfire," Starscream snapped, storming up to the railing and wedging himself between the railing and the larger jet, who stepped back to be able to look at him properly.
"You should have locked that door to the lab more often; at least it would have paused me for a second or so until I unlocked it. I don't really see how you could consider a crown a suitable thing to wear at a stipulated ceremony to recognize your efforts in science and your exploratory successes." Jetfire tilted his helm, and he really should not be smiling, but it was hard not to.
"You. are insufferable." Starscream glared and then used the railing to actually become a little taller than Jetfire, grabbed his chinguard with one hand, and put the other at the back of his helm and yanked Jetfire forward.
Resting one hand on the railing and the other along Starscream's side, Jetfire tilted his helm into the kiss and didn't bother being annoyed that Starscream was trying to use his new leverage in a very annoying and overly domineering way. He could let the Seeker have this; it wasn't as if he could stand on something to be taller than Jetfire all the time.
Setting the thinner, malleable plating of his lips vibrating with a soft hum, Jetfire smirked as Starscream shuddered slightly beneath his hand, and he stroked his thumb along the edge of the cockpit. Giving Jetfire a narrow, smoldering-red glare, Starscream moved the hand he had at the back of Jetfire's helm to pluck and stroke down his throat cables, smirking as the larger jet breathed out a moan between them. Straightening up, Starscream nonchalantly turned around and, still standing on the railing, leaned back against Jetfire.
"Don't expect that all the time." Starscream crossed his arms and stared down at Megatron and Prime, not yet back to his earlier levels of annoyance as Jetfire just snorted.
"No, of course not. I'd estimate a... hm, thirty-five point twelve percent uptime? Maybe. You'll certainly be busy, and I as well, and this isn't considering in the factors of future battles or attacks that you'd need to participate in or help organize the aerial defense against--- Starscream." Jetfire looked up at Starscream with a frown, attempting to jerk his wing out of reach, but Starscream was rather comfortably in rage where he was, and just gave the appendage another pinch before removing his hand.
"Shut up, Jetfire. We won't be that busy. Even if Skywarp will be useless and I look at his appointment with Thundercracker and I as merely necessary because he's trine, Thundercracker, at least, is capable enough to be counted on to do some things on his own."
Jetfire might have argued the point, but it wasn't as if we wasn't willing to adjust his position. To be honest, though, that was the number he'd got, from merely curiously running simulations and calculations to see what sort of free-time Starscream probably should expect. This hadn't even, in fact, taken into account Skywarp's... lazy or otherwise rather... unsuitable-to-leadership, nature. And he wasn't thinking of the fact that Skywarp wasn't exactly the sharpest processor around.
"If you say so, Starcsream," Jetfire murmured, resting one hand at Starscream's hip and smiled slightly when a smaller hand landed on top of it, Starscream still studiously staring down with a narrow glare at the two prominent figures on the other side of the plaza.
"I do. Now mute it so I can listen to this foolishness; I don't trust Thundercracker not to be busy keeping Skywarp in line so he doesn't embarrass us to actually remember to log this." There was a sneer on his faceplates as he spoke; clearly he didn't think whatever the Prime of Cybertron and the High Lord Megatron had to say would be interesting or useful at all, but some prudence told the one-third of the new rulers of Vos that there might be something he might need to actually know. Megatron hadn't gotten a longer temper after all.
"Yes, Starscream." Jetfire smiled and shook his helm, earning a huff and a rap on the back of his hand in 'punishment' before that hand settled back against his, fingers wedging between his own. Maybe it was slightly too optimistic to hope for something lasting from this, but...
Jetfire turned his helm and dropped a brief kiss on the side of the nearest vent, ignoring the stare he got as he turned back to the speech. But he'd rather hope that in the aftermath of the current war against the Quintessons, this reunification would hold, instead of preparing for another war.
That, Jetfire decided, as Starscream, staring down at the plaza himself squeezed their joined hands, would be worth ignoring the number of simulations and calculations that pointed at a less than twenty percent chance that it would hold. Not even half of the simulations and calculations showed that result anyway. Merely by joining together against first Unicron and then the Quintessons had they broken any earlier pattern of conflict. He wasn't always right, after all.
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Date: 2012-01-06 11:13 pm (UTC)This is WONDERFUL!
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Date: 2012-01-06 11:18 pm (UTC)