FIC: Different Directions: Leaning Away part 1
Different Directions
Leaning Away Part 1
Written by Dreaming of Everything-dreams_of_all-dream_it_all for dayari, betaed by mmouse15.
Series: Transformers 2007, non-compliant with Revenge of the Fallen.
Ratings/Warnings: T for adult themes and language--nothing particularly heavy. Eventual Transformer/human pairings, but that's a hundred pages away at this point. Literally. Original character(s).
Characters/Pairings: Centered on Starscream and Hope, an original character. Eventually romance, but not for quite some time.
Summary: It had started as an experiment: Starscream needed a human subject to observe and then manipulate. Somehow, things went wrong. He wasn't supposed to get attached. And he didn't care about the thing. Really.
Hope had thought of herself as average until she was nearly killed, twice, by a giant space alien robot who had pretended to befriend her. And then, after that, things got weird. Could she trust him? Probably not. But would she? Maybe.
Different Directions: Leaning Away Part 1
Starscream found himself idly amused by the irrational, petty histrionics of the human female he was observing. The best part was that it was all, in the end, so futile. Their lives were the barest blink of an eye, and they seemed to think they mattered so much, every single one of them, six billion on the planet-it was perfect and unintentional satire, an entire species that lived (and died) like a parody.
“Cheating piece of scum!” shrieked the human. “‘It’s not you, it’s me’-hah! ‘I met her at the dance,’ he’s even a bad liar! He didn’t go to this year’s Tolo (1), he said he wasn’t going to...be able...to make it-oh, fucking hell. He was lying then, too, wasn’t he. Oh, I-argh! I hate this! I hope he gets everything he deserves...
“Oh, damn, I’m crying. Again. It figures he’s such a jerk, he dumps me right before our camping trip... My camping trip, now, I guess. And I guess I won’t need this anymore.” Moodily, the human tossed something away from her. Zooming in on it quickly showed it to be a condom: interesting. It was a pity he’d missed the chance to observe reproductive behavior-it was fascinating how they would mate with no intention of producing young. It was almost Cybertronian, in a way... “And it was going to be our first time, too… Oh, damn it all, I’m just going to decide to die a virgin here and now. That way we won’t have to go through all this again! One year and-two months, wasted on that-that-”
Words seemed to fail the simple creature: she shouted instead, out of sheer frustration, tears starting to roll down her face.
After a while, still leaking (odd, that they had an emotional reaction tied in with a fairly reasonable biological function) she got up and wandered off. Starscream decided he was more likely to stay unobserved if he stayed still. At this point he’d been watching the female for a minimal period of time, and he wouldn’t want to have to go find another subject. Furthermore, her termination-and that would be the best solution if he was caught-would only arouse suspicions.
Starscream decided to use the free time to alter her cell phone: it was convenient that she’d left it. And yes, it was very easy indeed to make a few modifications, all little things she would never notice, so that it would also log and then send copies of all her conversations and... “texts” to him, for perusal over time. It would help increase the range of his data, exponentially so, even, since it was so hard to observe her at any useful distance inside the city. He stuck in a small camera, as well: it would drain the camera’s battery slightly faster, and the odds were good that he couldn’t come up with much of interest, but that was science, and you never knew. It was unlikely the human would notice anything amiss.
It was better to collect useless data than to risk losing something potentially helpful.
After sixteen hours had passed, he was starting to wonder what he’d missed. If it was something like an example of the dominant species being attacked by one of their natural predators-a fascinating thing, and so deliciously ironic, in a pathetic, human way-he was going to be terribly disappointed. It didn’t happen often, according to the statistics, and while an attack wouldn’t have been hard for him to set it up, he couldn’t guarantee that the situation would be entirely free of his influences. The last thing he wanted was flawed data.
But it was an easy matter to find the thing-the girl he was watching. He shifted into his alt form and took to the skies.
Yes, there she was, still alive. That was both positive and negative; mostly, it was neutral. Observation was what he was there for, whatever he ended up observing.
Her condition was deteriorating, however. Her leg was badly broken, bone sticking through the skin and, as he knew, she didn’t have her cell phone-not that it would help her now, if she did. She was hardly lucid, so there was no guarantee that she’d think to call.
“Don’t want to die,” the girl muttered. She tried to pull herself to her feet but fell back, in agony. Humans had such a low pain tolerance. It was pathetic. And they clung so hard to their worthless lives. “I didn’t say goodbye to Mom, Dad…”
It really would be a bother to find a new research subject. If he kept on having to switch every three months, he’d never get an accurate range of data.
Mind made up, he placed an anonymous call to the local police department, giving them the details of the incident. It would save him a lot of further hassle, and it would be interesting to watch the human’s continued and pathetic emotional struggle.
He transformed and flew off. The organic never knew he was there.
Half an hour after he’d left, emergency rescue arrived.
She would live, unknowing.
Human lives were astonishingly boring.
That was the main conclusion that six months of research had produced. Their petty dramas and troubles, the ultimate futility of whatever they ended up doing-it was all highly uninteresting. He’d heard about the dissolution of his research subject’s previous sexual relationship on a regular basis for over two Earth months. He still hadn’t heard the end of all the drama attached to the human’s progenitors ending their relationship, their announcement to their offspring taking place a month ago, and that shouldn’t have been a surprise, unless you were incredibly dense and unobservant. Or human.
Certainly it wouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone paying even the slightest amount of attention. The female of the two hadn’t actually committed extramarital sexual acts, but she’d come close. The male had been removed and distant, both physically and emotionally, using his work as an excuse. They’d fought regularly.
Really, the whole matter-reproduction-seemed to be something of an obsession for the species as a whole, which was a potentially helpful observation, if an uninteresting one. He couldn’t think of any direct applications for that conclusion at the moment, but almost anything could be used as a weakness to be exploited, and you never knew when some little morsel of knowledge like that would come in handy.
Sex. All they seemed to think about was reproduction, or at least the act of mating. He’d done the research, so he knew that the usual Decepticon views towards organics and sexual activities had to be wrong: purely recreational sex probably wasn’t as futile as it seemed. True, it defied the original purpose of the action, and it was a waste of energy, but it wasn’t like Decepticons-and, more commonly, Autobots-didn’t have possibly parallel actions. Starscream himself didn’t take part in any of that: it was a waste of energy, an exploitable weakness and really not the circuit-blowing experience all his comrades seemed to think it was. His theory was that there were a few ’Cons who actually felt it to that extent, and the rest was hyperbole and living up to the expectation. It wasn't a testable theory, though, as it touched on the inherent flaw of
Still, the human preoccupation couldn’t be entirely because of the evolutionary drive. Certainly, research he’d done online showed that there were large variances between cultures. That was logical, to a certain extent (Transformers also had cultural differences: Seekers were unique in that they formed trines; Autobots and Decepticons were impossible to confuse) but not when you considered that most ‘cultural’ differences between ‘cultural’ groups among the Transformers were because of literal physical, measurable differences: size, function, programming. Fliers didn’t like being underground. Gestalts were the only ones who liked physical touch. Casettes were dependent.
...Six months, though, and the human had failed to be interesting. She cried a lot. She seemed to be stressed, but only because of petty, infinitesimal matters, and she never managed to do much to effectively change the situation, didn't even try much. Certainly it was possible for her to do more. Economic and educational troubles-such a pitiably barbaric culture. There’d been a certain amount of talk of his research subject moving to a different state. That would be interesting, to see it integrate into a new society, even one that was similar to its old one.
Social interactions remained...confusing. Yes, they definitely required more research. Again, online data collection had helped: it seemed to indicate that social standards and norms, as well as non-verbal means of communication, were remarkably complex-they were actually transmitting not insignificant amounts of data. Starscream could admit that, only slightly grudgingly. He would also be the first to point out that it was an ineffectual, error-ridden system with a highly non-optimal design, too, but considering the design process (specifically, that there hadn't been one), it was almost miraculous. And such an inferior structure, too...
All his research seemed to indicate that many humans, especially the younger ones, were deliciously over-trusting and optimistic. That was definitely useful.
Hope was going camping again. Just for three days, but that was going to be enough. She’d talk her parents up to giving her more time later on.
She just couldn’t stay in the house another second. It had been a month since her father had announced he was moving out, and two weeks since he actually had-he’d found a new apartment.
Her mother was alternating between unintentional bouts of crying and bouts of yelling, and wandering around looking lost when she wasn’t doing one or the other of those. Her younger sister was throwing screaming fits, no matter what Mom was doing. Her father was awkward and uncomfortable when he talked to them, and trying too hard to pretend everything was still just the same. He wouldn’t meet their eyes. Hope just wanted to disappear and have some place she could cry in peace.
So she was going camping, where she wouldn’t have to ignore her sister Faith’s constant goading-what was it with her mother and virtue names?-or fight the temptation to scream at her mom, or try to talk to her father when he was alternating between pretending nothing had changed and trying to ‘talk to her’ about said changes.
She’d barely been able to talk her parents into letting her go out on her own again. She’d convinced them by promising to carry her cell phone everywhere she went, no matter what. That had been what had gotten her in trouble, last time-not the fall, but not having any way to get in touch with somebody else. She’d been lucky somebody had called the emergency line for her...
It was an interesting idea.
Starscream himself had absolutely no interest in associating with any of the barely-sentient wads of carbon that masqueraded as the dominant species of the planet (which they clearly weren’t, now that the Decepticons had arrived) but they had...potential.
Largely as bargaining chips.
The Autobots clearly loved the things. It made an excellent weakness for him to capitalize on. There were the obvious ways-threatening to go after their settlements, taking hostages-but he could also see a few subtler applications.
And all that most of his plans would require was a human he could easily manipulate.
The only downside was that the manipulation was something he needed to undertake himself. He certainly wouldn’t trust any of the Decepticon agents on Earth with the task: Barricade wasn’t capable of being charming, even to other Decepticons, and Scorponok-that defied rational thought. He was barely a step up from a drone and couldn’t even speak decent Cybertronian.
That left Starscream himself, who didn’t want to wait for other Decepticons to arrive-the word had gone out, but it could be years before anyone answered, let alone someone who could do the job. Thundercracker, maybe-although he’d shown unnerving tendencies to form sympathetic attachments to non-Transformer species, so perhaps not. Soundwave was reliable, but beyond uncharismatic. Really, most Decepticons were surprisingly lousy at such simple deceptions.
At least Starscream already had a subject picked out. His little research project had been surprisingly helpful. After all, who better to manipulate than someone who you already knew, intimately, but had no idea that you knew?
And her trips alone in to the mountains had continued: the perfect opportunity for Starscream to introduce himself. Or rather, to introduce a carefully designed false persona he could use to befriend her-
It was the third and final day of her camping trip and, like all the other mornings so far, Hope had hiked out to a meadow she’d found; the first morning, she’d seen deer, and she was hoping to see them again.
At first, she didn’t realize what she was looking at. She had to blink, twice, for the shapeless gray to resolve itself into a complicated metal tangle. She had to back up to come to a full understanding.
Robot. There was a giant robot in the field. It was looking at her. Hope’s legs gave out: she collapsed.
“What?” she said, irrationally, not sure why. Her voice sounded like it belonged to someone else, echoing strangely in her ears.
And then she fainted.
“Are you damaged, human?” the robot said when her eyes fluttered open again. -It was leaning over her. It’s voice was oddly-something. Some weird tone, or something like that...even beyond the way it was kind of shrieky. Mostly, it’s tone was neutral, but-
“Uh?” she said. She couldn’t think-this was all too crazy-
“I’m sorry I surprised you.” She mostly missed the grudging way he said that; she didn’t hear the seething disgust and resentment at all. Of course, Starscream was very good at keeping that sort of thing hidden.
“It-you-what?”
“I wasn’t expecting any humans in such a remote location. -My name is Starscream. I’m a Decepticon, an alien, to you, from the planet Cybertron.”
“I’ve gone crazy,” Hope breathed, scrambling into a sitting position. “I’ve started hallucinating-oh, fuck, I’m alone in the middle of a forest and I think I’m talking to a giant alien robot who’s talking back-oh, shit-”
She started laughing, hysterical.
“I am not a figment of your imagination,” Starscream said flatly, some of the venom he was feeling leaking into the statement. Slag: he had to remember why he was doing this-
“Oh. I’m sorry, then,” Hope said, somewhat dizzily. “-I can’t believe this...”
“I guess it could be hard,” Starscream allowed. If you’re a simplistic waste of energy. That was a thought. Maybe it could be possible to harvest their energy output into some sort of generator?
“Oh, my God-your, your name is Starscream? -I- Oh my God.”
“Yes,” he said, needlessly. This hadn’t been one of his better ideas. Of course, it wasn’t too late to just terminate the creature and leave its body somewhere that would make it look like an accident...
“-It’s nice to meet you?” she offered, sounding-and feeling-like a drowning woman clinging to a splintered piece of wood. At least she had manners and routine social greetings to fall back on. “-Um. Yes. It’s nice to meet you.”
“The honor’s mine,” Starscream said, with gravity. Inside, he was masking a full smirk: he had her. All he needed now was for her to calm down and a little more time to cement her connection to him.
“Oh,” she said, faintly. “...Why are you here?”
“My planet was destroyed in a catastrophic civil war,” he said solemnly. It was better to stick with something closer to the truth-not because it made the lie easier (a human was never going to catch him out) but because it would make his version more believable if she ever ended up interacting with the Autobots. “The Allspark, the sacred source of our-you would probably call them souls-was lost. We tracked it to earth, where it was destroyed in battle. I have no reason to return to my war-torn, destroyed home planet, so I stayed here.”
Some of her panic seemed to be fading. “But how-how did you stay hidden?”
“Oh, that,” Starscream said, and he smiled, almost smirked. He was deeply gratified by the yelp of fear and surprise as he activated his transformation sequence. The only downside was that he wasn’t able to get a good look at the expression on her face.
There were two minutes and seventeen seconds of silence. Starscream waited through it, impatiently.
“-Oh my God,” Hope breathed, again, taking one, then two steps forward. “That’s incredible! How-how does that work?”
“Transformation technology,” he replied, dismissively. He had better things to do than explain sophisticated Cybertronian tech to juvenile specimens of an underdeveloped backwater species. “It’s a little complicated.”
“It’d have to be...! Does-does it hurt?”
“What? No.” The idea was ridiculous.
“Oh. -Sorry.”
Slag. He was letting his true opinions color his voice again. He needed to stop doing that. Not that it seemed to be having any dramatic effect-she didn’t seem at all suspicious. That could change, though. He was doubtless overestimating the thing, but that was infinitely preferable to underestimation.
“It’s nothing-I understand that this must be a huge shock for you.” Really, he should apologize for startling her, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that, even for the sake of his act. It was an organic. A human-arguably an even worse epithet.
“I can’t believe it,” Hope breathed, again.
“And what’s your designation-or name?” Starscream asked, after a reasonably polite span of time. If he didn’t get an excuse to use her name-he already knew it, but she didn’t know that-he was going to end up accidentally calling her a gibbering carbonmonkey, or something to that effect.
“Hope,” she said, still staring at him, eyes wide. “Hope Lans. -Uhm. What are you doing here?”
“It’s a pretty area,” he said. Decepticon dignity made him tack on an addendum. “Even if it’s not Cybertron.” That was still an utter lie-the place was disgustingly organic. It wasn’t much even compared to the other organic-populated planets he’d been forced to visit. Especially not the wilder areas on Earth: the cities were marginally better. Marginally.
“It is,” she said, smiling softly, tension draining away, visibly. Starscream bit back a laugh: this was going to be pathetically easy.
“You’re going hiking again?” her mother said, letting the knife she’d been washing fall back into the sink. “What do you do up there, Hope?”
“It’s pretty,” she replied, shrugging. “It lets me-get away from it all. I’m thinking of taking up birdwatching?”
Her mother sighed. “I just don’t get it. Call your Aunt Charity, though, she’s always been into the whole nature thing. She’ll be ecstatic.”
“Maybe,” Hope said evasively, and she snagged her daypack and beat a hasty retreat for her car.
She felt bad, lying to her mom, she really did. But the robot-Starscream-was hard to explain, and he’d asked her not to tell...
It was all incredible. It felt like her boring life had turned into a movie, all of a sudden! She was only just, and only almost, starting to believe it was all real, a week later.
And really, she hadn’t told her mom a complete lie. This was the first time she was heading up into the mountains for any reason other than the ones she’d given. -Well, she really wasn’t interested in the birds. She agreed with her mother there: they were all kind of the same and essentially boring. Well, they could be nice to sit and watch and listen to, but she didn’t have any burning desire to track them down and keep lists of what she’d seen and talk all about it endlessly to everyone, even people who didn't really care, like Aunt Charity.
...She still couldn’t get over the fact that there would be a giant robot, an alien one, waiting to talk to her! She was so lucky, to have accidentally run into him... He’d said he hadn’t meant to reveal himself, but he was glad to have someone to talk to.
Hope felt kind of guilty about how that made her feel. Really, she was very ordinary, so to have someone-let alone someone like Starscream!-say that about her made her feel very happy and kind of embarrassed and all pleased and trembly inside. Because it was just her! It was just coincidence that she was the one, but he was happy it was her. Even though she was so ordinary, so absolutely average...
But, yes, that wasn’t a good way to feel, because it was coincidence and anyone else would have worked just as well and Starscream deserved to meet other people, to have met someone more interesting, a better conversationalist at least, or something like that. But the guilt wasn’t enough to make her stop feeling the way she did altogether.
She didn’t have much further to go, now. -What if someone else was in the field? Would he be there too? He’d said he was trying to stay hidden-to start with, he was worried he’d be studied, denied his freedom, if he was publicly known. That would have to be awful-Hope shuddered at the thought. He was definitely a living, emotional being with free will, but he wouldn’t have any rights under UN laws, because they were for humans. Forget about being treated like a citizen.
She could just wait if he wasn’t there and someone else was. She’d brought a book, after all. She still had some reading to do. And that way she wouldn’t be lying to her mom as badly, when she asked her what she’d done all day. -No, no, she needed to stop justifying herself, that was even worse than telling the lie in the first place, in a way.
Hope’s nerves were mounting as she started the hike, and they grew as she drew nearer and nearer the clearing. She’d gotten a text message from him, or she’d thought she had, but what if it turned out that she was hallucinating?
Thirty seconds from the clearing, nearing the very edge of the woods, Hope paused, a thought slamming into her hard enough to make her stop still.
What if he wasn’t the benevolent, supportive and kind person he was pretending to be?
...But no. That was ridiculous. He’d been very nice: she hadn’t gotten any sense at all of something like that from him, and she was pretty good at picking up on that sort of thing. And what reason would an evil giant alien robot have to befriend a human like her?
Hope started walking again, determinedly. She was almost there.
Starscream smiled to himself as the creature’s heat signature started moving again, along with the tracking device still sitting in her cell phone. Oh yes, he had her. As she drew nearer he hastily rearranged his expression into something more appropriate: something less of a sneer, less sadistic, a little more noble, “honestly” happy.
Really the whole thing made him want to laugh. He’d have to make sure he was there when she realized just how badly she’d been taken in, if at all possible. It was going to be hilarious.
“Hello,” he heard her say, voice timid again. Inwardly, he scowled: was he going to have to coax and prod her out of her figurative shell, to use the idiom, every time they communicated? That would also indicate a lack of actual trust, something that could cause later problems...
He would worry about that latter. It was too soon for it to be a real worry, anyways. “Hope. Hello-thank you for coming.”
She smiled shyly at that, blushing a little. “No, no, you don’t need to thank me! I’m happy to come. -You must be lonely, with no one to talk to.”
Starscream was lucky his grin had frozen in place. He wanted to shoot her, obliterate her, wipe her off of the face of the planet- How dare she. How dare she! To presume-
No. He needed to do this. “I can still appreciate the time and effort, right?” If he had a sweeter voice he could have charmed the fish out of the sea. Sadly, he still wasn’t able to override the protocol that kept his ‘human’ voice a reflection of his true tones. “So, I still should be thanking you-” He paused, then bit the figurative bullet. “-and yes, it’s nice to have some company.”
“Good,” she said, smiling again. “I wouldn’t want to be a bother.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
There was a brief moment of silence.
“How was your week?” Starscream asked at last. He’d learned long ago that the best way to get what you wanted was to get someone talking and then sit back and listen. Even if you didn’t end up hearing something useful-and you did, remarkably often; most mechs had trouble keeping their secrets secret when they’d been talking long enough-at the end of it all whoever you were listening to was far more predisposed to like the listener.
Apparently, the rule held true for juvenile human females, as well. Especially ones that were starving for attention. Things couldn’t have gone better for him if he’d planned.
All he needed to do was be supportive, especially once she’d opened up and shared her secrets. Once he got to that point, she’d consider him a friend-possibly, her best friend. After all, he was acting exactly the way she wanted him to-even when she didn’t know it. That was the benefit of having watched her: it made winning the girl’s trust that much easier.
“Are there a lot of you?” Hope asked. Starscream correctly interpreted the question to mean a lot of Decepticons-although she probably didn't differentiate between them and the Autobots.
“Maybe five hundred,” he said. “Scattered across the galaxy,” he hastened to add, because he didn't want her to try looking up more of them on Earth-she might even find them, which would be a disaster, no matter which faction she ended up making contact with-and there was still the chance, possibly a good chance, that she would be disturbed by an unknown number of Transformers hiding in plain sight on her home planet, in a way that she wasn't disturbed by his known presence.
At least, she thought she knew him, at least a little. Starscream looked forward to correcting that little fallacy. He really really did want the chance to see her expression, when she found out-
“Do you have any...friends?”
Would it be too heavy-handed to claim she was a friend of his? Maybe. In the meantime, he could reinvent a few of the more-tolerable Decepticons into 'friends.' “...A few. I haven't heard from them in-quite some time. There's Thundercracker...” Who else had he even moderately tolerated? “-Skywarp. Hook and Scrapper-they worked together.”
Hope jumped in, half-interrupting. “Really? What did they do?”
“They were architects, very talented ones.” Albeit ones that had a tendency to work live Autobots into their design plans. At least, they were alive when the buildings were first constructed... “They were fairly famous on Cybertron before the war.” He also didn't actually like them that much, even though they were more tolerable than, say, Bonecrusher-Hook was a compulsive and uppity micro-manager who didn't know when to shut down his fool vocalizer, and Scrapper was slightly creepy, like his decent personality was just some sort of mask, more than to the extent that was normal. And that wasn't entirely explained by the living-bodies-as-raw-materials thing...
“What did you do?”
Slag but the little organic could jump around with her irritating questions. -And it was probably better if he just didn't bring up his involvement in the war. “I was in training to be a scientist, before the war broke out. I had to stop, eventually... Although I did graduate from the Academy.”
“Oh! I'm sorry...”
“It's not your fault.” He tried to make his voice gentle, understanding, sympathetic. He almost definitely failed, but at least he didn't sound too sneering, dismissive.
There was a brief pause, which rankled Starscream's nerves even more. Finally, Hope spoke up again. “...What kind of science were you studying?”
A perfect opportunity. “Ah. We don't specialize quite the way you humans do, but I was concentrating on exploration, especially in the cataloging of alien species-such as yourself.”
“Really? That sounds so cool! I-this planet must be really boring for you in comparison to that!”
“To the contrary,” Starscream interjected coolly.
“But oh-wow, that sounds incredible. Did you travel to other planets?”
“A little, back then. I've done more since, but that's not research expeditions. I have seen some truly spectacular worlds...” Usually, he saw them burning as his army obliterated their pitiful defenses, entire planets fallen at his feet.
After all, the Decepticons had needed the resources, to continue their fight.
“That sounds so so cool!”
Her vocabulary was spectacularly uninspired. Not that their pitiful human language was going to ever be anything worth listening to...
The human-the girl-Hope seemed to be holding something back. It was probably nothing-or, if he was lucky, it was a hint that she was about to bring up something important (to her) with him, or at least thinking about it-but there was always the chance that she was beginning to doubt him. He doubted that, but you never knew-and it could ruin everything. A report to the local authorities would almost definitely go overlooked, but there was always the chance that someone would make the connection, and then-well, it wouldn't necessarily be disastrous, but it would definitely impede his plans.
Their conversation had faded into silence. Starscream let it be for a few moments, then, as gently as he could, brought it up.
“Hope? Is there something bothering you?”
She smiled, the expression slightly pained, slightly strained. Amateur. She couldn't even fake a smile! “No, not-nothing much. It'll be fine.”
“Would it help to talk about it?”
“...Not really.” Damn it: she was being recalcitrant. Why had she picked now, of all times? Maybe it really was that she was beginning to suspect him... But no, then it wouldn't make much sense that she'd hinted that something was wrong at all. Then again, it wasn't like she was a member of a logical species...
“Would it help you feel a little better if you did?” He struggled to keep his voice quiet, soft.
Finally, success. She half-turned, smiling up at him, a real smile, although one that was slightly bittersweet.
“Yes...I think it would.” She paused, drew in breath. Starscream forced himself to remain outwardly calm, unconcerned. “I...haven't told you much, but my parents are separated now.” The Decepticon reminded himself that no, he wasn't supposed to know much about that, yet. “...And it could be worse. I'm trying not to complain too much, or whine, because it could be a lot worse and, I mean, it's probably better that they-my mom and dad-aren't living with each other now, because they weren't happy, and...at least I still have them, right? And they still love me.”
She needed to get to the point. Starscream's patience had definite limits. It was, in fact, something he was known for, among his troops. His temper was even more likely to flare than Megatron's was-although he was less violent when he did finally snap, his troops said. Starscream viewed it as a simple tactical maneuver: if you killed your own team, there were less of them to fight the Autobots. And even just injuries, if they were severe enough, could be a death sentence, considering the quality of the average Decepticon medic...
“But it's...it's hard.” Starscream perked up as his sensors caught the tang of salt and a handful of unusual biomolecules. She was crying. Excellent. That meant he could be 'there for her.' There wouldn't be any question of whether or not she trusted him, after this. “I...
“It's worse for my little sister. Faith. She keeps on having these hysterical fights with my mom. And my dad! He's...damn it, I guess he's trying. But it...
“He keeps on trying too hard and I don't need him acting like nothing ever happened, because it is different! And he plans these stupid things for us to do, but there's never time for anything else-so, like, he'll take us to the zoo even though I'm an adult but then there won't be any time to visit his apartment and talk and have dinner later on, and he asks questions about my day but it feels like he's doing it just because he thinks I need it, and that just-it hurts.” Hope curled forward over her knees, and her shoulders heaved. She was crying hard, but almost silently, the only real sound her harsh breathing.
Starscream knelt, moving closer to her.
“-And it just all sucks. God, I hate it! And I don't know what the hell I'm going to do about college. There's just...I didn't get the financial aid package I need. I don't know what I'm going to do with that...” She sniffled, rubbing hard at her eyes. “None of my friends want to talk about the divorce. They keep on just...avoiding it. Like it didn't happen. It sucks. And if I bring it up, they all get nervous and quiet and crack these jokes like it'll all make it better until they can change the subject. I hate it. And-
“And damn it but my ex-boyfriend seems really happy with his new girlfriend and this one freshman keeps on showing up at my work and staring at my breasts and there aren't any boys in the entire grade who seem to even know I exist, except for one of my friends' friends who's gay, and it's just-I know it sounds stupid and petty, but I just feel ugly and useless and like I don't have any real friends! ...I'm sorry I just dumped all this on you. I know you probably don't care...you've got more important things to worry about, I'll shut up and-and go home or something...”
Much as that sounded like a good idea to Starscream, he couldn't let an opportunity like this get away from him. Ignoring his repulsion, he gently laid a hand over her shoulders, comforting her. “No,” he said. “I'm glad you trusted me enough to talk to me.” Which was actually true. “It sounds hard...I'm sorry. You're not ugly, and you're one of the nicest people I know.” The latter part of the statement was even true if you included Decepticons, meaning there was competition, because Starscream did not know anyone else. Not that he meant it as a compliment, though: nice was not considered a positive personality trait in a Decepticon. “You deserve some happiness. And I'm sure your education will work out. You're very smart, and clearly very determined and motivated.”
Hope smiled at him, awkwardly twisting under his caged fingers so she could see him. “Thank you,” she said, wiping at a stray tear.
She was even uglier than she usually was, with her face blotched and wet, eyes swollen and nose running.
It was dark, and Hope had left. But Starscream had stayed in the meadow, thinking.
He could still feel her body under his hand. And the revulsion was still there, but it had also been-
It had been strange, in a way he couldn't quite describe.
They were surprisingly complex organisms. Not in a good way-far from it, it was a ludicrously awful design-but it was true. There had been a lot of data to take in, analyze, absorb. Temperature, movement, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, chemicals and more-yes, a lot of different factors.
He'd been able to feel her heartbeat. And her breathing. There was just as much movement within a Cybertronian, but it was largely isolated from the outside-you couldn't feel energon pumping through armor; it didn't move with any internal system.
It was...different. Alien.
He didn't think he'd ever felt things as strongly as Hope did. Or about such little things like that. He hoped not.
Hope didn't have a goal. There was nothing tangible she was fighting for. Starscream had certainly always had something to overcome, to gain-power, usually. For a long time it had been Megatron, but Megatron was dead, wasn't he? And Starscream wasn't.
Had he ever thrown himself into his life like that? He couldn't imagine it. To start with, he was a Decepticon, the peak of creation, the ideal combination of intelligence and pure brute strength, armed with incredibly destructive weaponry and gifted with the ability to hide when it wasn't time to fight.
She was a weak, overemotional human. Of course Starscream had never been like that.
--End chapter 1--
(1) Tolo: a regional (western Washington, not sure where else, if anywhere) term for a girl’s choice dance. A more common term is a Sadie Hawkins, I think.
Different Directions is the umbrella title for the different sections of this fic; the first section is called Leaning Away; this is part 1 of the first section. There will be four sections total, each with three to five parts. Links will be posted as each chapter goes up.
Different Directions
Leaning Away 1 2 3 4
Coming Together 1 2 3
Part Three (TBA)
Part Four (TBA)
Leaning Away Part 1
Written by Dreaming of Everything-dreams_of_all-dream_it_all for dayari, betaed by mmouse15.
Series: Transformers 2007, non-compliant with Revenge of the Fallen.
Ratings/Warnings: T for adult themes and language--nothing particularly heavy. Eventual Transformer/human pairings, but that's a hundred pages away at this point. Literally. Original character(s).
Characters/Pairings: Centered on Starscream and Hope, an original character. Eventually romance, but not for quite some time.
Summary: It had started as an experiment: Starscream needed a human subject to observe and then manipulate. Somehow, things went wrong. He wasn't supposed to get attached. And he didn't care about the thing. Really.
Hope had thought of herself as average until she was nearly killed, twice, by a giant space alien robot who had pretended to befriend her. And then, after that, things got weird. Could she trust him? Probably not. But would she? Maybe.
Different Directions: Leaning Away Part 1
Starscream found himself idly amused by the irrational, petty histrionics of the human female he was observing. The best part was that it was all, in the end, so futile. Their lives were the barest blink of an eye, and they seemed to think they mattered so much, every single one of them, six billion on the planet-it was perfect and unintentional satire, an entire species that lived (and died) like a parody.
“Cheating piece of scum!” shrieked the human. “‘It’s not you, it’s me’-hah! ‘I met her at the dance,’ he’s even a bad liar! He didn’t go to this year’s Tolo (1), he said he wasn’t going to...be able...to make it-oh, fucking hell. He was lying then, too, wasn’t he. Oh, I-argh! I hate this! I hope he gets everything he deserves...
“Oh, damn, I’m crying. Again. It figures he’s such a jerk, he dumps me right before our camping trip... My camping trip, now, I guess. And I guess I won’t need this anymore.” Moodily, the human tossed something away from her. Zooming in on it quickly showed it to be a condom: interesting. It was a pity he’d missed the chance to observe reproductive behavior-it was fascinating how they would mate with no intention of producing young. It was almost Cybertronian, in a way... “And it was going to be our first time, too… Oh, damn it all, I’m just going to decide to die a virgin here and now. That way we won’t have to go through all this again! One year and-two months, wasted on that-that-”
Words seemed to fail the simple creature: she shouted instead, out of sheer frustration, tears starting to roll down her face.
After a while, still leaking (odd, that they had an emotional reaction tied in with a fairly reasonable biological function) she got up and wandered off. Starscream decided he was more likely to stay unobserved if he stayed still. At this point he’d been watching the female for a minimal period of time, and he wouldn’t want to have to go find another subject. Furthermore, her termination-and that would be the best solution if he was caught-would only arouse suspicions.
Starscream decided to use the free time to alter her cell phone: it was convenient that she’d left it. And yes, it was very easy indeed to make a few modifications, all little things she would never notice, so that it would also log and then send copies of all her conversations and... “texts” to him, for perusal over time. It would help increase the range of his data, exponentially so, even, since it was so hard to observe her at any useful distance inside the city. He stuck in a small camera, as well: it would drain the camera’s battery slightly faster, and the odds were good that he couldn’t come up with much of interest, but that was science, and you never knew. It was unlikely the human would notice anything amiss.
It was better to collect useless data than to risk losing something potentially helpful.
After sixteen hours had passed, he was starting to wonder what he’d missed. If it was something like an example of the dominant species being attacked by one of their natural predators-a fascinating thing, and so deliciously ironic, in a pathetic, human way-he was going to be terribly disappointed. It didn’t happen often, according to the statistics, and while an attack wouldn’t have been hard for him to set it up, he couldn’t guarantee that the situation would be entirely free of his influences. The last thing he wanted was flawed data.
But it was an easy matter to find the thing-the girl he was watching. He shifted into his alt form and took to the skies.
Yes, there she was, still alive. That was both positive and negative; mostly, it was neutral. Observation was what he was there for, whatever he ended up observing.
Her condition was deteriorating, however. Her leg was badly broken, bone sticking through the skin and, as he knew, she didn’t have her cell phone-not that it would help her now, if she did. She was hardly lucid, so there was no guarantee that she’d think to call.
“Don’t want to die,” the girl muttered. She tried to pull herself to her feet but fell back, in agony. Humans had such a low pain tolerance. It was pathetic. And they clung so hard to their worthless lives. “I didn’t say goodbye to Mom, Dad…”
It really would be a bother to find a new research subject. If he kept on having to switch every three months, he’d never get an accurate range of data.
Mind made up, he placed an anonymous call to the local police department, giving them the details of the incident. It would save him a lot of further hassle, and it would be interesting to watch the human’s continued and pathetic emotional struggle.
He transformed and flew off. The organic never knew he was there.
Half an hour after he’d left, emergency rescue arrived.
She would live, unknowing.
Human lives were astonishingly boring.
That was the main conclusion that six months of research had produced. Their petty dramas and troubles, the ultimate futility of whatever they ended up doing-it was all highly uninteresting. He’d heard about the dissolution of his research subject’s previous sexual relationship on a regular basis for over two Earth months. He still hadn’t heard the end of all the drama attached to the human’s progenitors ending their relationship, their announcement to their offspring taking place a month ago, and that shouldn’t have been a surprise, unless you were incredibly dense and unobservant. Or human.
Certainly it wouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone paying even the slightest amount of attention. The female of the two hadn’t actually committed extramarital sexual acts, but she’d come close. The male had been removed and distant, both physically and emotionally, using his work as an excuse. They’d fought regularly.
Really, the whole matter-reproduction-seemed to be something of an obsession for the species as a whole, which was a potentially helpful observation, if an uninteresting one. He couldn’t think of any direct applications for that conclusion at the moment, but almost anything could be used as a weakness to be exploited, and you never knew when some little morsel of knowledge like that would come in handy.
Sex. All they seemed to think about was reproduction, or at least the act of mating. He’d done the research, so he knew that the usual Decepticon views towards organics and sexual activities had to be wrong: purely recreational sex probably wasn’t as futile as it seemed. True, it defied the original purpose of the action, and it was a waste of energy, but it wasn’t like Decepticons-and, more commonly, Autobots-didn’t have possibly parallel actions. Starscream himself didn’t take part in any of that: it was a waste of energy, an exploitable weakness and really not the circuit-blowing experience all his comrades seemed to think it was. His theory was that there were a few ’Cons who actually felt it to that extent, and the rest was hyperbole and living up to the expectation. It wasn't a testable theory, though, as it touched on the inherent flaw of
Still, the human preoccupation couldn’t be entirely because of the evolutionary drive. Certainly, research he’d done online showed that there were large variances between cultures. That was logical, to a certain extent (Transformers also had cultural differences: Seekers were unique in that they formed trines; Autobots and Decepticons were impossible to confuse) but not when you considered that most ‘cultural’ differences between ‘cultural’ groups among the Transformers were because of literal physical, measurable differences: size, function, programming. Fliers didn’t like being underground. Gestalts were the only ones who liked physical touch. Casettes were dependent.
...Six months, though, and the human had failed to be interesting. She cried a lot. She seemed to be stressed, but only because of petty, infinitesimal matters, and she never managed to do much to effectively change the situation, didn't even try much. Certainly it was possible for her to do more. Economic and educational troubles-such a pitiably barbaric culture. There’d been a certain amount of talk of his research subject moving to a different state. That would be interesting, to see it integrate into a new society, even one that was similar to its old one.
Social interactions remained...confusing. Yes, they definitely required more research. Again, online data collection had helped: it seemed to indicate that social standards and norms, as well as non-verbal means of communication, were remarkably complex-they were actually transmitting not insignificant amounts of data. Starscream could admit that, only slightly grudgingly. He would also be the first to point out that it was an ineffectual, error-ridden system with a highly non-optimal design, too, but considering the design process (specifically, that there hadn't been one), it was almost miraculous. And such an inferior structure, too...
All his research seemed to indicate that many humans, especially the younger ones, were deliciously over-trusting and optimistic. That was definitely useful.
Hope was going camping again. Just for three days, but that was going to be enough. She’d talk her parents up to giving her more time later on.
She just couldn’t stay in the house another second. It had been a month since her father had announced he was moving out, and two weeks since he actually had-he’d found a new apartment.
Her mother was alternating between unintentional bouts of crying and bouts of yelling, and wandering around looking lost when she wasn’t doing one or the other of those. Her younger sister was throwing screaming fits, no matter what Mom was doing. Her father was awkward and uncomfortable when he talked to them, and trying too hard to pretend everything was still just the same. He wouldn’t meet their eyes. Hope just wanted to disappear and have some place she could cry in peace.
So she was going camping, where she wouldn’t have to ignore her sister Faith’s constant goading-what was it with her mother and virtue names?-or fight the temptation to scream at her mom, or try to talk to her father when he was alternating between pretending nothing had changed and trying to ‘talk to her’ about said changes.
She’d barely been able to talk her parents into letting her go out on her own again. She’d convinced them by promising to carry her cell phone everywhere she went, no matter what. That had been what had gotten her in trouble, last time-not the fall, but not having any way to get in touch with somebody else. She’d been lucky somebody had called the emergency line for her...
It was an interesting idea.
Starscream himself had absolutely no interest in associating with any of the barely-sentient wads of carbon that masqueraded as the dominant species of the planet (which they clearly weren’t, now that the Decepticons had arrived) but they had...potential.
Largely as bargaining chips.
The Autobots clearly loved the things. It made an excellent weakness for him to capitalize on. There were the obvious ways-threatening to go after their settlements, taking hostages-but he could also see a few subtler applications.
And all that most of his plans would require was a human he could easily manipulate.
The only downside was that the manipulation was something he needed to undertake himself. He certainly wouldn’t trust any of the Decepticon agents on Earth with the task: Barricade wasn’t capable of being charming, even to other Decepticons, and Scorponok-that defied rational thought. He was barely a step up from a drone and couldn’t even speak decent Cybertronian.
That left Starscream himself, who didn’t want to wait for other Decepticons to arrive-the word had gone out, but it could be years before anyone answered, let alone someone who could do the job. Thundercracker, maybe-although he’d shown unnerving tendencies to form sympathetic attachments to non-Transformer species, so perhaps not. Soundwave was reliable, but beyond uncharismatic. Really, most Decepticons were surprisingly lousy at such simple deceptions.
At least Starscream already had a subject picked out. His little research project had been surprisingly helpful. After all, who better to manipulate than someone who you already knew, intimately, but had no idea that you knew?
And her trips alone in to the mountains had continued: the perfect opportunity for Starscream to introduce himself. Or rather, to introduce a carefully designed false persona he could use to befriend her-
It was the third and final day of her camping trip and, like all the other mornings so far, Hope had hiked out to a meadow she’d found; the first morning, she’d seen deer, and she was hoping to see them again.
At first, she didn’t realize what she was looking at. She had to blink, twice, for the shapeless gray to resolve itself into a complicated metal tangle. She had to back up to come to a full understanding.
Robot. There was a giant robot in the field. It was looking at her. Hope’s legs gave out: she collapsed.
“What?” she said, irrationally, not sure why. Her voice sounded like it belonged to someone else, echoing strangely in her ears.
And then she fainted.
“Are you damaged, human?” the robot said when her eyes fluttered open again. -It was leaning over her. It’s voice was oddly-something. Some weird tone, or something like that...even beyond the way it was kind of shrieky. Mostly, it’s tone was neutral, but-
“Uh?” she said. She couldn’t think-this was all too crazy-
“I’m sorry I surprised you.” She mostly missed the grudging way he said that; she didn’t hear the seething disgust and resentment at all. Of course, Starscream was very good at keeping that sort of thing hidden.
“It-you-what?”
“I wasn’t expecting any humans in such a remote location. -My name is Starscream. I’m a Decepticon, an alien, to you, from the planet Cybertron.”
“I’ve gone crazy,” Hope breathed, scrambling into a sitting position. “I’ve started hallucinating-oh, fuck, I’m alone in the middle of a forest and I think I’m talking to a giant alien robot who’s talking back-oh, shit-”
She started laughing, hysterical.
“I am not a figment of your imagination,” Starscream said flatly, some of the venom he was feeling leaking into the statement. Slag: he had to remember why he was doing this-
“Oh. I’m sorry, then,” Hope said, somewhat dizzily. “-I can’t believe this...”
“I guess it could be hard,” Starscream allowed. If you’re a simplistic waste of energy. That was a thought. Maybe it could be possible to harvest their energy output into some sort of generator?
“Oh, my God-your, your name is Starscream? -I- Oh my God.”
“Yes,” he said, needlessly. This hadn’t been one of his better ideas. Of course, it wasn’t too late to just terminate the creature and leave its body somewhere that would make it look like an accident...
“-It’s nice to meet you?” she offered, sounding-and feeling-like a drowning woman clinging to a splintered piece of wood. At least she had manners and routine social greetings to fall back on. “-Um. Yes. It’s nice to meet you.”
“The honor’s mine,” Starscream said, with gravity. Inside, he was masking a full smirk: he had her. All he needed now was for her to calm down and a little more time to cement her connection to him.
“Oh,” she said, faintly. “...Why are you here?”
“My planet was destroyed in a catastrophic civil war,” he said solemnly. It was better to stick with something closer to the truth-not because it made the lie easier (a human was never going to catch him out) but because it would make his version more believable if she ever ended up interacting with the Autobots. “The Allspark, the sacred source of our-you would probably call them souls-was lost. We tracked it to earth, where it was destroyed in battle. I have no reason to return to my war-torn, destroyed home planet, so I stayed here.”
Some of her panic seemed to be fading. “But how-how did you stay hidden?”
“Oh, that,” Starscream said, and he smiled, almost smirked. He was deeply gratified by the yelp of fear and surprise as he activated his transformation sequence. The only downside was that he wasn’t able to get a good look at the expression on her face.
There were two minutes and seventeen seconds of silence. Starscream waited through it, impatiently.
“-Oh my God,” Hope breathed, again, taking one, then two steps forward. “That’s incredible! How-how does that work?”
“Transformation technology,” he replied, dismissively. He had better things to do than explain sophisticated Cybertronian tech to juvenile specimens of an underdeveloped backwater species. “It’s a little complicated.”
“It’d have to be...! Does-does it hurt?”
“What? No.” The idea was ridiculous.
“Oh. -Sorry.”
Slag. He was letting his true opinions color his voice again. He needed to stop doing that. Not that it seemed to be having any dramatic effect-she didn’t seem at all suspicious. That could change, though. He was doubtless overestimating the thing, but that was infinitely preferable to underestimation.
“It’s nothing-I understand that this must be a huge shock for you.” Really, he should apologize for startling her, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that, even for the sake of his act. It was an organic. A human-arguably an even worse epithet.
“I can’t believe it,” Hope breathed, again.
“And what’s your designation-or name?” Starscream asked, after a reasonably polite span of time. If he didn’t get an excuse to use her name-he already knew it, but she didn’t know that-he was going to end up accidentally calling her a gibbering carbonmonkey, or something to that effect.
“Hope,” she said, still staring at him, eyes wide. “Hope Lans. -Uhm. What are you doing here?”
“It’s a pretty area,” he said. Decepticon dignity made him tack on an addendum. “Even if it’s not Cybertron.” That was still an utter lie-the place was disgustingly organic. It wasn’t much even compared to the other organic-populated planets he’d been forced to visit. Especially not the wilder areas on Earth: the cities were marginally better. Marginally.
“It is,” she said, smiling softly, tension draining away, visibly. Starscream bit back a laugh: this was going to be pathetically easy.
“You’re going hiking again?” her mother said, letting the knife she’d been washing fall back into the sink. “What do you do up there, Hope?”
“It’s pretty,” she replied, shrugging. “It lets me-get away from it all. I’m thinking of taking up birdwatching?”
Her mother sighed. “I just don’t get it. Call your Aunt Charity, though, she’s always been into the whole nature thing. She’ll be ecstatic.”
“Maybe,” Hope said evasively, and she snagged her daypack and beat a hasty retreat for her car.
She felt bad, lying to her mom, she really did. But the robot-Starscream-was hard to explain, and he’d asked her not to tell...
It was all incredible. It felt like her boring life had turned into a movie, all of a sudden! She was only just, and only almost, starting to believe it was all real, a week later.
And really, she hadn’t told her mom a complete lie. This was the first time she was heading up into the mountains for any reason other than the ones she’d given. -Well, she really wasn’t interested in the birds. She agreed with her mother there: they were all kind of the same and essentially boring. Well, they could be nice to sit and watch and listen to, but she didn’t have any burning desire to track them down and keep lists of what she’d seen and talk all about it endlessly to everyone, even people who didn't really care, like Aunt Charity.
...She still couldn’t get over the fact that there would be a giant robot, an alien one, waiting to talk to her! She was so lucky, to have accidentally run into him... He’d said he hadn’t meant to reveal himself, but he was glad to have someone to talk to.
Hope felt kind of guilty about how that made her feel. Really, she was very ordinary, so to have someone-let alone someone like Starscream!-say that about her made her feel very happy and kind of embarrassed and all pleased and trembly inside. Because it was just her! It was just coincidence that she was the one, but he was happy it was her. Even though she was so ordinary, so absolutely average...
But, yes, that wasn’t a good way to feel, because it was coincidence and anyone else would have worked just as well and Starscream deserved to meet other people, to have met someone more interesting, a better conversationalist at least, or something like that. But the guilt wasn’t enough to make her stop feeling the way she did altogether.
She didn’t have much further to go, now. -What if someone else was in the field? Would he be there too? He’d said he was trying to stay hidden-to start with, he was worried he’d be studied, denied his freedom, if he was publicly known. That would have to be awful-Hope shuddered at the thought. He was definitely a living, emotional being with free will, but he wouldn’t have any rights under UN laws, because they were for humans. Forget about being treated like a citizen.
She could just wait if he wasn’t there and someone else was. She’d brought a book, after all. She still had some reading to do. And that way she wouldn’t be lying to her mom as badly, when she asked her what she’d done all day. -No, no, she needed to stop justifying herself, that was even worse than telling the lie in the first place, in a way.
Hope’s nerves were mounting as she started the hike, and they grew as she drew nearer and nearer the clearing. She’d gotten a text message from him, or she’d thought she had, but what if it turned out that she was hallucinating?
Thirty seconds from the clearing, nearing the very edge of the woods, Hope paused, a thought slamming into her hard enough to make her stop still.
What if he wasn’t the benevolent, supportive and kind person he was pretending to be?
...But no. That was ridiculous. He’d been very nice: she hadn’t gotten any sense at all of something like that from him, and she was pretty good at picking up on that sort of thing. And what reason would an evil giant alien robot have to befriend a human like her?
Hope started walking again, determinedly. She was almost there.
Starscream smiled to himself as the creature’s heat signature started moving again, along with the tracking device still sitting in her cell phone. Oh yes, he had her. As she drew nearer he hastily rearranged his expression into something more appropriate: something less of a sneer, less sadistic, a little more noble, “honestly” happy.
Really the whole thing made him want to laugh. He’d have to make sure he was there when she realized just how badly she’d been taken in, if at all possible. It was going to be hilarious.
“Hello,” he heard her say, voice timid again. Inwardly, he scowled: was he going to have to coax and prod her out of her figurative shell, to use the idiom, every time they communicated? That would also indicate a lack of actual trust, something that could cause later problems...
He would worry about that latter. It was too soon for it to be a real worry, anyways. “Hope. Hello-thank you for coming.”
She smiled shyly at that, blushing a little. “No, no, you don’t need to thank me! I’m happy to come. -You must be lonely, with no one to talk to.”
Starscream was lucky his grin had frozen in place. He wanted to shoot her, obliterate her, wipe her off of the face of the planet- How dare she. How dare she! To presume-
No. He needed to do this. “I can still appreciate the time and effort, right?” If he had a sweeter voice he could have charmed the fish out of the sea. Sadly, he still wasn’t able to override the protocol that kept his ‘human’ voice a reflection of his true tones. “So, I still should be thanking you-” He paused, then bit the figurative bullet. “-and yes, it’s nice to have some company.”
“Good,” she said, smiling again. “I wouldn’t want to be a bother.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
There was a brief moment of silence.
“How was your week?” Starscream asked at last. He’d learned long ago that the best way to get what you wanted was to get someone talking and then sit back and listen. Even if you didn’t end up hearing something useful-and you did, remarkably often; most mechs had trouble keeping their secrets secret when they’d been talking long enough-at the end of it all whoever you were listening to was far more predisposed to like the listener.
Apparently, the rule held true for juvenile human females, as well. Especially ones that were starving for attention. Things couldn’t have gone better for him if he’d planned.
All he needed to do was be supportive, especially once she’d opened up and shared her secrets. Once he got to that point, she’d consider him a friend-possibly, her best friend. After all, he was acting exactly the way she wanted him to-even when she didn’t know it. That was the benefit of having watched her: it made winning the girl’s trust that much easier.
“Are there a lot of you?” Hope asked. Starscream correctly interpreted the question to mean a lot of Decepticons-although she probably didn't differentiate between them and the Autobots.
“Maybe five hundred,” he said. “Scattered across the galaxy,” he hastened to add, because he didn't want her to try looking up more of them on Earth-she might even find them, which would be a disaster, no matter which faction she ended up making contact with-and there was still the chance, possibly a good chance, that she would be disturbed by an unknown number of Transformers hiding in plain sight on her home planet, in a way that she wasn't disturbed by his known presence.
At least, she thought she knew him, at least a little. Starscream looked forward to correcting that little fallacy. He really really did want the chance to see her expression, when she found out-
“Do you have any...friends?”
Would it be too heavy-handed to claim she was a friend of his? Maybe. In the meantime, he could reinvent a few of the more-tolerable Decepticons into 'friends.' “...A few. I haven't heard from them in-quite some time. There's Thundercracker...” Who else had he even moderately tolerated? “-Skywarp. Hook and Scrapper-they worked together.”
Hope jumped in, half-interrupting. “Really? What did they do?”
“They were architects, very talented ones.” Albeit ones that had a tendency to work live Autobots into their design plans. At least, they were alive when the buildings were first constructed... “They were fairly famous on Cybertron before the war.” He also didn't actually like them that much, even though they were more tolerable than, say, Bonecrusher-Hook was a compulsive and uppity micro-manager who didn't know when to shut down his fool vocalizer, and Scrapper was slightly creepy, like his decent personality was just some sort of mask, more than to the extent that was normal. And that wasn't entirely explained by the living-bodies-as-raw-materials thing...
“What did you do?”
Slag but the little organic could jump around with her irritating questions. -And it was probably better if he just didn't bring up his involvement in the war. “I was in training to be a scientist, before the war broke out. I had to stop, eventually... Although I did graduate from the Academy.”
“Oh! I'm sorry...”
“It's not your fault.” He tried to make his voice gentle, understanding, sympathetic. He almost definitely failed, but at least he didn't sound too sneering, dismissive.
There was a brief pause, which rankled Starscream's nerves even more. Finally, Hope spoke up again. “...What kind of science were you studying?”
A perfect opportunity. “Ah. We don't specialize quite the way you humans do, but I was concentrating on exploration, especially in the cataloging of alien species-such as yourself.”
“Really? That sounds so cool! I-this planet must be really boring for you in comparison to that!”
“To the contrary,” Starscream interjected coolly.
“But oh-wow, that sounds incredible. Did you travel to other planets?”
“A little, back then. I've done more since, but that's not research expeditions. I have seen some truly spectacular worlds...” Usually, he saw them burning as his army obliterated their pitiful defenses, entire planets fallen at his feet.
After all, the Decepticons had needed the resources, to continue their fight.
“That sounds so so cool!”
Her vocabulary was spectacularly uninspired. Not that their pitiful human language was going to ever be anything worth listening to...
The human-the girl-Hope seemed to be holding something back. It was probably nothing-or, if he was lucky, it was a hint that she was about to bring up something important (to her) with him, or at least thinking about it-but there was always the chance that she was beginning to doubt him. He doubted that, but you never knew-and it could ruin everything. A report to the local authorities would almost definitely go overlooked, but there was always the chance that someone would make the connection, and then-well, it wouldn't necessarily be disastrous, but it would definitely impede his plans.
Their conversation had faded into silence. Starscream let it be for a few moments, then, as gently as he could, brought it up.
“Hope? Is there something bothering you?”
She smiled, the expression slightly pained, slightly strained. Amateur. She couldn't even fake a smile! “No, not-nothing much. It'll be fine.”
“Would it help to talk about it?”
“...Not really.” Damn it: she was being recalcitrant. Why had she picked now, of all times? Maybe it really was that she was beginning to suspect him... But no, then it wouldn't make much sense that she'd hinted that something was wrong at all. Then again, it wasn't like she was a member of a logical species...
“Would it help you feel a little better if you did?” He struggled to keep his voice quiet, soft.
Finally, success. She half-turned, smiling up at him, a real smile, although one that was slightly bittersweet.
“Yes...I think it would.” She paused, drew in breath. Starscream forced himself to remain outwardly calm, unconcerned. “I...haven't told you much, but my parents are separated now.” The Decepticon reminded himself that no, he wasn't supposed to know much about that, yet. “...And it could be worse. I'm trying not to complain too much, or whine, because it could be a lot worse and, I mean, it's probably better that they-my mom and dad-aren't living with each other now, because they weren't happy, and...at least I still have them, right? And they still love me.”
She needed to get to the point. Starscream's patience had definite limits. It was, in fact, something he was known for, among his troops. His temper was even more likely to flare than Megatron's was-although he was less violent when he did finally snap, his troops said. Starscream viewed it as a simple tactical maneuver: if you killed your own team, there were less of them to fight the Autobots. And even just injuries, if they were severe enough, could be a death sentence, considering the quality of the average Decepticon medic...
“But it's...it's hard.” Starscream perked up as his sensors caught the tang of salt and a handful of unusual biomolecules. She was crying. Excellent. That meant he could be 'there for her.' There wouldn't be any question of whether or not she trusted him, after this. “I...
“It's worse for my little sister. Faith. She keeps on having these hysterical fights with my mom. And my dad! He's...damn it, I guess he's trying. But it...
“He keeps on trying too hard and I don't need him acting like nothing ever happened, because it is different! And he plans these stupid things for us to do, but there's never time for anything else-so, like, he'll take us to the zoo even though I'm an adult but then there won't be any time to visit his apartment and talk and have dinner later on, and he asks questions about my day but it feels like he's doing it just because he thinks I need it, and that just-it hurts.” Hope curled forward over her knees, and her shoulders heaved. She was crying hard, but almost silently, the only real sound her harsh breathing.
Starscream knelt, moving closer to her.
“-And it just all sucks. God, I hate it! And I don't know what the hell I'm going to do about college. There's just...I didn't get the financial aid package I need. I don't know what I'm going to do with that...” She sniffled, rubbing hard at her eyes. “None of my friends want to talk about the divorce. They keep on just...avoiding it. Like it didn't happen. It sucks. And if I bring it up, they all get nervous and quiet and crack these jokes like it'll all make it better until they can change the subject. I hate it. And-
“And damn it but my ex-boyfriend seems really happy with his new girlfriend and this one freshman keeps on showing up at my work and staring at my breasts and there aren't any boys in the entire grade who seem to even know I exist, except for one of my friends' friends who's gay, and it's just-I know it sounds stupid and petty, but I just feel ugly and useless and like I don't have any real friends! ...I'm sorry I just dumped all this on you. I know you probably don't care...you've got more important things to worry about, I'll shut up and-and go home or something...”
Much as that sounded like a good idea to Starscream, he couldn't let an opportunity like this get away from him. Ignoring his repulsion, he gently laid a hand over her shoulders, comforting her. “No,” he said. “I'm glad you trusted me enough to talk to me.” Which was actually true. “It sounds hard...I'm sorry. You're not ugly, and you're one of the nicest people I know.” The latter part of the statement was even true if you included Decepticons, meaning there was competition, because Starscream did not know anyone else. Not that he meant it as a compliment, though: nice was not considered a positive personality trait in a Decepticon. “You deserve some happiness. And I'm sure your education will work out. You're very smart, and clearly very determined and motivated.”
Hope smiled at him, awkwardly twisting under his caged fingers so she could see him. “Thank you,” she said, wiping at a stray tear.
She was even uglier than she usually was, with her face blotched and wet, eyes swollen and nose running.
It was dark, and Hope had left. But Starscream had stayed in the meadow, thinking.
He could still feel her body under his hand. And the revulsion was still there, but it had also been-
It had been strange, in a way he couldn't quite describe.
They were surprisingly complex organisms. Not in a good way-far from it, it was a ludicrously awful design-but it was true. There had been a lot of data to take in, analyze, absorb. Temperature, movement, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, chemicals and more-yes, a lot of different factors.
He'd been able to feel her heartbeat. And her breathing. There was just as much movement within a Cybertronian, but it was largely isolated from the outside-you couldn't feel energon pumping through armor; it didn't move with any internal system.
It was...different. Alien.
He didn't think he'd ever felt things as strongly as Hope did. Or about such little things like that. He hoped not.
Hope didn't have a goal. There was nothing tangible she was fighting for. Starscream had certainly always had something to overcome, to gain-power, usually. For a long time it had been Megatron, but Megatron was dead, wasn't he? And Starscream wasn't.
Had he ever thrown himself into his life like that? He couldn't imagine it. To start with, he was a Decepticon, the peak of creation, the ideal combination of intelligence and pure brute strength, armed with incredibly destructive weaponry and gifted with the ability to hide when it wasn't time to fight.
She was a weak, overemotional human. Of course Starscream had never been like that.
--End chapter 1--
(1) Tolo: a regional (western Washington, not sure where else, if anywhere) term for a girl’s choice dance. A more common term is a Sadie Hawkins, I think.
Different Directions is the umbrella title for the different sections of this fic; the first section is called Leaning Away; this is part 1 of the first section. There will be four sections total, each with three to five parts. Links will be posted as each chapter goes up.
Different Directions
Leaning Away 1 2 3 4
Coming Together 1 2 3
Part Three (TBA)
Part Four (TBA)