"Just fly!" Starscream yells. He is clinging to Skyfire's back, and ordinarily he would give some thought to how ridiculous this must look, but right now he's more concerned with the fact that the roof is caving in.

A falling chunk of concrete hits Skyfire's shoulder and glances off, leaving a deep, ugly dent, and Starscream feels Skyfire shudder as a falling beam punches through his thigh. A heavy spray of energon erupts from the wound, indicating a severed artery. Slag it, Starscream thinks, but then something heavy falls on him and crunches his wing like tinfoil. The damage probably shouldn't matter at this point considering what a mess he is, but the pain wrenches a cry from him anyway, and it's only belatedly that he realizes Skyfire is shouting at him, shouting his name.

"Starscream!" His voice is lost in the noise of the world ending, but his words, carried through their bond, inject themselves directly into Starscream's stream of awareness. "You shoot!" Skyfire orders. "I'll fly."

Shoot. Right, he can probably manage that. He unclamps an arm from around Skyfire's neck and fires upward, vaporizing steel and concrete before it has a chance to crush them, while Skyfire rockets up, dodging the pieces of debris that Starscream can't hit. They soar through the crumbling roof and up, into the veiled blue of Earth's sky.

"Keep going!" The wind rips Starscream's words away, but Skyfire seems to understand. His engines roar, and Starscream feels the rush of acceleration. It's almost enough—but not quite. When he looks down, he understands why. That severed artery is spurting like a geyser. He re-aims his weapon, adjusts it to the lowest power setting, and fires. It's an old trick for a reason. The heat seals the severed fuel line and they zoom up again, but it's too late.

The shockwave hits before he even hears the explosion, and it's like riding on a thunderclap. Skyfire angles his wings to catch the blast, letting it drive them higher and faster, and all Starscream can do is hang on. He laughs because this is so crazy, and he imagines how he must look right now—like a baby bat clinging to its mother's back—and also because he has entirely forgotten where he is, when he is, where they are.

Gravity falls away and they're alone among the stars, with nothing between them but the vibrant warmth of Skyfire's back and the rhythm of his life, like a song, beneath Starscream's hands, his cheek, his spark. They're tumbling through the darkness, together and free.

"Keep going," he says again. There's no atmosphere to carry the sound of his voice, yet Skyfire seems to hear. He turns and catches Starscream to his chest, spark to spark, powerful arms holding him in the starry silence, and he smiles. His optics are a blue pilot flame, and Starscream feels as if he's falling up, into that bottomless ocean, that deep summer sky that is home to his spark. When Skyfire speaks, his voice sounds from the depths of Starscream's own mind.

Find me.

Starscream came awake with a jolt, and sat up so fast he nearly smashed his head on the roof of his crib. His alarm subroutine kicked in, bringing his weapons systems and flight engines online with brutal abruptness while his addled mind grappled with the question of whether it would be better to fight or to flee. The realization that he was alone sank in a moment later. His quarters were quiet, dark, and almost peaceful—or as peaceful as they ever could be, considering they were next door to Megatron's. He swung his pedes to the floor and staggered up.

The silence was back.

He could feel it like a physical pull on his spark, commanding him into flight. He stomped across his quarters, making noise just for the sake of hearing it, though of course that made no difference. This was a silence that had nothing to do with sound. It was more like an absence, a dead spot at the core of his being, and it had become a regular, increasingly frequent part of his life over the past three and a half orns. In other words, ever since Skyfire had, once again, managed to get himself captured by the Decepticons, and Starscream had—again—helped him to escape.

How quickly it had become unfamiliar to him. The silence had been his constant, only real, companion for, literally, aeons. Less than a single year had passed since he'd finally found Skyfire, buried in the strange zone of silence he'd discovered in Earth's arctic. The irony was that he'd only needed his trine there with him to help him figure it out. Those obscure Seeker traditions that he'd spent most of his life avoiding had turned out to have some uses, after all. The zone muffled the bond he shared with Skywarp and Thundercracker just as effectively as it did his deeper, more intense bond with Skyfire.

Starscream didn't even want to think about the probabilities. Somehow, Skyfire had crashed in the one place—not just on Earth but, as far as Starscream knew, the entire universe—where their bond couldn't reach. Find me, Skyfire had said to him, at the time of their last parting. What a joke that was; Starscream knew precisely where Skyfire was, give or take a square kilometer or two, and he'd become so used to sensing Skyfire's presence, however faintly, through their bond that his absence felt like a blow. Even now, his traitorous body was quivering with the need to fly, to seek, the need for—

"Slag it!" he shouted, this time at the top of his voice, and aimed a savage kick at his desk chair. It fell sideways and struck the edge of his worktable on its way down, and a small metal object rolled from the edge of the table. He kicked that, too, sending it flying into a corner. It struck hard, raising sparks from the wall, just as Starscream's sluggish cortex recognized the thing for what it was.

He dove after it with a curse and scooped it up, his hands automatically checking for damage. The object was crushed, blackened and had never actually worked in the first place, but all that was beside the point. He glided his fingers over contours that were worn smooth from a thousand, thousand touches like the one he was giving it now, and vented a sigh of relief.

It was a phase-shifter, or had been. Or, at least, the prototype for one, though he and Skyfire had eventually given up trying to make it work. It was the one thing he'd managed to hang on to from that long-ago time before the war, and its solid weight in his hand served as proof that that world, the one in which he and Skyfire had labored over it, had actually existed. It was the one thing that made him believe that his life before hadn't been some kind of dream, as fleeting and ephemeral as his defrag imagery had been just now.

He set the phase shifter, carefully, on the edge of the porthole that looked out on the inky depths of the Pacific. It took a moment for him to realize that something outside was looking back. Actually, a bunch of somethings. They hovered in the murk, blank gazes trained upon him as if they expected him to throw a handful of breadcrumbs, or… whatever fishes ate. Chinook salmon, his memory banks supplied, as if there was the slightest chance of his not recognizing them. By now he'd seen enough of the Chinook, as well as its buddies the sockeye, chum, pink and coho—to last him several lifetimes.

"Go away!" he snarled. "Scat, shoo!"

The fishes stared at him. There was zero chance they could have heard him through the starship's thick hull, but he couldn't shake the distinct, unnerving impression that they were pondering, and choosing to ignore, his request.

Watch for the salmon, Starscream, the cracking voice of Sigil Nightspark, left-hand Speaker of Illuminus Trine, echoed mockingly from the back of his mind. Their journey of return shall parallel yours.

Those had been her parting words to him, nine million years ago. Back then, there'd been no such thing as salmon, and the Earth, from which he'd just recently returned after his last, fateful trip with Skyfire, had not yet evolved a form of life capable of naming them as such. It was a coincidence, obviously, that the humans had chosen that particular name for that particular species of fish, with its particularly odd migratory habits, and it was only to be expected that he now saw them, constantly, peering at him through the portholes. That's just what happened when you lived in a tin can at the bottom of the ocean.

It was also, quite clearly, coincidental that he couldn't scan human television or radio frequencies without arriving at some fishing show or an in-depth analysis of the salmon-colored drapes in someone's living room. Humans were both predatory and obsessed with trivialities; that wasn't news. So why couldn't he escape the feeling that that wretched old harpy, Nightspark, was watching him from some obscure pocket of space-time and having a grand old cackle at his expense?

"I'm not returning!" he barked, to the salmon and the memory of Nightspark and—most of all—the silence. "Anywhere!"

He spun on a heel-thruster and stalked to the door, which snapped open at his approach with prudent alacrity. The off-shift was well underway, which left the corridors silent and deserted. He headed for the rec room, hoping to find some means of distraction. Every cable in his body was strung tight, aching for the sky, and he needed something that would keep him grounded. Thundercracker was usually good for a fight whenever Starscream might choose to pick one, as were Thrust or Astrotrain.

The rec room, however, turned out to be as deserted as the officers deck had been—and why had he never noticed how unsettlingly large the windows were in here? They offered a panoramic view of the surrounding ocean-bed and of darting, silvery shapes among the towering kelp forest. He strode back into the corridor, slamming the rec room doors with a little more force than necessary, and considered his options.

He had two. Well three, if you wanted to get technical, but approaching Megatron would be a serious breach of protocol, and Starscream had long ago learned the wisdom of letting Megatron choose the time and the place and of not letting his own desires… interfere, in any way. That left either Dirge or Scavenger. Dirge was, by far, Starscream's preferred choice. What he lacked in personality he made up for with his understanding of, and more to the point respect, for protocol. He deferred to Starscream's rank without a quibble, and never attempted to turn their encounters into anything… more. Unfortunately he was in the repair bay recovering from a near-fatal encounter with a dinobot, which left Starscream with just one option.

He preferred to think it was a coincidence that his route to the lower crew decks took him past the brig. His steps barely slowed as he passed that one particular cell, the one where Skyfire had asked him to make love to him. As if that was a thing. As if anyone actually "made love," as opposed to merely fragging.

Yet Skyfire did, and Starscream had forgotten. He'd buried those memories deep, where nothing—no one—could ever reach them. Even himself, he'd thought, and yet Skyfire had brought them to life with just his touch, just his kisses and his easy, graceful surrender. He'd made it look so effortless, as if surrendering was the most natural thing and letting yourself be taken was a delight, not a humiliation. Starscream could almost remember when he'd thought that way, but that wasn't his world anymore. Wasn't him.

Scavenger was slow in responding to his knock, but when he finally did, his face lit with a ridiculous grin as if there was no one in the universe he'd rather find standing on his doorstep. "Starscream! Come inside," he invited, shifting one of his piles of junk to the side so that Starscream could fit his wings through the door more easily.

Come inside. Those words froze Starscream on the threshold as he recalled them being said to him, albeit in a very different context, just three and a half orns ago. That, itself, was almost enough to change his mind—but he needed this. He wouldn't be here if he didn't.

"It's been a while," Scavenger remarked as he bounced across the room, dodging stacks of crushed Volkswagens, threadbare couches and defunct refrigerators, somehow managing to avoid hitting anything with his scoop-tail, which he carried behind himself with improbable dexterity.

"It has," Starscream had to agree. He could tell it had been by the degree to which Scavenger's "collection" had grown since he'd last been here. Scavenger was always collecting things in hopes of discovering something that his gestalt team would find impressive or useful. Most of it was utter junk, but for some reason he hung on to a lot of it, to the point where his quarters now resembled a thrift shop.

"I've missed you," Scavenger added.

Uh-oh. This had been a bad idea, and Starscream had known that it was—and yet. If Scavenger could just be sensible enough to not regale him with poetry this time, he could cope. Probably.

"I've got some Visco," Scavenger said, scanning the contents of his ancient chill-unit. "Well, it's not really Visco," he amended, "but you can hardly even tell. Mixmaster distilled it, and—"

"No."

Scavenger's expression fell. He looked incredibly young without his battle-mask, though that, of course, was just an illusion. He and his fellow Constructicons had been around since well before the war, but his eagerness to please gave him an oddly youthful quality.

"How about some energon, then?" he offered. "I've got blue grade, yellow grade, and a tiny bit of—"

"I'm not here to drink," Starscream cut in, glancing around at the mess.

There were precious few horizontal surfaces—apart from the berth, which Starscream preferred to avoid, just on principle—over which Scavenger could be bent. He decided that Scavenger's workbench was probably the best candidate. It was around hip height, and wasn't covered with quite as many oddments as the rest of the furniture. He began clearing a space, moving aside boxes of tools, the skull of some kind of horned animal, and a fancy little cage of the type that humans used to entrap birds. Starscream paused over this latter object, morbidly fascinated in spite of himself.

"So how have you been?" Scavenger asked.

"Well enough," Starscream muttered.

There was a tiny, gray feather caught in the cage's door hinge. Had the bird died within its prison, or flown free? There was no way of telling, but Starscream suspected the former. Life was just like that. He shoved the cage aside and picked up a stack of moldering books. These were arranged in prismatic order according to color, which made Starscream wonder if Scavenger actually knew what books were for, or if he'd just collected them because he liked the way they looked.

A yellowing sheet of paper slipped from the pages of one book and landed on the worktop directly in front of him, as if an invisible hand had placed it there. It was a page from a magazine, and featured a full-bleed photo of a muscular, heavy-jowled fish with a speckled green back. Journey of the salmon, read the explanatory text. Each year, an entire generation battles the current to find their way back to their natal streams, where they will mate, then die. Follow them on their mysterious—

"Enough!" Starscream crumpled the paper with a snarl of irritation.

"Sorry?"

"Not you," Starscream growled.

"Oh! Okay." Scavenger gave a relieved chuckle. "Well check out what I found at a dump the other day. It's an Earth music machine; can you even believe it?" He was bent over a small device which Starscream's memory banks identified as a record player. Scavenger had it set up on a metal crate with a portable power-supply and a stack of battered-looking records. Scavenger took one of these from its cardboard sleeve, set it on the turntable, and dropped the needle. The result was a high-pitched, chirruping caterwaul which, while not being as bad as Scavenger's poetry, was still fairly unpleasant.

This had been a mistake. Starscream knew he ought to just leave and find some other method of distraction, but— "You have it set to the wrong speed," he heard himself saying instead. He dodged between several tottering piles of junk to reach Scavenger's side, flipped the appropriate knob on the record player, and the music became, well… music. Of a sort.

"Hey! How did you know how to do that?"

"It's obvious," Starscream retorted, knowing full well that it wasn't. His mind, he suspected, was not unlike Scavenger's quarters; a vast repository of useless facts which he hoarded every bit as jealously as Scavenger did his trash-heap treasures.

"Now I get why humans call this stuff groovy!" Scavenger exclaimed, gyrating his hips to the beat.

"Groovy?" Starscream mentally filed the word away for later investigation. The song's lyrics, if he was understanding them correctly, had something to do with "stayin' alive"—which was ironic, considering the average length of the human lifespan.

"C'mon, dance with me!" Scavenger said, grabbing his arm.

Starscream tried to twist away but Scavenger tugged him closer and, before Starscream had a chance to react, looped an arm around his waist and leaned in. As if he wanted to—

"Get off me!"

Starscream pushed him away roughly. Scavenger stumbled and his shovel-tail knocked over the crate, sending the record player smashing to the deckplates. Silence fell; the terrible, maddening silence.

"We've been over this!" Starscream yelled, trying to drown it out. "We can't do this if you continually insist on pawing me, do you understand?"

Scavenger dragged his rueful gaze from the broken record player to Starscream's face. "I just thought…" he paused, shoulders rising in a half-shrug, "maybe things had changed?"

Starscream vented a sigh. "Why ever would you think that?"

Scavenger's gaze migrated back to the floor. "Well, I did come to your rescue."

Ah yes, the "rescue." Scavenger was talking about how he'd attempted to rescue Starscream from Skyfire, who had been pretending to hold him hostage. It had all been part of Starscream's plan to help Skyfire escape from the Decepticon base, a plan that would have gone much more smoothly if not for Scavenger's "help." Scavenger, of course, didn't know that.

"Look," Starscream said, with what he felt was a ridiculous amount of patience. "Do you want to do this, or not?"

Scavenger studied him, as if thinking about it. Finally he crossed to the bench and bent over it, as befitted their respective ranks. He set his pedes wide apart, folding his tail, scorpion-like, above his back. This was the one aspect of protocol that Scavenger never tried to argue about, though Starscream suspected that was only because Scavenger preferred the receptive role anyway.

It was a sensible choice, however, and Starscream rewarded him for it by reaching between his legs and squeezing the plating that covered his groin. A tremor ran through Scavenger's frame, and Starscream heard a small, wanting sound from him as he rocked against Starscream's hand. He tightened his grip, intensifying the stimulation while at the same time holding Scavenger's fore interface panel closed so that things wouldn't be over too quickly.

Not that quick was a bad thing. It was, in fact, Scavenger's main virtue. If Starscream wanted a quick frag, Scavenger was exactly that; quick. Starscream had it down to a science, and could get Scavenger off in seconds if he wanted, though he generally considered it a point of pride to make things last a bit longer. He glided his other hand along the flat plane Scavenger's aft, and the panel there opened even at this, merest suggestion of a touch. Scavenger arched, tilting his hips, and… Starscream never should have looked.

He knew it was a mistake the moment he glanced down, but it was already too late. Scavenger's submissive posture, the inviting tilt of his aft; Starscream suddenly couldn't fight off the memories of Skyfire doing just this. Not in some vanished time long ago, but just a few weeks earlier.

Come inside.

Starscream would have thought better of it if he'd allowed himself to, or if had seemed less like a dream. A dream made so real, so solid beneath his touch, so alive and warm and somehow, miraculously his, after all this time and in spite of everything. He took a step back.

Scavenger glanced up, surprised. "Starscream?"

"Can't." He didn't want just a quick frag. He wanted… he didn't want to want what he wanted. This used to be enough, and now it wasn't, and how could he have been such an idiot? Let himself imagine, even for a moment, that things could be any different?

Scavenger's expression clouded with disappointment, confusion, and then—infuriatingly—compassion. "Oh, don't worry," he said, turning and reaching for Starscream. "That happens to everyone. Here, maybe I can help—"

"Don't touch me!" Starscream slapped Scavenger's hand away and stared at him in disbelief. Did Scavenger actually think that he couldn't, in the physical sense? Starscream gave a moment's thought to denying it, then decided that it wasn't worth the effort. Scavenger could think what he liked so long as he didn't tell anyone, and even Scavenger had more sense than that.

He left without a word, escaping back into the corridor. The silence was waiting for him, muffling the ring of his steps as he walked in an all-too familiar direction. The cell had become his last refuge, and he'd been spending an inordinate amount of time in it lately, a habit which he kept carefully hidden from his fellow Decepticons. He had to pause for a moment, fighting a wave of claustrophobia as the door slipped shut behind him.

The silence was more intense in here, but so was the crushing sense of water bearing down on the starship's outer hull. He needed that weight to keep him grounded, and the fact that there were no portholes in here, and therefore, no glimpse of the salmon-haunted depths outside, came as an unexpected blessing. The cell felt intimate, and safe in a way that his quarters never could. No one, Megatron least of all, would think to look for him here.

He leaned against the wall. The bulkhead was cool against this back, but it gradually warmed. When he shuttered his optics, he could let it become a broad, solid frame supporting his, and the distant rumble of the base's tidal generators became the thrum of powerful flight engines. His arms, now wrapped around himself, became those of another.

He sank down to sit on the floor, pulling his knees up. He was sitting now where Skyfire had sat chained to the wall, a prisoner. How different were their situations, really? His engines revved, impatient to carry him skyward, back to the arctic and the heart of the silence. In moments like this, he understood perfectly what drove the salmon on their strange journey. But he wasn't a fish; he was a Decepticon, and second in command of the most powerful military force the universe had ever seen. One day, he would rule Cybertron. He'd chosen this life and had worked too hard for it, made too many sacrifices to just throw it away for…

A dream.

A dream that was consuming him from the inside, filling his recharge cycles with vistas of deep, endless blue. In his dreams he flew toward it, fearless. In his dreams, he was lifted into that open vastness and welcomed with soft murmurs, softer kisses.

He dropped his forehelm to rest on his knees, and waited. When the silence finally dropped away, it wasn't so much a return of Skyfire's presence but an ending of his absence, accompanied by an easing of the compelling pull on Starscream's spark. It should have been a relief, but wasn't. It was just a different kind of emptiness. Maybe this was the last time that Skyfire would wait for him. Maybe this time he would finally get the message and give up, leave for good.

It was that silence, Starscream knew, that would break him in the end.

"Oh nooo," Dirge groaned mournfully. He rocked in midair as rubber concussion grenades hammered against his hull and detonated the smoke bombs inside his armor. "You've knocked out my gyros!" He broke from the formation of Seekers, trailing smoke as he spiraled toward the rocks below, and… nothing. The rest of the Seekers just kept flying.

"Skywarp!" Starscream shouted from his position in the canyon below. "That was your cue, you blithering dolt!"

"Eh? Oh—right!"

Skywarp, whose usual colors were sprayed over with silver and red to match Starscream's paint job, broke formation and angled into a steep dive. "Fear not, Dirge!" he shrieked, pitching his voice to a grating falsetto that was apparently meant to sound like Starscream. "I shall assist you!"

"Assist?" Starscream echoed in disbelief. "Your line isn't assist, it's—"

Skywarp wasn't listening. He loosed a volley of blasts at Thundercracker who, cunningly disguised as Wheeljack, had been the source of the fake concussion grenades. Thundercracker cried out, clutching at his midsection, and fell to the canyon floor where he writhed theatrically as energy charges, designed to emulate Starscream's null-ray, danced harmlessly over the surface of his costume.

"Cut!" Starscream yelled, for what had to be the hundredth time.

"What?" Skywarp demanded as he transformed and landed next to Thundercracker, reaching to help the other mech to his feet. "What's the matter this time?"

"What's the matter? Have you even been paying attention?" Starscream lurched toward them, tottering on his risers. He'd almost, but not quite, gotten used to maneuvering inside his Optimus Prime costume. The extra height threw him off balance, though it was nothing compared to the silence. He noticed Skywarp and Thundercracker edge closer to each other as he approached. There was something infuriating about that, though Starscream wouldn't let himself think about exactly what.

"Avenge!" he snarled, jabbing a finger into Skywarp's chest. "Your line is avenge! What's so hard about that?"

"It's stupid," Skywarp protested. "It doesn't make sense; we're supposed to be Autobots. Or, uh… like Autobots. Or something."

"Autobots aren't so big on revenge," Thundercracker put in, as if anyone had asked him. That point was debatable, and Starscream was on the verge of doing just that when Thundercracker went and added, "Ya gotta admit, Screamer—'Warp totally nailed your voice."

"Nailed it?" Starscream whirled on him. "That detestable screech? I sound nothing like that!"

"Heh." Thundercracker smirked. "You think?"

Starscream threw a punch at him. His fist sailed wide and he stumbled, the silence a dull thunder in his audials. It was an unbearable distraction, like having a loose stone rattling around inside his costume. He mentally cursed Skyfire for this very unwelcome reminder of his presence on Earth at just the moment when Starscream most needed to forget; to lose himself in his performance and avoid thinking about the ultimate consequences of this charade.

"Perhaps you need a reminder of what my null-ray feels like," he growled, swinging his arm up to point at Thundercracker. He'd subspaced his rifles since there wasn't room for them inside the arms of his costume, but he'd long ago rerouted his weapons circuitry so that he could use his null-ray without them. "Your acting suggests that you may have forgotten."

"Whoa," Thundercracker took a step back. "What's your problem? You've been on us like a case of cosmic rust all night!"

"You! You're my problem!" Starscream shot back. He noticed Skywarp moving closer to Thundercracker's side, and he suddenly hated them both with a virulent, blinding fury. "You and this slag-for-brains you call a partner!"

Insults to Skywarp's intelligence were a sore point. Starscream knew this, and although Thundercracker's expression was hidden behind the mask of his costume, Starscream felt his field shift with a sudden charge of true anger.

"If it's a fight you're looking for—"

"Just try!"

Starscream lunged at him. Thundercracker's fist came flying at his face and he ducked, not quite far enough. His new, greater height caused him to misjudge, and the punch sheared one of the audial antennas off from his Optimus Prime helmet.

"Hey!" Skywarp jumped between them. "You guys are gonna wreck your costumes."

"Ask me if I care!" Starscream took a swing at Skywarp, who instantly teleported beyond his reach. Starscream fired at him but missed due to Thundercracker's next punch, which spun him half-around and dented his battle-mask. He staggered on his too-long legs but he recovered and waded forward for the fight that he'd earned.

He needed this. Needed pain, the crunch of metal under his fists, and whatever else it took to keep him from ripping the bindings from his wings, hurtling north and throwing himself on that idiot, that colossal glitch who was up there waiting—for him. As if that made sense. As if Starscream was not, at this very moment, involved in a plot that would ultimately see Skyfire, and every other Autobot on Earth, destroyed.

"Optimus Prime," intoned a deep voice behind him. "We meet again."

Starscream froze. "Megatron!" He turned and found the Decepticon leader striding toward him, his fusion cannon pointing at Starscream's head. "I said cut!"

"No cuts," Megatron said. "I want to hear you say it."

"But—"

Megatron fired. The blast ripped into the canyon wall just behind Starscream, spraying shards of hot rock. Starscream stumbled backward, hands rising in a futile gesture of self protection. He didn't really have to act the next part. He staggered, lost his footing in the loose shale, and landed on his aft.

"No more, Megatron!" he begged, remembering mid-sentence to pitch his voice to match the deeper tones of Optimus Prime. He scrabbled backward as Megatron strode to tower over him, the broad sweep of his shoulders blocking the fading stars.

"I—" He broke off, the word catching in his vocalizer.

"Say it!"

"I… yield," Starscream said, in Optimus Prime's voice.

Megatron's field flared with an unmistakable surge of gratification; he wasn't acting, either. "Again!" he commanded.

"Again?" Starscream echoed, in his own voice this time.

The cannon swung level with his spark.

"I yield," Starscream said. He hated this part. Hated that Megatron seemed to enjoy making him say the words, and hated even more that he couldn't suppress his own body's reaction, the mindless, unreasoning rush of want that swept through him. It had been a good long while since Megatron had shown this degree of… interest. Perhaps Starscream should be surprised that this was what it took to coax it out of him these days, but then again, perhaps not.

Megatron's lips curled in a hard smile. "Again."

"I yield," Starscream repeated, and then, when the cannon still didn't move, he launched to his feet and shouted the words directly in Megatron's face. "I yield!" he snarled, heedless of any further attempt to sound like Optimus Prime. "I yield, I yield, I yield! What the Pit do you want?"

Megatron cuffed him. It was a light cuff, almost casual, but it sent Starscream sprawling back on his aft again, unable to balance without his wings. "Your full attention," Megatron said. "I trust I have it now. At precisely eleven-hundred hours I want you to take Dirge, Thrust and Ramjet to Central City and stage a raid on the new solar power facility."

"The solar power plant that was built by Shawn Berger? Are you defective?" Starscream struggled up again, keeping a wary optic on the fusion cannon. "How do you expect him to trust us after we've attacked his power plant?"

"Are you questioning my strategy, Starscream?"

"What strategy?" Starscream tore off his mask. "Skywarp could come up with a better strategy! Your plan is unworkable! You're forgetting that—"

Megatron's hand shot out and caught him around the throat. "I forget nothing." He tightened his grip, lifting Starscream so that his pedes dangled above the risers inside his costume. "It just so happens that our adversaries, the evil Autobots, have been using a secret weapon against us; one that warps our minds and forces us to steal this planet's precious energy resources."

"Wh… who's going to believe that?" Starscream choked. Supernovae were bursting across his visual field as he tried, vainly, to pry Megatron's fingers from his throat. "No one's that stupid, not even the humans!"

Megatron threw him back on the ground, and Starscream found himself once again staring up the barrel of Megatron's cannon. "Humans believe what they're told to believe. Especially when it's told to them on television. Once we control Shawn Berger and his empire of media networks, we control the message."

"But—"

Megatron's plan was unworkable. Could it really be this easy? If Starscream destroyed the power plant and Shawn Berger refused to ally with the Decepticons, Megatron's so-called "master plan" could very well fail—which would leave Skyfire safe, at least for now. But wasn't that treason, of a sort? Wasn't he failing as second in command, not to mention as future leader of the Decepticons, by following such an obviously flawed edict? Then again… he was just following orders.

"I will not fail you, mighty Megatron."

Megatron studied him with a granite expression. "See that you don't."

The sun broke over the horizon, framing him in a corona of silver flame as he turned to the other Decepticons, who had been watching the exchange with wary interest. "Places!" he bellowed, leaping into the air. "Take it from the beginning and this time, no mistakes!"

Thrust and Ramjet, who'd been leaning casually against the canyon wall, rose into the air and transformed. Dirge, like a great dark bird, swept up from wherever he'd hidden himself after his pretended crash landing, and flew up to join them. The others—Scavenger costumed as Sunstreaker, and Hook as Ironhide—donned their headpieces and shambled to their respective marks.

Starscream got up and pulled his mask back on, for once feeling almost glad of the extra layer of protection afforded by its confines. The silence burned, and he knew that if he dared shutter his optics he would see nothing but Skyfire, standing glacier-still on a sparkling field of ice, his broad wings framing this very same sunrise. Damn him.

Skywarp and Thundercracker hadn't moved. They were still talking in low voices, and though they weren't touching, Starscream could not miss the closeness of their stance, or the intimacy of their locked gazes.

"You heard Megatron!" Starscream snarled as he stormed over to them. "Get going!"

Skywarp hastily adjusted something on Thundercracker's costume as the pair glanced up in unison, noticeably reluctant to acknowledge his presence. It was so easy for them, he thought. They could have each other's back. There was no conflict, no fear of betrayal; no defrag cycles in which one of them endlessly shot the other and watched him crash to the ice.

Skyfire would go with the Autobots, if it came to that. He would try to save them, and when he couldn't, he would share their fate. Even if this plan failed, there would be another, and another; Starscream couldn't protect him forever. How could Skyfire expect this of him? How long could he keep being two things at once?

He grabbed one of Skywarp's intakes—smearing red paint in the process—and spun him violently around. "Avenge!" he roared, leaning down into Skywarp's dumb, astonished face. "Your line is avenge! Get it right this time!"

Skywarp sprang into the air and transformed, falling into formation with the other Seekers. Starscream glowered at Thundercracker until he turned and walked to his place, and then limped to his own mark where he waited, glaring at the sky.

This was Skyfire's fault. He'd made his choice knowing there would be consequences for marking himself as Starscream's enemy, and Starscream had already done everything he could—far more than he should have—to keep those consequences at bay. The silence dropped away, and the empty place where it had been ached anew. He felt as hollow as this shell of a costume.

Give up, go! he thought furiously. Why did Skyfire have to be so stubborn? Why couldn't he leave things alone, leave Starscream to the choice that he had made? Why, in fact, could he not just leave?

Skyfire had waited for as long as he could. When the sun poked over the horizon, spilling paths of light across the ice, he knew it was time. He'd already packed the few pieces of equipment that he would need to return to Wheeljack before he departed for Mars, so technically, there was nothing to stop him from going. Still, he was slow rising from the ice, and he circled the area in a long swoop, mentally bidding it farewell.

This would be the last of his arctic vigils, at least for the next two or three months. Over the next couple of days, he and the rest of the team from SITE—the Solomon Foundation for Interplanetary Travel and Exploration—would be busy preparing for their journey. Once on Mars, his hold would serve as a habitat for the human scientists for the weeks that it took to establish a basic infrastructure for the planet's first human settlement, and Skyfire would have neither the privacy nor the fuel resources needed for personal trips back to Earth.

He'd hoped to speak with Starscream before he left and tell him where he was going. In the old days, that would have been as simple as sending a message along their spark bond. Now the bond was weak from the nine million years of dormancy and, Skyfire also suspected, from prolonged exposure to the zone of silence.

Wheeljack's equipment had been helpful to him in mapping the zone. Skyfire had discovered that it extended in a five kilometer radius around the crystalline shaft that led to the Earth's core, and it also formed a dome that extended about four kilometers above the site. Skyfire remembered all too well the moment he'd entered that dome for the first time. He'd been spinning out of control, thrown helplessly about by the storm that had risen so suddenly and mysteriously in a clear sky, driving him from Starscream's side. That sudden, awful silence had felt exactly like death, and while his consciousness remained, he'd been consumed with terror for his bonded, afraid that Starscream had been killed in the storm.

Now, as he rose higher, the silence dropped away. The filaments of their bond hummed to life with brittle echoes of Starscream's familiar presence, giving the illusion that his mate was no farther away than his own spark. The idea of using the zone as a means to contact Starscream had seemed brilliantly simple when he'd first thought of it, almost poetic in its symmetry. The phenomenon that had caused their long separation could now be a means to guide them back to each other, but that was assuming that they both wanted such contact, and one of them, clearly, did not.

Skyfire knew he shouldn't be surprised. It had been a long time and the world had changed, and Starscream with it. They occupied different realities now. Skyfire had had a taste of Starscream's reality when he'd briefly called himself a Decepticon, and then again later when he'd lived among the Autobots and had found the war creeping into him, changing his values, his priorities, and even his very thoughts. It wasn't so hard to understand how Starscream had become a stranger to him over the course of nine million years, and a part of him wondered if the wiser choice would be to accept Starscream's choice and leave him be. Two things were stopping him.

One was purely selfish; he ached for Starscream with his whole body, his whole being. His nights were filled with dreams of their life together before the ice. Of flying together, of laughing or arguing over some difference of scientific opinion; of kissing Starscream, holding him; worshiping every line of his sleek frame and loving him senseless. Those might be distant memories for Starscream, but for Skyfire, they felt as if if they'd happened yesterday. The touch and taste of Starscream still lived in him; mind, body and spark. He doubted that would ever change.

The other reason, however, was Starscream himself. More specifically, what Skyfire had seen in him when they were in the brig together, just a few weeks ago. Up close, it was hard to miss the cracks in his facade; the lost expression behind his ferocious glare and the way he held his arrogance around himself like a tattered cloak, as if all he had left was his bitter, aching pride. When Skyfire hadn't been able to take it anymore, he'd kissed him—and then there'd been something else. Something worse.

Starscream had tried to push him away, and Skyfire, wanting to be sure, had told him that he would stop if Starscream truly wanted him to. It had been so long, and Skyfire hadn't trusted himself to read Starscream's cues and to know instinctively when a struggle was meant as play and when it wasn't. But the look Starscream had given him when he'd said that—as if Skyfire had just spoken to him in some unfamiliar language—still haunted him.

That look had been fleeting and covered in an instant, but Skyfire knew what he'd seen. The question remained as to what he should make of it. Should he assume the worst? The thought of Starscream being hurt, particularly in that way, sickened him. He knew that Starscream had been watching over him, though, standing guard and subtly protecting him even after their initial, violent parting of ways. Skyfire wanted to protect him in return, even though he didn't know how.

His thoughts were interrupted when a familiar set of coordinates pinged on his nav system. He angled into descent, and saw the outlines of the old airfield take shape out of the landscape below him. He spotted just one car, the battered green Volvo station wagon belonging to SITE's director, Dr. Bartholomew Evans, parked next to the main hangar. That surprised Skyfire. He would have thought that the other staff would be here by now, but he was also grateful. No one at the Solomon Foundation was aware of his relationship with Starscream, of course, but some of the staff had started asking questions about his frequent late night excursions, and he didn't like having to lie.

Dr. Evans—or Bart, as he insisted on being called by his friends—glanced up and smiled as Skyfire ducked through the hangar's tall double doors. "Good morning, Skyfire," he said. "Please do shut those behind you. The draft puts a chill into my tea, not to mention my old bones."

"Morning," Skyfire said, returning the smile. "Where is everyone?"

"Oh, you didn't get the message? Our meeting with Shawn Berger has been pushed back again."

"Again?" Skyfire checked his message log. Sure enough, there was a data-packet from Bart, dated from the night before. He was surprised that he hadn't noticed it, but then again, he'd had a lot on his mind. "When is it re-scheduled for?"

"Next week," Bart said. He rose stiffly from his chair beside the mainframe and shuffled across the loft—a raised platform which had been built so that Skyfire could collaborate more easily with his much smaller coworkers—and went to the small kitchen area, where he unplugged the kettle. "I commed everyone and told them they might as well sleep in," he said as he hunted through the cupboards. "I'm sorry you didn't get the message."

"It's my own fault," Skyfire admitted. "I forgot to check for messages. Did Mr. Berger give a reason for the delay?" This was the third time that Shawn Berger, a wealthy businessman whom they hoped to court as an investor in SITE's Mars project, had postponed meeting with them.

"His secretary apologized," Bart said, pouring his tea. "She mentioned that his solar energy project has been keeping him busy lately, and I'd imagine there's been some fallout from his failed bid for mayorship of Central City."

"So we can't leave for Mars yet," Skyfire concluded.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that. On one hand, it meant that he could keep trying to reach Starscream; on the other, he doubted that would make much of a difference.

"It's just another week," Bart said. He came over to the platform's safety railing and propped his elbows against it, wrapping his bony hands around his mug for warmth. Today, he had forgone his usual ascot in favor of a green turtleneck sweater, which he'd paired with brown corduroy pants and, Skyfire was amused to notice, a pair of bunny slippers. "Something's bothering you," he observed, studying Skyfire through the rising wreaths of steam.

A number of things were, but there was only one that Skyfire could give voice to. "I think it's because of me," he admitted. "Mr. Berger has spoken publicly against humans having any dealings with Cybertronians. It's probably due to my involvement that you can't get the funding you need."

Bart was quiet for a moment. "Well, Skyfire," he said at last, "you are, more than any of us, the heart and soul of this expedition. Humans might eventually make it to the red planet without your help, but it would take decades longer; it would probably happen far beyond the lifespan of a decrepit old astrobiologist such as myself." He paused and blew on his tea. "You are helping me to realize a dream, Skyfire, as well as the dreams of the other scientists on our team—and, if I might be so bold as to say this, you are helping to ensure the long-term survival of the human species. If Mr. Berger can't see beyond his own prejudices, we will simply have to find a more open-minded investor. Do I make myself clear?"

"Abundantly," Skyfire answered with a smile. He liked Bart, and he loved being part of the SITE team. The intrepid group of scientists reminded him of his colleagues back on Cybertron, and in spite of the species difference, he felt more at home here than he ever had among the Autobots.

"Good." Bart gave Skyfire's arm a pat, and if he noticed the ice crystals melting on his metal skin, he said nothing.

"So what are you doing up so early?" Skyfire asked, changing the subject.

"Ah well, it's hard to sleep at my age, and these short nights aren't helping. I thought I'd go over our slide presentation." He gestured toward the slide projector, which was set up on one of the crates containing supplies for their upcoming journey. It was switched on, and was projecting an image of Mars onto the heavy curtain that partitioned Skyfire's makeshift loft area from the rest of the hangar.

"Again?" Skyfire asked with a laugh. They had been over the slide presentation dozens of times by now—not to mention the earlier versions of it, which had been geared for other potential investors.

"It never hurts to be prepared," Bart answered with a twinkle in his dark eyes. "Care to join me?"

"Why not?" Skyfire stepped closer to the rail and helped Bart to climb up onto his shoulder. "Where's Solomon?" he asked. Solomon, the owl after whom Bart had named his foundation, normally swooped down to perch on Bart's shoulder when they did this.

"Ah, well I'd rather hoped you'd be able to tell me," Bart said, his bushy gray eyebrows puckering in a frown as his gaze swept the rafters. "I haven't seen him in a couple of days, have you?"

Skyfire shook his head. "Are you worried?"

"No, not quite yet." Bart sighed. "He's disappeared for longer than this. I suppose he enjoys having his independence, but I do wish he'd—" he broke off, seeming to collect himself. "Well. In any case, I almost forgot. There's a letter for you."

"A letter?" For a single, spark-freezing moment, Skyfire was irrationally convinced that such a letter could only be from Starscream. Hope and dread warred within him as he contemplated what it might say, but then he saw the manila envelope that Bart was pointing to, and recognized the logo stamped upon it. "Ah," he said. "My lab results."

"A personal research project?" Bart asked.

"You could say that." Skyfire picked up the envelope between his thumb and his first finger, then gazed with dismay at the impossibly tiny string closure that held it shut.

"Would you like help?" Bart offered.

"If it's no trouble."

Bart's lined features lit with an eager smile. He seized the envelope when Skyfire handed it to him, tore it open, and scanned the enclosed printout. "Well, it seems that the sample you provided is composed of silicone dioxide, plus iron. It's known as—"

"Prasiolite," Skyfire interrupted, deflating. "A type of quartz." His gaze strayed to the chunk of green crystal that sat on his worktable. He reached for it and picked it up so that its rough facets, carved by his own laser array, caught the beams of sunlight filtering down from the high windows. "I'd hoped the MIT lab would find something I'd missed in my own analysis."

"Something such as?" Bart asked. He had settled to sit comfortably on Skyfire's shoulder.

"I don't know," Skyfire admitted. "It's a sample from the core shaft in the arctic."

"I heard of that," Bart said. "The Decepticons were using to extract heat energy from the center of the Earth."

"Yes," Skyfire admitted, wincing inwardly. He was quite aware who had designed that project; Starscream might have changed in many ways, but his style had not. "Prasiolite is a rare type of quartz, but there's nothing unusual about it. No radiation effects, no magnetic field phenomena, nothing that would explain—"

He broke off and sent a rueful, sidelong glance at his friend. "When I crashed on Earth nine million years ago," he explained carefully, "there was someone with me. My… partner, a fellow explorer, should have been able to locate me, but couldn't."

"You think the crystal shaft might have been causing some sort of… interference?"

"It's the only explanation I've been able to think of." Skyfire scowled into the depths of the crystal, mentally willing it to give up its secrets. "I lost nine million years," he said. "I lost—"

Everything, he wanted to say. His people, his world, his career, his lover—everything that mattered.

"I want to know why," he said, "but…" he vented a sigh, and set the crystal carefully back on his worktable. "It's just a rock."

"Skyfire… I'm so sorry."

Skyfire glanced at Bart, startled by his heavy tone, and saw him staring at his cup, seemingly fascinated by the rising curls of steam. Skyfire wasn't always confident of his ability to read human facial expressions, but the look of sorrow and regret on Bart's features was unmistakable.

"It's not your fault," Skyfire said, baffled by this reaction. He reached to brush a fingertip lightly against his friend's arm. "It's not as if you were there; your species hadn't even evolved. You have no reason to apologize."

Bart cleared his throat. "Well. Yes… well. It was a figure of speech," he said gruffly. "Sometimes when humans say they're sorry, what they mean is, I'm sorry that this happened to you." He gave Skyfire's fingertip an awkward pat. "I truly am, you know."

"Thank you," Skyfire said, grateful for the sympathy but still mystified. Human languages seemed to have so many puzzling figures of speech, it was difficult to keep track of them. For example, this wasn't the first time he'd noticed Bart referring to the human species as "they," as if he didn't consider himself to be one of them, though that, too, was probably just an expression.

"Just look at the time!" Bart said with a sudden, short laugh. "Perhaps we should review the presentation before anyone else arrives?"

"Sounds like a good idea," Skyfire agreed, privately thinking that it was still quite early and there was very little chance of anyone else arriving if Bart had told them to sleep in. Bart seemed to be grasping for a change of topic, however, and Skyfire hoped that reviewing the slides would help to ease his obvious discomfort.

He sank down to sit on the floor, the better to see the slides projected on the makeshift screen. Bart drew the remote from his pocket and tabbed through the first few images, then paused on the schematic of the townsite proposal. "Bergerburg," he said, reading the caption with a sigh.

"There probably are worse names," Skyfire said.

"None that are coming to mind," Bart answered with a snort. "Forgive my saying so, but I'm almost hoping that Mr. Berger turns us down for the funding so that we don't really have to name it after him."

He thumbed through a few more images—artist's renderings of the townsite, complete with human settlers going about their business underneath the town's protective enviro-dome, shots of the crater as it was now, and scenic images of some of the planet's more spectacular natural features, such as Valles Marineris, the towering volcano Olympus Mons, the polar ice caps, and the planet's two asteroid moons, Phobos and Deimos. Skyfire, who had taken many of those photos, had seen this presentation so many times that the sequence of images was becoming routine. He found his attention wandering in all-too-predictable directions when a particular image, one that he hadn't seen before, caught his attention.

"Bart?"

"Hmm?"

"Go back four."

Bart, who obviously hadn't been paying attention either, tabbed through the requisite number of slides and froze, staring at the screen. He then burst out laughing. "Oh, my goodness! What pranksters I have working for me. It's a good thing you noticed this, Skyfire. If not for your keen optics, that might have ended up in our presentation! Which would have been… well. Let's just say that Mr. Berger is better known for his tremendous wealth than for his tremendous sense of humor."

"But what is it?" Skyfire asked, leaning forward to peer more closely at the image. It was an aerial shot of the surface of Mars, but not, Skyfire was sure, one that he or any of the SITE team had taken on their various surveying missions. Even though the slide was projected onto the uneven "screen" provided by Skyfire's berthroom curtain, the landform that dominated the majority of the image was startlingly symmetrical—and familiar—in appearance. "It looks like an Autobot insignia," he said.

"Yes," Bart agreed with a sigh. "I suppose that it does, which is, no doubt, why our colleagues saw fit to include it."

"So the image isn't real?" Skyfire asked.

"Oh it's real enough, for whatever that's worth. It was captured in 1976 as the Viking 1 orbiter passed above the region known as Cydonia, and it's been an embarrassment to science ever since."

"An embarrassment to science?" Skyfire was surprised. "But this could be evidence that Mars was once inhabited. Shouldn't that be exciting?

"If it really was what it looks like, then yes. But it, like your crystal, is just a rock. One that coincidentally happens to resemble a human face—or, as you pointed out, an Autobot insignia—when the light strikes it at a particular angle."

"But the Cydonia region wasn't on any of our surveying missions," Skyfire pointed out. "How can you be sure that it's just a rock, unless we look?"

Bart spread his hands. "Because it is just a rock, Skyfire. I didn't include it in our survey because Cydonia is so far north and, frankly, the Face on Mars controversy has become a huge bore."

"Off the record, then," Skyfire challenged gently. "Once the base habitat is set up we'll fly over there, just you and me. If it is just a rock, we won't tell anyone. And if it isn't, you'll go down in history as having discovered ancient life on Mars."

Bart scowled at the screen.

"Come on," Skyfire coaxed. "Aren't you even curious?"

"This would have to stay just between us," Bart stipulated.

"Of course," Skyfire assured him.

Bart took a sip from his tea, and Skyfire could have sworn that he was hiding a smile behind his mug. "Very well, since you insist," he said. "As a favor to me, though, I would appreciate if you could hang on to that slide. Just in case our merry pranksters get any further ideas."

Humans actually were that stupid.

The day's events proved it, and Starscream had been forced to admit—privately, at least—that Megatron was right. The squishies really did believe whatever was shown to them on television. What had started with Shawn Berger airing footage of "Autobots" stealing energy from an oil-field had spread to the point where every channel was now clogged with those images, along with commentary in a dozen different languages.

"And you ma'am, what is your opinion?" a reporter asked, shoving a microphone into the face of an exhausted-looking woman carrying an armload of grocery bags. "The Autobots were caught on tape stealing energy. Should they face charges?"

The woman got a wild look in her eyes and Starscream, who was watching the broadcast from one of the auxiliary comm stations in th Decepticon base's command center, paused flipping channels long enough to hear what she'd say.

"Those stinking metal bastards?" The woman spat on the sidewalk. "I said they were bad news from the start, but did anyone listen? Nooo, of course not! Well I say—"

"Thank you so much!" the reporter interrupted hastily. "Now, for another opinion—"

Starscream switched channels, and landed on a photo of Shawn Berger standing behind a podium draped in American flags.

"Business mogul Shawn Berger claims he has unmasked the Autobots for what they truly are," a disembodied announcer explained. "Earlier today, he described them as 'soulless alien parasites, preying upon humanity's inherent goodness and generosity.' Anti-Autobot protests have erupted worldwide. In New York, a group draped the Statue of Liberty with a sash bearing the purple Decepticon insignia while in Los Angeles, rush hour traffic came to a screeching halt when protesters burned an effigy of Optimus Prime on a freeway overpass. We now take you to London, where—"

The announcer broke off mid-sentence as an image of spawning salmon flashed across the screen. "Whoops!" He gave an embarrassed chuckle. "Something went wrong there. We'll get that story in a minute, but for now—"

Starscream flipped again, with a shudder.

"In business, Fisher Price stocks netted big returns—"

Click.

"Seems like everyone's hooked on classics—"

Click!

"Tonight we're speaking with Professor Sam Sponner of the McRoe Institute, a noted expert on Human-Cybertronian relations—"

Starscream froze the broadcast. "Spawner? Really?"

This was getting ridiculous. He was seeing patterns where none existed, and that was all there was to it. The ignorant rubes who used to gather at the pantheon might have credited Sigil Nightspark and her Trine with oracular abilities, but that didn't make it true. He slouched in his chair and glowered at the screen, trying to shake off the mental image of wet, glistening forms writhing together in deathly ecstasy.

Humans, he thought firmly. The fleshies been waiting for something like this. Primitive though their minds were, they recognized on some deep, instinctive level that their giant metal benefactors could turn on them just as easily as protect them. Starscream wouldn't have guessed that the seeds of mistrust had sprouted such deep roots, but Megatron had. He'd perceived that potential divide, and had played upon it masterfully.

Even the disastrous raid on the so-called solar facility had played right into Megatron's plan. The Autobots' swift arrival on the scene just proved, according to any number of human commentators, that they had used their mysterious mind-warping weapon against the Decepticons and then swooped in to make themselves look like heroes. In retrospect, Starscream was prepared to admit that he might have mistaken the humans' rapidly developing technology for intellectual sophistication. The good news, though, was that it didn't matter.

He glanced around to make sure he was alone before calling up a secondary visual feed. This one was black and white, silent, and composed of grainy still images patched together from his various "tame" satellites which showed the Autobot base throughout the past twenty-four hours. He scrubbed through the display, taking note of the changing angles of the sun on desert rock, and smirked when he saw Laserbeak swoop in to perch on one of the crags overlooking the entrance to the base. Soundwave might have his spies, but Starscream also had his.

Optimus Prime emerged from the base right on schedule, accompanied by several of his most trusted lackeys. They returned a few hours later, driving slowly, the smaller vehicles huddled close to their leader's flanks as if for comfort. It wasn't hard to guess why. Having their human pets turn against them so suddenly must have come as quite a shock. The little group disappeared inside the base, and that was that. Evening turned to night, and when it became clear there would be no further activity even Laserbeak stirred, stretching his stubby little wings, and flew off.

Starscream vented a barely audible sigh of relief. Skyfire had appeared on this feed just once in the past week. That had been on the day of the raid on the fake solar facility, and he hadn't stayed long. He'd arrived at sunset and had landed a short distance from the base. The Autobot Wheeljack had been there to help him unload some crates of what looked to be scientific equipment from his hold. Skyfire had transformed, the pair had chatted briefly, and then Skyfire had flown off again.

There'd been no sign of him since, nor had the silence returned, and Starscream hypothesized that the Autobots had dispatched him on yet another menial errand. With any luck, it was one that had taken him offworld, possibly to Cybertron. He went there regularly if the number of reinforcements who'd been joining the Autobot ranks lately was any indication, a theory which Red Alert had partially confirmed during his and Starscream's… encounter… a few months ago. Starscream, not wanting to arouse the Autobot security director's infamous paranoia, had been careful in the phrasing of his questions, but he'd managed to glean that Skyfire had, at the very least, recruited Red Alert and his new partner, Inferno, during a trip to Cybertron.

Starscream could remember a time when he wouldn't have had to rely on rumors, supposition and dubious human technologies in order to know where Skyfire was. He would have known it innately, with the same sureness that he knew how to maneuver with his Trine in midair, turning, swooping and diving simultaneously without thought, without the need for words. It was better, now, that he couldn't do that with Skyfire. Safer for both of them. Knowing that was true wasn't enough to suppress the ache of loss that gnawed his internals whenever he let his mind drift long enough for memories of what had been to creep in around the edges.

He launched out of his chair, and was reaching to punch the "close" button on the feed when a heavy hand clapped his shoulder.

"Starscream."

"Megatron!" Starscream twisted toward his leader, barely mastering his panicked impulse to slap his hand over the satellite image even though it showed nothing more incriminating than a still frame of the Autobot base. "I was just checking," he blurted, "making sure that all the Autobots are still inside their base."

Megatron's gaze swept to the image on screen. "And are they?" he asked. "All?"

That last word was freighted with layers of significance that Starscream didn't dare to acknowledge. "Y…yes, mighty Megatron," he replied, not trusting his voice. How long had Megatron been standing there? More importantly, how was it that Starscream hadn't heard him approach, or sensed him through his field? Granted, Megatron's field was difficult to read at the best of times, but Starscream should have noticed something. He was slipping worse than he'd realized.

Megatron was silent for a moment, gazing past him at the screen. He gave a quiet snort, as if he was thinking about something that either amused or disgusted him, and slid his hand to the back of Starscream's neck, thick fingers massaging the tense cables.

Starscream froze. It was all he could do to keep himself from hunching into that harsh caress. Megatron's grip felt terrifying, because Starscream well knew the strength in those hands and how capable they were of snapping his neck if Megatron wanted to, but also strangely wonderful. Touches like this were so uncommon. The rare times when he and Megatron interfaced—fragged, really—there was never any touching beyond what was strictly necessary for completion of the act.

Starscream preferred it that way. He'd never, for example, enjoyed kissing, except with Skyfire. Keeping things impersonal made it easier to banish those memories, keep them locked down where they belonged. But then Skyfire had kissed him, and with just that brush of his lips he'd ripped open all those old wounds, leaving Starscream at the mercy of needs that now refused to be tamed. Megatron seemed to be stirring all that, his fingers sifting through that murk of long-buried feelings as if… as if he was searching for something.

Was he? What was he playing at?

"No one has entered… or left, since the Autobots returned from the press conference," Starscream added, forcibly dragging his mind back to the conversation.

"Yes." Megatron gave a low chuckle. "So Laserbeak informed me, just a few breems ago. Surprising that you'd choose to rely on human satellite technology rather than our own intelligence operatives."

Megatron was driving at something. Definitely. The question was what.

"I thought it would be valuable to ascertain whether or not the humans are observing them," Starscream answered carefully. "And as you can see, they are."

"So I can see." Megatron's tone was iron velvet. His blunt fingers kneaded the sensitive juncture just at the base of Starscream's helm, releasing hidden stress-points. "And to think you ever doubted my plan."

"It is working… beautifully," Starscream managed, choking back a whimper. His body was coming alive under that touch. His legs began to quiver, his vents cycling shorter as Megatron stepped up behind him, not touching—not quite yet—but close enough for Starscream to feel his heat in the chilly room.

"Isn't it." Megatron's field radiated satisfaction and, it had to be said, no small measure of arousal. Did he mean to take him right here, in the command center? Literally anyone could walk in and see them, but Starscream was starting to think that he might not care. It had been—weeks? No, months, and even if someone did see, it wasn't as if they'd be stupid enough to say anything. Not unless they had a death-wish.

"Have I ever told you, Starscream, how it was that I met Optimus Prime?"

Starscream waited, knowing the question was rhetorical.

"His name then was Orion Pax," Megatron continued, his tone lost in distant memory. "He was a lowly dock worker who'd never so much as touched a weapon. It was I who forged him into what he's become; a great warrior and a great leader. In a real sense, he is my creation. And yet he retains one—" Megatron's hand tightened, compressing Starscream's cervical assembly, "fatal—" he thrust his arm forward, slamming Starscream's face against the monitor hard enough to crack the glass, "weakness."

"M…Megatron—!" Starscream hunched his wings against the crushing pain as he clawed desperately at Megatron's arm, trying to twist free. Megatron tightened his grip. Starscream ceased his struggles when he heard his spinal struts groan beneath the pressure.

"Sentimentality," Megatron went on conversationally. "Optimus Prime feels compassion even for the flesh creatures. He'll leave this Earth if they ask him to, and that will be his undoing. Yours, Starscream—" he hitched up against Starscream's aft, knees pressing dents into the backs of his thighs, "is this."

He glided his free hand down Starscream's side to settle on his flank, and Starscream felt his back arch, his traitorous body responding despite his best efforts to keep it in check.

"Megatron, please—"

His voice choked in a half-sob, and didn't even know what he was pleading for, just a release of some kind.

"Never forget that I made you what you are," Megatron said, leaning close. "Your very nature dictates you will always be second. My second. Do we understand each other, Starscream?"

"Y…yes," Starscream gasped. It was a struggle hearing his own voice above the dull roar that filled his audials, and he wasn't sure that he did understand, but right now he was prepared to say whatever he thought Megatron wanted to hear.

Megatron, however, seemed satisfied with his answer. His field shifted, icy satisfaction dousing the heat that had been there a moment before. He eased his grip and Starscream sagged, shuddering, against the console. The image of the Autobot base swam in a blur of pixels as Megatron resumed stroking his neck.

Footsteps echoed in the corridor. Starscream registered them as merely abstract information, but Megatron took a step back, pulling Starscream smoothly to his feet as he did so. Starscream tottered, caught himself against the back of the chair and turned to lean against the console in what he hoped would appear to be a casual slouch. If his wings happened to block the monitor screen from view whoever was approaching, well, that was obviously just a coincidence. A lucky coincidence, considering who appeared in the doorway.

"I have received a communique from Shawn Berger," Soundwave announced. "The human shuttle is ready for inspection."

"Excellent," Megatron replied. He was standing a few paces away with his arms folded, as if he and Starscream had been discussing some matter of business. His field was scrubbed and impenetrable, as silver-bright and featureless as a winter sky. "Starscream, is the Dominator Link ready?"

He was referring, of course, to the device which would allow him to take control of the shuttle's guidance and communications systems once the Autobots were aboard.

"It is, mighty Megatron." Starscream replied. He had, quite naturally, volunteered to design said component, since you just never knew when a working knowledge of such a device might come in handy.

"Soundwave, inform Mr. Berger that he can expect us within the hour," Megatron ordered, striding for the door.

"Yes, mighty Megatron," Soundwave replied. He stepped respectfully to one side so that his leader could pass, then turned his impassive gaze upon Starscream. His features, hidden as they were behind his mask and visor, were unreadable, and it would have been hard to say whether he noticed Starscream's hunched posture or the slight tremor in his hands where they gripped the edge of the console.

"What are you staring at?" Starscream demanded, fighting to keep the telltale quaver out of his voice. His head was pounding, and his HUD was awash with warnings about the crush injury to the back of his neck, but he kept his thoughts carefully reined in. He wasn't so naive as to imagine that Soundwave didn't know, at least in general, about the kinds of things that went on between Megatron and himself, but that didn't mean that he wanted the telepath pulling pictures of it out of his head.

"The Dominator Link," Soundwave replied tonelessly. "Do you not need to retrieve it before we depart?"

Starscream did need to retrieve it; he'd left it in his lab, but he was damned if he was about to move and let Soundwave catch a glimpse of the screen behind him. Megatron's having seen it was bad enough, and he wasn't about to compound his mistake. "You go on," he said. "I'll be there in half a breem. I just need to finish something here."

"Perhaps you require assistance?" Soundwave offered. His tone was as expressionless as always, but Starscream caught a distinct impression of sardonic mockery behind that offer. The fragger knew he was hiding something.

Fine.

Starscream began to straighten—but then "slipped," catching himself against the console. His elbow smacked one of the controls, and the screen went dark as his satellite feed, along with all traces of its ever having existed, was erased from the ship's computer.

"Oops! How clumsy of me," he said. "I suppose I'll just have to finish this work later." He pushed himself upright, swaying a little as his gyros struggled to adjust, and strode to the door. He kept his field pulled tight to his body as he passed Soundwave, and didn't miss how the visored gaze flicked toward the computer console, as if the Communications Officer was itching to pounce on it and rifle through its contents.

Starscream rather hoped that he would.

He'd set up the satellite feed in its own encryption layer, tucked snugly within a directory where Soundwave would have few reasons to look. At the same time, he'd created a false data-tree, ringed with multi-tiered firewalls, which Soundwave definitely would notice. It was designed to self-destruct once hacked, leaving Soundwave with nothing to show for his efforts while in the meantime, Starscream would have a chance to scour the system for any lingering traces of what he'd really been hiding.

Soundwave, however, appeared to change his mind about the computer and fell into step behind Starscream, a silent and very unwelcome companion. Starscream kept his thoughts carefully insipid as he strolled to the lift. It was just as well that he'd made his "special adjustments" to the Dominator Link in advance, just in case worst really did come to worst. Which it had—because humans really were just that stupid.

Wheeljack was worried. Skyfire could tell by the number of oil-streaked rags slung from his shoulder when he answered the feed. His workshop on the Ark was more of a shambles than it had been when Skyfire had been there last, and the invention that he'd been working on, which hung from the ceiling suspended by an arrangement of chains and pulleys, looked particularly baroque in its complexity.

"Skyfire!" The corners of Wheeljack's optics crinkled in a smile that remained otherwise hidden behind his mask. "This is a nice surprise. How are things in the space exploration business?"

"Could be worse," Skyfire answered, returning his smile.

"Could be better too, I'm guessing. I heard Shawn Berger turned you guys down for funding."

"How did you hear that?"

"Oh, I have my sources." Wheeljack pulled one of the rags from his shoulder and attempted to clean his hands with it, an effort which only succeeded in spreading the oily mess farther up his forearms. "Actually I heard it from the man himself. He's convinced we're all part of some big conspiracy. The guy's starting to sound like Red Alert, only with more swearing. Is this a big setback for your Mars project?"

Skyfire glanced around. He was alone in the hangar, since Bart and the rest of the staff had long since gone home for an early night's sleep before tomorrow's launch. "The funds from our existing donors will be enough for us to set up the basic townsite," he said. "Bart's confident that we'll be able to attract new investors once we have it going."

"Makes sense," Wheeljack said. "Anyway, I think you're better off without Berger. That guy's a jerk."

"I saw the news," Skyfire said. "How are you and the others handling it?"

"Well lucky for us, not all humans are so easily fooled," Wheeljack replied. "Spike, Chip and Sparkplug are still on our side, and I think Op was the one who said it best. That footage they aired is obviously fake, and it's just a matter of time before we prove it."

"The sooner the better," Skyfire agreed.

Wheeljack rubbed the back of his helm. "What about your humans?" he asked. "Do they think you're a soulless alien parasite?"

Skyfire had to laugh at that. "No," he said. "My human colleagues think it's a hoax, as yours do."

"Colleagues." Wheeljack vented a sigh. "This is going to sound strange, but I envy you. I think you did a smart thing, stepping away from this war."

"That's not what Cliffjumper said."

Wheeljack glanced away. "Yeah, well," he said.

It was, Skyfire supposed, the most that could really be said. Cliffjumper had been more outspoken with his opinions than the others, but Skyfire knew many of the Autobots had labeled him a coward and a deserter. Wheeljack was one of the few who'd accepted his choice to leave without question.

"Is there anything that I can do?" he asked, changing the subject.

Wheeljack frowned. "Aren't you leaving soon?"

"Tomorrow," Skyfire confirmed. "But we've pushed back the launch a few times anyway. We could do it again, if you need—"

"Naw!" Wheeljack made a broad, dismissive gesture with his rag, managing to smear oily streaks across his comm screen in the process. "No," he repeated. "I mean, things do look bad, but we've got a plan. Well, I'm sure Op does. Doesn't he always?"

Skyfire hesitated. He knew Wheeljack genuinely considered him a friend, but his rejection of Skyfire's offer might come from a concern over how the others might perceive it. "I could just wait for a day or two," he suggested. "If you need air support, or anything at all, I'm just a comlink call away."

"You're just a comlink away anyway," Wheeljack pointed out. He stepped forward and settled his arms on the console, leaning close to his filthy screen. "Go, Skyfire. Do science. Think of it this way; you're living proof that humans and Autobots can work together and accomplish great things, and—" he glanced around as if making sure he was alone before he added, in a lower voice, "and you're a reminder for the rest of us that there's more to life than this slagging war. Heck, if worst came to worst—which it won't—the rest of us might want to join you on Mars."

Skyfire had to smile at the wistful note that accompanied that last statement. "But," he began, "don't you think—"

"No!" Wheeljack interrupted. "Don't worry about us. We've handled worse, believe me, and if we do need help, we'll call."

"Promise you will."

"I promise," Wheeljack answered solemnly. His headfins flashed a playful blue as he added, "And you better leave some space in your hold, because I'm expecting a ton of mineral samples."

Skyfire answered that he would see what he could do and they said their goodbyes, ending the call. Once he'd shut off the screen, Skyfire leaned back in his chair and turned his gaze toward the empty rafters. It had become a habit lately, scanning them for heat signatures to see if Solomon had returned. It had been well over a week that he'd been gone now. His absence left a gap that was felt, Skyfire knew, by every member of the SITE team, but Bart was sick with worry. He kept a brave face in front of his staff, but Skyfire had glimpsed him many times wandering the old airfield's cracked runways, calling to his friend.

Solomon was more than a pet. He was, in some way that was understood only by the two of them, Bart's very closest friend. Skyfire had often overheard Bart speaking to the owl in low tones, in the way that one might share confidences with a dear companion. He had also noticed the silences in those conversations, during which Bart would seem to be listening for Solomon's responses. It was unusual friendship, but one that clearly mattered greatly to both man and owl. Leaving now, when Solomon was missing and the Autobots, despite Wheeljack's assurances, seemed to be in trouble, felt wrong.

Skyfire walked to the hangar's big double doors and let himself out into the night. The sky was dark and clear, the stars veiled by the aurora's shimmering ghost lights. Mars glowed brightly from its zenith, its coppery shade giving it a deceptively warm appearance. The sky beckoned to him as it always had, whispering promises of adventure. He should be more excited about this. In the old days, he would have been beside himself.

But no, that wasn't quite right. In the old days, he would have been beside Starscream. His beloved mate would have been right there with him, sharing every moment. The thrills of discovery yes, and also the long, cold, frequently monotonous journeys between star systems. Those trips had never seemed dull or cold, though, when he'd had Starscream to talk with, laugh with, sometimes argue with. Every moment had been a treasure, and if he'd ever taken it for granted it was only because he'd never imagined that their lives could be any different. Certainly, he'd never thought that it could all end.

Yet.

Here he was, about to depart on a new expedition, with new companions, and he couldn't even tell Starscream goodbye. Well, the truth was he hadn't tried. He hadn't gone back to the arctic for a week, now. He could tell himself that he was too busy with preparations, but the truth was that he was losing his heart for this, for the constant waiting and hoping and hearing nothing; no sound of approaching engines to break the deep inner silence. Starscream's absence was eloquent. It spoke volumes, and he'd started to make himself accept what it was saying to him, but—

Tonight was his last chance. He couldn't help the Autobots unless they wanted his help, and if he went now there was a good chance that he'd simply end up confined to the Ark along with everyone else. He couldn't find Solomon, either. Not unless the owl wanted to be found, which clearly, he didn't.

But Starscream…

That was the one thing he could do. He could try, one last time. It might not make a difference, but he had tonight and he could use it to follow the calling of his spark. He launched from the frozen runway, decision made. Not wanting to wake the sleeping town, he waited until he was a mile up before he fired his thrusters. A wall of dark clouds were massing on the horizon ahead but he shot toward them anyway, spinning wing over wing in a barrel-roll as a sudden lightness swept through him.

This was right. It was what he needed and nothing—certainly, no storm—was going to hold him back.

Flying above the ocean made Starscream queasy, and it didn't help that his gyros, located in the back of his helm, kept getting confused about which way was up. They'd always been sensitive to abrupt changes in pressure, something which Megatron had just applied one Pit of a lot of to that particular area. A jolt from the gravitic stabilizer that he kept in his lab had settled them enough that he was able to fly, and his self-repair systems were helping too, but he could tell that his balance system was going to need a total recalibration.

At least they were approaching land. That was good news for Starscream's gyros, though it would do little for his headache. He kept his gaze fixed on Megatron and Soundwave who appeared as distant specks, one light and one dark, against the horizon. Soundwave would know better than to ask why Starscream was lagging, just as he'd known better than to ask about the cracked monitor screen in the command center.

Maybe Soundwave had filled the blanks in for himself, or maybe he just didn't care. Either way, his silence left Starscream with that rarest of commodities; a little personal airspace in which to think. That was a good thing, since what Starscream was thinking right now amounted to treason.

Not treason in the way that some pedestrian minds might label his efforts to overthrow Megatron as such. Those, as far as Starscream was concerned, were acts of loyalty. The Decepticons deserved a leader who would bring them to victory, something he would have done hundreds of vorns sooner than this, had he been in charge. Nor was it quite the same as choosing to obey an order that, as second-in-command, he ought to question. This was the real deal, and he could practically feel the weight of it rattling around in his subspace.

Well, not really. The whole point of having a subspace was so that objects placed within it would temporarily cease to have mass, but he knew the device was there, and that was enough. The Dominator Link was the component that would allow Megatron to take control of the shuttle that was being built by Shawn Berger's aerospace corporation, and to send it, with the Autobots aboard, directly into the heart of the sun.

Unless.

Starscream could barely think about unless, even with Soundwave as far away as he was. The override chip that Starscream had placed inside the Dominator Link would, if activated, allow the Autobots to regain control of their ship and escape. Right now, Starscream had no reason to think that he'd ever have to use it. Skyfire was away from Earth on one of those pointless errands the Autobots seemed to delight in sending him on, which meant that he was safe, at least for now.

Even if he never used the override chip, though, Starscream would always know that he'd put it there. He would always know that he'd been willing to sell out his faction, to deny them victory. Could he live with such a choice? And if he could, could he consider himself worthy to continue calling himself a Decepticon—much less a potential Decepticon leader?

He remembered how proud he'd felt receiving the insignia on his wings. In those early days, he'd imagined that Skyfire would feel proud, too. But once they were reunited, Skyfire had looked at him with such sorrow and had asked if he was, of all things, happy. The tiny flame of hope he'd nurtured through the aeons had faltered then, and Skyfire's later betrayal had snuffed it completely. He tried to tell himself that it didn't matter. After all this time, he had no more feelings for Skyfire than he would for a stranger.

Then had come the dogfight that wasn't.

It wasn't a fight at all, by virtue of the fact that Skyfire couldn't fight. He'd never battled anything more dangerous than a strong wind. Starscream had always pictured himself as the one who would teach him, who would train him to become the deadly air warrior he could be.

Lesson one would have been never to engage in a direct frontal attack. That was a sky fighter's endgame, a kill-or-be-killed scenario, but did Skyfire know that? He couldn't. As Starscream watched his form grow larger on his targeting display, all he could think was how typical, how painfully Skyfire this was. It had always been his way to tackle things head-on, without a thought to his own vulnerability.

It would be easy to shoot him down. It would have been easy enough for Skyfire to shoot him down, but maybe Skyfire didn't know that. He wasn't shooting, and Starscream was wasting precious klicks trying to decide what to do. He should fire—he had to—but he wasn't, and then it was too late.

Starscream veered at the last possible instant, avoiding a head-on collision though his wing snagged Skyfire's and he went into a spin. He fought to regain equilibrium, but lacked the altitude he needed and was left screaming his rage as the ice rushed to meet him.

It was rage. Rage at Skyfire's betrayal, rage at his own weakness. Nothing more.

"We are approaching Shawn Berger's airfield," Soundwave announced over the comlink. His voice jolted Starscream back to the present. They were flying over land, and Shawn Berger's private airstrip was indeed coming into view.

The shuttle, encased in a framework of construction scaffolding, dwarfed everything, buildings and vehicles alike. It looked like a gun. Starscream had noticed that resemblance, if vaguely, when he'd studied the blueprints. Now that the craft was taking form, it was impossible to miss how much its nosecone looked like the muzzle of a cannon pointing at the stars. Fitting, considering its purpose.

Shawn Berger, who for now remained blissfully unaware of that purpose, was waiting on the tarmac. He rolled up to greet them astride the back seat of a jeep being driven by one of his private soldiers, gripping the roll-bars with his pudgy hands as if he imagined himself a charioteer.

"I'm changing the terms of our deal," he announced by way of greeting. "My price is now three cities, not two."

"As you wish," Megatron replied. The surge of contempt that swept his field remained undetectable in his voice. "Once our enemies are exiled from this world, you may rule as many cities as you desire. And to that end," his gaze rose to the shuttle, "I see that your engineering team has made great progress."

Berger puffed proudly. "She is a beauty, isn't she?"

"She… most certainly is," Megatron agreed, with just the slightest hesitation. Starscream had coached him on the importance of adopting human manners of speech, even when they made little sense. The human custom of referring to their sparkless conveyances in the feminine gender was a perfect example.

"I've got to admit," Berger added, "we couldn't have made progress on it so quickly without the help of the Constructicons. Our shuttle is a shining example of what humans and Decepticons can achieve together."

"I could not agree more," Megatron replied. "But time is pressing, so we wish to begin our tour by inspecting the passenger compartment. Our main priority is to ensure that the Autobots' journey into exile is a safe and comfortable one."

"Of course, Megatron," Berger replied. "Right this way."

He motioned to his driver, who turned the jeep and led them onto an elevator platform built into the shuttle's scaffolding. Megatron followed with Soundwave at his heels, and Starscream brought up the rear, stepping carefully due to the pavement's unpredictable nature. His vision blurred for a moment and the shuttle went double, then snapped back in focus.

"The fools who voted against me are starting to see their mistake," Berger said as the lift began to rise. "Soon they will beg me to lead them."

"They certainly will beg," Megatron agreed.

Berger seemed not to notice the undercurrent in Megatron's tone. He prattled the whole way up, going on about his plans for the various cities he expected to rule. Under different circumstances, Starscream might have found the man's naivete amusing. As things were, he was far more focused on the small device that he now held in his hand. A device that he was carefully not thinking about, with Soundwave now standing so close. He dared a glance down at it. Could he do this?

The lift stopped, and the shuttle's boarding hatch slid open. A small shape erupted from the doorway and flew directly at him. Starscream ducked, throwing his arms in front of his face and almost lost his grip on the Dominator Link as his gyros struggled to compensate. He caught a glimpse of round yellow eyes staring directly into his; then the unknown object sailed past, and was gone.

"Damned owl!" Berger shook his fist, and turned on the soldiers guarding the hatch. "That thing's been hanging around for days! Can't one of you people shoot it—or at least close the hatch?"

One of the soldiers mumbled an apology, but Berger cut him off with an impatient gesture. "I don't know what I'm even paying you for!"

He urged the driver forward, and the three Decepticons followed him inside. The shuttle's passenger compartment was, unlike its exterior, still clearly under construction. Monitor screens, packed in boxes bearing the logo of Berger Electronics, Inc., were stacked against the walls, and the seat cushions were covered in layers of protective plastic sheeting. The nav console was open, exposing a snarl of loose wires, and Starscream wasted no time spotting the gap where the Dominator Link was meant to fit.

It felt heavy, a dead weight. He hesitated, pedes frozen to the deckplates, and something in him shifted. No. This, he could not do. He could not be other than he was, for anyone. He stepped toward the console, and a lumbering shape imposed itself in his path.

"I see you've brought it," Hook said, holding out his hand.

Starscream drew back, holding the Dominator Link out of reach. "I shall install it."

"Not a chance," Hook retorted. "The systems of this ship are too delicate to be tampered with by the likes of you. I won't allow you to install a device that I haven't had a chance to inspect."

"No inspection is needed," Starscream replied. "The Dominator Link conforms to this craft's exact specifications."

"Dominator Link?" Berger echoed. "What's that?

Hook opened his mouth to answer the question, but Megatron cut in. "It's the final component needed to complete the navigational system," he answered, ignoring Hook's affronted glare.

"Really?" Berger frowned. "It sounds more like S&M equipment."

"I assure you, it has nothing to do with S or N," Hook answered huffily. "It's a long-horizon impulse invalidation module designed—"

"To ensure that the Autobots arrive safely at their destination," Megatron interrupted, giving Hook a stern glance.

Starscream guessed that Megatron had no more idea about long-horizon impulse sequencing than Hook did about what S&M stood for. They made quite a pair. "As stimulating as this conversation is," he said, stepping around Hook, "we really are on a time constraint, and—"

"Now wait just a minute!" Hook grabbed his arm. "I haven't authorized…" He trailed off, and Starscream could guess by his expression what kind of look Megatron was giving him. "On second thought, go right ahead."

"Thank you."

Starscream stepped over to the console, taking care that his wings blocked Hook's line of sight as he flipped open the device's glassine case. He kept his thoughts carefully blank as he unsnapped the chip from its housing, closed the case, and eased the Dominator Link into its waiting cradle. It locked in place with a soft "click," and that was that.

"Now to test it," Hook said. He bustled forward began flipping switches on the console. A low hum filled the air as the ships systems powered up, and Starscream watched numbly, holding the chip in his palm. Now that he'd made his choice, he suddenly wanted to shove Hook aside and put the chip back. It was too late to change his mind, though, and anyway, he'd never have to use it. He'd seen to that.

He turned, started to walk away, and the room tipped sideways.

He lost his balance and plowed into one of the plastic-wrapped seats. The room spun as his overtaxed gyros struggled to adjust, while his spark engaged in a fairly credible attempt to burn its way out of his chest. The silence was back. It swept over him like a giant tide, and all he could do was grip the back of the seat and focus on not disgorging his fuel reserves.

Don'tthinkdon'tthinkdon'tthink…

Skyfire. Was. Here.

On Earth.

Waiting, like the giant fool that he was. He was going to end up on this shuttle with all the other Autobots, and he'd die with them, and there wasn't a thing Starscream could do. Unless. There was just one other unless. He didn't know if he could make it work, but…

"What's the matter?" Hook sneered. "Got some bad energon in your system?"

Starscream didn't respond. How far was the Arctic? Twenty-eight hundred miles, give or take? He could be back by sunrise.

Megatron's hand landed on his arm; the arm attached to the hand that was holding the chip. Starscream tried to pull away, but Megatron tightened his fingers just enough to restrain him. "You appear damaged," he stated tonelessly.

Damaged. Of course that was how he'd put it. No acknowledgment of how such damage might have happened. Starscream was simply "damaged."

"I'll be fine," Starscream said. He jerked his arm free and took a step toward the door, then lost his balance again, grabbed one of the consoles for support and dropped the chip. It fell, spinning end over end, and it struck the deckplates with a soft "ping."

"What is that?" Hook asked. He took a step toward it, then froze as the console behind him made an unnaturally loud, grating hum, and a curl of smoke rose from its innards. He yelped as if stung and pounced on the console while Starscream pounced on the chip. Beating Megatron to it by a mere nanoklick, he held it up and pretended to study it.

"This is an override chip," he said.

"A what?" Hook spun from the console and stared at the chip with widened optics. "How could something like that end up here?"

"It's obviously sabotage!" Starscream raged, and shoved the chip against Hook's chest hard enough to conveniently crack its data layer and render it unreadable. "Someone is trying to sabotage this shuttle, and you let them walk right in!"

"I…" Hook looked taken aback. "Believe me, mighty Megatron, I have no idea how this got in here."

"Its a good think you found it then, Starscream," Megatron said, settling a hand on the edge of his intake. "Hook, have additional security details posted from now on."

Starscream darted a glance at Megatron, but his granite profile was unreadable. Could he really not have seen that the chip had fallen from Starscream's hand? Apparently so.

He stepped forward, shrugging off Megatron's hand, and plucked the chip from Hook's fingers. "I will take this to base for a full analysis," he said.

"Excellent, Starscream," Megatron replied. "I will await your report."

His voice carried an undertone that Starscream couldn't identify, but at least he now had a clear path to the door. With the evidence. He willed his gyros to behave long enough to reach the elevator platform, where he sagged against the ship's outer hull and thought, for a moment, about unless.

Unless depended on a couple of things, one being his ability to fly. He waited for the ground and sky to stop exchanging places at quite such an alarming rate, then stepped to the edge of the platform and took off. He was a bit wobbly, but he could make it.

The other thing was harder to predict. If he was Skyfire's reason for lingering on Earth, maybe he could also become his reason for leaving. It was the last card in his deck, and he'd have to play it with the utmost finesse. Luckily, he had twenty-eight hundred miles in which to think it over.

Of course, there had to be a storm. It seemed fitting, since this had begun with a storm and now, nine million years later, Starscream was going to end it. He threw himself against the wind, welcoming the hailstones that battered his wings. If they could only touch the silence within.

Below him, the seemingly endless icefield was lost in churning blackness. There was no sign of Skyfire, and it was impossible not to think of that other storm, long ago. There'd been no sign of him then, either, but what he remembered most was the crisp stillness of Earth's upper atmosphere and sunlight flashing from Skyfire's wings as he turned in a lazy roll, angling his nosecone toward the planet.

"Let's go!" Starscream had called after him. "There's nothing here worth seeing."

Skyfire transformed and spread himself on the cushion of air, his arms and wings splayed wide. "I wouldn't say nothing," he said, sweeping an appreciative glance down the length of Starscream's altmode. "Besides, when has that ever stopped us?"

Skyfire was flirting. Here, of all places. They had argued earlier, flown in silence for a time, and if their dispute had become more heated than normal, it was only because there was something about this star system, particularly its third planet, that set Starscream on edge. He couldn't shake the sense of being watched, in spite of their preliminary scans having returned no signs of intelligent life. For once, Starscream was more than content to leave things at preliminaries. The sooner they got out of here, the better.

"I want a closer look," Skyfire added, perfectly at ease. A familiar light kindled in his optics and he reached to Starscream, hand open. "You can't blame me."

"I'm not joking, Sky! I want to go. I… I don't like it here."

That was a major admission, and Skyfire seemed to recognize that. "All right," he conceded, his tone disappointed. "We'll go, but… just come here an astrosecond, would you?"

"Just an astrosecond? Right," Starscream groused. "Where have I heard that one before?" But he was transforming as he spoke. It was a weakness of his; he'd never been able to say no to Skyfire.

Skyfire smiled as Starscream reached for his outstretched hand, but his expression froze into one of shock as a wall of blistering cold air slammed between them and knocked him into a wild spin.

"Skyfire!" Starscream plunged after him and caught his hand, gripping tight, but the wind got between them. The air was thicker than it should be this high up, and it swirled around Skyfire, forming a funnel that dragged him down while pushing Starscream back and away. Starscream held on, though his strength was no match for the force that seemed intent on wrenching them apart. It was Skyfire who let go.

"It's okay, you'll find me!" he yelled. The wind swallowed him, and he was gone.

That storm had raged on for days, and Starscream had nearly died trying to find Skyfire in it. Once the wind settled, Starscream had remained longer than he should have, his search eventually covering the planet's entire northern hemisphere before lack of fuel resources forced him homeward.

This storm was different. It lacked the almost sentient quality of the first one, yet searching for Skyfire in this windswept darkness felt all too familiar. When he finally did see him, sitting in the entrance of one of the ice tunnels with his knees pulled to his chest, wings swept forward against the cold, Starscream had to forcibly quash the urge to throw himself on Skyfire and to finally, really warm him from his long vigil.

He looked vulnerable in spite of his size, dwarfed by the Arctic's vastness, and Starscream regretted, for a moment, the things he was about to do and say. It was the only way, though. It was the only way he could undo the damage he'd caused in his moment of weakness when he'd returned Skyfire's kiss, when he'd… made love to him. This time, Starscream would be the one to let go. Skyfire's life depended on it.

He banked into a steep dive, powering his weapons as he did so. Air screamed over his wings; he dropped like a falling sword, leveling off at around five hundred feet, and stitched twin paths of laserfire across the snow as he rocketed toward Skyfire's sheltering place. His goal was to get Skyfire's attention, and it worked—a bit too well.

"Starscream?" Skyfire sprang up as Starscream strafed the tunnel entrance, and Starscream had to pull up hard in order to avoid hitting him.

"Starscream!" Skyfire leaped into the air, wide optics scanning the darkness as Starscream pulled up into the storm, putting distance between them as quickly as he could. He arced back, hailstones peppering his belly, and then he was descending again in a loop that would have gone just perfectly had he not felt possessed to add a corkscrew barrel-roll at the end.

Perhaps there was something in him that wanted Skyfire to notice and admire what an ace he was. His gyros wasted no time informing that this had been a bad idea.The world flipped sideways, then back, then blurred in a swirling chaos of white snow and black sky as he spun out of control.

He transformed mid-fall, somehow managing to land pedes first. The force of his momentum carried him into a stumble that lasted one, two, three steps, before he went down in a roll that nearly wrenched one of his wings from its socket. His HUD iced over with damage reports from every part of his frame—minor stuff, mostly, but still painful—and he staggered up, swaying on his feet as he fought the buffeting winds for balance.

So much for his grand entrance.

Skyfire dropped down out of the swirling blackness and charged toward him. "Starscream! Are you all right?"

Starscream raised his rifles. He wasn't sure which Skyfire he should be aiming at, so he pointed a rifle at each. "Why are you doing this?" he demanded.

Both Skyfires had stopped. "Doing what?"

"Coming up here all the time! What do you think you're waiting for?"

"You," the Skyfires answered simply. They were studying him warily, but their twin expressions reflected concern rather than fear. "You're hurt," they said, stepping forward. "Let me—"

"No!" Starscream fired. His shot went wide, as intended, and it had the intended effect. The Skyfires paused, staring at him with identical, unclassifiable expressions. "Not another step," Starscream warned. "Answer the question. Why do you keep coming up here?

The twins blurred wildly out of focus for a moment, then merged and became just one Skyfire; a Skyfire who was gazing at him with the utmost sincerity. "I wanted to talk."

"There's nothing to talk about!"

"Starscream—"

"There!" Starscream fired past him into the darkness. He knew the exact spot without even looking. "That's where I shot you. Look at it!"

Skyfire hesitated, then glanced at it reluctantly, as if he was afraid Starscream would fly off while he was looking the other way. He settled his wings. "What about it?"

"What about it? I shot you! I walked away and left you to die. Are you going to pretend that never happened?"

" Of course not." Skyfire studied Starscream from beneath lowered brow ridges—and then he did something that made no sense at all. He smiled. "You're not going to shoot me now," he said. "You would have done it by now." He took a step toward Starscream, hands outstretched. "Let me look at that wing."

"Back off!"

"No, I just—"

Starscream fired past him, hitting a spot near the first one. "That," he said, "is where the core shaft is buried. You do understand that I was going to freeze this planet, and everything on it?"

"Starscream—"

"And I'd do it again, too! I did do it again, when I kidnapped Dr. Arkeville. I was going to use his device to destroy this world."

"Yes," Skyfire said after a moment, heavily. "I did know that."

"Then leave! I'm not—" a sharp wind knocked him sideways. He staggered, his rifle misfiring as he fought to regain his balance, and big, warm hands caught his shoulders, steadying him.

Starscream twisted away from the touch, pulling his field in tight to his frame to keep stray emotions—such as the surge of desolate longing that rose in him at Skyfire's touch—from leaking out. He hadn't planned on getting nearly this close, but Skyfire, the stubborn fool, was refusing to take no for an answer.

"We'll talk about all of this," Skyfire said. "But for now, you're hurt. I have supplies here, and some energon. Come into the tunnel and let me fix your wing and… we'll figure the rest out. Okay?"

He reached out again, not touching Starscream but simply offering his hand. Offering something he had no right to offer. A place of shelter from the storm, sanctuary for his sworn enemy, and false hope of something Starscream knew could never be his: forgiveness.

Rage swelled from somewhere deep inside, and he suddenly knew what he had to do. Touch was the only way to break the silence, something he'd learned when reviving Skyfire from the ice. He'd touched him then to send a warning, and he could do the same now.

He seized Skyfire's wrist in both hands, found the bond that linked them and poured all his anger—all his hate—into that fragile connection. Skyfire recoiled, tried to pull back, but Starscream held on. He took a step closer, pushing into Skyfire's personal space and leaning up to shout in his face.

"Just go! The Starscream you knew is dead. Give up on me, like I did on you."

"You didn't—"

"I did! I am."

Skyfire's mouth fell open, perhaps in dismay or perhaps with the intention of countering his argument. Starscream could feel him reaching back through their bond, his presence like soft rain, infinitely gentle and sad, and he knew that if he stayed here a moment longer he'd drown, fall into Skyfire's arms sobbing like a newfledge trying to wake from a bad nightmare, and that would be it—the end.

He gathered his will and drew on everything he had left—all his rage at Skyfire's betrayal, all his wounded pride, and struck out ruthlessly. "Leave," he hissed. "Find somewhere else, find someone else! I'm not for you anymore!"

He let go and staggered back a step, barely able to face the sight of his own handiwork, the growing look of devastation in Skyfire's optics. "Goodbye," he managed, before he gunned his thrusters and shot straight into the storm. If he lingered for another moment, or let himself hear a single word Skyfire might have to say, he'd be lost. They both would be.

The sun was well above the horizon by the time Skyfire landed at the airfield, and he wasn't surprised when he saw the small crowd of worried-looking humans gathered outside the hangar. He was half an hour late for a launch that was supposed to have happened at dawn. What did surprise him was the small brown shape that detached itself from Bart's shoulder and swooped up to land on his.

"Solomon!" Skyfire smiled in spite of himself, in spite of the heavy, broken feeling in his chest, and reached to carefully stroke the bird's feathered back with just one fingertip. Solomon flexed his wings and stamped his taloned feet in a celebratory dance, hooting joyously.

"He came back," Skyfire said, glancing down at Bart, who was sitting on the hood of his old Volvo, looking uncomfortable in the exosuit that was going to be his second skin for the next few weeks. The rest of the team was gathered around him, and behind them was the town's mayor and a delegation of townspeople, including the friends and family members of SITE's ground crew, most of whom were local.

"He did!" the mayor answered happily on Bart's behalf, and clapped Bart on his exosuited arm. "He was sitting on on Bart's desk when we arrived, demanding treats and acting as if he'd never been gone." She turned her beaming smile up to Skyfire. "We were getting worried about you, though."

"Sorry I kept you waiting," he said. "I just…" he paused, glancing over the upturned faces of his colleagues and SITE's many supporters. No one from this small Alaskan town seemed to have bought into the notion that the Autobots were evil, a fact for which he was deeply grateful. Perhaps it was one of the benefits of knowing an Autobot personally. His gaze fell on Bart, who hadn't spoken yet. "I need a moment," he said. "Is that all right?"

Bart nodded. "We'll be here." Perhaps there was a hint of sadness in his tone, but Skyfire wasn't sure.

He walked around to the back of the hangar and stood for a moment, gazing at the sunrise. His legs gave way and he sank to the ground, letting his forehelm drop to his hands. "He's lying!" he said through clenched dentae, finally giving voice to the thought that had been dogging him since he'd watched Starscream vanish into the storm. "He's lying to me through our bond."

Unless he wasn't.

But… Skyfire thought of Starscream in the brig. His bitter anger and the hurt behind it, and how his biting kisses had grown tender as his rough dominance had shifted to playfulness, even laughter. That had been real. He'd stake his life on it. Also real had been that first, soft smile Starscream had given him when he'd awakened from the ice. And then there'd been the moment Starscream had called him a traitor and shot him. That, too, had been real.

Nothing from the previous night was.

"Unless I'm wrong," he murmured. "Maybe it's just that he wasn't saying what I wanted to hear."

A soft hoot drew his attention to his shoulder, and he realized that he wasn't quite alone. Solomon had come with him. Skyfire smiled as the owl hopped closer to his face and cocked his head to one side, studying him with those huge yellow eyes.

"It's just…" Skyfire paused to recognize the fact that he was talking to an owl, but then again, he needed to talk to someone. "We're bonded. I know what his feelings feel like, and…"

He replayed it in his mind, the outpouring of hate and fury that Starscream had blasted at him. It was real hate, real anger, but beneath all that there'd been fear. Fear of what? He couldn't tell. Even the hate had felt wrong, as if it wasn't really meant for Skyfire. As if it was inwardly directed, toward the hater himself. A cold wind touched Skyfire's wings, and he shivered with sudden dread. The worst part of this was not knowing whether it was Starscream's dread or his own. Then on consideration he decided that no, it wasn't the worst part.

"It's knowing that there's nothing I can do," he said aloud.

Solomon inclined his head, and an image formed in Skyfire's mind, so clear and vivid and so unlike his usual thoughts that it seemed almost comical. It was of a tiny Starscream. Or an enormous owl. Either way, the owl's wings were stretched behind Starscream's, as if to shelter him.

Cybertronian glyphs materialized within the image. They were of an ancient script, one that had been out of use since before the grandsire of Skyfire's grandsire had been created. They said, watch over.

"Watch over?" Skyfire frowned. "That's… strange." It was the constant worry catching up to him, he decided, the stress of feeling pulled in many directions at once.

Solomon hooted again, sounding impatient, and squeezed his eyes shut as if in tremendous concentration. The image returned, even sharper and brighter this time, and this time the glyphs read, I will, followed by protect: watch over.

Skyfire stared at the owl. "You didn't just—"

But no, that was impossible. Even if he was dealing with a telepathic owl, how could a bird from Earth know Cybertronian? Especially in such an ancient form? Yet the message, nonsensical as it was, brought a curious sense of peace. It was if there was some deeper part of him that understood, even where his mind could not. A part of him that didn't find the notion of a telepathic owl strange at all.

"Thank you," he heard himself say.

Solomon shook his feathers, gave a pleased hoot, and launched skyward. He was lost in the sunrise within moments, and Skyfire rose and went back to his waiting team. "I'm ready," he told them. That was probably a lie too, he thought as he transformed and extended his ramp for boarding. He was, however, as close to ready as he was ever likely to be.

Starscream hadn't been sure if he'd be able to tell. Skyfire had left Earth before, had traveled to Cybertron, and Starscream hadn't known. But this time, when the moment came, it was unmistakable. He jolted upright, raising his forehelm from his knees as he stared blankly into the darkness of the cell.

"Oh."

This was different. It wasn't the silence, and it wasn't a matter of physical distance. This was emotional distance, and resignation; a sense of letting go. It meant that he'd won. Skyfire wasn't going to wait for him anymore. He was moving on, as Starscream had told him to and, Starscream hoped, going somewhere far away.

He'd expected to feel some relief. A lifting of the heavy sense of dread that had been weighing on him for the last few orns. He was free to go about his life—this life, the life he had fought for—without shame, without any need for excuses. So why wasn't he moving? Why was he not striding out to do just that rather than sitting here, where Skyfire had once sat, in this brig cell that had come to feel more like home than his own quarters?

His comm pinged several times before he answered. "Starscream here. What do you want?" Whoever it was, he felt safe snapping at them, since Megatron would have used a private channel.

"Berger's on the move," Skywarp announced in a singsong voice. "His private army's headin' to the Ark to arrest the 'Bots, and the trial's happening later today. You'll wanna get your aft to the command center before it all goes down, yo."

Starscream rolled his optics at the Earth colloquialism, but thanked his Trinemate before signing off. It would indeed be much better for the second-in-command to be on-deck when the trap Megatron had set for the Autobots sprang shut. He pushed himself up, mentally sorting through the list of explanations he could offer if anyone should happen to ask about the scratches on his frame, or his damaged wing.

They wouldn't ask, though. They would assume Megatron had done it and leave things at that, and Megatron would be too busy to notice.

He stepped out into the brightly lit corridor and paused, letting his optics adjust. Skyfire had asked if he was happier in his current life, and he'd answered with the truth. He was happier. He was happier now than he'd ever been. It was just the brilliance of the overhead lights that was making his optics water and burn; nothing else.

"How much pain has cracked your soul?
How much love would make you whole?
You're my guiding lightning strike."
—Muse, I Belong to You

Nimue: "Come, we must get away from here before the dragon returns!"
Warpath: "She must mean Starscream."
—from A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court

Earth: 1985 A.D.

Rumble glanced around. "What is this joint, anyway?"

"Our tomb," Starscream muttered as he tried to shift one of the boulders that blocked the entrance of the dome-shaped chamber that they, along with Ravage and Ramjet, now found themselves trapped inside. Moments earlier, he and the other three Decepticons had stumbled in here, lured by anomalous energy readings. The Autobots had collapsed the entrance behind them, sealing them in, and even through his rising panic, Starscream couldn't help feeling that there was something wrong about this place. He couldn't have put a digit on what it was, though he was certain that it was more than just a Seeker's natural aversion to enclosed spaces.

"Not quite, Starscream," Rumble said. "Your sensors were right; there is energy in here."

Starscream spared a glance at the smaller Decepticon, who was standing before a structure that might have been an altar. It consisted of a stone slab with a row of rune-like carvings inscribed across it. The symbols looked uncomfortably familiar, and he wondered where he had seen them before. Were they Viking runes? But the columns that supported the chamber looked more Roman. It didn't make sense, and neither did the scale of the room.

Rumble, who was about human height, appeared dwarfed by their surroundings. The chamber seemed designed for beings of Starscream's height, perhaps taller, not for humans, and the architecture was too sophisticated for the era during which the structure seemed to have been built. There was something else, too. An apparently sourceless green radiance that shone down from somewhere near the ceiling. The radiance pulsed in rhythm with a nagging, tingling sensation that was marching the length of Starscream's spinal assembly like static electricity.

His mind made note of these details and filed them for later consideration, because the only thing that really mattered right now was the soft blue glow coming from the altar stone.

Energon.

Its energy signature was unmistakable, and it was emanating from, of all places, the first rune in the row of glyphs incised on the slab. That was the first thing about this place that made any sense. Ancient humans must have discovered some naturally-occurring energon crystals and embedded them in their altar stone as an offering to their primitive gods.

"Out of the way, Rumble!" he snapped, shoving the smaller mech aside. "As your leader, I must take the risk. Anyway, I'm lower on energy than you."

Ignoring the inner voice trying to warn him that this was far too much like the bait in a trap—a trap intended to catch Cybertronians—he pressed his finger to the second rune. It came alight with the same soft glow as the first, and sent a welcome rush of energy coursing up the length of his arm. Eagerly, he activated the next rune, and the next. The green light from above intensified, but he was oblivious of anything other than the delicious warmth that was now flooding his circuits.

Mars, 1985 A.D.

"We must be almost there," Bart said, glancing at his chrono.

"We are," Skyfire agreed as he angled into a shallow descent. The filmy cloud layer parted, giving them their first clear glimpse of Mars' Cydonia region. "The Face should be coming up on our starboard side in less than a breem."

Bart leaned forward in his seat, peering anxiously through Skyfire's cockpit window. "I can't see a thing," he complained.

The terrain below them was still in shadow, so Skyfire highlighted an area of the map on his console display. "There," he said. "That's it."

"Ah, yes." Bart checked his chrono again. "Sunrise in T-minus sixty-eight seconds. Can you go a bit faster?"

Skyfire pushed some extra power to his engines while privately questioning, once again, the wisdom of their having made this journey on this particular night.

It had seemed like bad timing, considering the massive dust storm that had blanketed most of the planet's northern hemisphere when they first set out. Skyfire had suggested postponing the trip, not out of a concern for safety—he could fly above the storm easily enough—but because the billowing dust clouds would have made for poor visibility once they arrived in Cydonia. Bart had insisted that they had to make the trip tonight, though he had declined to offer any particularly convincing reason. The storm had cleared, quite unexpectedly, a short time after they took off, but Skyfire's doubts had not.

He'd been looking forward to this expedition. It meant a chance to stretch his wings after being grounded for weeks while he and the rest of the SITE team worked to set up the townsite at Arsia Mons, an extinct volcano located near Mars' equator. It was also a nice distraction from his ever-present worries about what might be happening on Earth. He'd learned, days after the fact, about the Autobots' exile and narrow escape after having been set on a collision course with the sun.

Wheeljack had described the incident, explaining that the Autobots' communication system had been disabled, which had left them unable to call for the help that Skyfire would have been glad to provide. "It's better you weren't there," Wheeljack had said, with typical nonchalance. "You would have just gotten blown up with the rest of us." Skyfire disagreed, but he didn't argue. He wondered instead about his last, perhaps final conversation with Starscream, and of how desperate Starscream had seemed to put distance between them. Had that been the reason? Had Starscream been trying to protect him?

"Sorry I haven't been very good company these past few weeks," Bart said, interrupting his thoughts. "I know I've been quite unpleasant at times, especially to poor Priya."

He was referring to an incident two days earlier when he had lost his temper with Priya Chadar, SITE's head engineer. Bart had been pushing hard to get the townsite ready so that the team could stop sheltering in Skyfire's hold, and his tolerance for technical delays had been steadily dwindling. Skyfire wasn't sure what the rush was about, and had said so. He didn't mind serving as a home away from home for his colleagues, and he secretly found their presence comforting, especially at night. That was when the stars, which he and Starscream once would have lain beneath, quietly talking, were his only other source of companionship.

"You do seem to have a lot on your mind," Skyfire answered carefully. "I'm sure Priya understood, once you apologized."

"I did try to smooth things over," Bart replied, checking his chrono again. "It's just… there's so little time, Skyfire. You think you have all the time in the world, but then, suddenly…" he paused. "Well. For now, at least, we seem to be right on schedule."

They had, indeed, arrived at the Face. In the pre-dawn twilight, it looked like nothing more remarkable than an oddly symmetrical mountain, but when the sun broke the horizon and its first coppery rays struck the eastern slope, a boldly carved set of features leaped dramatically into focus. Bart gave a low whistle through his teeth. "I do believe I stand corrected."

"I do believe you do." Skyfire swooped lower and circled the mountain, angling his wings to offer Bart the best possible view from all sides.

"A victory lap, Skyfire? You needn't be so smug."

"Smugness is part of the in-flight service," Skyfire said, and was pleased to get a chuckle in response. Bart seemed more relaxed than he had in days, and he didn't appear the least bit troubled over having lost their debate over whether or not the Face was a natural feature.

"It certainly has a Cybertronian look to it," Bart commented.

"It is Cybertronian," Skyfire said. Wind and time had left the carving badly weathered, but at this range, its origins were beyond doubt. "It's carved in the shape of one of the great Seals associated with the ancient Primes," he said as he slowed his flight and began scanning the structure, creating a detailed holographic map for later study. "It's a glyph that goes back to our planet's earliest known history."

"Some of the weathering looks like water erosion," Bart added, peering closely at the map. "It must be terribly old."

"It must be," Skyfire agreed. "Considering how long it's been since Mars had liquid water, the Face must have been here nine million years ago, when…" he paused, "when my partner and I first mapped this system. It's strange that we didn't notice it at the time."

"Perhaps it was hiding," Bart suggested, smiling behind the mask of his exo-suit.

Skyfire laughed. Bart seemed almost back to his old self, which was reassuring, though Skyfire couldn't help but feel unnerved by the way the Face's empty optic chambers seemed to track him as he flew.

"Skyfire," Bart said, "do you realize that your voice changes whenever you mention this mysterious, nameless partner of yours?"

"I didn't think I mentioned him that much," Skyfire said warily, startled by the abrupt change of topic.

"You don't," Bart agreed, "but silence can be more eloquent than speech." Softly, he added, "If you were a man, I would say you're in love."

Was it that obvious?

"We were bonded," Skyfire admitted, since Bart had clearly guessed as much, and Skyfire already knew, based on remarks that Bart had made on other occasions, that he didn't share the common human prejudice against same-gender bondings.

"What was he like?" Bart asked.

Skyfire considered how best to answer. He thought of his and Starscream's last journey together, and of the strange, glowing ice-creatures they had discovered on the moon that was now called Titan. Starscream had stood for joors just watching them, his lovely face illuminated by their ghostly light-trails. He was the one who had detected a rudimentary language in their shifting patterns of movement and color.

"He was brilliant," Skyfire said finally, though the word hardly seemed adequate. "And driven. Obsessive, even. He was always on a quest, always hungry for new knowledge, and he would never hesitate to challenge a theory that didn't fit the facts as he saw them. He'd argue a point just for fun, and he could be ruthless about it. He was proud, and stubborn, and he could be so infuriating…"

Skyfire trailed off as he recalled their last few joors together, when they had argued over just such an issue. He'd been frustrated over Starscream's seeming blindness to the fact that he'd been systematically—and pointlessly—antagonizing the preceptorate of one of the few academic institutes left on Cybertron that had still, at that time, funded interstellar exploration. If Skyfire had just known how little time they had, he wouldn't have argued. He would have talked about something else, something more important. Something that would probably now go forever unsaid.

"You loved him."

"Beyond reason," Skyfire said immediately. "He was… my light."

"Light for a seeker's path," Bart murmured.

"What was that?" Skyfire tried not to sound alarmed. Bart's use of the word 'seeker' was obviously a coincidence, but it still struck a little close to home.

"Oh, it's…" Bart paused. "It's from something written long ago. What you said reminded me of someone."

"Would that be a certain town mayor?" Skyfire teased, deciding that this would be a good time to change the subject.

"Clarice?" Bart sounded surprised.

"Who else?" Skyfire said. "I noticed that the two of you had been spending a lot of time together before we left Earth."

Clarice Corbett was mayor of the town that hosted SITE's main base of operations, and while Skyfire was no expert where it came to human emotions, he suspected that the smiles he'd seen her trade with Bart meant much the same as they would have between two mecha.

"Ah, you've misunderstood," Bart said. "Clarice and I can never be more than the dear friends we are now, unfortunately. But I wasn't referring to her. The individual I had in mind is someone much as you've described. I must confess that I didn't much care for this person, but he taught me a great deal."

"How so?"

Bart was quiet for a moment. "Love," he said finally. "I believe that it's a form of grace, Skyfire. It cannot be earned, or ever truly deserved; just given. And accepted, if one is lucky, though I think acceptance might be the more difficult part. Well!" He patted the inner wall of Skyfire's cockpit. "Exploring a new planet certainly can put one in a philosophical frame of mind, can't it?"

"Yes," Skyfire agreed with a pang. "It can."

"Shall we go in for a landing? Take a closer look at the old rock?"

"We don't have to," Skyfire suggested. There was something about this turn of conversation that didn't sit well with him, though he couldn't have said why. "We have enough information to prove that this a site worth studying. Let's come back on another day, and—"

"There isn't time," Bart interrupted. "I won't take no for an answer, Skyfire. Please, land."

Skyfire considered this. As the pilot, he was within his rights to pull the plug on this trip at any moment, especially if he had concerns over safety. Bart's odd behavior was making him uneasy, but did that constitute a reason to turn back? He decided that it didn't, at least for now, though he certainly planned to keep a close optic on his employer. Pushing his discomfort aside, he circled lower and began searching for a landing site.

His sonar array pinged, drawing his attention back to the terrain map where a fresh datastream was resolving itself into a set of geometric planes set within the mountain. "That's interesting," he remarked. "I think the Face might be hollow."

"Hollow?"

"There seem to be a number of interior chambers, like caves."

"Or rooms?" Bart suggested.

"Maybe, yes." As Skyfire flew closer, he was somehow not surprised by the sight of a doorway with two tall, rectangular doors set in the side of the mountain. "Make that definitely," he amended.

Earth: 1985 A.D.

"Stop hoggin' it all for yourself!" Rumble exclaimed.

Starscream barely heard him. He had activated the entire row of glyphs by now, and he could feel their energy coursing through him. Too late, he noticed that the green radiance had gone from a faint glow to a blinding nimbus of light. There were a series of flashes, and then… nothing.

They were still inside the stone chamber, but everything seemed somehow quieter. It took Starscream a moment to realize why. The sounds of battle had fallen silent, and the strange, electric feeling was gone.

"Look," Ramjet said, indicating the doorway. "It is not blocked anymore."

He was right. The chamber's entrance was no longer collapsed, and in fact looked as if it had never been damaged at all.

"And the Autobots are gone," Starscream added as he stepped out onto the grassy hillside. The air, which felt unseasonably warm against his frame, carried the scents of grass and flowers rather than of battle. The Autobots must have turned tail once they realized that the Decepticons were trapped. Typical, he thought; never bothering to finish what they started. Still, he wasn't going to complain.

He started up the hill, almost by instinct. The sky was a deep, rich azure blue, and though he didn't have the energy to fly just yet, there was something in him that wanted to get as close to it as he could.

Rumble, falling in step behind him, groused, "I just hope there's some energy around here somewhere for the guys who didn't get to charge up inside."

Mars, 1985 A.D.

It wasn't often that Skyfire felt small in relation to his surroundings. He did now, though, as he came in for a landing in front of the towering doors set in the side of the mountain. After he'd transformed and carefully set Bart down on the rocky soil next to him, he just stood gazing up at them for a long, long moment. "Whoever built this place must have been…" he shook his head, trying to comprehend the sheer scale of the place, "giants."

The doors, which which were made from a bronze-colored metal that blended well with the surrounding environment, were roughly four times his own height, and the weathered stone steps leading up to them were clearly intended for beings much taller than himself. He felt like a newfledge as he lifted his pede to the first step, an action that required him to raise his knee to nearly hip height.

"Want a lift?" he offered, holding his hand out to Bart.

"Er…" Bart consulted his chrono. "You go on ahead."

"I thought you'd want to take a closer look," Skyfire said, puzzled.

"I'll catch up with you."

Skyfire climbed to the top of the steps where he paused to study the gigantic, rectangular pillars of rock that framed the entrance. These supported a third, horizontal stone, into which were carved a row of Cybertronian glyphs.

"Can you read those?" Bart asked, from the bottom of the steps.

They were badly weathered, like the rest of the monument, and were of an ancient script which Skyfire had not seen since… well, since his conversation with an owl, several weeks ago. "It says Alchemist," he said, translating the term into its closest Earth equivalent, "and Onyx."

"What do you make of that?" Bart asked.

"I'm not sure. Those are the names of two of the thirteen ancient Primes who are said to have founded Cybertron. Perhaps this place was dedicated to those two, or perhaps…" he paused, considering the possibility, "built by them. That would make this inscription like a signature."

"Like an artist, signing his name on a painting," Bart suggested.

"Exactly." Skyfire took a closer look at the doors and noticed that their surfaces carried more inscriptions. He brushed his palm over the metal, sweeping away aeons worth of dust, and exposed an intricate pattern of metallic inlays in the shape of bird-like claws. He cleared away more dust and revealed the lower edge of a wing with flame-like feathers. "It looks like a bird," he said. "A fire-bird."

"A phoenix?"

"You could say that, yes. We have a legend that's similar to yours, about a bird that's reborn from its own ashes. It's thought to be an allegory for Cybertron itself, and is connected to Alpha Trion's prophecy that the planet will eventually rise again from the ashes of war. Of course, it's just a myth," Skyfire added as he stretched farther, trying to reveal more of the design. His arm could only reach the bird's chest, so he engaged his antigravs in an attempt to reach higher.

"Oh!" Bart said urgently, I wouldn't do that,"

"Do what?" Skyfire asked, giving him a curious look—and that was when it hit him. It felt as if a black hole had opened inside his chest and a piece of his spark was being sucked down into it. His antigravs failed and he lost power, his vision blacking out around the edges as he felt himself starting to fall.

Earth, 543 A.D.

"Energy!" the would-be tyrant demanded, not for the first time. With obvious difficulty, he raised his head from the rubble and sent a venomous glare around the courtyard. "I need energy!" When no one responded, he subsided with a groan, muttering to himself.

It cannot be him, Beorht silently insisted. He cannot be the One.

Thou wishest, old man, came the soundless reply. Solomon was perched on Beorht's shoulder, his talons digging through the patched green cloak Beorht had now worn through more winters than he cared to recall. Solomon's golden owl-eyes were fixed on the Seeker, and Beorht had to wonder what it was that he was seeing.

He is a knave! Beorht said in disgust. Was he not the one who commandeered this very castle and imprisoned fair Nimue in one of its towers? Was it not he who enslaved the peasant folk and pretended to the title of Lord? How can he be the One for whom we have been searching all these long centuries?

Hath he not brought peace between two realms poised on the brink of war? Solomon asked, his mind-voice tinged with a note of humor.

Beorht glanced over at the two knights. Sir Aethling the Red and Sir Wagend du Blackthorne, who had been sworn enemies just an hour before, were now trading jokes like old friends. Sir Aethling's daughter, Nimue, was cuddled happily against the arm of Sir Blackthorne who had, in all the confusion, somehow become her betrothed.

That is not his doing, Beorht scoffed.

Not his intended doing, Solomon agreed. Yet the prophecy mentions nothing of intent. It does, however, state that the One will be like to tame a dragon—

He hath not tamed a dragon!

No, Solomon agreed. But he hath concocted dragonsbane like to tame any number of dragons. This castle smelleth not unlike thine laboratory.

Privately, Beorht had to admit that it did, though that was hardly the point. Thou playest with words, old friend.

Solomon shifted his wings in an owlish shrug. The prophecy was given by Lady Nightspark, he pointed out. Wouldst thou expect otherwise, coming from her?

Beorht leaned against his staff, suddenly weary. Solomon was correct, of course. Nightspark, Beorht's former protege, was as well known for the uncanny accuracy of her predictions as she was for her droll, frequently obscure ways of expressing them. These past three days had left him with little room to doubt, however, that the events of which the prophecy had spoken were finally coming to fruition.

He had been on the heath, gathering herbs for a potion that he hoped would encourage a family of foxes to move elsewhere, so as not to be hunted by townsfolk fearing for their chickens. As he'd stooped to pluck a crowfoot blossom, a wave of dizziness had swept over him and felled him to his knees. The world had seemed doubled for a moment, as if drawing close to a mirror image of itself, and then something—or someone—had stepped across the divide.

He'd known immediately that the disturbance could only have come from the Dragon Mound, and he had hastened there to discover the impossible: the portal standing wide open, but not by his, or by Solomon's, doing. As the creators of the portal, they were the only ones who should have been able to command it, and so Beorht had naturally assumed that whoever had entered their world through it could only be a master Mage. That it should instead be this creature, who lay sprawled in the rubble—wheezing, making demands, and occasionally focusing his gaze enough to send a hostile glare at someone—seemed almost an insult. Yet Solomon's arguments did make sense.

The prophecy does describe the One as a 'seeker,' he conceded at last. Perhaps that was one aspect that Lady Nightspark intended for us to take literally.

It would be in keeping with her wit, Solomon answered. Shall we go over and introduce ourselves?

"I suppose we must," Beorht replied. He realized that he'd spoken aloud when he saw Sir Hoist give him a curious glance. "Must revive the Decepticons," he amended, "if they, too, are to return to your time through the Dragon Mound."

"Agreed," Sir Hoist replied, with obvious misgivings. "Neither Warpath nor I could carry them, that's for certain."

Beorht nodded, wishing again that it could have been one of the Autobots, or even Sir Spike, who had opened the portal. Their group had come through after it was already open, though, so it could not have been one of them. Beorht had also concluded that it could not be Sir Rumble or, regrettably, Ravage. He spared a glance at the latter as he walked toward the rubble pile.

Ravage had dragged Sir Rumble to a patch of soft grass and was standing guard over him, baring fangs at anyone who dared to come near. Such devotion was typical of beast-form mechs, being spark-descendants of Onyx Prime, and it was one of the reasons why Beorht had always felt a special fondness for them. If the One had turned out to be from among their kind, Beorht would have considered it a vindication, though having it be a Seeker was, perhaps, a vindication of a different kind.

Thou seest the potential of things better than I, Beorht admitted as he climbed onto the rocks. My Lenses show only what is, not what could be.

Then what do thy Lenses show now, old friend?

Beorht took a breath to steady himself before gazing into the Seeker's inner being, something that he had thus far avoided doing. There were, of course, two Seekers who lay sprawled among the rubble, though Sir Ramjet's lifespark appeared entirely ordinary, devoid of any magickal potential. It was the lifespark of the one who called himself "Lord" Starscream—the one who had arrogantly dismissed the very idea of magick—that appeared as a scarlet firebrand to Beorht's inner vision, smoldering with untapped power.

A strong lifespark, Beorht said. Unusually strong, as one would expect. And… There was something else. Beorht deepened his focus, and found his inner gaze drawn to a narrow tendril of light, frail as spider silk, emanating from the center of that little flame inside the Seeker's chest. He is bonded, Beorht concluded in surprise. Who would bond with such a miscreant?

He glanced around at the other Decepticons, then the two Autobots, and swiftly concluded that the Seeker's bondmate was not among them. Closing his eyes, he drew upon his Lens of longest sight and found his gaze drawn back through aeons of time to a broken, twisted frame gone gray in death, sightless optics staring at a city in flames. Beorht pulled back from the vision with a shudder, chilled despite the warm spring air.

His bondmate is long dead, he told Solomon, yet their bond remains, unbroken. How can that be?

The Seeker's bondmate liveth, but in another track of time, came Solomon's reply. His eyes held the faraway look that meant he was gazing into the depths of time, unraveling its strands like a weaver counting threads in a tapestry. I find but one timeline wherein the bondmate hath survived the Great War.

One? Beorht frowned. Then our friend here must have come to us from that very same timeline.

Indeed.

The Dragon Mound must exist, then, in both, Beorht mused. Could this be the key to our role?

Perhaps. Solomon seemed about to say more when Beorht noticed that they were being watched. The Seeker had lifted his head and was glancing between them with an expression of mingled alarm and disbelief.

Think thou that he can hear us? Beorht asked.

There is but one way to find out, old man, Solomon said with a hint of mischief. He flew to perch on the Seeker's nose. Starscream of Cybertron, hs sent, loudly and clearly. Hast thou been watching for the salmon?

"WHAT?" The Seeker's optics tilted comically as he tried to glare with first one, then the other, and then lifted his hand in a weak attempt to swat the owl away. This proved too much effort, and he subsided with a rasping moan. Energy, he sent plaintively. I need energy…

"No matter where you go, there you are."
—Buckaroo Banzai

Mars, 1985 A.D.

"Skyfire!" Bart struggled to lift one of Skyfire's fingers and gave it a shake, trying to rouse him. "Are you all right, Skyfire? Wake up!"

Skyfire's frame twitched weakly, but he didn't unshutter his optics. He lay where he had fallen moments ago, his wings and shoulders propped against the lower steps of the Temple and his long legs sprawled on the rocky Martian soil. His spark, as seen through Bart's inner lens, was noticeably faltering.

"Hang on, Skyfire," Bart said, checking his chrono. Solomon! he sent. What's happening on your end?

Nothing yet, Solomon replied. The Seeker and his companions took the bait and entered the Dragon Mound, the Autobots went in after them, and now all we can do is wait. Is there something wrong?

Skyfire's spark is destabilizing, Bart sent in a rush. I don't understand; the Seeker wasn't affected this way, and—

Have you attempted a stabilization field? Solomon interrupted.

Of course I have! That was the first thing I tried.

So? Is it helping?

I don't know! Bart snapped, then consulted his inner Lens. Maybe, he conceded. The stabilization field was helping, but not enough. Skyfire's spark was sputtering, sending out flares that seemed to reach blindly in search of… well Bart knew what they were searching for.

He recalled his first impressions of Starscream, and how astonished he'd been to realize that the Seeker was bonded. His first thought had been to wonder who would bind their spark to that of such a scoundrel, and he'd certainly expected the Seeker's bondmate to share a similarly dubious moral character. But then he'd met Skyfire.

"Met" wasn't quite the right word, since Skyfire hadn't been aware of his presence at the time. Bart had been there, though, hovering invisible with Solomon in the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere. He had witnessed how the Seeker and his bonded clung to each other in the storm that he had summoned, how they had fought it together and how, once the battle became hopeless, Skyfire had been the one to let go so that Starscream might fly free and live. He'd also witnessed how Starscream had lingered on Earth until he nearly died, searching for his mate beyond hope, beyond reason.

Love beyond reason. Those were the words Skyfire had used to express his feelings for Starscream. He wasn't blind to Starscream's faults. None of the qualities he'd mentioned when describing his mate could entirely be considered virtues. He saw Starscream as he was, but through a lens that saw beyond the pettiness and false pride and into the soul that lived beneath. Bart couldn't imagine what Skyfire saw there, but whatever it was, he clearly found it beautiful. It was terrifying to think how much depended on Skyfire's ability to see that, and, even more, on Starscream's ability to let himself be seen that way.

Bart glanced at his chrono, then again at Skyfire. Waiting didn't sit well with him. One of the advantages of being able to traverse time was that he rarely had to wait for anything. Another was that he nearly always knew what was coming next. Anything he couldn't see for himself through his Lenses, Solomon could divine for him by testing the strands of destiny and choosing the ones that best fit the tapestry they were attempting to weave. But now, watching as Skyfire's spark slowly faded, he realized he was experiencing something uniquely suited to this mortal frame he currently inhabited: helplessness.

When the Seeker had stepped through the portal, it had marked the end of the time-loop Bart and Solomon had created. That was a loop that had started, at least in chronological terms, with Skyfire's crash nine million years ago. From now on, anything could happen, and the outcome was beyond his, or Solomon's, or perhaps even Sigil Nightspark's ability to predict.

I'm going to invoke restraining wards, he told Solomon.

Are you sure that's wise? came the owl's reply. It could sever their bond.

What else can we do? Bart demanded. If he dies, everything we've put him through will be for nothing.

Solomon was silent for a moment. You are letting your guilt drive you, old man, he sent. But, as always, you will do what you believe is best.

Typical Solomon. Plant the seeds of doubt, then step back and leave the decisions to someone else. Bart vented a sigh. The thought of Skyfire's death made him ill. It wasn't just that it would mean the failure of their mission, but on a more personal level, Skyfire had become dear to him. Perhaps Solomon was right, but he truly did hate the suffering that he'd had to cause this gentle being. It would always be one of his deepest regrets.

"Hold on," he murmured, patting the large finger, then raised his hand, palm open. He no longer had his staff, his herbs, or even a handy pouch of dragonsbane, but those were all just tools. Real magick came from within. He shuttered his eyes and summoned the power, letting it build until it crackled through his field like lightning. He inscribed the ancient glyphs in the air, chanting soundlessly, and when the wards took shape he poured the charge into them until they became almost tangible.

He was about to unleash them when Skyfire's spark erupted in a flare bright enough to dazzle his inner vision. A thread of scarlet radiance materialized from nowhere and coiled around the blue, and Bart watched with his breath, and wards, held as the two colors swirled together, seeming to embrace each other in welcome. The red faded after a moment, and the blue settled into a normal, steady pulse. Bart shuddered in relief and dropped his forehelm to rest against Skyfire's finger.

Did something just happen? Solomon asked.

It's all right, Bart sent, once he found words. I don't know how, but somehow he… they… managed to restabilize. On their own.

Interesting. Solomon's tone was thoughtful. Their bond seems able to stretch across formidable barriers of time and dimension.

Yes, Bart agreed. There was a part of him that didn't care how the two sparks had managed to achieve balance, only that they had. His inquisitive side, however, still craved answers. Have our time travelers returned? he asked.

Not yet, Solomon replied, and then, seeming to guess the reason for the question, added, If the Seeker was indeed able to reach Skyfire through their bond, he did it from the far side of the portal. In other words, over a gap of fourteen hundred years and from a completely different timeline.

No sparkbond should be able to do that, Bart mused.

Agreed, Solomon said. This might later prove significant. He paused. How are you doing, old friend?

Bart was startled by the question. Why I'm just— he broke off as a painful tightness lanced through his chest. Oh. He pressed a hand to the chest-plate of his exosuit. It's starting, isn't it?

Yes. I believe so.

Bart glanced again at Skyfire, who hadn't stirred. There was more he wanted to say to him, and to others; things he probably couldn't say, yet still, even with the long centuries that he and Solomon had sojourned in this plane of existence, he found himself wishing for just a little more time.

You are staying well clear of that battle? he asked.

How kind of you to inquire as to my wellbeing, Solomon responded dryly. Yes, I'm keeping well hidden. Not that it will matter in a breem or so.

I suppose not, Bart conceded. But until then, please remember that you are as capable of being squashed by a dinobot as the next owl.

I'll keep that in mind, old man.

Bart smiled. His gaze went to the softly pulsing blue of Skyfire's spark, and he let his mind drift, just briefly, to his other deepest regret.

Love beyond reason. That was the best, perhaps only, kind. It was the kind of love that would lead one to don mortal flesh and follow one's dearest friend into exile when he'd been banished to this dense, physical realm for a crime he hadn't committed. That was the love of a true companion, the kind that Onyx never could have offered to Solus, any more than he, Alchemist, could now offer it to a certain town mayor.

Skyfire's spark was the color of Earth's sky on a cloudless summer day. Clarice's eyes were more periwinkle. Bart remembered the first, and last, kiss he had shared with her as they sat together in his old Volvo, gazing up at the flickering glow of the aurora borealis. There were too many reasons why he could never tell her who he really was, and for that, he was deeply sorry.

Skyfire stirred, murmuring something unintelligible. Bart patted his finger. "You are lucky, friend," he said softly. "Your true companion is also your true love. You'd be surprised how rare that is."

Earth, 543 A.D.

Starscream's memory banks churned sluggishly, and eventually offered up a single word: owl. That was what it was called, this small brown creature that sat perched on his nose with its wings tucked primly behind its back, studying him with large, yellow optics. He didn't have the strength to swat it away, so he could only lie where he was and be… examined.

Was it a bad sign that the creature had appeared to speak just now? Or was it yet another example of the old man's trickery? Starscream decided on the latter. After all, the man was clearly a charlatan. Everyone else seemed convinced that he had summoned lightning to revive the Autobots, when his staff had obviously just acted as a lightning rod. It was no surprise that these rustics would be taken in, considering how primitive their minds were, but the fact that the Autobots also seemed fooled suggested that their mental functions were equally flawed. Perhaps that explained why they got along so well with humans.

Skyfire would understand. He would see the truth for what it was. But Skyfire had left him, and he, in turn, had left Skyfire.

"I see thou art familiar with the writings of my most accomplished protege," the old man said as he stepped into Starscream's field of vision. At least he was moving his lips now, rather than insulting Starscream's intelligence with his ventriloquist nonsense. There was something familiar about him, though Starscream couldn't place it. It might have been his voice, or the set of his shoulders beneath that ragged cloak he wore. Then again humans all looked somewhat the same to him, so it was hard to tell.

"What… are you talking about?" Starscream asked.

"Why Lady Nightspark, of course," the man replied as the owl flew to perch on his shoulder. "She alone could have told thee to watch for the salmon, the sign that marks the Seeker's journey of return."

This wasn't just trickery. It was a hoax, obviously instigated by the Autobots, though he couldn't imagine how Hoist or Warpath could possibly know about Sigil Nightspark, much less the salmon. The hoax theory was, however, infinitely preferable to the only other credible explanation, which was that his central processor was shutting down and he was, quite literally, losing his mind.

"Energy!" he pleaded, exhausted by the effort that it took to raise his voice above a whisper. "I need energy."

"In a moment," the old man said, leaning on his staff. "I believe thou will be more inclined to listen if thou remain in this state, for now."

"I don't need your… your magic!" Starscream tried to heap contempt on the word, but he only succeeded in giving himself a coughing fit. "The dynamo," he added, gesturing weakly to the wreckage at his feet. "Must be… rebuilt."

"Yes, thine energy device. An example, perhaps, of the 'science' of which thou spoke earlier?"

Starscream managed a glare. Wasn't it bad enough that he was lying here on this heap of rubble, possibly dying? He shouldn't also have to answer to the gawking curiosity of primitive life-forms.

"It is as I told thee, Starscream of Cybertron," the man went on. "I know not of science, but I do recognize magic when I see it."

"Magic…" Starscream's voice came as a thready rasp, "is nonsense. Only fools… believe in it."

"And yet the Dragon Mound opened for thee, when it should only have done so for Solomon or myself."

"You mean the time transporter."

"Indeed. A powerful magic is required to open that gate."

"It's not… magic, it's technology!"

"Thou believe there is a distinction?"

"Yes! Technology's real, magic isn't. That's the distinction."

"And yet, thou has this," the old man said, stepping closer. He placed his hand on Starscream's chest, just above his spark. "This bond that connects thee to thy mate. Which would that be? Technology or magic? Real, or unreal?"

"Don't touch me!" Starscream attempted to recoil, but the action became a shudder as his innate revulsion gave way to a dawning realization. This human was talking about his bond with Skyfire. "How do you know about that?" he demanded. Skyfire wouldn't tell the Autobots about their bond, he was sure of that, and he knew he'd never said anything, so how could this human have possibly found out?

"I see it plainly, Starscream of Cybertron," the man replied. He withdrew his hand, offering a sad smile, and that was when Starscream realized why he looked familiar. His memory supplied an image of the same man dressed in a crisp lab coat, his beard neatly trimmed. That had been just a few weeks ago—or, more accurately, fourteen hundred years in the future—inside a secret military base. But that was impossible; humans didn't live that long.

"Didst thou hope to find him here, Starscream of Cybertron? Were thou seeking thy bonded, thy beloved?"

"That's—"

None of your business, he meant to say.

"He wouldn't want me!" was what tumbled out instead. "Even if I trudged to the Arctic on foot, chipped him out of that iceberg with my bare servos and built fifty thousand electric dynamos to revive him, he'd never—" Another fit of coughing took him, and a bitter taste rose in the back of his throat.

"Why dost thou think he would not accept thee?" the man asked.

Starscream tried to glance away, but he was too weak. He shuttered his optics instead, but all he saw was Skyfire as he'd looked that last time they'd spoken, his gaze warm and sincere as he'd reached to Starscream, offering to fix his damaged wing. We'll figure the rest out, he'd said. The "rest" being the fact that Starscream had shot him, had tried to destroy the Earth twice, and that he was no longer someone Skyfire could possibly love, or even respect.

"I've…" Starscream's voice quavered. "Done things… he wouldn't like."

"Ah." The man was quiet for a moment. "Thou must be referring to thy conquests in this realm: the kidnapping of fair Nimue, the enslaving of the peasant folk, the waging of war against—"

"No!" Starscream opened his optics just enough to glare at him. Why did the human have to bring that up? But he couldn't deny that when he'd first found himself in the Sixth Century, it had seemed like a second chance. It was a world without Megatron, without the war and, at least at first, without Autobots. Better still, he knew precisely where Skyfire was buried, and more to the point, he hadn't shot him yet. It was like being handed a clean slate; a chance to start over.

Of course, the only practical means of reaching Skyfire, much less reviving him, involved tapping into this planet's resources. Soon enough, Starscream had found himself kidnapping maidens, enslaving peasants and cooking up gunpowder, and at some point, he'd realized that reviving Skyfire would do him no good. Even without Megatron, even without the war, Starscream was who he was now, and Skyfire was who he was, and any reunion between them would end the same way. It was at that point that conquest had became an end in itself, and he'd stopped letting himself care about anything else.

Thou art right, Solomon, the old man's voice reverberated in Starscream's thoughts. I believe his bondmate is the key.

The true companion, the other voice replied. A guiding light for the Seeker's path.

"What…?" Starscream focused his gaze with difficulty. His vision was going dark at the edges, and the man and the owl were visible only as dark shapes that seemed, for a moment, strangely unlike those of a man or an owl. They towered against the sky, two colossal robotic forms, one with gigantic birdlike wings and the other with strange, lens-like optics that seemed to gaze right through him.

"Thou would not have found him," the one with the lenses said. "He is not here, this great knight of the air, this…" he paused, exchanging glances with the birdlike one, "Skyfire."

"He's…" Starscream's voice was failing him, along with his sanity, which doubtless explained why he was still bothering with this hallucinatory conversation. "Arctic," he said. "Crystal shaft—" He broke off in a wracking cough.

Lenses shook his head. "No, Starscream of Cybertron. Thy spark connects thee to the realm thou left behind when passing through the Dragon Mound. It is to thine own timeline that thou must return if it is thy wish to reunite with him."

"Can't…" Starscream was gazing past them at the sky, his failing vision lost in the deep, soft blue. How beautiful that color was, and how much he missed it. The warm sky seemed to embrace him from within, filling and surrounding him with heat, and light, and… love. So much love for who Starscream had once been.

Desolation swept him. He was dying on this ground, in this long-ago age. His body would eventually crumble, and no one would ever know. He would become a legend to these primitives, a tale about strange armored knights who'd entered their world through the so-called Dragon Mound. The story would fade into myth, then superstition, and at last he would be forgotten.

And Skyfire… would he sleep forever in his icy tomb? Or would someone else find him? Perhaps he would think Starscream had given up on him, had simply abandoned him to the storm. But you did give up, didn't you? an inner voice chided. You did abandon him. Would Skyfire hate him for it? Would he curse his memory or, worse, simply forget all about him?

Please, he thought desperately. Remember who I was. Don't forget.

The blue shimmered, and Starscream felt himself falling up, drowning for a moment in its welcoming depths. Then another voice cut through his awareness and his vision gradually resolved into the the outline of a man in a ragged cloak with an owl perched on his shoulder. The man was holding a staff to the sky and chanting.

There was a flash, and a blaze of energy shot down from the cloudless blue and engulfed the tip of the staff. The man then pointed it at Starscream, and white heat erupted all around him. His body arched, hands clenching in the rubble as the energy raced along his limbs, the intensity almost painful as his hungry circuits tried to absorb all of it at once. Then it was gone. He collapsed back against the rocks and just lay there as the world around him gradually stopped spinning. After a moment, it occurred to him that he could sit up.

Ramjet sat up too. "Aww," he grumbled, rubbing his dented helm. "My poor head."

"What happened?" Rumble asked, shaking his head woozily. Ravage bumped his arm affectionately, then yawned, his fangs gleaming in the sunlight as he stretched his dark limbs.

The old man, who was standing near the Autobots, spoke. "Come with us," he said. "Thine own time awaits on the far side of the Dragon Mound." He turned and strode away, the owl gliding silently at his shoulder. If their shadows seemed momentarily too large and blocky to be those of a man and an owl, Starscream could dismiss that as an illusion caused by the uneven ground and, possibly, the after-effects of energy deprivation. He scrambled to his feet.

"The time transporter!" he said. "That's where they're going—get up!" He seized Ramjet's arm, hauling him to his feet. "The sooner we leave this wretched century behind, the better."

Earth: 1985 A.D.

The doorway of the Dragon Mound was now partially, rather than completely, blocked by debris. Starscream guessed that Hoist and Warpath had had likely cleared some of it away when they'd pursued the Decepticons inside. This detail seemed lost on Hoist, who turned to Warpath and asked, "What do you think? Are we back?"

Just then, a volley of fusion cannon blasts rained down on them. "Megatron!" Starscream shouted. The Decepticon leader was at the top of the hill, framed against the pale sky, magnificent. "Hold your fire!"

Starscream ran up the hill toward him and with each step he took, the world on the far side of the portal seemed more and more like the fading imagery of a bad defrag cycle. He was back. Back to a world free of dragons, wizards, talking owls, and any other associated nonsense. And there was Megatron. Wonderfully solid and real as Starscream threw himself against him, crashing them both to the ground.

"It's me, Starscream!" he cried. "We're back, we're back!"

This was where he belonged. Megatron was the one he'd chosen, the one who had taken him under his wing, the one who had been there these past nine million years. He was the one Starscream could embrace freely, without shame or fear of being pushed away for his perceived moral failings. Megatron was the ice in which Starscream could bury his memories of the past, the blanketing glacier that would numb the aching of his spark.

"Starscream, you fool!" Megatron's field erupted with an emotion so unexpected that Starscream did not at first recognize what it was. "You've ruined my shot!"

"What's the matter?" Starscream asked, and was then surprised to find that Megatron was pushing him away, shoving him roughly back as he got to his feet. "Aren't you glad to see us?"

Later, he would ask himself what he'd been expecting. A smile? Words of welcome? He and the others had been gone for three days, and surely Megatron would have been concerned about their absence. Now, he was home. He was back; he had chosen. He'd thought they understood each other. He'd thought…

Megatron's roar of anger came a split second after Starscream's chrono informed him that he'd been gone for minutes, not days—and he understood the situation well enough to duck when Megatron's heavy cannon arm swung toward his head.

Mars: 1985 A.D.

Skyfire gradually became aware of his name being called, and of someone tugging urgently on one of his fingers. When his optics came online, he realized it was Bart.

"Primus!" Skyfire sat up with a jolt. "I could have crushed you! Are you alright?"

He'd been lying sprawled on his back, his wings and shoulders propped against the stone steps. The sun was shining from the same low angle in the sky, casting shadows long across the rusty ground, and his internal chrono confirmed that he'd been unconscious for only a few minutes.

"I'm… just fine, Skyfire," Bart said with a tired smile. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm…" Skyfire put a hand to his spark. That awful rending, sucking sensation was gone, and his spark felt normal again. "I'm fine," he said, surprised. "I thought I was…" he paused. "I thought something terrible had happened."

"To your bondmate," Bart put in quietly.

Skyfire frowned. He'd been careful to use the past tense when speaking of Starscream. How could Bart possibly know? "I don't—" he began, but Bart interrupted with a wave of his hand.

"He is all right. That much I can tell you. As for the rest…" Bart paused, seeming to consider what to say next. "Ask your bonded about the year 543 A.D.," he suggested with a twinkle in his eye. "You might get some interesting answers."

"I don't understand."

"I can tell you only a little," Bart said. He glanced at his chrono, and Skyfire noticed that his arm was shaking. "I haven't much time, but please know that I consider you… a friend."

"Bart…?" Frowning, Skyfire bent to get a closer look at him and saw that his face was ashen and sheened with sweat. He did a quick scan of the man's vitals, and though his understanding of human anatomy was only basic, the readings he got were enough to alarm him. "We're going back right now," he said. "No arguments." He started to rise, but Bart gripped onto his hand with sudden ferocity, his face twisting into a grimace of pain.

"Skyfire, listen," he said. "I need to tell you—"

"Tell me on the way." Skyfire scooped Bart into his cockpit and transformed around him. "Hang on," he said as he took off, sending a distress code to the team at Arsia Mons to notify them of a medical emergency. "We'll be home in just a few breems."

"Home… yes." Bart smiled. "Going home." His voice was getting progressively weaker. "I regret the pain that I've caused. You were… preserved… for a reason, Skyfire, but…" his body spasmed and he pitched forward, clutching at his chest.

"Bart!" Skyfire gunned his engines.

He didn't need a medical degree in human anatomy to correlate the man's symptoms with the term heart attack. But heart attacks were common in humans, from what he'd heard, and surely someone on the team would know what to do if he could only get there fast enough.

"Stay with me, Bart," he said. "Talk to me."

"Happening faster than I'd thought," Bart said weakly. "Listen. When you get to Earth, you will… need to speak with… Clarice."

"When we get to Earth, you can talk to her yourself," Skyfire retorted.

"Skyfire!" Bart smacked weakly at the inner wall of his cockpit. "Listen. Clarice has… documents for you. You'll understand when… you read them. You have… a little time, Skyfire. I wanted that… for both of you."

Skyfire wasn't listening. His full attention was focused on coaxing a little extra speed out of his thrusters. A ping came back from Arsia Mons with a coded inquiry, and he was in the midst of sending his reply when a huge shadow swept over him.

It was as if something incomprehensibly large had blocked the sun. The object, whatever it was, seemed to have wings like a bird, and they cast huge, distorted shadows across the plain below as the thing appeared to swoop closer. Skyfire began to take evasive action, but there was nothing to evade. His proximity sensors weren't registering anything, and he decided that what he was seeing must be a malfunction in his visual processor.

"Solomon!" Bart smiled weakly. "What an unexpected pleasure."

The shadow spread and intensified, seeming to darken the entire landscape below. Then it swept past, and was gone. An astrosecond later, Skyfire noticed that Bart had stopped breathing.

"Trying to read your fortune?"

Skyfire glanced in the direction of the voice. Clarice Corbett, the town mayor, had approached silently and was standing a few paces from where he sat, just outside the hangar's rear entrance. It had become his customary thinking spot ever since his conversation with a certain owl.

"My fortune?" he asked.

"Crystals." She gestured to the chunk of green crystal that he held in his hand. It was the shard that he'd taken, several months ago, from the crystal shaft in the Arctic. "Some people believe that you can read your future in them," she added.

"Actually, I was trying to read the past," Skyfire answered with a smile as he subspaced the crystal.

Clarice rolled her eyes. "I'm guessing there's no point asking what you mean by that." She pulled a pack of cigarettes from an inner pocket of her coat and lit one, cupping her hands around the small flame to shelter it from the wind. "That was a nice speech you gave."

"It didn't really seem like enough," Skyfire admitted. He'd said a few words just before Clarice had scattered the ashes, but they seemed empty in retrospect, almost meaningless. "There's so much I'd like to have been able to say, if I'd known."

Clarice nodded. "I find it's a good policy not to leave things unsaid. You just never know." Her gaze settled on the horizon. "I was hoping to find you here. Actually, I was afraid you might have taken off."

"I wouldn't leave without saying goodbye," Skyfire answered. He tried not to think of Starscream, and the things that would probably go forever unsaid between them; including goodbye. "I haven't seen Solomon around," he said, changing the subject. "Have you?"

She shook her head. Her hood was thrown back, and her silver hair swirled on the cold wind currents. "You won't be seeing him."

"What makes you say that?"

She hesitated. "I had a dream. I know that's not very scientific, but it runs in my family. The Corbett women all get them; even my granddaughter's starting to."

"What was your dream?" Skyfire asked, curious. He'd been surprised to learn that humans also experienced imagery during recharge cycles, just like Cybertronians. It made him wonder if the difference between their two species might not be as profound as it first appeared.

"It was on the night Bart died," Clarice said. "I dreamed I was in this big, strange place that looked like the pictures I've seen of Cybertron, and Bart and Solomon were there. They looked different, but I knew it was them."

"Different?"

"They looked like robots," she said with a chuckle. "I don't take that part literally, of course. Probably just that I've been spending too much time with you." She smirked, but then her expression sobered. "When I woke up I knew Bart was gone, and wherever he is, Solomon's with him."

She took a few steps away across the frozen ground, and Skyfire saw her shoulders hunch beneath the heavy material of her coat. He cupped his hand around her, not quite touching but offering shelter from the wind. Clarice patted one of his fingers.

"You should know that he had a condition. He never told me the details, but…" she broke off and glanced away, visibly mastering her emotions. "That one time he kissed me, I knew it was a kiss goodbye, and when he left for Mars I think he already knew he wasn't coming back."

Skyfire remembered how Bart had insisted they explore Cydonia on that particular night, and how he'd said there wouldn't be time to do it later. "How could he have known?"

"Maybe we all just do, when our time's up." Clarice tapped ashes from the end of her cigarette, releasing sparks on the wind. "Anyway, I know you're probably blaming yourself, so don't. You did a lot for him. He wanted to see Mars before he died, and you gave him a chance to do that."

"He did a lot for me," Skyfire answered. "He gave me a chance to be a scientist again."

Clarice nodded and they fell into a companionable silence, watching the aurora. "Priya was pretty upset when you said you were going," Clarice said as she finished her cigarette stubbed it out on the ground. "Just between you and me, I think she's got a little crush on you."

Skyfire smiled. "There isn't much for me to do now that the colony's been set up, and with the new funding coming in, SITE will be able to build their own spacecraft."

"So where do you think you'll go?"

"I'm not sure yet," Skyfire replied, and flinched inwardly. He hated to lie, but he didn't see another option. He was sure that Bart had known precisely what they were going to find in Cydonia, and what was more, that he'd known about Starscream. He hadn't referred to him by name, but Skyfire was taking no chances. He'd kept the discovery to himself, and had no plans to reveal it until he'd had a chance to investigate the site thoroughly.

"Well," Clarice said, "if you insist on leaving, I should probably mention right now that you were in Bart's will."

"I was?" Skyfire said, surprised. He'd been present for the reading of the will, and his name hadn't been mentioned.

"Yeah, he left special instructions concerning you. No one else is supposed to know. Are you curious?"

Skyfire nodded.

"Good. I am too." Clarice stepped away from the shelter of his hand and went around the side of the hangar, motioning for him to follow. When Skyfire got to the front of the hangar, he found her climbing into the cab of her battered pickup truck. "Follow quietly," she called through the window. "We're heading back into town, and I don't want an audience."

Skyfire transformed and glided soundlessly on his antigravs, following her back to the outskirts of the town. Clarice turned down a narrow side-street that led between the deserted public works yard and the rear of the town's movie theater. There she pulled over, killed the engine, and got out. Skyfire transformed and settled on the tarmac next to her. They were across the street from a park.

"There," Clarice said, pointing to a statue just inside the park entrance.

Skyfire had seen the statue before, but never paid much attention to it. Now that he was taking a closer look, he saw that it depicted a bearded man with… he frowned.

"Is that an owl on his arm?"

"It certainly is," Clarice said.

One of the stone owl's horns had snapped off, but Skyfire couldn't help noticing how much it looked like Solomon. And how much the man, though dressed in a top hat and Nineteenth Century frock coat, bore an uncanny resemblance to…

"That looks exactly like—"

"Yeah, it really does, doesn't it?" Clarice walked up to the statue and gave its leg an affectionate pat. "Actually it's his great-uncle, Bertrand Evans, who founded our town in 1865. The Evans family crest has owls on it, so I suppose that's why he's got a Solomon lookalike."

"So is that why he chose your town for SITE's base of operations?"

"I would imagine so. The fact that we have an airfield from the Second World War just sitting there probably clinched the deal, but I think he feels—" she paused, "felt, a connection to our town. Anyway, this land was his old family homestead, which Bertrand willed to the city with strict instructions that it be made into a park."

"And the statue?" Skyfire asked.

Clarice's eyes twinkled. "Well according to town legend, it just arrived one day. It came on a supply plane, and was supposedly a gift from his family in England. No one was ever able to confirm that, but the mayor at the time decided the park would be a good place to put it. I can't help but agree."

She reached into her pocket, drew out a flashlight and a sheet of paper, and bent to examine a plaque at the base of the statue. "Ah-ha! There it is." She pressed a combination of letters on the plaque, and a panel bearing the town crest slid smoothly to one side to reveal a circular opening. Clarice shone her flashlight inside, then reached in and pulled out a datascroll.

"Well, I have no idea what this is," she said, holding it up to him, "but apparently, it's yours."

"It's Cybertronian," Skyfire said as he carefully took it from her. "It's a device for storing information." And a very old one, at that. It was a type of scroll that he'd rarely seen outside of places such as Iacon's great Hall of Records.

"Like a floppy disk for a computer?"

"Very similar," Skyfire said as he gingerly activated it. The scroll flickered fitfully to life. "I wonder how it would it have come into the possession of Bart's ancestor?"

"Maybe he found it somewhere?" Clarice suggested. "Earth seems to be full of Cybertronian… stuff. And people. Anyway, Bart must have realized it was from Cybertron and left it to you for that reason."

"I'm surprised he didn't turn it over to Optimus Prime," Skyfire said. The main directory contained just one file, which he opened with the tap of a finger. "If it turns out to be important, I'll hand it over mysel—"

He broke off, staring at the document he'd just opened and at the two designations listed at the bottom. Now, that was impossible. Wasn't it? His logical mind instantly suggested that it must be a forgery, but he couldn't imagine who could have perpetrated it, or how, considering that the scroll seemed to be older than he was.

"So what's on it?" Clarice prompted. "Anything interesting?"

Skyfire shook himself back to reality and deactivated the scroll. "I'm afraid I can't tell you," he said, and this time, at least, he was being completely truthful.

"You and Bart are just full of secrets, aren't you?" Clarice said with a wry smile.

"I'm sorry," Skyfire answered regretfully. "If I could tell you, I would."

"Oh, it's fine," she said, waving off his apology. "Listen, I have to get home. My grandkids were threatening to make dinner, and I have to make sure they haven't burned the house down. But Skyfire—" she took a step closer, reaching up to him.

Skyfire reached back, and was surprised to find his index finger clasped in a swift, tight hug.

"Don't be a stranger."

"I won't," he promised.

He watched as she climbed back into her truck. She waved as she drove off, and he waited until her taillights had disappeared around the side of the theater before he reactivated the scroll and read through the document once more. It hadn't been his imagination. The file said what he'd thought it said.

He tucked the scroll in his subspace, thought for a moment, then took out the slide that Bart had given him for safekeeping. He raised it to the light of a street lamp, studying the blurred image. He had no doubt that Bart had put this slide, with the picture of the Face on Mars, into the tray on purpose. He'd also made sure to do it when none of the other staff were around. Had he been aware of the Face's Cybertronian origins, or had he just been curious? There was no way of knowing for sure, but Skyfire would have bet an orn's worth of energon rations on the former.

He put the slide away, and turned his gaze toward the reddish planet that had just risen above the eastern horizon. His world had rearranged itself yet again, and in the strangest possible way. If he wanted answers, there was just one place in the universe where he might be able to find them—but first, he had one stop to make.

"Say it," Megatron commanded, his tone ragged. His frame was hot, his hand a searing brand against the back of Starscream's neck as he shoved his face down into the berth.

"I yield," Starscream choked, struggling to maintain his imitation of Optimus Prime. The thin upholstery muffled his voice, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep this up.

Megatron's field blazed a black corona of exultant rage-contempt, and he rewarded Starscream with a deep push that drove him forward across the bunk so that his intakes slammed against the wall, raising sparks.

Starscream barely felt the pain. He was straining for release, but Megatron knew just how to get him to the edge and keep him there. His traitorous body was greedily soaking up every movement, every sensation. Megatron had made him wait so long this time, and he needed it so much that he was willing to be Megatron's whore, do anything he asked.

"Again," Megatron ordered.

"I—" Starscream's voice broke, pitching higher.

Megatron grasped him by an intake and hauled him back so that he was kneeling on the edge of the bunk, half-sitting in Megatron's lap. "I yield," he said, forcing his voice back to that deep register, the one he knew Megatron wanted to hear.

Earlier, when Megatron had stopped by his quarters for a frag, Starscream had thought that maybe he was happy to see him after all. But it wasn't him that Megatron now saw. The fevered touches to his chest, his flank and belly weren't for him, they never had been because he wasn't the one Megatron really wanted.

"I…"

There was no "I." He was like Scavenger's empty bird cage. The arms that trapped him in place were the bars, and he the feather. He was less here than a prisoner; he was a nonentity. An absence where something might once have been.

"Again," Megatron said, his voice falling to a purr as he shifted his angle, driving up into the dark, hungry places that yearned for contact.

"Yield," Starscream rasped.

He dropped his head back against Megatron's chest, squeezing his optics shut as he surrendered to the rough tempo. He could still remember another time, another world, where he had mattered. Where he had been everything. Now he imagined that great wings were sweeping forward to shelter him, and he let his own hands become those of another, knowing fingers seeking the vulnerable fault-lines in his frame and tenderly exploiting them.

"Say it."

"I… ah!" Starscream's voice was his own now, a harsh whimper. He was on fire from the inside, shuddering in Megatron's harsh grip. He was breaking over the memory of ardent touches and a beloved voice whispering his name as if it meant something beautiful.

A hand drifted to his wing, thick fingers tracing the edge of an aileron with shocking gentleness. Megatron pressed his mouth close to his audial and growled," Go on, say it Starscream. Just say it."

"I…!" Starscream gasped, sobbing. "Oh, Sky—"

He bit back the name, but it was too late.

Megatron laughed, dark triumph cascading through his field. He finished with a few, sharp thrusts and threw Starscream down on the berth.

Starscream rolled, pulling his knees up to protect his vulnerable, aching core, and raised his arm to ward off blows. None fell. Megatron was stalking away, and Starscream scrambled from the berth, pulling the tattered shreds of his dignity around himself.

"Sky," Megatron murmured as he paced the perimeter of Starscream's quarters. "I wonder what would make you cry out that particular word, at that particular moment?"

"I think you misheard," Starscream replied, fighting the tremor in his voice. "Perhaps you mistook the word 'I' for—"

"Could it be short for something?" Megatron interrupted. He paused at Starscream's desk, picked up a stylus and examined it as if he'd never seen one before. "Skywarp, perhaps?" He glanced over at Starscream, twirling the stylus between his fingers. "Starscream," he chided, almost jovial. "Have you been allowing the other Seekers to spike you?"

Starscream glared. "Obviously not!"

"No, of course not," Megatron agreed. "A leader takes; he does not allow himself to be taken. You know as well as I do that no Decepticon would submit to your leadership if they knew what you really are; if your subordinates became aware of your true—" he tossed the stylus back on the desk, "preferences."

Megatron strode to the porthole and set his hand on the window ledge, gazing out into the dark ocean. "No, I believe your ambition alone would keep you from violating protocol. At least, with any other Decepticon."

"If you're implying what I think you are, you're a bigger fool than I thought," Starscream snapped. "My encounter with Red Alert certainly did not involve him 'spiking' me, as you put it."

As he stepped closer, he noticed an object on the window ledge, a mere finger-width from Megatron's closed fist. He recognized it with a jolt of dread. It was the phase shifter, the one that he and Skyfire had labored on together and that Starscream had kept through long aeons of war because… well. Just because.

"Hmm no, I wouldn't imagine that it would," Megatron murmured, his gaze lost in the inky blackness outside. He seemed unaware of the phase shifter's existence, but seeing it sitting there so close to his hand seemed wrong. Starscream sidled up to him and reached for it, trying to make the gesture appear casual, but Megatron was too fast. He clamped his hand over it and regarded Starscream with a cold smile.

"Red Alert's designation doesn't begin with 'Sky,'" he observed. "And it would seem that this object," he raised the 'shifter, studying its blackened, pitted surfaces in the light, "has some meaning for you. I wonder what that could be?"

"It's a delicate piece of equipment," Starscream retorted, mustering a scowl. "It's not designed to be handled by scientific simpletons." He reached for it again, but Megatron evaded him.

"Delicate equipment, my aft." Megatron ran his thumb along one of the 'shifter's worn edges. "This is old. Very old. And as you pointed out, it is of a scientific nature." His gaze swept over Starscream with searchlight intensity. "How was it again that we ended up drilling in that particular area of Earth's Arctic? Ah, yes. As I recall, it had something to do with your scientific opinion; and then we uncovered a long-lost friend of yours. What a remarkable coincidence."

"Friend?" Starscream snapped. "If you're referring to that traitor—"

"Aerial combat is not my area of specialization," Megatron cut in, "but isn't it true that failing to fire on an enemy aircraft during a direct frontal assault is tantamount to suicide?"

"What's that got to do with anything?" Starscream lunged for the 'shifter and found his arm gripped in an iron hold.

"You know perfectly well." Megatron took a step forward, driving Starscream back a step. "You had that traitor Skyfire within your sights. He could have killed you, yet you didn't fire a single shot. Why?"

"I was biding my time!" Starscream snapped. "I was waiting until he was within range."

Megatron pushed him back another step, and Starscream felt the cold bulkhead press against his back. "He was within range. You hesitated."

"It won't happen again! Next time I have him within my sights, I'll—"

"But the traitor Skyfire has been within your sights, many times since then. At the Peruvian pyramid; the oil tanker; even here, in our own headquarters. Every time he falls within our grasp, it seems that he mysteriously disentangles himself. I cannot help but wonder if he's had some assistance."

"Assistance? Are you suggesting that one of us is helping him? Whoever it is, he will pay dearly for his treachery!"

Megatron's smile hardened. "Yes. He certainly will." His hand tightened on the 'shifter, and Starscream heard a sickening crunch of metal. Megatron tossed the crushed object over his shoulder and planted his free hand on the wall next to Starscream's head, leaning over him. "But who, Starscream? Who should pay?"

Starscream's mind raced. "Thundercracker!" He threw the name between them like a gauntlet. "I caught him conspiring with Skyfire to destroy the weapons-frame you built on top of that pyramid! I wouldn't put it past him to curry favor with the Autobots by helping one of them to—"

Megatron clamped his hand around Starscream's jaw, forcing his mouth shut.

"Mmmgtrn—!"

Starscream tried to twist away but Megatron pressed closer, trapping him against the wall. His free hand groped between Starscream's thighs, and Starscream felt his body betray him yet again, as it always did. His vents cycled shorter and he trembled, arching into Megatron's hand. Megatron's field hummed with fierce satisfaction, as if he'd wrung some kind of concession.

"You've been protecting him," Megatron murmured. He loosened his grip on Starscream's jaw and tipped their forehelms together, lowering his tone to a sensual whisper. "Why?"

Starscream could only stare into Megatron's optics, held captive by the hypnotic scarlet embers of his gaze. It was a gaze that saw him all too clearly now, saw him with contempt for his weakness, his need. Megatron knew just how to play on those needs, how to turn them against Starscream and use them for his own advantage, and yet it was intoxicating to be recognized, no longer invisible.

Suddenly, he knew what he had to say.

"He's mine!" he spat, twisting his face free. "I'm the one Skyfire betrayed, and I will be the one who ends him! Me, personally!"

Megatron's hand glided along the side of his helm in a rough caress. "Very good, Starscream. That's what I wanted to hear."

Starscream shuddered. He couldn't suppress an aching jolt of pleasure at the touch, and the approval that he felt emanating from Megatron's field. Approval that was meant for him, not some phantom.

"You have chosen a most opportune time for your vengeance," Megatron added, "considering that the traitor has been sighted on Earth, yet appears to have strayed from the Autobot fold."

Starscream stiffened. "What?"

"Oh, you weren't aware?" Megatron murmured. "That surprises me, considering how carefully you have been watching their base. At the very least, I'd think you would have noticed his absence when the shuttle was launched."

"He wasn't there?" Starscream tried to sound innocently surprised, though he suspected that his tone fell short of any such thing. "I checked the manifest, counted the names, I could have sworn—"

"Don't toy with me!" Megatron's tone was a whip-crack. He took a step back and leveled his cannon at the center of Starscream's chest.

Starscream flattened himself against the wall, but there was nowhere to run. He'd seen what that cannon could do, and Megatron could make it last. It wasn't always the quick death that one might assume. But Megatron visibly mastered his rage and his smile returned, though it never quite reached his narrowed optics.

"I expect this situation taken care of promptly."

He turned and strode to the door. When it snapped closed behind him, Starscream's legs gave way and he sank to the floor.

Skyfire was on Earth, but not with the Autobots? But Starscream had risked his life and his career to cover his escapes. He'd provided items that could be used as weapons, and assigned guards who were too weak or incompetent to hold him captive. He'd even given Skyfire the antidote to Red Alert's virus so that he could buy his way back into the Prime's good graces, and then, when all else had failed, he'd tried to drive Skyfire away from Earth. He'd done all he could, given everything he had—and Skyfire had just thrown it away!

His gaze fell on the phase shifter. He sprang up with scream of rage and gave the object a savage kick which sent it skittering across the floor. It bounced off the wall and he lunged at it, meaning to crush it with his pede. Then he hesitated.

No. He was going to have this out with Skyfire, once and for all.

He picked up the 'shifter, subspaced it, and paid a quick visit to the officers' washracks, which was his usual custom after spending any… intimate… time with Megatron. A couple of breems later, he was on his way to the Arctic.

Two could play the game of silence.

It had been night the last time Starscream had been in the Arctic, and there'd been a storm raging. Now the ice lay exposed beneath a sky that seemed almost too blue, a shade so deep that Starscream thought that if he gazed at it long enough, he'd see right through it into space. The snow dazzled him as he angled into his final descent, transforming midair just before he landed.

The silence made every sound seem unreal. The cycling of his engines, the wind's high-pitched moan, the crunch of his pedes as he walked across the ice all seemed flat and two-dimensional compared with the vast silence. He stomped his feet to drown it out, and wondered how long it would take Skyfire to get here. There was a part of him that bridled at the notion of having to wait, but then again, he was finally giving Skyfire a taste of his own medicine, and that had its own satisfaction.

The horizon was empty in all directions, but he had no trouble orienting himself. He knew the crystal shaft was buried beneath the ice about thirty steps to his right, and his memory supplied a ready schematic of the network of tunnels beneath his feet. He'd spent weeks supervising the excavation of those tunnels and he knew each of them well. Their pattern would seem haphazard to anyone but him, but he could read the mounting desperation that each one represented.

He had discovered the zone of silence while flying here with Skywarp and Thundercracker, searching for energy resources. Seeker trines shared a bond that enabled them to fly together as one, maneuvering in unison like flocks of birds. Seeker tradition had created great edifices of myth and symbolism around this basic set of facts, but all mumbo-jumbo aside, Starscream had found that the trine bond—annoying as it could sometimes be—did offer certain practical advantages.

He never would have guessed that finding Skyfire would be one of them, but when he and his trine-mates had found their bond suddenly cut off, he instantly remembered having felt the same thing when the storm had swallowed Skyfire. Feverish with excitement, he'd ordered Skywarp and Thundercracker to help him map the area. They'd found that the zone was dome-shaped and, as luck would have it, that it seemed to emanate from an unknown energy source.

That source had, of course, turned out to be the crystal shaft that led to the planet's core, so it was easy to persuade Megatron to let him excavate the site. Further, when he'd compared his current map of the Arctic to the one he'd made nine million years earlier, he'd discovered that the zone's geology had remained remarkably stable over time. It was almost unchanged, in fact, which meant that if Skyfire really was buried there, he was in one of the few places on Earth where his frame might have remained intact.

It was the first real break that he'd had in his various attempts to find Skyfire, and he'd pressed it to full advantage. Even so, finding him hadn't been easy. The ice was riddled with caves which rendered sonar and radar equipment useless, and the scans he would normally use to detect metal alloys simply didn't work inside the zone. He was reduced to tunneling blindly and hoping for the best, an undertaking that had become increasingly random and desperate as the energy project had neared its completion. But then, seemingly at the last possible moment, he'd found him.

And… lost him.

Starscream had told himself many times that the ice had changed Skyfire, turned him into someone he didn't recognize. In his spark, he'd always known it wasn't true. It was he, not Skyfire, who had changed. Over nine million years, he had become someone his former self wouldn't recognize. His willingness to freeze an entire planet, one that supported sentient life, stood as silent testament to the fact. Skyfire's look of sorrowful accusation had served as a mirror to that forgotten past, and Starscream had reacted by trying to shatter the reflection.

Now, standing beneath the cruel sun that eradicated all shadows but his own, he found his gaze drawn again and again to one particular spot. It was a patch of ice that looked just like every other part of this Primus-forsaken landscape, except that it wasn't. It was where he'd shot Skyfire. The memory stalked his dreams, ambushed him whenever he let his attention stray. He saw, over and over, the look of bewilderment in Skyfire's optics, the look of stunned betrayal as he fell, the sight of Skyfire's fuel soaking into fresh snow.

Starscream had told himself a hundred different times that it didn't matter; he felt nothing. But if that was true, then why couldn't he look? What made that patch of ice different from any other? It wasn't, he told himself. He could walk over there any time he wanted; it would mean nothing. He took a step toward the spot, then another, and then his legs locked tight and he glanced away, hands clenching into fists. The white horizon blurred into liquid flame as he squeezed his optics shut, fighting to master the shudders that racked his frame.

It's just the cold, he told himself. I need to get my internal temperature regulation system re-calibrated—

"Frag!" He aimed his rifle and fired, blasting a hole in the ice. He stormed closer, blasting as he went. "Frag-frag-stupid-fragging—!" He kicked the snow, sending up clouds of floating ice crystals that sparkled in the cold air. His legs gave way and he crashed to his knees, punching at the snow with his fists, and then froze. There was a small object in the snow.

It was a photographic slide. He'd seen them before, somewhere, and his memory banks conjured a helpful schematic of the carousel device that humans used to project images from such slides onto screens or walls. It was a primitive technology, though apparently effective. But what was it doing here?

Starscream reached to pick it up, but hesitated as his digits encountered an electric feeling in the air above the slide. It was a sensation he'd felt before. It took him a moment to place it, but then he remembered the dome-shaped room that had turned out to be a time-transporter, and how the air inside that room had crackled with the same static feeling. But that was silly. He was in the middle of nowhere, and there wasn't a rune-stone in sight. Just this tiny, completely harmless object.

With something written on it.

He bent closer, trying to read what was inscribed on the slide's white cardboard frame. Finally, with a growl, he snatched it up. It was so tiny that he had to hold it wedged between his thumb and index-digit while he shook off the snow that clung to its frame. The lettering, he realized, was in a familiar handwriting, and was written in a scientific notation script that was known to just one being other than himself. It was two words: Find me.

Starscream raised the slide to the light. It was an image of… well. It was hard to say. An aerial shot of a mountain with startlingly symmetrical, and familiar contours. He'd seen that figure just twice before. Once on an ancient data-scroll at the great Hall of Records in Iacon, where he'd logged joors at a time reading the legends of the ancient Primes and trying to figure out how to build a phase-shifter. The other instance emerged from his memory banks in the form of an entry in a batch of information that he'd siphoned from a US government database a few weeks earlier, but hadn't yet gone through.

1976 NASA Viking 1 orbiter, Mars, Cydonia region, his memory banks divulged, in response to his query. That Skyfire had left it here was beyond doubt, and it could be no coincidence that he'd left it on the very spot where he'd fallen when Starscream had shot him.

"Find me," Starscream whispered as he rose to his feet, his voice echoing strangely against the silence. The air hummed, and the slide grew suddenly hot. He dropped it with a startled cry, and was somehow unsurprised when the slide erupted into a ball of green flame. It hovered at chest height, flaring steadily brighter, and he recoiled, stumbling backwards with his weapons raised.

He knew that shade of green, and where he'd seen it before, and there was no way he was getting sucked into another time-vortex. The question was, how could he possibly avoid it when he had no idea what this technology was?

The green light shot straight up into the sky, and Starscream kept a rifle trained on it until it faded from his sight. Was it gone? The fact that it could apparently move as fast as he could wasn't reassuring, but at least there was some distance between them now, and he could make a break for it. He tensed, preparing to spring into flight, but then there was a flash of green light high above. Fingers of green radiance shot out from a central point and arced down toward the snow, forming the outlines of a gigantic dome. A dome that was all too familiar.

It was the dome-shaped zone of silence, and the green radiance was now spilling down over its invisible contours like water. The sky, the snow, everything around Starscream was green, and panic swelled in him as he realized that he was just as trapped here as he had been inside the time travel device. He wanted to throw himself into the air, punch through that wall and into the clear blue sky beyond, but he held himself still and deployed his scanners instead.

What was the green light? Radiation of some kind? A form of plasma? Or something worse? His scanners returned no results, which meant that the source was unknown, something he had never encountered—and that, in itself, was reason enough not to fly through it. Yet the alternative was to remain trapped here, and that could be just as potentially dangerous. He was still debating with himself when a patch of blue suddenly appeared at the top of the dome. He lunged toward it, but the sides of the dome were collapsing, the green radiance evaporating into thin air, and he found himself hovering in the clear blue.

It took him a moment to realize what had changed.

Skyfire.

He could feel Skyfire's presence now, a faint pulsing at the center of his chest, and the silence was… gone. He flew to where the edge of the zone had been, zig zagging back and forth across its boundaries, but the silence didn't return. The air was clear, and still, and the sky so deeply blue that it stung his optics.

Find me.

He knew where to go.

Starscream had never considered the fourth planet of Earth's solar system to be the least bit interesting. It was a frozen dustball with no energy resources worth speaking of, and was incapable of supporting life apart from, perhaps, a few very hardy strains of bacteria. It wasn't even much to look at it. Its endless sweep of rust-colored—or was that salmon-colored?—tundra utterly failed to inspire the imagination, and the planet's twin, potato-shaped moons were, at best, homely.

Maybe it was due to his overall lack of fascination with it that he had somehow failed to notice that one of the planet's northern mountains was carved in the shape of the Great Seal of Alchemist Prime. Starscream could think of no other explanation for having missed such a thing. The presence of water erosion on the carved surfaces was enough to tell him that it had certainly been here during his and Skyfire's initial exploration of this little backwater star system, and yet it wasn't on any of his charts. His topographic map of the Cydonia region showed only a blank, flat space where this mountain should have been.

It didn't matter. Starscream wasn't following his charts, he was following the small, insistent tugging of his bond with Skyfire, which had set itself like a hook in the depths of his spark. He was a fish. He was following the same mindless homing instinct even though it could, and probably would, cost him everything. His self-respect, his position, his life—or Skyfire's, or both—and he was powerless to stop himself. He circled the mountain, then skimmed its top, his field and frame thrumming with instinctual awareness of Skyfire's presence.

Skyfire was here. But where? There was no sign of him. Starscream circled again, then suddenly glimpsed a dull flash of sun on metal. There was a pair of bronze-colored doors set into the flank of the mountain, with a short flight of stone steps leading up to them. There was a design etched on those doors, which looked like the figure of a bird, though he caught only a brief glimpse because as he flew closer, the doors slid into the rock to reveal a passageway.

It was enormous. The passage was easily as tall, and as broad, as a human-built skyscraper. Starscream didn't bother to transform, he just rocketed in, following the pull of his spark. The walls were lined with the same bronze-like metal as the doors, and were supported by towering Romanesque columns of polished basalt. The interior was illuminated by filament lanterns cunningly hidden within rectangular wall niches, but Starscream could just as easily have found his way in the dark.

Skyfire was so close, his presence so strong that Starscream could almost taste it, and when he hurtled through an archway into a circular room with a high vaulted ceiling, he was already banking toward the tall, winged figure that was standing near one of the blocky consoles at the far end of the room. Skyfire seemed to have been doing something with that console, which was one of the few surfaces in the room not covered with iron oxide dust, but he spun toward Starscream, his optics wide with—surprise? Fear?

Starscream didn't give himself time to think about it. He was on Skyfire, crashing them both to the floor and sending up a choking cloud of that orange dust. He wasn't aware of transforming, but it was somehow his hands that grasped Skyfire's shoulders, slamming him back as he tried to rise, and it was his legs that wrapped themselves around Skyfire's broad torso so that Starscream was essentially sitting on him.

"S…Starscream!" Skyfire looked stunned. "How did you get in?"

"Anyone could have gotten in here, you moron! The door was unlocked!"

Skyfire shook his head. "It wasn't—"

"You were supposed to leave!" Starscream yelled in his face. "You were supposed to go far away and never come back!"

"I won't," Skyfire said firmly. "I won't leave you again, ever—"

"How the frag am I supposed to keep doing this?" Starscream cut him off. "How can I keep you alive when you can't even lock a door? Why would you leave the Autobots? I gave you what you needed to buy your way back in, I gave you everything I had, and you just threw it away! This isn't a game, Skyfire! It's a war, and Megatron wants me to kill you, and—oh Sky…"

His voice cracked. His fists were balled against Skyfire's chest and he was shuddering. A big hand framed his jaw and guided him down into a kiss. Starscream tried to resist, but his spluttered protests somehow ended with his glossa tangled up with Skyfire's, and Skyfire's warm hands cradling the sides of his helm, stroking and caressing and urging him deeper, inviting surrender. Starscream pulled back and glared at him, marshaling his fury, but when he opened his mouth the words that tumbled out were a contradiction.

"How could you leave me?" He hated the breaking sound of his voice, and the way the cavernous silence seemed to magnify it.

"I didn't, I won't." Skyfire's own voice had roughened, his optics bright as he traced the contours of Starscream's face. "I promise I'll never leave you again."

That was a promise Skyfire couldn't make, but Starscream wanted to believe it anyway. He claimed Skyfire's mouth, drinking his kiss like energon. There was a hitch in his vents, a wetness on his face—probably from all that orange dust that was blowing everywhere—and he couldn't seem to stop shaking. Strong arms came up around him and drew him close, steadying him.

It was like flying into the eye of a storm. The winds could rage around them all they liked, but here at the heart, everything was steady; everything made sense. Kissing Skyfire felt inexplicably right, like coming home.

Skyfire was stroking him, tracing his shoulders, chest, wings, intakes, murmuring his name as though it meant something beautiful. Starscream shoved a knee between his thighs and Skyfire parted for him with a sound that was half rumble, half moan, all hunger.

Hunger for him.

The mere thought of that roared through Starscream like a firestorm, setting flame to the dry tinder of his spark. Skyfire wasn't pushing him away. He was drawing him in, surrendering, and Starscream couldn't fight. He didn't even want to anymore, and probably never had. There was no stopping this now.

Skyfire was mistaken. Starscream could think of no other explanation yet he couldn't quite stop touching him, couldn't move from the circle of his arms.

They were in a heap, bodies still interlocked and stray bursts of charge still expending themselves between them. Skyfire seemed intent on keeping Starscream where he was for as long as possible. He'd wrapped his legs around Starscream's hips to hold him inside, and Starscream didn't feel at all inclined to change that arrangement.

"I didn't mean it," he said after a while, breaking the silence.

"Mean what?" Skyfire asked, his hands continuing their slow, rhythmic glide down the length of Starscream's back, tracing familiar patterns. His field radiated contentment.

"The things I said in the storm that night."

"You mean the part about how I should give up on you? Or about how I should find someone else?"

"I might have overstated things," Starscream admitted. They were both covered in the orange Martian dust, and Skyfire's plating felt gritty against his cheek. Still, he couldn't remember when he'd felt quite this comfortable.

"I see." Skyfire nuzzled one of his crest ridges, nipping softly. "This could be a bit awkward, then."

"Awkward?" Starscream glanced up sharply, optics narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well…" Skyfire's field glowed with affectionate amusement. "If I were to tell you that I had found someone—"

"You had better not, or—" Starscream broke off, hating the insecurity in his voice, not to mention the sting of knowing what a hypocrite he was for feeling jealous. "You didn't, did you?"

Skyfire kissed the tip of his nose. "Of course not." He sank back again, mouth curving in a tender smile. "I was yours the moment I met you. I've never wanted anyone else."

Oh. And didn't that make him feel like an aft. He glanced away, unable to meet Skyfire's gaze, and evaded the gentle hand reaching to touch his face.

"I have to go."

"You just got here," Skyfire said mildly, though his dismay was etched bright as neon throughout his field.

"Yes, and it was a mistake!" Starscream disengaged himself and staggered up, flexing his wings to find his balance in the unfamiliar gravity. "What did you think was going to happen?" he demanded, suddenly angry. "That I was going to move in with you?"

"I must admit that I wasn't thinking that far ahead," Skyfire answered dryly.

Starscream couldn't help but notice the way he'd drawn into himself as he sat up, his wings flaring at a defensive angle and his knees pulled to his chest as if to protect his core. It was a gesture Starscream recognized only too well, and the thought that he could have inspired it in Skyfire sickened him. As if he'd needed any further evidence to prove his point.

"One of us has to," he muttered. He turned, and stalked toward the grand entrance hall from which he'd come.

The chamber they were in was cone-shaped, its walls sloping up toward an apex that was lost in darkness above. A series of towering stone slabs, each the size of a Guardian Robot, were set in a circle beneath that uppermost point. It was eerily similar to the circle of standing stones that had surrounded the so-called Dragon Mound.

"So that's it?" Skyfire asked, his voice echoing in the chamber's vastness. "You're just going to run away from me? Again?"

Starscream whirled. "It's not running away, it's—" he broke off. "What else would you suggest? We're still enemies! I'm not going to stop being a Decepticon."

"I don't remember asking you to."

"So then what?" Starscream pointed at the red insignia above Skyfire's spark. "Are you going to take that off? Come back to our side?"

"No." Skyfire's tone was flat.

Even though Skyfire was sitting, the difference in their heights placed them nearly at optic level. Starscream met his gaze defiantly, though inside, something was quietly dying. He'd held on to that dream so long, the dream of ruling Cybertron with his bondmate at his side, a final triumph over all the forces that had tried to separate them.

"So be it."

He hiked his wings up and stalked away, head high. The gravity here on Mars was far lighter than that of Earth, and takeoff should have been a simple matter of giving the floor a good kick. Instead, he found himself staring at his pedes, half buried as they were in the thick carpet of dust. Everything in him felt heavy. The bond that stretched between them hummed and sang, a subtle pull that was all it seemingly took to keep him within Skyfire's orbit. He could fly away all right, but flying away wasn't quite the same thing as staying away.

"I've done things you'd hate me for," he said.

There was a quiet scuffle of metal on metal, and Starscream didn't have to glance back to know that Skyfire had risen to his feet.

"What things?" Skyfire asked. "What would make me hate you?"

"I saw Altihex destroyed," Starscream said, still staring at the floor. There was a pattern of grooves carved in it, though the iron dust was so thick that it was hard to make out the design. He felt a sudden tension along the bond, and wished he didn't have to say what he was about to say. There were any number of confessions he could have made, but if this was to be the last time they ever spoke, he wanted Skyfire to know the truth. It wasn't something that the Autobots would ever tell him, assuming that any of them even remembered.

"What happened?" Skyfire's tone was hushed, and Starscream could tell that he didn't want to hear the answer any more than Starscream wanted to give it.

"It wasn't us," he said, as if that made some kind of difference. "We were going to, though. We had plans underway, but the Senate beat us to the punch."

"The Senate? But why would they—"

"Because Altihex remained neutral," Starscream interrupted, suddenly in a rush. "Both sides saw it as a threat, and reacted accordingly. After the city fell, we tracked down as many survivors as we could and offered them a chance to avenge their people by joining the Decepticons."

"And those who refused?"

Starscream let his silence speak for him. This was it, he thought, staring at the dust. The worst. After all, the salmon returned to mate and die.

"My clan," Skyfire said eventually. "Did you… learn… anything of their fate?"

"When we reached the Altihexian shipyards, we found that several of the Transport Confederacy's deep space cruisers were unaccounted for," Starscream answered carefully. "I heard rumors of a breakaway contingent that had chosen to leave, taking their kin with them."

"My clan would never have been among those," Skyfire said heavily. "My grandsire disowned me just for moving to Vos and pursuing science. He'd never abandon Altihex, or the Confederacy, even if it meant death."

"All I know is that none of your clan were among those we found among the ruins. Living or dead."

"Do you think he might have changed his mind, then?"

Starscream scowled at the floor. The lines beneath the dust had a tantalizing sense of near-coherence, yet they refused to coalesce into a recognizable pattern.

"It's not impossible," he said, keeping his tone neutral.

Too neutral.

He felt something shift in Skyfire, a shapeless sense of knowing that suddenly took concrete form. "It was you, wasn't it? You warned them that the Decepticons were planning an attack."

His voice was suddenly much closer. Starscream sensed a hand reaching for his shoulder and flinched away, turning to glare at him.

"Whether I did or didn't is immaterial! The point is, if I'd tracked him down after the attack and he'd refused to join the Decepticons, I would have shot him dead! Or anyone else in your clan, for that matter."

Skyfire studied him. "Maybe." His mouth curved into a faint smile. "Is this what I'm supposed to hate you for? You did what you could, just like you did for me. I know that you've been protecting me."

"I shot you! Twice! You call that protecting?"

"That second time was an accident," Skyfire countered, "and as for the first—"

"I almost killed you!"

"I'm not that fragile, Starscream."

Oh, but you are. Starscream's spark clenched at the images flashing through his memory. Images of Skyfire falling, his optics darkening, and his own momentary surge of triumph lurching into icy horror at the realization of what he'd done. What he'd become.

Skyfire held out his hand. "Come inside."

"Inside?" Starscream glanced around. He'd thought they were inside.

"The living quarters are through there." Skyfire gestured toward the console he'd been working on earlier. It, along with several others, were positioned inside a U-shaped alcove that opened off the main chamber. At the rear of the alcove was a set of doors. "If you flew here all the way from Earth, you probably need to refuel." His optics shimmered with quiet humor as he added, "You might also want to think about getting cleaned up."

Starscream glanced down at himself. Skyfire was right; he was literally salmon-colored, his armor coated in iron dust, which would itself have been enough to raise a few optic ridges—and perhaps prompt a few rust jokes—when he got back to Decepticon Headquarters. Even more incriminating was the sticky residue of their joining, which had distributed itself with surprising abandon across his chest, thighs and belly.

"That might be a good idea," he admitted. "Same with you." Skyfire's snowy finish was, like Starscream's, obscured by a thick layer of dust, among other things.

Skyfire started toward the console alcove, motioning for Starscream to follow. "Come on. We can talk about this inside, where it's warmer."

"You live here?" Starscream asked as he fell into step behind Skyfire. It was strange how natural that felt. For all he knew, he could be walking into an Autobot ambush, yet trusting Skyfire was as inherent to him as his own designation.

"I do," Skyfire answered. "I'm studying this place."

"For the Autobots?"

"No," Skyfire said. "They don't even know I'm here."

"Then why—"

He broke off, glancing down as they crossed the spot where they'd lain together in the dust, making love. The spot had been swept clear by their movements, and the pattern of grooves was revealed, taking the form of a bird's talon.

An owl? he wondered, irrationally.

"Do you know who built this place?" he asked, not sure if he actually wanted to know.

"Yes," Skyfire said as they reached the doors. "I think it'd be easier just to show you, though."

"Show me?" Starscream sincerely hoped that didn't mean the builders were somehow still here, perhaps preserved via some obscure form of robotic mummification.

"You'll see."

They came to the doors, which were made from the same bronze-colored metal that lined the grand entrance hall. They were inlaid with a decorative border of vines and flowers that framed playful representations of Mars' two ugly little potato-moons, one moon on each side of the door. Skyfire keyed a code into the entry pad and the doors slipped open to reveal a passage with a high, arched ceiling.

Starscream stepped past Skyfire into the corridor, and was pleased to note that the moon-doors, though highly decorative, were as as well-reinforced as any of the blast doors inside Decepticon Headquarters. The passage, too, was fortified with heavy support beams and additional barrier-doors that could be slammed shut if needed. "Whoever these builders were, they knew what they were doing," he remarked.

"I just wish I could figure out the heating," Skyfire said. "I got it to work in here, but for some reason the outer facility is on a totally separate system."

"Defense," Starscream said automatically. "If the life support systems are damaged in the outer fortress, you still have a fall-back position."

"Fortress," Skyfire echoed. "I wouldn't have thought of it that way."

"Of course not," Starscream grumbled. "We're going to have to work on your security sense. Locking those outer doors, for example. And you should also change that door-code, now that I've seen it."

"I let you see it on purpose," Skyfire said, laughing. "I want you to have it; I trust you."

Then you're a fool, Starscream wanted to say, but the words caught in his vocalizer. He wanted to be worthy of that trust, yet at the same time it felt like an overwhelming burden, one that he wasn't sure he was able to carry.

At the end of the passage, a second set of doors whooshed open at their approach, ushering them into a living area that seemed to have been made for giants. Giants who liked being comfortable. Starscream's mouth dropped open as he glanced around at what was, by far, the most civilized space he had entered in… well, possibly ever.

On their left, a flight of steps led down into a large, sunken entertainment area with thickly padded bench seats arranged in a circle around a gleaming basalt table. The table was equipped with a device that might have been a holo projector, along with an energon dispenser and a hover-tray that could be dispatched to carry drinks to whichever guest had requested one.

Right ahead was a spiral staircase that swooped gracefully up toward an open loft area that looked to be a lab of some sort, being filled with banks of computers and other scientific equipment. The floor in here was clear of dust, apart from a few telltale, Skyfire-sized pede-prints, and the flickering glow of filament lanterns gave their surroundings an added sense of warmth and intimacy.

"This…" Starscream turned, glancing up at Skyfire. "You live here?"

"Does that mean you like it?" Skyfire looked pleased; in fact, he looked downright smug. "Come over this way, I'll get you some energon."

He trailed a big, warm hand against Starscream's shoulder as he stepped past him, encouraging him to follow him into a large and rather sumptuously appointed galley just off the main living area.

"You have your own supply?" Starscream asked, suddenly hesitant. If Skyfire had discovered a significant energy source on Mars, wasn't it his duty, as a Decepticon, to report that finding to his commander? It was just one of the complications that Skyfire obviously hadn't considered.

"It's not a lot," Skyfire said as he activated the galley's energon condenser unit. Inside the unit's receptacle chamber, an energon cube flickered into existence and began to fill with pale, softly glowing energon. "The facility was originally built to run on geothermal energy from the planet's core, but the core has cooled since then. I'm working on other possibilities, such as wind or solar, but for now it's enough for one mech to survive on. Maybe even two mechs," he added with a sly smile as he opened the condenser and drew out the cube, now full. "There." He set it on the counter. "That's for you."

"I told you I'm not moving in," Starscream muttered as he climbed up onto one of the perch stools that bordered the galley's sweeping stone counter. The counter was heaped with piles of data-sheets covered in notes written in Skyfire's small, precise script. Starscream felt a pang at the sight, remembering how the galley of the sky-barge they'd once shared on Cybertron had been similarly cluttered. Skyfire often took notes while he was cooking, since that was when he tended to get ideas for his scientific projects.

Starscream picked up the cube, then hesitated. "You've got enough for yourself, right?"

He was hungry—very hungry—and it wasn't in his nature to hesitate, but he also knew that Skyfire was all too capable of denying his own needs in favor of someone else. It was one of his most irritating qualities.

"I have everything I need," Skyfire answered, regarding him warmly.

"I told you, I'm—"

"Not moving in, I know. Drink up, I need to get something from the workshop, I'll be right back." Skyfire engaged his anti-gravs and launched himself up into the loft, not bothering with the stairs.

Starscream raised the cube to his lips and took a sip. The energon was pearlescent rather than pink or prismatic, which indicated that it had gone through a number of distillations to remove impurities. That was hardly surprising, considering that all the galley equipment seemed to be of near-professional grade, but the cool, sweet taste came as a shock. It was the best energon he'd tasted in… well again, probably ever, and he felt a deep sense of contentment well from within as his internals soaked it up.

Idly, he began glancing through the documents that Skyfire had left on the counter. They were schematics of some kind, and like so many other things around here they had a certain, maddening sense of familiarity about them. At first he couldn't quite place what it was, but then the pattern leaped into sudden, sharp focus, and he nearly dropped his energon.

Of course. The cone-shaped chamber, that circle of pillars beneath its apex… it all fit, and on one hand he couldn't suppress a certain rush of jubilation at knowing that Shockwave's "brilliant" invention obviously wasn't quite as original as he'd led Megatron to believe, but on the other hand…

He glanced up as Skyfire alighted once more from the loft. "What is this?" he asked.

"Oh, that's the circuitry inside one of those consoles in the main chamber." Skyfire studied Starscream for a long moment. "You know what it is, don't you?"

"I have an idea," Starscream hedged.

"And?" Skyfire looked eager. "It's a space bridge, isn't it? It must be how they transported the materials here from Cybertron to build this facility. I'm right, aren't I?" His field was alight with barely suppressed excitement as he added, "I compared it with the schematics Wheeljack was able to glean from the Decepti—"

Starscream held up his hand. "Not another word."

"Oh." Skyfire's cheeks darkened slightly as his gaze fell on one of Starscream's wing insignia. "This is…" he sighed. "We can't even talk about this, can we?"

"It's worse than that," Starscream said. "What if that thing is a space bridge? What are you going to do with that information?"

"I…" Skyfire set his fists on the counter. He was holding a rolled-up datascroll in one of them, but his gaze was focused on some distant point in space. "This is complicated."

"Oh, you think?" Starscream snapped. "This isn't just complicated, it's crazy! It's dangerous. We shouldn't be talking at all, much less about this." He waved his hand in the direction of the schematics.

Skyfire vented a deep sigh. "I really hate this war."

"It is what it is," Starscream replied, wondering when the last time was that he'd even questioned it.

Skyfire was quiet for a moment. Then he slid the datascroll across the counter. "I need you to read what's on here."

Starscream eyed the scroll warily. "What is it?"

"Nothing classified," Skyfire answered with a wan smile. "At least not from you."

Starscream lifted an optic ridge. "Not from me?" He pulled the scroll toward himself with one finger and shook it open. It held just one file which, once opened, divulged an emblem of a golden bird with outstretched wings. The creature's feathers were drawn in such a way as to appear like flames, and its proudly upraised head bore a four-pronged crown. Starscream froze at the sight of the crown.

"That's…" he stopped himself, deciding that was a story best saved for another time. "What is this, Sky?"

"Keep reading."

Reluctantly, Starscream executed the "scroll" command. The fire-bird dissolved into a legal document written in archaic, but still perfectly understandable, Cybertronian. "It's title of ownership," he said, scanning through opening paragraphs.

"Yes."

As Starscream kept reading, he discovered a sub-directory that yielded the galactic coordinates for their current location, along with detailed holographic maps of Mars—a much younger, greener version of Mars—and holo-images showing a far less weathered version the carved mountain that housed this very fortress.

"It's for here."

"Yes. Read it to the end."

Starscream skimmed through a few more screens of complex legal language to reach the bottom of the file. There, two sets of names were listed. He stared at them for a long, silent moment, then deactivated the scroll with a jab of his finger and shoved it back.

"Don't tell me you believe this."

"Does it matter what I believe?"

"Yes! Slag it, it matters! If you actually believe this… this…" he gestured in the general direction of the scroll, then clenched his fist. "If you honestly believe this is our own private kingdom, granted to us on authority of a pair of ancient Primes who are probably mythical…"

He paused, sorting through the implications, then glanced up at Skyfire, who met his gaze evenly.

"I haven't found any signs of forgery," Skyfire said. "The document is as old as it purports to be. As for whether it was actually authored by Onyx and Alchemist Prime, or how our designations could appear in a document that's older than either of us by several hundred thousand vorns, well…" he spread his hands. "That, I can't answer."

"Time travel," Starscream suggested without thinking.

Skyfire snorted. "You're joking."

"It's theoretically possible."

"Theory is just theory, Starscream. You know that."

Starscream crossed his arms. "Do I?"

Skyfire hesitated. "It was suggested to me," he offered slowly, "that I should ask you about the year 543 A.D."

"Really? And just who suggested that?"

"A friend," Skyfire said, glancing down at the scroll. "And that's the only thing I can say for sure about him anymore."

"Maybe we should compare notes on this 'friend' of yours," Starscream said. "He didn't happen to have a pet owl, did he?"

Skyfire tensed. "Maybe we should compare notes."

"Or maybe we shouldn't," Starscream growled. He slid from his perch and stalked a few paces away across the dark stone floor, trying to corral his whirling thoughts into some semblance of reason. There was something going on here that he couldn't begin to figure out, and he couldn't escape the feeling that something, or someone, had shifted the pair of them into place like two pieces on a holochess board. Whatever the game was, he'd bet his afterburners that it had everything to do with that device in the outer chamber, a device that was almost certainly more than just a space bridge.

"If that document of yours is legal," he said, turning back to Skyfire, "it means that you're not obligated to tell the Autobots anything about what you discover here."

"Obligated?" Skyfire frowned. "I suppose not, though that isn't the reason I haven't told them."

"Why, then?" Starscream asked, suddenly knowing that everything, his entire world, rested on how Skyfire answered that one question.

"Because your name's on the document," Skyfire said, looking mildly surprised. "I didn't want to risk exposing you."

"So… you chose me over them."

"Oh, Starscream." Skyfire's tone was hollow. "That was never a choice. I can't be against you; I can't be your enemy."

Never a choice. Starscream thought he should have felt pleased, perhaps triumphant, at such a confession. Instead, a cold dread was gnawing at his internals. Skyfire had claimed that he wasn't fragile, but here he was, isolated from his so-called allies, and for what? For him? It was madness, but it was a madness that they apparently both shared.

He stepped closer and, without quite meaning to, reached for one of Skyfire's hands and gripped it in both of his own. "You'll need to learn how to fight."

"I do know how to—"

"No! You don't, and I'm going to teach you. As for your so-called 'research,'" he nodded dismissively toward the pile of diagrams on the counter, "Decepticon space bridge technology is far superior to this relic you've uncovered."

Skyfire took a moment to absorb this. "So what you're saying is that this technology is of no interest, from a military standpoint?"

"That old junk?" Starscream snorted. "None whatsoever, and you are never, under any circumstances, to bore me with the tedious details of anything you might happen to discover here."

"Very well," Skyfire answered, his tone quietly stricken. "I'd hoped we could investigate this together, like we always did, but… you're right. I will keep anything I discover here strictly to myself."

"See that you do." Starscream gripped his hand a little harder. "You know this means we can't merge sparks."

Skyfire's wings sagged, but he brought his other hand to cover Starscream's, his big fingers tracing his knuckles. "Yes," he said. "That makes sense."

Actually, it made sense on more levels than Starscream was prepared to admit, but having a solid, strategic reason to avoid spark contact allowed him to keep his other, more personal reasons to himself. Of course it was just a matter of time before Skyfire saw him for what he truly was, but there was no reason to rush things.

"We also have to follow protocol," he added.

Skyfire gave him a baffled look. "Protocol?"

"I don't submit. Ever."

Which wasn't quite true, of course, but there was no reason Skyfire had to know that. Starscream was more than happy to keep the details of his relationship with Megatron private; indefinitely, if possible. There was, however, one other thing they needed to discuss.

"You should also know that I haven't exactly been faithful," he said.

Skyfire glanced down at their hands. "I knew about Red Alert."

"Him? That's not even the tip of the iceberg! After I lost you, I—" he broke off. "I'm not proud of it, but I also won't deny it."

Skyfire was quiet for a moment. His field was unreadable, and Starscream wondered if this confession was going to be the breaking point. He supposed it was best to find out now.

"So what you're telling me," Skyfire said slowly, "is that you haven't been living a life of celibacy for the past nine million years."

"Five million," Starscream corrected. "I was in stasis for four."

"Ah yes." Skyfire's field rippled with an undercurrent of something akin to humor. "Well, that is disappointing. I would have expected celibacy for at least the first six million."

"This isn't a joke! I'm serious, I've…" Starscream trailed off. "You really don't care who I frag?"

"Of course I care, I just…" Skyfire paused, seeming to gather his thoughts—and then gathered Starscream, sweeping him firmly into his arms. Starscream put up a token show of resistance, but it was somehow easier to just surrender, to tuck himself into the warm curve of Skyfire's frame and just let himself be held. "I think you have been faithful," Skyfire murmured. His tone held nothing but sorrowful tenderness. "You might have let others touch you, but you haven't let anyone else love you."

They remained quiet for a while.

"What about you?" Starscream finally asked, his voice muffled against Skyfire's chest. The grit on Skyfire's frame left iron taste in his mouth, but he couldn't bring himself to care. "What do you want?"

"Me?"

"You must want something."

Skyfire seemed to think about it. "I do, yes."

Starscream drew back a little. "Well?" he demanded. "Let's hear it."

"Would it be too much to ask for you to refrain from freezing or blowing up the Earth? Or, for that matter, any other world that harbors sentient life?"

"It wouldn't be too much to ask," Starscream said impatiently. "But what about you? What about everything else? You do realize that I could end up killing one of your friends."

"I do," Skyfire said, his tone grave. "It's something I have to accept, just as I would have to accept it if one of them killed you."

"That's hardly likely."

"It's possible," Skyfire said. "This is a war and they're soldiers, as are you. It's a reality that I have to be prepared for. All we really have is right now." His hand rose to cradle the side of Starscream's face, his big thumb stroking down the contour line of his cheek. "Dragonfly. Will you grant me this moment?"

The old nickname touched off a quiver of recognition, pulling Starscream back to another time and to a younger, braver version of himself who wouldn't have been this scared. His vents caught. "What do you have in mind?"

Skyfire stepped back, gently disengaging, and drew Starscream toward the spiral staircase. "Come on."

There was a passageway leading off from behind the staircase and Skyfire drew him along it, passing doors that obviously led to berthrooms. At the end of the passage, an ornate set of doors swept open to reveal one of the most lavish washracks Starscream had ever seen. It had more in common with the spas that he'd occasionally visited on Cybertron, when time and credits had allowed, than it did with the starkly utilitarian facilities he'd become used to during his military career.

The domed ceiling was covered in dark tiles with glowing luma-stones arranged in a star map of what was, Starscream suspected, an accurate representation of the Martian sky at the time the fortress had been built. Most of the floor was taken up by a large, circular bath pool with stone steps that doubled as benches leading down into it.

"I don't have enough water to fill the pool yet," Skyfire said apologetically as he led Starscream down the steps. "I've extracted enough from the permafrost that we can take a shower, though, if you're willing to share."

He activated the water controls. The ancient pipes rattled and then, without warning, sheets of icy spray exploded down over them. Starscream yelped and scrambled back so fast that he skidded on the now-icy tiles, nearly losing his balance.

Skyfire caught his arm. "Sorry!" He pulled him close, sheltering him with his broad wings while he cranked on the heating controls.

"What are you trying to do, kill me?"

"The heating system still needs a little… ah. That's better."

It was. The water was warming to a more acceptable temperature, but Skyfire didn't let go, nor did Starscream draw away. He was still shivering as he relaxed against Skyfire's frame, but now it had less to do with cold than it did with the large, powerful hands that were gliding down the curves of his intakes.

"I don't mind sharing," he murmured.

The thrum of Skyfire's engines deepened to a low, cycling growl as his hands slipped lower, down Starscream's sides to settle around his flanks, and Starscream felt smooth lips brush a kiss to the crest of his helm. The spray was lifting the dust from their frames, but Starscream could already tell that this shower was going to have very little to do with getting clean.

He stretched on the tips of his pedes and hooked an arm around Skyfire's neck, pulling him down for a kiss. Skyfire opened at a thrust from his glossa and drew him inside, welcoming him with a pleased murmur. Starscream pressed deeper, savoring the sweetness that was Skyfire's taste and the warmth that was his field, which was now undulating in slow, seductive waves against his. He heard a needy sound rise in his throat and Skyfire answered with a rumbling purr.

They broke, gasping, and Skyfire dimmed the lights. The room was dark now except for the luma-stones and the glow from their optics. Skyfire's gaze held his, and Starscream's mind was flooded by dream-memories of falling up into limitless blue as the two of them tumbled through space, together and free.

"This is going to hurt," he whispered.

"Yes," Skyfire agreed, tucking him closer against his frame. "That's the part we don't have a choice about."

"But there's a part we do?" he asked, finding that he sincerely wanted to hear the answer.

"Oh yes."

Skyfire tipped Starscream's chin up and brushed his thumb against his lower lip, gently tugging it open as he leaned in for another soft kiss. He then moved down, kissing his way along Starscream's jaw, then his throat, and then down over his canopy. He sank to his knees, bracing Starscream's hips with both hands as he nuzzled the upper surfaces of his thighs.

"May I show you?"

Starscream hesitated. It wasn't so long ago that he'd demanded this from Skyfire, who was now offering it freely. As if kneeling before another and taking him into one's mouth was the most natural thing, a pleasure rather than a humiliation. Starscream could almost remember a time when he'd felt that way too, but that wasn't his world anymore. Wasn't him.

"We did this last time," Skyfire said with a slight frown. "This is all right, isn't it? This is protocol?"

Starscream managed a nod. Technically it was, but Skyfire himself wasn't protocol. He was a stranger to this world, and it was only a matter of time before he realized his mistake and walked away for good, condemning Starscream for all that he no longer was. But maybe by then Starscream could at least have taught him how to survive. Surely he could give him that much.

"Sky…"

Skyfire vented warm air against him, trailing soft kisses.

Oh, frag. He opened, reaching instinctively to stroke the crest of Skyfire's helm as he did so. "Yes," he said. This felt right, for now. If he could only stop shaking. "You may."