Prompt 3 response
Barricade couldn’t pinpoint the moment he had fallen for the jet. Maybe there hadn’t ever been one, one turning point, one thing that had flipped a switch. Not even a moment that drew a line between him knowing (or acknowledging) and not knowing. It had just…happened, until one day he realized it had become part of him.
Of course, that day was the day he wished it hadn’t ever happened. His whole frame shook, his talons trembling, as he saw the wreck of the jet’s frame flung across the chamber’s deck plating. He forced himself still, not to lash out, or cry out or even worse, to shriek in horror. A spray from the jet’s flailing limbs struck his shoulder and chassis like a warm, wet blow, so unlike the hungry kisses the jet normally traced along his armor. Don’t move! he told himself, and screamed mentally at Starscream. Don’t move, don’t get up. Don’t give him any further reason to come after you. This is…impossible to bear. Don’t make me watch any more.
Vicious, unworthy thought. He wasn’t the one in pain.
Starscream got up, rolling slowly, haltingly, to his foreknees, one hand pushing hard against the floor. He said nothing, merely defied Megatron, and common sense, by refusing to stay down. You can silence me, beat me, he seemed to say, but you cannot crush something deep within me.
Just…play along, Barricade thought, desperately, aware that his talons were bunched into fists so tight the metal grated. This is all for show: let him have his show. Play-act. No one will hold it against you, least of all me, if you pretend and let him ‘win’. If you stay down, say the right words, in the right tone of voice. We have all been there. You lose nothing by joining us.
But Starscream couldn’t. It wasn’t that the jet couldn’t act-he’d put on any number of ruses, any number of insincere blandishments on other mechs to get what he wanted. He had never done that to Barricade, and it was a source of pride for the grounder that Starscream was ruthlessly honest with him. The jet had never lied to him.
Megatron roared, swooping down upon the jet like a force of nature, one crab-clawed hand swinging to crack against the jet’s helm. A mix of fluids sprayed from the damaged jaw assembly, the frame tossed sideways, one folded wing grating, bending, as it took Starscream’s weight against the floor.
Megatron followed the move up, grabbing at the jet’s throat with his other hand, hauling the weight up. Starscream met the furious optics with his own cool ones. Inured to this, resigned to this. Cold to Megatron’s heat.
“You continue to defy me,” Megatron said, his voice barely under his control. “You never learn.”
He has learned, Barricade thought, his tanks burning with rage. He has learned. He simply refuses to give in to fear. He has learned that his pride is greater than his pain, his spirit bigger than his frame.
A lesson Barricade knew he could not follow. Starscream’s pain was an agony to him, his worry and fear an accelerant. And on top of them all, the sick knowledge that this was one of the reasons he loved the jet, even through this pain.