The Devil's Advocate

Chapter 8

It was a click that woke her up, and a sudden lightness on her wrists that chased haziness away. "What... what are you doing?" She sounded groggier than she'd have liked to be, but she was more rested than she ever remembered being. So it didn't make a lot of sense to her that Starscream was taking her cuffs off.

"Isn't it obvious? I'm letting you go," the Seeker said, throwing the deactivated shackles aside. Though her wrists were stinging from so long spent chafing against metal, she couldn't even stand up from confusion and shock rooting her to the cold floor.

"But... w-what about all that stuff about needing a second bot? Someone to distract Megatron?" She wouldn't have put it past Starscream to have a plethora of back up plans in mind, but his primary one obviously involved her. What had suddenly made her disposable overnight?

Starscream seemed to be reluctant to share the answer, but he seemed to tire of her giving him a searching glare. "I've been thinking, Arcee," he began. "While you've been recharging, I've been thinking... quite a lot. We both have our own reasons for killing Megatron. I won't hold you to following mine. Think of this as an... insurance policy. If I fail, at least you'll still be alive to take your own chance at him. So... you're free to leave. Tell the Autobots what happened, take it to your grave, I don't really care. Just don't get in my way." He waved his claws in a throwaway fan as if it would make the dismissal any less awkward.

Arcee was halfway to accepting that everything was as it looked, that Starscream was genuinely just letting her slip away, but that still left a hefty amount of disbelief in her processor. "How do I know this isn't just a way for you to follow me back to my base?" she asked, rubbing the ache slowly out of her scuffed wrists and finding her weapons still disabled.

Starscream was strolling away towards his lab but he turned to scoff at her, offended that she'd even suggest such an obvious deception. "Please, if I really cared about where your friends hole themselves up, I would have spent the past few days torturing it out of you." That certainly would have fit his usual methods. And if he was as intent on offlining Megatron as he had her convinced, he wouldn't waste the effort of finding their base to use as a bargaining chip for regaining his place in the Decepticons.

Everything more or less checked out, even the uncharacteristically generous notion of keeping her alive to take the glory of killing Megatron in the future, yet Arcee still couldn't make herself leave. Starscream almost jumped in surprise when he turned around and saw she was still sitting there. "Well, what are you waiting for? A kiss farewell?" he asked sarcastically, though it occurred to her that she wouldn't have minded one as much as she should have.

She shook her helm while pulling herself to her peds, more to get the mental image out. "I... guess I should wish you good luck or something."

"I won't need it," Starscream assured, lofty wings asserting that his confidence was more than just from denial. "But... you might need more than just luck." There was a hiss of locks unlatching and air escaping a chamber, and his hand appeared holding a vial with a sliver of red energon at the bottom of it. Arcee blinked at it, trying to find some kind of tracking or explosive device on the container, but Starscream just shook it impatiently at her. "Go on, take it. Use it for an emergency or something, whatever you Autobots do with your trinkets." She still took a few nanoklicks to retrieve it, brushing digits against his claws as she turned the vial over in her hands. Red energon was his most precious resource, and he was just giving away a portion of it to her. Gratitude only barely outweighed her suspicion, and she slipped it into her subspace before he could change his mind.

"Before I go... will you tell what you're gonna do up there without me?" she asked. A few days ago she'd have happily took her leave and left him to rust on whatever half-boiled plan he had waiting in the dark of his processor, but with everything that happened in those days... it didn't feel right leaving without making sure he wouldn't get himself killed in a nanoklick.