Chapter Text
Starscream was a MESS. He whimpered as he curled in on himself, his wings drooping. His processor was still fogged, but without the Emberstone to motivate the Quitessons into controlling him, it had cleared enough for him to realize what he’d done. He slowly lifted his helm, looking at the corpses of the young Aftermath and even younger Spitfire. They were dead. He’d killed them. He couldn’t bear to look at the bodies, and curled back up with a wail. He felt coolant beading in the corners of his optics, and he just freely let them fall. He had nothing left to lose. Nothing. Not his dignity, not the Chaos Terrans, not his relationship with Hashtag, not his Conjunx… Oh how he missed Skyfire. He missed him so much it hurt worse than dying had. Starscream attempted to soothe himself by focusing on the soft, warm feeling of their sparkbond. Although Skyfire had been lost millions of years ago, Starscream still carried the gentle giant in his spark… Literally. Their sparkbond quite literally bound their sparks to each other. Skyfire’s side of the bond had gone silent long ago, but the resurrection of all the Cybertronians Mandroid had killed had evidently reignited the small piece of Skyfire’s spark that was in Starscream’s… Barely, though. It was faint. When Starscream first noticed the faint pulse of life in the long dormant piece of his lover’s spark, he’d nearly fainted… But then he realized two things. One, Skyfire had most likely offlined too long ago for the Emberstone’s power surge to do anything, and two, he was most likely damaged beyond the point of staying alive long even if he was revived by it. He thought back to Hashtag, how she had been so kind to him. Her smaller but older sister, Twitch, referred to Wheeljack as her ‘Dad 2’... Perhaps if Starscream hadn’t turned on her, Hashtag could have thought of him the same way… Maybe, he could have been happy… Or maybe he was doomed to never be happy… Or maybe, it was his own fault. Starscream looked back up at the Chaos Terrans. Skyfire would be disgusted if he saw what he’d done. They were just sparklings… Sparklings like they could have had together if they hadn’t been separated. Starscream slowly sat up, clawing at his helm. He NEEDED something to drown out this deafening silence, to drown out the guilt that was eating him alive. He wanted to ignore the reality that his Conjunx was dead, that he’d either pushed away or killed anyone who’d ever cared for him. He wanted to pretend he was alright. Maybe, here in the Titan, he could pretend all was fine. He could pretend he and Skyfire were still safe and sound together… He stood up, walking over to the lifeless sparklings, still letting coolant stream down his faceplates. He gently took the small body of Spitfire in his arms, letting her limp head rest against his chassis. She was much easier to hold than Aftermath… And her name was close to Skyfire’s. Just replace the ‘pit’ with ‘ky’ and it’d be his name. Maybe, Starscream could pretend that he and Skyfire were a family, just as his kind and loving partner had always dreamed of. Spitfire and Aftermath could be their sparklings… It would be a way to keep himself company… Primus, he’d really gone insane, hadn’t he?