Chapter Nine
Crave
“GET BACK HERE IMMEDIATELY!”
Sunstreaker, Bumblebee, Miles, Sam and Sideswipe were almost tripping over their own feet as they fled from the hopping mad medic, convinced that they were quite literally running for their lives. Although Ratchet was as much of a pacifist as one could be in the middle of an intergalactic war, the twins had both had rather bad experiences with him when he was in this sort of mood, and Sam was absolutely certain that he was actually going to do as he was threatening to do – chop at least one limb from each of them with his gyratory saw.
“Quick men, flee!” the crimson twin shouted almost gleefully, snatching the boys up and thrusting them up into his shoulder armour without slowing his pace one iota.
They took him at his word – Bumblebee started playing a fast, remixed song from his radio in his exhilaration as they rounded another corner in the base, hearing the footfalls of the medical officer smashing behind them with the sounds of Hell crashing down, and Sunstreaker managed to smack him on the head as they fled.
“Silence, you aft-head - you’ll attract him!”
Sam was laughing so hard he thought he might rupture something as he clung for dear life to Sideswipe’s red armour next to Miles, bouncing like a rubber ball as the quintet of pranksters attempted to shake Ratchet off their tail. He had predicted that these guys would be fun, but he had never imagined that they would be quite this fun.
Almost three weeks had passed since their arrival, and Sam had never been more enthused about spending time with the Autobots. He and Miles had immediately clicked with the twins, who were already partners in crime with Bumblebee, and the five of them had pulled more pranks over the three weeks that had passed than Ironhide had cannons in his arsenal. As Ironhide had told Jade wearily, the jokes were usually at the expense of the grumpy soldier or Ratchet, who had proved to be the most entertaining – if terrifying – candidates.
Skyfire, who had just stepped out of his quarters, quickly stepped back to allow the three mechs to rampage past like a herd of elephants. “Where are you five off to in such a hurry?” he chuckled, and Sunstreaker pointed wildly behind them.
“Stop the maniac, big guy!” he almost shrieked, even as Ratchet rounded the corner with the fury of a thousand warriors in his look.
He raised his saw and wasted no time in springing after them – Bumblebee panicked and somehow, in his haste, ended up on the floor with Sunstreaker underneath him. Sideswipe skidded to a halt and Sam and Miles steadied themselves as the crimson mech looked between his fellow pranksters and the incoming threat that was the incensed Ratchet.
Sam put his hands in his hair in mock horror. “We can’t just leave them, Sides’!” he cried with faux anguish.
“It’s okay, I’ve got a plan!” Sideswipe responded enthusiastically before he rounded on Mikaela, who had just entered the corridor with a packet of potato chips in one hand. “The doctor will never fail to cooperate if we follow the damsel in distress exercise!”
And Mikaela, who had only left the safety of the human recreation area for a quick snack, soon found herself elevated twenty feet into the air and dangled in front of her rapidly approaching guardian like a tempting piece of meat. A rather pained expression appeared on her suntanned face and she twisted her neck to face her captor and give him a distinctly pitying look. “Sideswipe, please. We’ve tried this before.”
“And it worked!” he pointed out triumphantly. “Doc, stop in the name of the useless human commandments!”
Miles scratched his head. “Huh? It’s stop in the name of the law, man.”
“Same thing,” Sideswipe sighed, raising his optics to the ceiling for a moment before he brandished Mikaela at Ratchet like a sword. “Halt sir, or the lady gets dropped twenty-one feet to the ground and crushed beneath my all-powerful foot!”
Sam buried his face in Miles’s shoulder and laughed silently until tears began to come up in his eyes. Their humour was so bizarre, but when he was on a sugar rush like this he found it hilarious. Miles was no better: the blonde was almost choking on his own mirthful tears, unable to so much as squeak due to his hysterical paralysis.
Sam made a mental note to cut back on the donuts before he went on ‘prank patrol’ with the twins and Bumblebee again – he was going crazy.
Ratchet had stopped by this time, and glared at Sideswipe. “If you drop her,” he said simply, “I will decapitate you with this saw and then display your severed head as a reminder to all not to touch Mikaela Banes unless they want to die an extremely painful death.”
Mikaela gave Sideswipe a smug sort of look.
Bumblebee and Sunstreaker, who had been trying to back away from Ratchet subtly, suddenly found themselves with the medic’s face shoved into theirs. He looked between the two golden mechs fiercely, making his saw spin threateningly next to Sunstreaker’s head.
“If you ever enter my medical bay and plant those fetid items there again,” he warned in a low voice, and Sunstreaker cringed away from the weapon. “I will make sure your paintjob is absolutely irreparable, Sunstreaker.”
“Yessir!” he squeaked.
“As for you, youngling,” Ratchet snarled at Bumblebee, who cowered beneath him, “Those vocal processors can always be rewired back into silence, and I assure you that I will have no problems whatsoever with doing just that during your next diagnostic if you are not very careful.”
He received a shaky nod and a single, fragmented word from a song in response. “C-cool!”
“What on earth’s going on?” a new voice asked enquiringly and Ratchet almost took Sunstreaker’s sharp, angular nose off when he swung his saw away from the two fallen partners and retracted it quickly back into his forearm. Sunstreaker let out a shriek of surprise and covered his face protectively with both hands.
“Not the nose!” he pleaded, and Bumblebee shook with laughter beneath him.
Ratchet thought he might offline out of pure embarrassment when he saw Rose standing at the doorway to the communications room, her dark eyebrows raised and her copper hair swept up into an untidy ponytail with thick strands falling down on either side of her face. She surveyed the scene curiously, as if were an interesting Broadway show.
“Nothing to worry about,” he grumbled, mortified, before standing up and giving Sunstreaker a venomous glare. Rose tilted her head to one side and laughed when she saw the still-horrified look on Sunstreaker’s face. “It is hardly funny…”
She giggled, taking in the scene with nothing less than amusement. “You must be joking – it’s side-splitting!”
The medic frowned. “’Side-splitting’? I should hope not – your vitals would fall out.”
Mikaela could not contain her amusement at that comment, and Ratchet looked at each one of them with bewilderment as they all started to chuckle – even Skyfire, who had been watching the entire scenario from a safe distance. “Oh, Ratch’,” she tittered, one hand near her mouth as if she wanted to muffle the sound, “I really do love you.”
“No you do not,” he said resentfully, “None of you do. And one day, when you all come to me with your various infirmities and health complaints, I am going to kick you out of the medical bay on your afts and let you sort your own problems out.”
“Have at thee, fiend!” Sunstreaker suddenly yelled, lashing out at Ratchet’s shins with the flat side of his retractable axe.
The medic went down like several tonnes of bricks, and Bumblebee’s eyes widened when he found himself beneath both Sunstreaker and Ratchet. “Primus, you two!” he complained, wriggling fruitlessly beneath Ratchet’s bulk. “Lose some tonnes!”
Rose’s smile grew in width until it turned into a full-fledged grin, and her eyes sparkled as she watched Ratchet pick himself up with an exasperated huff and give her a look that was half-mortified and half-furious. “What’s with the medieval lingo, Sunstreaker?” she asked with interest when she had finally controlled her smirk. “You sound like you’ve just stepped out of a Shakespeare play.”
“Who’s Shakespeare?” Miles asked, frowning.
Sam rolled his eyes. “Jeez, no wonder you didn’t pass the literature exam, man. The man with the ruff that wrote Macbeth.”
“That’s your description of Shakespeare?” Rose asked, apparently quite insulted by the idea. “He was the greatest writer in English history, thank you very much – the writer of Romeo and Juliet, for goodness sakes! I’m telling you, if a man quoted Shakespeare at me, I would be… ‘putty in his hands’, I think you Americans say.”
Mikaela bit her lip to disguise her mischievous grin and wondered whether Ratchet was thinking what she was thinking. That was certainly a nice titbit of information to save for a rainy day.
Sunstreaker finally shifted his aft off of Bumblebee, who stood up hastily before anybody else could crush him. They shied away from the medic’s furious glare and both shuffled off towards Sideswipe, their heads bowed as if in shame to conceal victorious grins. They had succeeded in drawing the Hatchet from his lair for the fifth time in a week – a new record, to be sure – and had managed to do without losing any vital parts or being forced into doing somebody’s chores for a year.
The young woman standing in the doorway watched as the five-man-and-mech team of jokers made their way down the corridor with Mikaela, still smiling slightly. Much as the Autobots had terrified her initially, she had to admit that she was having fun staying with them. They made her laugh like nobody ever had – Ratchet most of all.
The ruffled medic in question finally retracted his Gyro saw back into his forearm and shook his head, muttering incoherently to himself.
“Are you alright?” she asked through an irresistible giggle, and he looked up in shock as if he had forgotten that she was there. “Didn’t hurt yourself falling on top of Bumblebee, or anything?”
“Certainly not,” he snorted. “But I sincerely hope it hurt him, the impudent youngling.”
With that, he stormed off down the corridor back towards the medical wing without so much as a second glance.
She shook her head in mystification, wondering what was the matter with him sometimes. He was quite odd around her; sometimes he could be friendly and inviting, but other times he could be grumpy and short with her. She reasoned that it was just his personality, and reminded herself that she was still a newcomer amongst their ranks – she doubted that they could trust all that easily, being soldiers in a war of such an enormous scale. Perhaps she would gain his trust soon…
Her stomach growled and she sighed, rolling her eyes; she knew she had forgotten to eat that morning. She turned towards the human sleeping quarters, intending to get her jacket and then beg a lift off of one of the Autobots to get some lunch for them all from a takeout.
Ratchet had certainly been an interest of sorts to her since they had first spoken. He still had not explained his sudden flight from the base when she had first arrived, but they had spoken for a long time once they had got started on history – he was certainly very knowledgeable, and she had loved debating the innocence of the king’s second wife with him. It was a period of history that she had always adored, and she was delighted to find someone who knew as much about it as she did.
As well as his obvious wisdom, she could see that he was compassionate despite his crabbiness. Whatever he might say about it, it was clear that he was passionate about his work – healing and repairing. She admired it about him; there was something very commendable about a job like that. She yearned to know more about him, and decided to go and see if she could watch him work with Mikaela later.
She approached the camp bed that had been set up for her in Jade’s room – Mikaela and Alexis shared the other in the girl’s quarters – and picked up her soft black coat, slinging it over one arm. She had not had a chance to speak with Alexis for all three weeks she had been there; the girl was always out somewhere.
Where was a different matter. She would have to ask Ratchet or Sideswipe, whom she had befriended, later.
As she left the room, she was not expecting to see Jade Rivers in the midst of a passionate embrace with a person she had never seen in her life, but there it was. The small brunette was holding onto the much taller man and kissing him deeply, immediately making Rose feel uncomfortable for stumbling upon them.
She considered scooting past them with swift, silent precision, but they were right in the doorway, right in her way, and there really was no other choice but to announce her presence so that they could detach themselves from each other and remove themselves from her path.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered, putting a hand to her forehead and sighing pointedly to make herself known.
Jade and her lover sprung apart, the former’s cheeks glowing in her embarrassment. She quickly brushed her long, tangled locks away from her eyes, looking as if she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her. The man, however, remained white as a sheet, and merely smiled at Rose as if she was an innocent child that had stumbled upon kissing parents.
“Um…” Rose said suspiciously when neither of them offered her any explanation or apology, eyeing the man with mistrust. “Not meaning to be rude, but… well, who are you?”
The man about seven feet tall, which she would usually have found somewhat intimidating, but he had a kind face that suggested that he would not harm her if she came within a few feet of him. His skin was ghostly white – unnaturally so – and his eyes were bright blue, like gas flames. His longish, dark blonde hair was endearingly messy, but he exuded a sense of majesty nonetheless. She could see that his arms were extremely muscular, and he generally looked rather regal.
“He’s my boyfriend!” Jade announced cheerily with a smile as fake as a china doll’s. “Um – yeah – his name’s, um, Steve.”
Rose’s eyebrow curved sceptically. “Steve,” she repeated, to nods from both of them. “I see.”
After a few moments, in which the two of them continued to look at her like rabbits caught in headlights, Rose’s eyes caught sight of something that appeared to be coming into the man’s head from elsewhere. A thin, hair-like line of blue light. As she cast her gaze down his body, she saw more of them – they were all over him. She would not have noticed had she not been looking for them, but now she saw them she could hardly believe that she had not.
Jade swallowed hard.
Her eyes crept up the first ray, following its path. It extended through the open doorway of the other entrance that the two had been leaning against, and she stepped forward to see it more clearly.
“Um, Rose… I don’t know if you should do that…” Jade said slowly, looking up – rather a long way, Rose noted with amusement – at ‘Steve’. He, however, remained with his cerulean cores fixed directly on Rose with a reasonably tranquil expression on his fine features.
Rose glanced at her. “I think I should,” she disagreed, and Jade looked as if she might faint with dismay.
She leant around the doorpost, hanging out to see where the light was coming from. It was reflecting off of a window, and the young woman approached it with an intrigued expression. “Some kind of laser expert are we, Steve?” she asked, and turned briefly to face him.
His strong, kind-looking face exuded calmness, but she could see worry lingering in his cobalt eyes. “Of a sort,” he admitted finally in a voice that was deep but very gentle.
By this point she had reached the grimy window, and she reached out a hand to touch the glass, affecting the light that was bouncing off of it. The man flickered, and her head flicked to observe it with alarm. She removed her hand and he returned to normal, and then waved her hand over the light rays once again, watching his body flicker and an almost mechanical look to appear about him. “Okay, what’s going on?” she asked, her voice quavering slightly as her hand remained on the mirror.
The two of them exchanged glances and Rose removed her fingers from the glass, allowing the man to return to his normal status. He took a step forward, prompting her to throw herself back against the glass in an effort to get away from him. “Miss Connelly, I am not going to hurt you,” he murmured in a sincere voice. “But my name is not Steve.”
“I guessed,” Rose said, her eyes wide. “For God’s sake, I’ve only just gotten used to the giant alien robots – what’re you, the Terminator?”
Jade had her hand to her face, but her flush was visible from beneath it. “Sky, we can’t – she won’t understand –” she said weakly.
“Understand what?” the other girl pressed, shoving her back up against the glass when the man approached her. “What the bloody hell is going on?!” She stepped away from the mirror then, but interrupted the rays – the man flickered, showing obviously mechanical insides, and she gasped in shock. “What the hell are you?!”
He sighed. “Turn around, Miss Connelly.”
She stared at him for a few seconds before slowly, she turned around.
The light rays all came to a point above her head, originating in the bright blue optic sensors of the largest Autobot she had ever seen in her life. It was absolutely colossal – she had thought that Optimus Prime was big, but this one looked too big to be allowed. It was a dark silver-grey in colour, and a cockpit made up its chest, an Autobot symbol painted to one side of it.
Two things registered in her mind at the same time: firstly that ‘Steve’ was actually some kind of hologram produced by this enormous Autobot. This thought led onto the rather disturbing fact that Jade had been kissing the said hologram.
“B-but…” she stammered, turning around and seeing that ‘Steve’ had taken Jade’s hand tightly in his much larger one. “That would mean…”
That Jade is having a romantic relationship with one of the Autobots?!
The man smiled humourlessly. “Allow me to introduce myself, Miss Connelly.” He vanished, and Rose leapt backwards as if she had been burnt with a white-hot iron when the Autobot behind her reactivated and stepped forward with a resounding boom. “My name is Skyfire, and I am the Air Commander of the Autobot force.”
Rose stared at him with a truly stunned expression that twitched between reverential and aghast.
“I… how would that work?” she whispered, shaking her head and feeling her back against the mirror again. Her knees suddenly buckled and she slid down the glass, unable to take her eyes off of the mighty creature before her. “Oh my God…”
Jade was wringing her hands and looked as if she might burst into tears. “Rose, honestly – it does work!” she babbled, as Rose stared at the ground in total shock as if she could not believe what she was hearing. “It’s just different – I mean, it’s not as if it’s a Decepticon and a human, like Starscream and Alexis –”
“Jade!” Skyfire interrupted swiftly, but it was too late.
Rose’s head snapped up and her lips parted in astonishment as Jade gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth, flushing bright pink. Her brown eyes flicked from the other girl to Skyfire, who froze and watched as Rose slowly shook her head before she let out her first scream of the many that were about to ensue.
“WHAT?!”
Starscream looked down at his human form with some distaste. Using his hologram was physically demanding and drained energon from his body as easily as sand ran through fingertips, and it felt extremely uncomfortable to be human, though his holoform had many restrictions – he was not used to having such slender limbs, nor wearing clothing. That was probably the most annoying part of the whole thing: why humans felt the need to wear it was quite beyond him.
According to Alexis, without clothes humans felt embarrassed about their bodies and shied away from exposure to each other, unless they were involved romantically – even then, she had said, it was hard to overcome the need to hide themselves away behind barriers of cotton and cloth. He could not understand why their natural forms were so humiliating to them, and probably never would.
However, the young woman resting on his chest was a merciful distraction from his discomfort.
He ran his long, pale fingers through Alexis’s short hair and she shifted a little against him, her hand idly tracing circles on the synthetic flesh of his bare chest where his black shirt hung open. Her slender torso rested against him and he was against her all the way down to where their legs were entwined as they lay together on the couch in the communications room.
True, it was risky being here: Rose still had no idea about their relationship, and Alexis had no wish for her to find out, but he had hidden his feelings for Alexis for months before he had finally kissed her and told her how he felt. It had taken death to give him the courage to do that, and he would be damned to the Pit if he would ever hide away from the truth about her again.
A soft sigh escaped her and he looked down the line of his chest to see what was wrong. “Alexis?”
“Mm?” she hummed, tilting her head back to look at him properly.
Primus, her eyes, he thought. Why ever was she given such breathtaking eyes? “You sounded… sorrowful,” he murmured, and she smiled slightly. “Is something wrong?”
She pressed her cheek against his pale, muscular chest and ran a hand across it gently. “No… I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, Starscream.”
Why was she saying that, when she looked so troubled?
It was laughable that she thought she could fool him. He had been programmed as a Decepticon – he could sense lies as easily as he could hear her heartbeat from where it throbbed in her neck and her wrists from her heart. “You cannot fool me,” he said and she looked up at him again, huddling into the arm that came around her tightly. “Tell me.”
“Nothing,” she insisted, reaching a frail hand up to caress his chiselled, flawless features. “I’m just glad we finally got a moment together… what with Rose around and the twins kicking up hell on earth for poor Ratchet every five minutes, we don’t get much downtime.”
“Would you be partial to a ride tonight, then?” he asked with an impish smile.
He heard her pulse flutter distinctly when he smiled, and vaguely wondered whether he should try it more often. “Mm… yes, please,” she said softly, turning her head back to rest against his chest and closing her eyes.
Her caresses were beginning to drive him insane; she seemed to relish teasing him. He gently scooped a hand back under her chin and dragged her light body further up to his with his arm so that she was leaning over him a little, her mousy hair falling down into his face. She quirked an eyebrow at him and they both smiled slightly.
“You are right,” he admitted huskily as she leant down, her torso pressing intimately against his bare chest. “It is… good to have time together like this.”
His spark was burning up with want for her. Three long years had passed, and there had been no mating ritual between them; she had always seemed too embarrassed to talk about it, and he had been trying to be a ‘gentleman’, in a sense, by keeping quiet about it. But she was his spark partner – he knew that for certain – and that spark could not wait much longer.
His sign that she was ‘the one’ had been far less dramatic that Ratchet’s. It had happened when he had been stalking her for information on the Autobots, and had waited outside her house one night – the night before she had met them. When he had first met her eyes through the window in the darkness, when she had called out to him, wondering who he might be. He had felt the slightest flare in his chest, and had quickly returned to his true form to find his spark searing, as if pure fire had touched it.
Ratchet’s indication had been a chance in something like a billion to one.
And, much as he respected the medic, he could not resist an internal smirk at the thought – it had to be Ratchet, possibly the most uncomfortable mech in the world around femmes, that had that happen to him.
Alexis looked into his eyes, leaning over him with her lips lingering painfully close to his. “Starscream,” she breathed, and he sat up then, both arms coming around her waist. Her slender legs were forced apart around his torso, her thighs on either side of his strong waist, and her heartbeat spiked abruptly at the motion.
“Yes?” he whispered, his large hands sliding up under her flimsy shirt and up her back, tracing the protruding line of her spine.
Before either of them knew what was happening, they were locked at the mouth in a fiery, rough kiss that made Alexis’s heart rate hit the roof as his lips slammed into hers, knocking the breath from her lungs. He clasped her body to his in his possessive way and she grabbed the back of his shirt in return, kissing him ravenously as he had wanted her to since the last time they had shared a kiss.
She was breathless within seconds and he pulled away quickly to let her take a breath, seeing that her eyes were feverish with desire. He looked into them with unbridled lust, wanting her more than anything else he had ever wanted in the universe, including Megatron’s place as Decepticon leader.
A chuckle rolled from between his lips as she leant forward, already impatient for more of him. “You roguish femme.”
“You started it,” she pouted, but could not help but smile mischievously at his description of her.
He felt her shiver beneath his hands as they wandered around from her back, holding her at the waist. He captured her mouth again, demanding entrance wordlessly, and she parted her lips a little to let him in, giving herself over to him.
Fragile hands came to his shoulders and he caught her around the waist again, bringing her down to the couch so that she was beneath him and he was leaning over her with playful aggression. Locks of blonde hair fell into his gorgeously crimson eyes and he saw her becoming breathless again. Her heartbeat had never been quite so… irregular.
Her tongue flicked over her lips to moisten them nervously, and she looked deep into his eyes as if searching for something behind them. Whatever she wanted to know, he would tell her. Whatever she wanted of him… whatever she asked of him.
She swallowed thickly and then took a small breath to fill her deprived lungs. “Starscream…” she whispered, “Do you love me?”
Love.
Once upon a time, he would have been absolutely disgusted had a human asked him such a question. Starscream had never loved anyone or anything but power, and he had never known the love of another in return. Humans had once made him feel nauseous, with their flimsy organic bodies and utter weakness, but now he could not work out how he had been so callous.
True, he was still a Decepticon. He could never escape that; he had been programmed to be that way, after all. Evil was wired into him. Corruption flowed with energon throughout his metallic veins. And yet… she had changed that.
“What sort of question is that?” he said sternly, leaning down with his arms on either side of her and his hands just about cupping her face.
“One I’m asking…” She closed her eyes when he leant down to brush her neck with a kiss, his teeth grazing her skin intoxicatingly. “Don’t… distract me…” she tried to scold, becoming breathless again as her heart fluttered like a butterfly. “I know your game, Starscream…”
A soft laugh escaped him. “You will never know my game. But yes,” he added, almost inaudibly. “I do love you. And only you.”
A smile broke out across her face and she let out a sharp breath of apparent relief, bringing her arms up around him again and drawing him closer to her so that their bodies had no space left between them. “Good,” she sighed softly before pressing her lips up against his again, her passion for him remaining utterly voracious.
“You doubted me?” he said when they finally parted.
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head and letting her fingers trail down his neck. “But… you don’t say it much.”
Starscream brushed some stray strands of hair from her eyes and kissed her briefly. “And I am sorry for that,” he murmured, caressing her soft, pale cheek. “I know that I should. But…” he lowered his ruby-like eyes, “It is… hard, after so many years of never loving…”
She pressed a finger to his lips, her heart hurting her. She had not intended to ignite such terrible memories of his past, and guilt gnawed at her for her simple request to hear him tell her that he loved her. “It’s okay,” she assured him in a hushed voice. “I always know it… I understand.”
“You deserve to be told,” he denied, his nose touching hers. “I should not let the past corrupt the present.”
There was no chance for her to reply as she found herself kissing him again, her body tightening reflexively as he touched her with an intimacy that she had never known before she had met him. She wanted him so badly it hurt her – she would give herself over to him in heart, in body, in mind, if he so desired it of her…
“ALEXIS PAXTON!”
The holoform and the human both jumped apart involuntarily and Starscream could have hissed with frustration. Alexis turned her head in surprise. “That’s Rose…” she said uncertainly.
“Primus…” Starscream muttered, before his hologram vanished and his true form reactivated above them.
Before anyone could stop her, the enraged redhead had slammed into the room, closely pursued by Sam, Mikaela and Jade. She saw Alexis within range of Starscream and immediately let out an ear-piercing shriek of fury that made Starscream wince when his auditory sensors rebelled against the high-pitched tone – the irksome female could rival Blackout’s sonic booms, and they had been enough to make heads explode if he had engineered them to do so in battle.
“So it’s true!” she said almost triumphantly, her cheeks glowing with anger. “I knew there was something dodgy going on with you two, but this – how could you, Alexis? What is this place, some sort of madhouse?”
Mikaela put a hand on her forearm, looking up and into Starscream’s eyes for a moment. “Rose, listen –”
Rose, however, was not allowing anyone to comfort her, and appeared to be too long gone into her outburst to be drawn from it. “I mean, what the hell are you doing, getting yourself romantically involved with a giant alien robot?! How does it work?! It’s a bloody ridiculous concept – especially with that obnoxious bastard –”
Starscream let out a deafening, feral snarl that would have terrified the wits out of any ordinary person, but Rose appeared unmoved by it, merely glaring at him with a tightly clenched jaw and her painted fingernails digging into her palms as her hands balled into fists.
“How dare you insult him?!” Alexis shot back angrily, motioning for Starscream to put her down, which he did. “He’s a better person than you’ll ever be –”
Sam decided to try and step in at this point, swiftly stepping in front of Rose and holding his hands out to halt Alexis in her tracks when she looked as if she might throw a punch at her stepsister. “Alexis, calm down – Rose, you too –” he grunted, slinging an arm around Rose’s waist when she tried to get in front of him. “C’mon, let’s just talk like –”
“You stupid girl!” Rose snapped at Alexis from where she was caught by his forearm, “Your mother thinks you’re all Miss Innocence, doesn’t she? Her lovely little girl who’s never had a boyfriend – oh no, Alexis Paxton is too perfect to have a boyfriend – and here you are, doing God-only-knows-what with a God-knows-how-dangerous alien machine!”
Alexis actually shoved Sam out of the way then, and he raised his hands in surrender, shocked by her move. The two reluctant stepsisters squared up to each other, which was a little more effective on Rose’s part due to her height – she was five inches taller than Alexis, after all. However, the petite girl was absolutely seething with rage, and it showed in her stance and features quite clearly how irate she was.
Jade stepped back, looking very upset and with her lower lip quivering dangerously; Mikaela, on the other hand, turned and dashed out of the room, looking back over her shoulder anxiously as she went.
“He may be a machine, but he’s better than any man I’ve ever come across,” Alexis snarled, her face as near to Rose’s as it could get without her standing on tiptoes. “I don’t see you getting to know him before you judge him –”
“Oh yes,” Rose scoffed sarcastically. “I obviously couldn’t tell what a horrible personality he has from the way he treated me when I first –”
“That was a one-off!” she shouted back, her cheeks flushing and her eyes bright with antagonism. “It wasn’t as if you didn’t deserve it, anyway, following me and acting like you care about my mother more than I do –”
Rose’s look was venomous poison as she glared at the shorter girl. “I probably do!” she pointed out, planting her hands on her hips. Her already rosy cheeks remained bright, and now both faux family members were breathing harshly in their anger at each other. “You’re certainly not doing her much good at the moment! Her husband died and you –”
“DON’T YOU THINK I KNOW THAT?!” Alexis screamed, and Mikaela suddenly ran back into the room, pursued by Seraphim, Carlos and Arcee. The two femmes quickly took the arms of one of the girls each – Arcee gently pinched Alexis’s clothes to hold her still, and Seraphim took over from Sam’s previous position with an arm around Rose’s waist. “I think I might be able to notice that my dad is DEAD, don’t you?!” Alexis screeched nonetheless.
“Stop this immediately,” a new voice suddenly thundered.
Rose and Alexis stopped struggling; the others looked up in shock.
Optimus Prime was standing in the doorway, looking at them with a disappointment that was worse than his anger could ever be.
“This is the Autobot base,” he said with a quiet dignity, “A place where our peace can be kept without any threat of the Decepticons disturbing it. Why, then, do I come in here to find this room in a state of warfare – between not only allies, but sisters?”
“She is not my sister,” Alexis spat. “She’s a bitch.”
Rose looked as if she might have clawed at her had Seraphim not got a hold of both of her arms. “Wouldn’t want to be a relative of yours, whore!”
Starscream sprung forward then with a Cybertronian screech of rage, and both Seraphim and Rose gasped in shock as his massive bulk came flying towards them. He looked as if he was truly ready to tear Rose apart; his crimson optics were on fire with fury, and his long fingers were hooked into claws as if he intended to tear them through her fragile human skin.
However, as he was about to snatch her up in one hand and throttle her until her bones broke, an arm slammed into his chest, breaking the force of the spring and sending him off-course – he careered into the wall instead, snarling at the sharp pain of the impact as he slammed back to the ground with a thunderous crash that rattled the teeth of all the humans in the room.
“Starscream!” Alexis gasped, wrenching her collar free of Arcee’s hand and rushing towards him.
Ratchet was crouched over Rose and Seraphim, his arm still extended above them as a shield. Rose’s knees had given way in fear at the unexpected attack and she was hanging loosely in the femme drone’s arms, but she met Ratchet’s eyes when he looked down at her. His face was impassive, but his eyes told a different story.
Why did he do that…?
Optimus stepped forward, casting each person in the room an individual look, including Starscream, who was still reeling on the floor from the head-on collision with the wall. “I am very disappointed in you, Starscream,” he said simply, and the jet glared at him. “You should know better than to try and attack one of the humans.”
“She started it!” Alexis argued with her hand at Starscream’s head, pointing the other accusingly at Rose. “It wasn’t his fault – she provoked him!”
“Tranquilo, Alexis,” Carlos advised worriedly from where he stood beside Seraphim.
“He should have remained above such provocation then, Alexis,” Optimus said sternly to the girl, and she looked as if she might burst into tears. “I am not angry with any of you, but I am saddened by your behaviour – all three of you,” he added to Rose, who looked at her feet. “I never want to see this sort of conduct in this base again. Is that understood?”
Seraphim saluted him smartly. “Yes, sir,” she agreed, echoed by Arcee.
“I agree,” Ratchet murmured, not taking his eyes off Rose, who whispered an affirmative as Seraphim gently loosened her arms around her and let her stand unaided. She swayed for a moment and then put a hand to her face as if she had developed a migraine. “Most improper…” Upon his saying this, her cheeks turned pink beneath her fingers.
Optimus looked at Starscream intently.
Crimson eyes burnt back into his for almost half a minute before finally, he lowered his head to look at Alexis instead. “Understood,” he muttered, and Alexis managed a stiff nod towards the commander.
With one last look at all of them, Optimus turned and left the room, leaving a wake of silent shame behind him.
Alexis opened her mouth at once to verbally abuse Rose but Ratchet spoke over her. “Enough, Alexis.” She shut her mouth again, looking hurt, but her sharp green eyes cut like daggers into Rose’s blue ones.
Rose bit her lip, her eyes filling with tears, before she cast Ratchet one more look and made a break for the door.
“Wow…” Sam breathed, shaking his head. “Now that was a bitch fight.”
“Hell yeah, man,” Carlos murmured.
Once it had slammed closed, Alexis stood up as Starscream clawed himself upright unsteadily. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she said darkly to Ratchet, who looked at her with an odd expression on his face. “You should’ve let Starscream teach her a lesson… you heard what she was saying! She thinks she’s so much better than I am –”
“No, Alexis,” he disagreed, coming over to attend to Starscream. “Letting Starscream harm Rose was not an option. Not only would it have caused Optimus to disengage Starscream from the Autobot force – which would be extremely regretful, but necessary – but the young lady did not deserve to be physically injured in such a manner.”
“She damn well did –”
Jade, who was still slightly pale after seeing Starscream attack Rose, shook her head. “No… Ratchet’s right. She was just frightened. It’s normal to us, remember. We’re all used to it. I don’t blame her for reacting badly – she cares about you, Alexis.”
Alexis snorted disbelievingly as Starscream reluctantly let Ratchet examine his cranium for any damage.
“I am sorry for that, Starscream,” the medic murmured apologetically, to which he replied with a noncommittal grunt. “But I had to stop you.”
As Alexis stood to one side with her hands on her bony hips and an angry expression on her face, Jade had tears in her soft brown eyes. “Starscream… Alexis… I’m so sorry, it was all my fault,” she said quietly and Alexis looked at her with obvious surprise. Starscream watched her with burning eyes from beneath Ratchet’s arm. “She caught me and Skyfire… um… yeah, and it sort of slipped out about both of you. I’m sorry.”
“Well done,” Starscream muttered.
She flushed and the tears became more imminent; Alexis said nothing, merely looked at her feet. “It’s okay,” she whispered a few seconds later.
Carlos, seeing Jade’s obvious distress, moved across the room with his casual lope and put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into an embrace with one tanned, muscular arm. “It’s cool, Jade – it was an accident, no?” he asked gently and she nodded tearfully, sniffing. “Jeez, Starscream, you can be a real a-hole sometimes.”
He glared at the angered robot, who glared right back with double the rancour. “Get used to it,” he snapped at the Spaniard.
The red eyes, however, were not on the boy’s face. They were on his right hand, which was stroking up and down Jade’s back far more intimately than the occasion really called for.
Jade saw his look and received the impression that he was glaring at her for her supposed ineptitude at secret keeping. The young woman flinched away from the ex-Decepticon’s toxic glare and quickly pulled away from Carlos, giving the jet one last repentant look before she ran from the room, swiftly pursued by a worried-looking Seraphim.
Starscream stood up slowly, optics narrowing and fist tightening.
“Where are you going?” Alexis demanded, stepping in front of him quickly as if she could stop him with her tiny, frail body. “Starscream?”
“I will be back in a moment,” he muttered, and she could almost feel the anger that was radiating from him. “There is something that I have to say to Jade first.”