The Devil's Advocate

Chapter 7

According to her chronometer, Arcee had only been in Starscream's custody for three solar cycles. But either it was broken or boredom made the breems stretch out longer than they looked, and she was left itching to go after Megatron all by herself and get the suicide mission over with. With little else to do but carve her digits down to their skeletal mesh, she ended up watching her captor like a wild animal pacing its cage, and was forced to notice several things about him that most Decepticons would have most likely glossed over. For one thing, his wings had a very fixed pattern of twitching and subtle sweeps that could give away whatever he was feeling whole klicks before the rest of his body caught up. He often muttered while they fluttered up and down on their hinges, like a butterfly testing a wind current. He scratched at the plate on his chin whenever he was frustrated by something only he could see, with growls dripping down his claws.

And after a day of regaining flight, rolling over Primus-knows what in his lab and almost being decapitated by his prisoner, he got very greedy with his energon. Though her own tanks rang hollow, Arcee could only swirl the fluid in her cube. "Something about you is still bothering me," she admitted, and for once it wasn't Cliffjumper's ghost hovering over her shoulder or the magnetic pull of smudged grey morality tearing at the poles of her spark. It wasn't even the startling normality of sharing a meal with him.

Whether or not Starscream knew that, he quirked an eyeridge at her anyway in a grand gesture to go on while he was noisily slurping up the rest of his own cube.

"Megatron knew right from the start that you were a sneaky glitch," Arcee started, and Starscream spluttered on his drink at the accusation they both knew was true. "He knew you'd be out to get him at every chance, that he'd be looking over his shoulder for as long as you were alive. So how did you of all bots end up as his second in command?"

Starscream wiped away the faint cyan trails dripping down his chin, but he didn't scratch at the small ridge just under his smug smile. "I never expected to get as far as I did, but it was a pleasant outcome," he confessed, setting his empty cube down next to the other two he'd managed to drain dry. "I joined the Decepticons with the intention to make their leader answer for what he did to me. So at first, I played along. Like everyone else, I acted like a good, loyal soldier. But there's really no such thing as a loyal Decepticon. They either do it for bloodlust, for money, or because they just have nothing better to do. Under Megatron, the Decepticons are really no better than an army of mercenaries. I aim to fix that."

While Arcee was playing his answer back over in her mind with helm bowed low, his lofty wings fanned downwards with his optics narrowing an inch. "You know, if you're going to recharge, I'll have to chain you up again," he said, leaving Arcee to wonder if he'd actually follow through this time or if he knew better than to put his claws anywhere near her frame while it was still walking.

"You look like you're gonna nod off first," she bit back. He could flaunt his wings all he wanted, but they couldn't hide the dull sheen of exhaustion over his optics. For all she knew he hadn't recharged once since her capture.

Starscream blinked, only hiding the sheen for a nanoklick, and his scoff was like rust flakes caught in his vocaliser. "Considering I know I'll wake up with something slashing my throat, not fragging likely."

"Weren't you the one saying we needed to trust each other?" Arcee asked, cocking an eyeridge and her helm at him.

Another smile cracked his faceplate, but of a whole different breed from the usual obnoxious jagged hole that carved through his expression like a canyon. It was like something that managed to scale the canyon walls and crawl into daylight. "After today... I think I do trust you, Arcee. Because you've finally managed to push aside all personal grudges, all quaint thoughts of murder in your pretty little spark, for the greater good of a universe without Megatron."