Trinket

[stainless]

Title: Trinket
Characters: Megatron, Skyfire, Starscream (mentioned only, but key to the story nonetheless)
Verse: G1
Wordcount: 2,300ish
Rating: PG
Contains: Angst, mainly. And maybe a few sacred cow burgers. Om nom nom. ^_^
Summary: Starscream is not the mech Skyfire remembers. Skyfire decides to get revenge on Megatron for changing his old friend into a ruthless, amoral war machine. But confronting Megatron always has a price -- and sometimes that price is learning the truth.
A/N: I've always been a little uncomfortable with Fire in the Sky. I don't dislike Skyfire, but I find Starscream's fondness for him strange, as Starscream is very rarely shown expressing fondness for anyone but himself (and possibly for Megatron, if you take their relationship to be mutually twistedly respectful amidst the hatred. Which I do.) I'm never sure quite how his friendship with Skyfire is supposed to coexist with the very different relationship he has with Megatron. This is an attempt to delve into that... though as a consequence it's pretty different from the usual fics about Starscream and Skyfire, in ways some people probably won't like.

Also posted to FFN here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7600995/1/

Thanks to dogstar for beta.

"Megatron."

The voice boomed, thundering in his audio receptors. Cannon arm already raised, he answered it, a bolt of purple energy lancing toward the great white shape in the sky.

He saw his enemy tilt upward to evade it, but a craft that big made an easy target. It pitched as Megatron's shot tore into its wing, smoke billowing from the wound. With a pained stutter of engines, it righted itself and came on.

"Megatron," it roared, pain evident in its voice now. "Today you answer for -"

"- 'crimes against Cybertron and Earth,'" he finished for it, smirking as he aimed again. "But it's usually your Prime who says those words, Skyfire. Not you."

The big jet swooped downward, form shifting as it did so. Megatron fired again, hoping to take advantage of its transformation to do some serious damage to it. But this time Skyfire was ready, twisting away with an ungainly roll even as his armor clicked into place over his chest and limbs.

"I did not come here to say those words," answered the titan that Skyfire had become, its ivory faceplates set in an impassive frown as its feet hit the ground with a crunching, metallic thud. A mist of sand rose up from the impact.

Megatron had first encountered Skyfire in this planet's polar regions. Now here they were in the parched heat of a desert. Were the other Autobots around, or had Skyfire chased him halfway around this world's globe?

The Decepticons had found Skyfire entombed in ice, frozen and forgotten. He'd lain there in stasis for countless numbers of this planet's years. Megatron had bid his followers revive the sleeping titan. He had awakened Skyfire to new life - and new purpose.

Or so he had thought. His new warrior had had, it seemed, other ideas.

Skyfire raised a blaster held tight in one ivory hand, leveling it at his enemy. "You have much to answer for, Megatron. But that is not why I am here."

Megatron leapt high into the air, his thrusters firing moments before the orange blaster fire blew the spot where he'd been standing into rubble.

Megatron had wanted him for exactly that destructive potential: a massive destroyer, soaring above his Autobot enemies, raining fire from the sky. But there had been another in the Decepticon army that had wanted Skyfire with them, and for very different reasons.

Megatron chuckled softly as he remembered Starscream, bending over Skyfire's comatose frame, his high voice shrieking out commands. More voltage. Again. Again. I want him awake.

"You want, Starscream?" Megatron had sneered. It was, after all, not Starscream's place to decide what happened.

Starscream had not answered him. Not at first. But he'd stared at Skyfire, his crimson optics burning bright, as if the motionless giant were some prized possession he'd lost many vorns ago and then finally found again.

And Skyfire had finally awoken, as if his systems could not resist the bright heat of Starscream's will. Curious, Megatron had given the Seeker his plaything. He'd given the usual speech about the Decepticons' purpose, but after that, he'd left Skyfire to Starscream.

So why had Skyfire chased him from the ice of the Arctic to the rocks and desert of another continent? Surely this was about more than the simple fact that Megatron led his new faction's enemies.

"You think that I deceived you," Megatron tried, swerving away from his foe. "You think I pulled you from your frozen tomb to feed you lies."

"No." The giant's optics, bright Autobot blue, flashed in anger, a vengeful echo of his waking. "You did not lie to me. I understood your aims. I am not the one you wronged."

It was an answer, but not one that Megatron understood. He scowled. "This is personal? I didn't think the Autobots looked kindly on vendettas."

The hand holding the blaster trembled. "They don't."

Megatron's arm moved, tracking Skyfire's movements. The shuttle's distress made that embarrassingly easy.

He held his fire for the moment. Things had just gotten interesting, and if Skyfire's emotions continued to get the better of him, Megatron could disable or destroy him any time he wished. "And you do?"

"Even if Prime made peace with you, Megatron, I could never forgive you. Not for what you did to him."

"'To him?" Megatron rasped, grinning. "So this is about Starscream."

Skyfire didn't answer. He nodded, his wings twitching, the orange energy streaking from his weapon speaking for him.

Megatron dodged, the desert sunlight glinting off his silver frame, and fired at his foe's wing again.

Skyfire's engines roared his pain. Megatron waited.

"You changed him," Skyfire boomed. "The Starscream who woke me is not the Starscream I knew. The cruel face that stared down at me as my systems came to life is not the face I remember."

Megatron threw back his head, roaring with laughter. "I changed him? I changed him?"

"He was a scientist," Skyfire said, his voice deadly even. "He was intelligent, thoughtful. He invented things."

Megatron nodded. He thought of the Seeker's frantic bursts of energy, of the bright, almost crazed look in his optics when he had a sudden idea. Skyfire was right. Once, those ideas had taken shape in research laboratories.

"He studied energy sources found on foreign worlds -"

"- so that he could use them to fuel weapons," Megatron finished.

Skyfire's engines stuttered, a choked sound that reverberated in Megatron's audio receptors. "No -"

"Yes," Megatron's cannon crackled with energy as he took aim again. "And those who wield them."

He waved his arm, knowing that the metal of his cannon would catch the sunlight. He felt its familiar weight and the heat of this planet's sun shining down on it. Energy crackled within it, impatient to be set free, to make the enemy wither and blacken and burn. "Did you know that this is his design?"

Skyfire's answer was a boom of engines and a panicked, staticky cry.

Megatron fired. The titan took the bolt in his chest, a charred hole appearing where it hit, its center roiling flame. He staggered, his optics flickering. Then he straightened, aiming his weapon.

Megatron's cannon crackled with heat. He caught Skyfire staring at the lavender light building in the barrel, mesmerized. More than a few of Megatron's foes had died for that fascination. His faceplates curled into a smirk.

"Lower your blaster, unless you want to die believing lies, Autobot. I could have killed you already."

Skyfire's hand trembled. He looked down at his wound, his mouth opening in disbelief. "If - he designed that -" Skyfire said, slowly, each word a knell - "then you wrenched it out of him."

Megatron's optics blazed. "I did."

"Then you made him what he is now. You beat him and berated him until he knew nothing but hatred and deception and war. And gave you that." He fired, barely bothering to aim, the air around Megatron flaring with light, as if the sky itself were bursting into flame.

Megatron laughed as he dodged, a harsh, grating bark. He thought back to the day that Skyfire had turned on his Decepticon saviors. Starscream had ordered him to terminate a group of Autobot prisoners. He had refused and escaped. Starscream had flown after him in a towering rage, determined to destroy the old friend who had betrayed him.

"If you want to say I beat it out of him, go ahead, Skyfire." He chuckled, thinking of thin wings, white striped with red, denting and buckling under the grip of his black hands. "You would not be wrong."

Skyfire spoke even more slowly than usual, each word resounding through the air around them. "You are a monster."

Megatron's voice was soft, but no less deadly than Skyfire's ringing tones. "By your standards, I am."

Skyfire's great hand twitched on the trigger of his blaster. Megatron tensed, ready to move at any moment.

But Skyfire didn't shoot. After a long moment, his engines rumbled in a choked, low wail. "I thought you saved me for him."

Megatron smiled, thinking of Starscream's wild dive as he raced toward Skyfire, the high shrieks as he called for the spark of the one who'd turned against him.

"I did," Megatron said finally. "I gave you to him."

"Gave me?" Skyfire repeated, less angry than incredulous.

"Yes. Because he wanted to keep you, and I had no reason to refuse."

A ray of flame erupted just at Megatron's feet. He snarled in pain and flew upward, growling. It would leave him with only a minor scorch, but his sensornet flared with it, erratic little surges that meant pain. And pain meant distraction, and distraction he didn't need. Not now.

"You belonged to him." Megatron's silver mouthplates set in a pitiless line. He stared not at the Autobot's stricken face, but at his blackened wound. His cannon arm twitched, but he did not move.

"No mech can belong to another, Megatron. The Starscream I knew would never have attempted to claim me, as though I were a -"

"A possession?" Megatron finished, his crimson optics flaring. "You belonged to Starscream. As Starscream belongs to me."

Skyfire did not speak. The hand holding the blaster stopped shaking, and he raised it again to level it at his enemy with a deadly, frozen calm that made Megatron think suddenly of the icy prison the Decepticons had found him in. Despite the desert heat, he had brought the chill with him.

And Megatron knew, in a moment of cold certainty, that if Skyfire chose to shoot now, more than the plating of his feet would melt and burn.

He did not move out of the way. He did nothing but watch and wait, staring at the blaster as Skyfire had stared at his cannon shortly before. But Megatron had led warriors for millions of years Skyfire had lost, and knew better than to be hypnotized.

"Starscream hates you, Megatron," Skyfire said finally, pronouncing each word slowly, as if carefully crafting the syllables would prove that they were true. "He said so himself, shortly after he revived me. He intended to betray you. To make you pay for your cruelty to him."

Megatron did not laugh, or smirk, or chuckle. His rasping voice was deadly soft, as it had been before. "Did you think his ambitions were a secret, Skyfire?"

"No -" Skyfire stammered, staggering, his wound belching black smoke.

"And now here you are. A traitor telling me about another one. Why should I listen to anything you say?"

Once more, the enormous blaster lit the sky. "I am not here to be heard. I am here to see justice done."

The bolt of orange heat caught its enemy. Megatron bellowed once and dove free of it as quickly as his pain-wracked chassis would allow. He had meant to save his fire until his foe understood the lesson he meant to teach. But the fight had become real again, and Megatron answered that the way he always had: with swift and decisive violence.

The flare of cannon fire caught Skyfire in the chest, just as Megatron's other shot had. The giant pitched forward, falling to his knees. This time he made no sound - no cry from vocalizer or engine, from gear or from throat. The great hand opened, and the blaster fell from it, falling to the rock where Skyfire lay.

For a long moment, Megatron could not tell whether the thing below him lived or not. He spoke before he knew, his rasping voice soft, the words coming regardless of whether anyone but himself would hear them.

Megatron landed, standing over the fallen one who lay before him in the dust. "Starscream is mine. He always was. Do you condemn the violence between us? That does not establish my claim on him. That only confirms what we both have known from the beginning."

The smoking, mangled metal stirred. A hand rose, the fingers twitching as though they did not realize they were empty. Then it fell again, the desert sun making it gleam blindingly bright until it fell to the blasted ground in a cloud of grit and dust.

"He belongs to me, Skyfire. He always has. And the only reason I am not finishing you now is because you, in turn, are his."

Megatron rocketed into the air again. If the big mech had survived crash landing on this planet, and survived the millions of years of stasis he'd spent in the ice, he would not die now. Not from only two wounds, even from as formidable a weapon as the cannon Starscream had designed for him.

Then Megatron spoke again. "Starscream claimed you and used you as he saw fit - and now that you have betrayed him, you are his to break."

Comments

[iiskaa]

Well, I liked it. It's a believable take on Starscream's character.

[stainless]

Thank you. I'm glad you liked it.

[kakarottosballs]

Makes sense to me.

[stainless]

Thanks :-) Glad you liked. I expected some people not to at all. Though if so they probably wouldn't tell me about it...

Ah sorry, this was supposed to be here...

[saltedpin]

I liked this a lot -- I think it was really true to all of the characrers involved, and I loved these two's interaction. There isn't enough fics dealing with how Megatron reacts to Starscream and Skyfire's connection. Lovely work :)

Re: Ah sorry, this was supposed to be here...

[stainless]

Thank you! I really thought the fandom would loathe this one, given how often Skyfire is portrayed as Starscream's savior or soft spot. To say nothing of that one fic I read recently where Skyfire shows Starscream how wrong it is to be a 'Con, out of love, and Starscream defects...

Re: Ah sorry, this was supposed to be here...

[saltedpin]

I have never liked that interpretation -- though I know what you mean, there are a lot of fics out there like that XD I never caught flack for keeping Starscream a Decepticon even after dealing with Skyfire, so hopefully people will judge your fic on its merits and not because it doesn't totally agree with their headcanon XDD