Trials of a Seeker - tfanonkink - Ironhide/Will/Ratchet, part 7

[sorciere]

Original request is here: http://community.livejournal.com/tfanonkink/491.html?thread=792299#t792299 – Seeker!Will, car fetish, Seeker libido, more humour and plot than smut, and my general fail at writing anything above PG-13.

Title as suggested by requester: Trials of a Seeker
Rating: R
Pairing: Eventual Ironhide/Will/Ratchet, as things are looking now.
Summary: Will gets turned into a Seeker. Things go downhill from there.

 

Sarah Lennox had been twenty-two when she'd met the boy she would one day marry. Whatever else William Lennox had been at twenty-one, uniform, rank, and all, he had still been very much a boy in Sarah's mind. Silly, flirty, enjoying his legal drinking age, and very much looking for trouble. He had grown up, of course, as they both had, had grown more serious and more mature as she watched the little stripes and badges on his uniform change and increase in number over the years, but a bit of that boyish manner had always remained and Sarah didn't mind. It had been part of the package she had married, after all, and after a decade of marriage, it had still made her smile... in between counting the many, many grey hairs she'd found herself with after said husband had accepted the position of commander of NEST.

He had asked for her permission before he had accepted, in his own round-about way as he tried to explain as much as he could without getting himself into even more trouble, and while she hadn't objected, she didn't doubt that he would have turned down that position if she had honestly told him she would prefer he refused. That offer had been there every time he had renewed his contract – she was the one at home, she was the one raising their child on her own, she was the one waiting for the knock on the door that might one day come, and however much of a boy he had always been, he had known the realities just fine. It had been close before, too close for comfort sometimes, and she had always known that there was a very real risk that his luck might one day run out.

In the end, there hadn't been a knock on the door but a phone call instead. NEST could move fast when it had to and she had been on a plane less than two hours after getting off the phone with a Robert Epps who had at the time clearly still been in too much of a state of shock to really say much, much less string together a coherent conversation. She had gotten the gist of it – enough to know that her husband was in trouble and it was serious – and she had been told the rest when she had arrived.

Been told the rest and been properly introduced to the most recent arrivals among the alien war machines that her husband had worked with – towering, intimidating beings that she still hadn't quite gotten used to. The first introductions shortly after Qatar and Mission City had been... unsettling and taken a while to properly sink in, but that had been under carefully planned circumstances and with Will right there as he introduced his new partner-in-crime. This... this was something else entirely and not appreciated in the least, worrying about her husband while trying to navigate the chaos that was the NEST base and alien robots that occasionally had far more weapons than processing power. Getting clearance and being introduced to them due to the risk that she might one day find herself in an alien-related emergency and thus had to know who she could trust was very different from being more or less moved to their base overnight, with only Annabelle and a few suitcases for company.

Between the shock of her husband's condition and being dumped in an entirely unfamiliar base in the middle of the Indian Ocean she had done the only thing she could do: drawn on every last inch of mental strength and willpower she possessed, focused on their daughter, and otherwise been there whenever they had most graciously allowed her to see her husband turned alien robot.

And there she went with the sarcasm again. Her mother, Sarah knew, would be appalled to hear it but she couldn't bring herself to care in the least, and certainly not when it came to the ill-mannered Hummer they called a medic. The jury was still out on the rest of the Autobots for the most part – Sam and Mikaela seemed to like Bumblebee, and she supposed that counted in his favour, and she was still a touch annoyed with their leader as well, but she hadn't been around most of them enough to form any sort of well-founded opinion of them.

None of them except Ironhide and even that had only been a rare, few meetings and a lot of stories from Will. Carefully censured, of course, but enough to give her a feel for the being behind the armour and weaponry and enough to make her cautiously trust him, too. Will trusted all of them but she wasn't Will and right now, Ironhide was about as far as she was willing to go on the whole 'trust' issue. He wasn't that different from her husband, when it all came down to it. More serious, more temperamental, more easily annoyed, but not that different. What Will might be, she suspected, twenty years down the line. Twenty years and entirely too many of those dedicated to war.

She stopped her restless pacing in the hangar – back and forth and back and forth and back while she waited for the news that was so very long in coming – and fumbled with the small comm-link that they had given her and which she still wasn't used to at all, the insistent sound it made not helping in the least, either.

Finally she managed and she kept her voice as even as she could when she responded. "Yes?"

"He's on his way." The voice was familiar – not familiar enough to tell much based on his tone of voice but still enough that she relaxed slightly at the sound of it.

"I'm not surprised. I felt his scan again," Sarah said softly. "Thank you, Ironhide."

There was some sound that could with some generosity have been called an affirmative acknowledgement before the comm-link went silent again, but Sarah didn't mind that, either. She was used enough to a husband that was very much not a morning person when he was on leave and never took it personal. Ironhide's little quirks were no different in that regard. A grouchier, bigger, more trigger-happy Will, that was all. Alien, perhaps, but still comfortingly familiar in his own way.

The comm-link returned to its pocket, and Sarah didn't have to wait long for the sound of mechanical footsteps that were slowly becoming familiar. Familiar enough, at least, that she could tell his footsteps from Ironhide or the others' – the detached, analytical part of her knew it was because his legs were very different from any of the other Autobots' and that he was a lot heavier than most of them to boot, so of course it would sound different when he walked, and the rest of her didn't care about it in the least. It was her husband so of course his footsteps were supposed to be familiar. Even if they weren't quite human anymore.

The figure that appeared in the entrance to the hangar was both familiar and utterly alien at once, slowly becoming increasingly normal for her to look at but still a very, very strange sight and still something she doubted she would truly be used to for a long time, much less the knowledge that this was her husband now. She could have met him outside, she knew, but had decided against it. She knew him, knew that there was a lot more of the human self inside that being than their medic and the rest of them probably suspected, and Will had never been big on public displays of anything. She didn't doubt he had joked about it but she knew him well enough to know that the human part, at least, would be beating itself up for a long time for allowing itself to get that... intimate with Ironhide on a runway in full sight of everyone.

His body language seemed to agree with that as she could actually see him relax slightly at the sight of her and then kneel at a cautious distance away in the slightly-awkward way that she didn't doubt was a purely human thing. The alien body wasn't meant to move like that, not with the sort of legs it had, which meant that it was very much a human thing and another bit of evidence that there was more of Will in charge in there than their medic might be willing to admit.

She moved closer with a pale smile – tired, relieved, worried, and ruthlessly squashing that feeling of nagging jealousy that her husband shouldn't be that close to anyone but her – and then she closed the distance between them and sat down gently in the hand that he so carefully offered to her. Still unsure about his own strength, she suspected. Still not entirely convinced that he wouldn't forget himself and hurt her the moment his attention flickered for even a second. She trusted him but it would take a while before Will would trust himself.

"You are going to give me white hair before I'm forty," she said softly. "Never mind grey. At the rate this is going, it's all going to be white."

Will snorted; a very human sound from an utterly alien creature. "At the rate this is going, I'll give myself white hair." He paused and she could see the slight shift in his body in silent, tired defeat before he even spoke. "I'm sorry."

He didn't elaborate and he didn't need to.

The hand under her was oddly warm and comfortable for something made of metal and clearly designed for war, and she let her fingers brush lightly against one of his before she spoke, taking in the still-alien presence of... whatever he was these days.

"Do you regret it?"

The hand underneath her tensed slightly, just as the rest of him did, and while he didn't look human anymore, she could still read at least part of his body language. Some was obviously human, some was alien and took a bit more guessing to get right, and some seemed to transcend little things like size and species.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said quietly.

The truth, that, she could tell that much and there was far more in that sentence than the words let on. He had never been good at talking about things so she had learned to read between the lines from plain old necessity. The lack of an outright 'yes' combined with his actual answer meant that he didn't regret it if she didn't and while she was tempted for a long moment to tell him to stay the hell away from them, to tell them to keep their looks and comments and hands to themselves and damn well leave her husband alone, she also knew she couldn't do that. None of them particularly cared what the actual paperwork said but even then, she knew just fine that it wasn't just her husband anymore, body language alone could tell her that. There were two distinct personalities and only one of them was hers. The other one might have staked a claim, too, or whatever alien robots did when it came to cross-species things, but it didn't change the fact that it wasn't her husband, wasn't human, and didn't share the same ideas with her particular culture – about relationships or anything else.

The fact that it had apparently influenced her husband, too, wasn't something she particularly liked but she also wasn't blind to the fact that the influence went both ways. She sincerely doubted that alien part would have cared the least about her otherwise.

"At least you have good taste," she snorted, momentarily annoyed with the whole damn lot of them again for putting her husband in that situation in the first place, and then she calmed down again and curled up in his hand. "I don't like it but you need it. It's not a lack of self-control or because you don't care about me. It's... programmed. Hard-wired," she said quietly. "It's not something you can really fight."

Another alien thought she still wasn't comfortable with. She had grown up with the concept of free will and the right and responsibility of making her own choices. Something like programming that told you to... to interface or suffer actual, physical consequences and become a genuine danger to your surroundings was a very uncomfortable thought and not something she particularly liked to think about. It brought up entirely too many questions about consent and about whether or not it was even possible to actually give consent when you didn't have a choice in the first place, and those thoughts were unsettling enough without applying them to the very real situation her husband found himself in. How could anyone be sure what was programming and what was choice when it was hard-wired into your being?

Will shifted uneasily – another gesture that reminded her of the human he had once been – and Sarah continued before he had the chance to argue with her. "I know you tried and we all saw what it resulted in. You could fight it but that wouldn't be good for anyone, much less you. I mean it, Will. I like Ironhide. I trust him. Yes, it's... it's a bit of a strange situation, but we'll adapt to that. I'll fight for it if you do, too."

He lifted his other hand to caress her hair with one infinitely gentle metal finger, his voice relieved when he spoke. "I will. I'm still myself, just... taller and uglier. It's pretty for a mech, apparently, but..." he shrugged. "Still ugly to me. We stopped arguing about that a while back, it and me."

And there it was again, the reminder that there were two personalities in there, even if his whole way of being hadn't made that perfectly clear almost from the first moment she saw him. There was less of it now, though. Some was still human, some was still very alien, but a lot of it had blended to some degree to some strange mix of mannerism and behaviour that was both disturbingly familiar and at the same time so very much not.

"Not ugly. 'Different', honey. The word you're looking for is 'different' or 'unique'," Sarah said mildly. "Mind your manners. I don't want Annabelle to pick up that kind of thing."

Annabelle, their daughter, the biggest of the remaining issues that no one seemed to have anything even approaching enough backbone to even look at, much less deal with, and she both felt and saw as Will stayed unnaturally still for a moment.

"She's fine," Sarah said before Will could argue, her voice low and soothing. "She's fine, Will. There's a day care on the main base where she spends most of the day. It's a nice place. Not too many children and they're used to strange working hours. She's fine, Will. We still have to figure out what to tell her and she has figured out that something is wrong but for now, she's just fine."

"Keeping her away from the crazier of the 'Bots?" Will asked quietly. "Good idea. I trust them, but..."

He shrugged carefully, mindful of Sarah still in his hand, and Sarah nodded her agreement. Bumblebee had been careful around her and was used to human teenagers, and Will might trust them but that didn't change the fact that they were massive, alien robots and letting a three-year-old near them was asking for an accident of some sort. As for Will himself, she had gotten every impression that he was unsure about his own new body at best and that even picking her up took most of his attention to stay even remotely calm when faced with the very real risk that he might accidentally harm her. Picking up something as small and fragile and with as little a sense of self-preservation as Annabelle...

No.

Allies or not, friendly or not, kind or not, that was her little girl and Sarah was not letting anything harm her if she could stop it.

Unhappy with the way her thoughts were headed, Sarah shook her head and forced herself to change the topic. Will was there for a reason, after all. He might not even be aware of it but she knew him well enough to be able to tell and she could guess the most probable reason, too.

"So can I expect a search party to show up any moment or did you actually have permission to leave?" she asked dryly. Ironhide hadn't mentioned anything but knowing her husband's reluctance to stay still for any period of time...

His alien features weren't really meant to convey the feeling of sheepishness but he managed surprisingly well, anyway. "Ratchet didn't tell me to stop," he argued half-heartedly. "And he had fixed all the dents."

He paused and the sheepishness faded to be replaced by quiet seriousness. "I had to know. I had to see you. Starscream mentioned some things and I was... reminded of a few things on my own, too. I'm stuck in the middle of a tug-of-war and there isn't a fragging thing I can do about it other than wait and see what boss ends up holding my leash." There wasn't quite bitterness in the last words but the annoyance was more than enough, anyway. "I had to see you. I had to make sure you were at least sort of okay with this."

There was more in that than he said out loud but those lines weren't hard to read between. She wasn't Optimus Prime's, or one of the enemy, or whatever other sides might be involved in it. She might not know a lot about what was happening or how to help but she would do her damn best to be support if he needed it, an ear if he wanted to talk and a shoulder to rest on if he was tired, and he needed that reassurance now.

"You know I am," she agreed, just as quiet and serious. "And the rest?"

Silence. Nothing in his body language she could read and recognise, nothing but silence that stretched on for several long seconds before he touched her hair again gently. "We'll handle it."

Plenty of things left unspoken in those words – we'll handle it through whatever means necessary and don't worry about it, along with a personal favourite she wasn't sure about but strongly suspected to be true, anyway: We don't have a plan but that never stopped us before.

Nothing she could do or say about any of that so instead she just sighed. She'd never liked it much but then, it was nothing she hadn't tried before when he had still been human. The stakes might be higher this time and the focus more on her husband as a person and not just as the guy who happened to be in command, but it was still her husband in a nutshell, impulsiveness and all included.

"Just don't get yourself killed," she finally said softly.

Please. I can't handle it, not again.

She didn't need to speak those words out loud. Will understood just fine and that gentle feel of metal fingers rested lightly on her shoulders in a surprisingly warm touch.

The lack of a verbal response told her everything she needed to know, too.

I can't promise that.

She put her hand on one of his fingers in her own silent response and squeezed slightly. It was different from gripping his hand but it got the point across, anyway, she hoped.

Then try your best.

She got a wry half-smirk in response. An alien one, granted, but still mostly recognisable. Trust me.

Brat, she responded silently with a light smack against his hand before she looked up at him again. Feeling better? she mouthed soundlessly. Spoken words could be overheard. Sure, someone could spot them and make out somehow what she was saying now, too, but the chance was a lot less and this was... personal. Not something she felt like sharing with the rest of NEST, human or alien or otherwise, however much of a right to her husband's life they might think they had.

He nodded almost imperceptibly in response and rested one gentle finger against her back. Yeah. Thank you.

"They'll probably be looking for you soon," Sarah finally said softly. She suspected so, at least, based on what little she knew about their medic and considering that Will had apparently left without actual permission, she couldn't even blame him, either.

Will just offered another wry smile, that gentle caress of a finger against her back never stopping. "Then let them look." I'm not going anywhere.

Sarah knew she should argue, should probably tell him to get his metallic behind back to their medic and get the all-clear just in case, but she didn't. It was her husband, they were hers, both of them, they were there, and for now, that was all she cared about.

The rest of the world could wait. For now, Sarah Lennox was content.

---

It had started with something as simple as a comm-frequency.

(Some might have claimed had started with the satellite images Soundwave had sent back with the clear image of an Autobot Seeker, but Starscream did not agree – it was a Seeker and he would have felt it when it was ready to fly as one; glorious, unbound, and untouchable. He did not need a glorified communications system to find his kin, whatever their most exalted leader might think.)

It had started with a comm-frequency and a simple response. There had been a time when Starscream would not have cared for the well-being of one mere Seeker, much less a pathetic Autobot one, but that time had long since passed.

(Starscream had never been the best of Air Commanders, had never surrendered enough to that web of connections that bound all of Seeker-kin together, but he had been skilled and ruthless and brutal and he had done what he had deemed best for his kind. All, really, that could be asked from any Air Commander. It had not been Starscream's fault that most of his kin was worthless at best.)

The youngling had responded, uncertain and stubborn but not entirely a lost cause. An Autobot, perhaps, but clearly by leash and limitations rather than choice. Starscream, whatever other flaws he had-

(-And Starscream would argue with that; his predecessors had been weak, content, self-centered and arrogant without the perfection to back it up. Starscream was not. What they called weakness was strength, what they called egocentric insanity was command, and for all of their pathetic attempts on his life in the course of the War, Starscream-)

- was still the Air Commander and knew every Seeker that had been born under his wings. This youngling, chained and enslaved by the so-called goodness of the Autobots, was not one he recognised... and that had been enough to make instincts hesitate and bring up long-forgotten programming to handle a situation that was entirely alien to him.

Perhaps it had been a stolen youngling, kept it stasis. Perhaps it had been frozen on a worthless speck of dirt in the outer reaches of a utterly uninspired part of a galaxy, encased in ice as the fleshlings had claimed of it in their own report.

(Starscream did not believe that for a moment. There was justice in their leader's unfortunate imprisonment, as if the universe itself mocked the ground-pounder that thought itself Starscream's superior, but it could not be true for their unknown youngling. Old enough to fly, old enough to claim kin and mate and bonded but still too immature to have been so far away alone. Too young to have been present to fall prey to the planet as their leader had, and Starscream felt a rare moment of anger at whatever worthless kin of his that had let a youngling be taken and sent into Autoscum hands.)

Perhaps it had even been the sparkling of an Autobot Seeker, however unlikely and distasteful Starscream found that idea. Optimus Prime knew the truth, whatever it was, and Starscream intended to find out by whatever means necessary. Where there was one youngling, there could be others, and newly-reawakened programming rose up in anger at the thought of Seeker sparklings in the hands of unworthy ground-pounders.

It had not been an Autobot by choice, at least, Starscream knew that much. The connection was still there, the faint bond that connected any Seeker to its Air Commander. No Autobot Seeker had kept that bond... no Autobot Seeker that had stayed an Autobot, at least. It could be broken, painfully and in a way that left permanent scars on the spark of the Seeker that tore apart that connection. It was unnatural at best, an abomination to most-

(-because what true Seeker would irrevocably abandon their kin, their bonded, their trine-mates; deny a fundamental part of themselves and never feel that closeness again-)

- because once done, it could never quite be repaired again. The connection was still there which meant that the youngling was not yet lost completely. Deluded but... with some hope remaining, perhaps.

Worth, at least, a genuine attempt-

(-and if it had not been, none of Megatron's grand commands and threats of deactivation would have done a thing to make Starscream put actual effort into converting the worthless creature-)

- and further contact had yielded more useful information. Will lived up to his designation; stubborn, annoying, and a pest when he put his processors to it-

(-and there was no chance that the Autoscum had named him so; Starscream knew the kind of designations that Seekers-turned-traitors had claimed in their new lives and while 'Will' was not impressive for a Seeker, it was still a Seeker-name-)

- and still there was... potential. He had listened and more importantly, he had yielded far more than any of the Prime's worthless Seekers would ever have done. Fleshling and Autobot markings meant nothing – the Seeker was already under Starscream's command. It would merely be a matter of making the youngling see that.

It would mean reactivating parts of his own programming that Starscream had deactivated not long after the War began but that would be an acceptable annoyance to tolerate for what little time it would be necessary. Any actual connection to other Seekers was something Starscream had severed not long after pledging loyalty to the Decepticon cause. Anything beyond the absolute minimum of a superficial bond of an Air Commander that Starscream had not been able to dispose of despite his best efforts would be a weakness and a liability in combat; not just to himself and his trine-mates but to all of them. It had been... useful in peace-time, an indulgence and a thrill of power at the sheer command he held over his kin, but it would be useless in war. The base bond that remained no matter what was enough to keep watch over Seeker-kin. Anything past that was a potential risk and a weakness that could be used against all of them. The bonds with his trine-mates were strengthened instead to ensure their mutual survival, and he knew through that weak bond that his kin had followed suit.

(Perhaps, before, there would have been time and the luxury of curiosity and scientific interest to consider what a shift like that would do to them, but it was not before and War offered no such luxuries. Survival mattered above all else and idle curiosity was not something Starscream would have time for again.)

To bring it back to gain the sufficient hold needed on the new Seeker did carry a risk, Starscream knew, but not enough to be a genuine concern. The few Seekers that were left were all-

(-too few; so few that it had never been a concern what such a loss would do to their kind because it had been inconceivable that Seeker-kin would be reduced to what it now was; so few that the network of bonds and connections that had once fed them strength and skills and made them think and act as one entity had now reduced them to shadows of their Air Commander: unstable, mercurial, sadistic, and brutal. Few and becoming ever fewer; no longer genuinely alive, but merely-)

- survivors, used to war and well able to handle it should it come to that and the benefits far outweighed the risks. His programming did feel... peculiar when he brought it online again but that wasn't a concern to Starscream, either. It had been a long time since he had been able to remember how that programming had originally felt, much less actually had it online, so some shifts in his processors were to be expected.

There might even, to Starscream's furious disgust, be bits of ground-pounder coding there for it to clean out first before it could function properly. He had spent entirely too long in the company of their glorious leader and like a virus, the mech had a way of infesting every part of a system. Starscream wouldn't even have put it above their most magnificent leader to have done it on purpose – force his own pathetic limits on Starscream in a vain attempt to prevent the only worthy leader of the Decepticons that remained from claiming his true place.

In the end, though, it was all merely a minor annoyance and easily handled and so Starscream ignored it and focused on the Seeker itself. Megatron listened-

(-of course he listened, as if something sparked as a ground-pounder could possibly understand what Starscream was doing-)

- and heard nothing that Starscream didn't permit him to hear. Will was a Seeker; he would understand what Megatron did not. Starscream could speak of loyalty to the cause, of the glory of Megatron, but in the end any Seeker was loyal to its Air Commander, whatever Megatron's inflated ego might think.

It had started with a comm-frequency, had continued with a simple response and long-dormant coding brought back online... and for a moment, that was where Starscream had almost thought it would have ended, too. It had come close – the words had been purely Autobot drivel and worthless declaration of loyalties to a Prime that cared nothing for their kind, but the bond remained. By choice or by ignorance, the bond remained and so did Starscream's influence. He used that newly-reawakened programming to reach out and strengthen that influence and to his surprise, found more than one bond respond.

One Seeker and one re-emerging memory of the faint, faint bond of the groundling medic – Seeker-kin turned Autoscum when he should have stood by his kin and true faction, a coward at best and guilty of treason at worst, but someone with enough Seeker-programming to enable a bond and one that had, Starscream noticed with no small amount of satisfaction, never formally been broken, either. Lost, forgotten, ignored, but not broken – by choice or ignorance, as with their Seeker, it didn't matter as much as the fact that it was there. Worth, perhaps, the attempt at reclaiming him. There were precious few medics left and even fewer that had been trained by Seekers, and Starscream carefully put aside those half-formed plans for a later time.

He had strengthened that bond and he had used it and when they had spoken again, he had seen the effects as well. The youngling had yielded and Starscream had spoken and drawn on echoes of genuine beliefs he hadn't held in a long time. Memories of what had been and what could have been but still genuine and that had carried through as well. It had been less difficult, too, than Starscream had thought but then, the memories were still there to draw on.

There had been power and ideology and the sheer, raw presence of Megatron in his prime-

(-not a Seeker, never a Seeker, but with wings and that was more that Optimus Prime could ever claim-)

- and while the reality was gone, the echoes of it remained. He was trapped at Megatron's side now but even as he plotted to dispose of his leader, he never regretted his choice. Then, as now, it was about survival, always survival; the one duty to Seeker-kin above all else. Neutrality would have seen them crushed between opposing armies and Optimus Prime had been the weaker foe.

(The merciful one, the forgiving one, should they end up on the loser's side.)

Starscream craved power, craved the satisfaction of an enemy brought ruthlessly to its knees, but he was the Air Commander and he had to consider all eventualities. Kin mattered, however worthless it might be. Kin mattered above all. The rest, Starscream knew, was irrelevant and so there was never really a choice.

He had spoken, Will had listened, and underneath it all, in the echoes of their bond, Starscream felt the presence of mates as well. Ground-pounders and Autobots-

(-because what else did that worthless faction have-)

- but it did not change the fact that they were mates.

A true groundling mate to a Seeker would follow, he offered through their bond even as he spoke the words out loud, a longer, more detailed explanation to distract his youngling, stress the importance of his words, and make their Prime remember to fear.

If they were true mates, if Will was a true Seeker, then Starscream could decimate their worthless faction through nothing more than reclaiming the kin that was properly his. Claim the Seeker and the mates would follow. If they were true to their mate, they would follow.

They would follow, they would be claimed, and Starscream had hid the victorious smirk he had felt not long after as the bond flared distantly under his focus and a panicked distress signal had followed suit. The youngling had reached out-

(-and a youngling it was, because he remembered that feeling, the panic of someone young and inexperienced denied its wings for the first time-)

- and with it came the knowledge of the mate it had bonded with in the moment of blind panic before the connection fell silent again and Starscream's eyes glowed brighter in satisfaction.

The weapons specialist, the two-legged cannon with far more ammunition than sense; stubborn and simple, but also violent and strong. A proper mate, if one had to deign to claim one among the grounders. He had contacted them to mock them and taunt, to remind the Prime that there was someone out there who kept an eye on that young Seeker and would tolerate no more abuse of him, and most of all to leave a lasting impression on that young Seeker that had instinctively reached out in a moment of panic. Starscream's words would filter back to him and remind him just where his true loyalty should be. A more time-consuming approach than Starscream might have liked but worth it all the same.

Ironhide was firmly claimed and the rest would follow. Ironhide and... the whisper of an undercurrent that was almost familiar and annoying in a way that made Starscream's optics narrow before he dug deeper into that bond. Strangely familiar and... Seeker-ish. Seeker-ish but not a Seeker – the medic, then.

Trying to replace what you once had, Hatchet? Starscream hissed over the faint bond with the medic. The Hatchet wouldn't hear it, what was left of his programming was too weak for that, but it satisfied some fundamental bit of programming in Starscream that demanded retribution for the betrayal of their own.

(Stronger than it had been before, stronger than it had even been since not long after he had severed all but the most basic of their connections as they had joined in the war, but Starscream did not notice that. He had responded before, demanded retribution before, but that had been a matter of principle, a demand for respect, and not something that came from the very foundation of his programming. This, he did not notice, either. He had remembered once what the world had felt like before, around kin and mates and with instincts that did not need to be reined in to avoid the displeasure of their leader, but that had been a long time ago and Starscream had not lingered on what had once been.)

Retribution was needed and then... perhaps not. The bond with the medic remained and the ground-pounder was apparently a mate to their young, new Seeker, and if Will came under Starscream's domain, so would the medic.

Forgiveness could, perhaps, be earned. The bond remained, after all, and Starscream held command over any creature in Seeker-domain. The Hatchet could be influenced and made to see sense, and Starscream would deny the Autobots their prized medic and claim it for himself in one swift move. Worth, perhaps, some lenience with a creature that obviously had not known better.

The weapons specialist, the medic, and something else, faint and barely there at all, but unmistakeably a bond of some kind. Not something Starscream could identify, though, and so he pushed that thought aside for the moment, too. If it mattered, he would learn. If it was a proper mate, Starscream would find out its identity, it was only a matter of time. If not, it would not matter, anyway.

The newly reawakened programming still felt strangely foreign to his mind at times as it settled into places in his processors that had been occupied by more important matters, but Starscream ignored this passing annoyance. It was useful programming, after all. There had been sound reasons for restricting it when they had first allied themselves with Megatron and now there were just as sound reasons for permitting it back, if at least for a brief while.

When he bonded with his trine-mates again, that change would be carried on to them as well, but that, too, was an acceptable annoyance. They were strong-

(-almost the best, almost his equals, or he would not have tolerated them-)

- and they would adapt as they always had. It would weaken them for a time, perhaps, leave them open to outside influences, but their supremacy was unchallenged on this pathetic speck of dirt and so the benefits outweighed the risks. He needed that programming for now and to deactivate it before their new Seeker was truly theirs was not an acceptable option.

He would tolerate it for a while, he would claim their Seeker, and he would decimate the Autobot forces in the process. Not for the cause or for Megatron, but for kin. And perhaps, in his darkest, most brutal fantasies, it would gain him the advantage needed to dispose of their useless Lord and claim the Decepticon throne and the glorious, new future he would lead them to.

Perhaps. For now, he would tolerate and endure and play his games as he claimed Will for his own right under Megatron's impatient glare.

(Skywarp and Thundercracker, educated through aeons around their trine leader, would know better than to question Starscream's words. They would adapt as their Air Commander had, and they, too, would carry on that coding, and in the end the change would spread from one trine to the next as they avoided their ever-mercurial and notoriously busy Air Commander and went to his trine-mates instead as they always had when their reports or orders or requests it did not require Starscream's direct attention.

Perhaps someone from before, before the War and Megatron and the countless losses would have been able to tell that it was stronger than it once had been and remember that even the Air Commander was not invulnerable, that any bond went both ways and that sometimes the most dangerous viruses would sneak past because the carrier looked harmless.

But there was no one left to remember and if there had been, they would, perhaps, have let it run its course regardless because they would also remember that Seekers had never been meant for what they were now: few and isolated where they had once been numerous and an entity as a breed in their own right. They would know the consequences of suppressing their programming to that extent and they would see the last, frantic warning signs for what they were and not merely the Seekers' notorious temper and impatience that those signs had long since been dismissed as.

But there was no one left and unseen, unnoticed, one small bit of coding after another was changed and repaired as needed and came back online to be dismissed by Starscream as nothing more than an annoyance to become used to in time.

A Seeker would have noticed.

But Starscream, with programming suppressed and dismissed and outright rewritten as needed, had long since ceased to be a true one of the kind.)

---

There had been a lot of details about leadership that Robert Epps had never considered until he had ended up in charge of NEST himself. He was intimately familiar with the paperwork, of course – Will Lennox had been notoriously good at delegating that sort of thing to his unfortunate second-in-command – but that had been then and being handed command of NEST had quickly taught him that there had been a lot of other stuff he hadn't really paid attention to before. The fact that he had taken over in the middle of a clusterslag of a situation hadn't helped at all, either. By the end of the first week, he had been sleep-deprived, buried in paperwork and various appointments, and not entirely sure what day of the week it had even been. Then he'd actually slept for the better part of a day, on a couch in one of the Autobots' hangars and well away from stupid people who might bother him, and things had looked marginally more approachable... but honestly not much.

Dealing with liaisons, politicians, paper-pushers, and whatever other disgusting things that appeared when Epps poked the numerous connections NEST had to just as many groups and people and countries and organisations was not something he had enjoyed as second-in-command of their little unit, and it wasn't until he got the actual brunt of their attention that he realised just how much of that crap their former commander had had to deal with and that maybe, just maybe, delegating all that paperwork hadn't all been laziness, even if Epps would deny that one to his dying day if asked.

He wasn't above taking pointers from more experienced people, though, even if Lennox probably didn't even know he had taught him, and so Epps had done the only reasonable thing and found himself an equally unfortunate underling-slash-minion to take the worst of the administrative stress from him as well.

That had taken care of the worst of the paperwork but still left him with the politicians and assorted other pests and it was nothing short of a miracle that he hadn't snapped at any of the idiots yet. Decepticons didn't kill themselves and inch-thick reports explaining 'budget cuts' and 'right-sizing' wasn't going to do a whole lot of good against thirty-something feet of psychotic, malevolent, red-eyed destruction, either.

The sympathetic look he had gotten in return when he had shared that particular rant with Optimus Prime had told him entirely too clearly that it hadn't been the first time they'd had that argument with the political pukes and that it damn well wouldn't be the last one, either.

It had started with paperwork, it had continued with Pit-spawned politicians, and it had all gone downhill from there. He had demanded – okay, possibly begged for, but Robert Epps was never going to admit that out loud to anyone – information and when he had finally gotten it, it hadn't taken him long to wish he could just un-read the whole damn thing again. In any other situation it might have been interesting – it probably wouldn't have mattered much in combat since Seekers were Seekers and best left to mechs like Sideswipe and Ironhide to deal with – but it would still have been interesting in the way that most things about their allies tended to be, for the sole reason that it was so completely alien that they couldn't have made up the stuff if they'd wanted to.

In any other situation it might have been interesting but not now, not when everything he read about Seekers in general and the current situation in specific got filtered through the knowledge that it wasn't some random flying Decepticon they were talking about but a former human that Epps considered a damn good friend. He had gone through the whole spectrum of emotions as he had read through the stack of material he had been given, from disbelief to anger to fear and grief and morbid amusement, and finally he had caved, waited until their human-turned-Seeker seemed to have a calm day and then gone to Ratchet for some answers that weren't in the shape of dry, scientific language that told him nothing beyond the fact that Seekers were some seriously messed-up fraggers and that however alien the Autobots might be sometimes, they had nothing on the flying fraggers that had always been so much of a pain to them in combat.

He had found Ratchet in a decent enough mood – suspiciously so, if Epps paused to think about it, which probably explained his willingness to go in detail to such a degree, and either the medic was being a sadist or it was his way of reminding Epps of just what they were dealing with and either way, he really didn't care – and he had left again an hour later with entirely too much information to file away and the vaguely twitchy, bemused thought that someone had really had it out for William Lennox.

The mechs probably disagreed with that part of it, Epps figured, but Will had been human and would have agreed. Not that Epps got a lot of chances to ask but really, in that case he didn't have to.

'Maybe', Epps had theorised in a quickly scribbled message through Will's personal comm-frequency in between the stupid meetings and paperwork that bred like rabbits on speed, 'you really pissed off someone in a past life.'

'Says the guy who got stuck with Sideswipe. What'd you do, steal candy from a bunch of nuns?', Will had sent back via email and Epps could almost hear the snort in the words. Winged bundle of issues or not, at least some part of Will was obviously still in there and Robert Epps could work with that.

Sarah Lennox seemed to agree with him and that was surprisingly comforting to know, too – and not just, Epps realised, because of the whole 'married' issue. Sarah Lennox was a good judge of character. Sarah Lennox had always been a good judge of character and for all that her husband was now stuck as something big and winged and ugly and alien, she was still willing to fight for him and however stubborn she might be – and experience had taught Robert Epps plenty about that particular side of her – she wouldn't have been willing to do that if there hadn't been at least a small part of him worth fighting for.

A human part, Epps knew. Not the Seeker part that would as soon step on them as give them the time of day, but a human part. The part, Epps figured, that was still Will somewhere in the mess of programming. The part that gave their Seeker – or what little he'd seen of it, which hadn't been a whole damn lot – the human traits that Epps wasn't even sure the Seeker itself noticed. Enough to keep him from looking entirely 'Con, at least, and that made Epps sleep a lot better at night. Denial helped, too. He couldn't exactly delete a memory like the 'Bots could but that wasn't about to stop him from doing everything he could not to think about Will's little training session with Sideswipe that Epps had been able to imagine in all too vivid details from what little he had heard from the mechs. Denial worked beautifully there and if denial was to credit for not having the image of one of Ironhide's cannon's trained straight on Will's spark running through his head whenever he thought too much about the situation, then denial was all good with him. He had enough to worry about without adding the cold dread of Will going 'Con on them to the list.

Not that Epps thought he would go along with it voluntarily for a moment but if even half the stuff Ratchet had shared about Seekers had been true, then consent wasn't a requirement when it came to a whole lot of things.

Possibly, Robert Epps was a teeny, tiny bit sleep deprived still but he wasn't about to admit it and his NEST team knew better than to ask and he could fragging well sleep when he was dead. At the rate things were going, that was the only sleep he'd get, too.

"Commander?" Optimus Prime's voice, low and calm, cut through the chaotic mess of thoughts that rambled about in his head and however many times he'd heard the mech speak before, it was different somehow when you were the one in charge of the human side, when you were the one who made the decisions and the only humans above you were somewhere in the States, playing politics while people died. Equals, Epps had finally realised, or as close as it could be. Optimus Prime respected his troops, respected the humans who went up against the 'Cons at the Bots' side, but that didn't change the fact that there was a lot of difference between being second-in-command and being the one in charge. Never true equals, because there was a whole ton of issues that came with being Prime that Epps couldn't even begin to make sense of – and the religious aspect was probably the least of it – but... somewhat equals, at least.

Enough that it still unnerved him and made him wonder how long it had taken his former boss to get used to it and how long it would take before Optimus Prime realised that Epps had no clue what he was doing and lost patience with him.

Ratchet had told Epps to sleep more. Possibly, he conceded, the medic had a point. At least he was pretty sure that he hadn't been rambling like that to himself before the whole world had gone FUBAR on them.

'Cons, Seekers, plans. Right.

Their Prime's voice still in the back of his mind, he forced his thoughts back into somewhat-focus and back on track again... for all of the good that would do him.

Robert Epps understood military strategy but Decepticons had never worked on human logic much.

"They're giving us every chance to stop them. They're asking us to stop them. We all know Screamer isn't stable but Big and Ugly? I don't like him, Prime, and he's got some damn alternative approaches to handling troop morale, but he's not stupid. Arrogant, sadistic, and willing to throw away lives on a whim but not stupid. He's smarter than that."

Had to be, at least, to go up against Optimus Prime and hold his own... but then, going up against Optimus Prime in the first place wasn't exactly a sign of awe-inspiring intelligence to begin with. Competent, though, on his own merits, Epps knew that much even if he didn't like to admit it. Megatron might be a grade-A asshole but that didn't mean he was stupid in the least and expecting him to be could get them all killed.

"It gives him the psychological advantage," Optimus Prime responded and Epps suspected it wasn't all his own tiredness that made their Prime's voice sound a little weary as well. "In this case, it may very well be worth surrendering part of the element of surprise."

He paused for a moment and it was just long enough for Epps to hear the dreaded catch-all explanation in his head even as the mech spoke it. "He is targeting a Seeker. Common sense and known military strategies do not always serve their purpose in those cases."

Right, Epps mentally groaned, he's a Seeker, but the mech continued before any of those comments could be voiced out loud.

"The... display is aimed at Will," Optimus Prime said carefully. "It would have had little effect on a normal mech but for a Seeker, the rules are different. What Megatron does – what Starscream does, in all honesty, as he is undoubtedly a strong force behind this – is a reminder of the attraction the Decepticon cause holds for Seekers. Even Autobot Seekers had... abrasive personalities for the most part. Will, whatever he might have been before, carries around part of those same traits now. They may show to varying degrees and may at times not even show at all but they remain there all the same. Starscream is making a point and regretfully, William's new personality traits will not allow him to ignore it."

Programming. Right.

Epps resisted the urge to rub his face tiredly. Alien robots had taken a while to get used to but the 'Bots had always made an effort to pick up some human traits. Even Sideswipe had adapted eventually. Not very well and Epps knew that, too, but enough that even his attitude on his bad days felt more like a human asshole with way too big of an ego than it felt like an alien. They were alien but acted surprisingly human for the most part. Will... really, really hadn't. Epps hadn't been around him that much but it had still been enough to make it very, very clear that there were two personalities in there and the second one was pretty damn alien. The whole 'programming' thing didn't help on that in the least. Epps liked to believe in personal choice and free will and whatever else had been hammered into his head over the years. Something like Will's programming that ran haywire if he didn't get laid and which was apparently wired to pay attention to Starscream of all people... Epps wasn't too proud to admit that the thought was more than just a bit freaky and that if their new Seeker-human decided to go batshit insane from it, he really couldn't blame them, either. Or blame Will, at least. The Seeker probably didn't think it was a problem.

There was probably some interesting theories to make about programming and the nature or nurture slag he'd put up with from an ex-girlfriend in his teenage years, but NEST undoubtedly had smarter men than grunts working on that already and Epps' main concern was more aimed at the human-mech in question than the theories behind it.

"They know we can stop them," Epps finally repeated as he forced himself to start over and try to get somewhat of a grip on the special brand of logic that Seekers apparently used.

"They do," Optimus agreed, and not for the first time Epps mentally thanked whatever deity might be listening that they had a patient Prime. "Their target, whichever one they may decide on, is secondary, and yes, they are well aware that we will strike against them the moment the location they choose becomes clear. The display of power and decisiveness is the purpose of their attack." The large mech paused and Epps just knew he wouldn't like what followed. "I suppose, to a Seeker, it could be seen as a display of courtship towards Will."

I hate being right.

There were a lot of things Epps could have said to that particular little bit of explanation but in the end he settled for the first thing his brain could think of: "He's married."

"Seekers," Optimus Prime responded dryly, "are somewhat confused by the concept of 'monogamy'."

Trines, Epps realised, and wouldn't that just bring a whole 'nother level of wrong to the situation the next time NEST went up against Starscream and the rest of the flying fraggers? Ratchet had mentioned something similar, in the written briefing and the lecture afterwards, but that had been Ratchet and he wasn't exactly known for putting things in easy-to-understand packages when it came to medical stuff. That little bit of information had been there, it just hadn't clicked until Optimus Prime's dry comment.

Seekers were confused by monogamy, and even if Starscream hadn't been likely to at the very least ignore the fact that Will still had a human wife who refused to let him leave for her own good – and at worst try to kill her, even if Epps would do everything in his power to keep Sarah Lennox safe – it still wouldn't have meant a damn thing if he had accepted her, because Seekers didn't do monogamy and the fact that Will already had a mate wasn't going to stop a determined Seeker.

Or Ironhide, apparently, but that mental image was something Epps could have lived just fine with never, ever crossing his mind again. The mech was right up there with Prime on the list of beings Epps would want to have at his back in battle, and target practice with him never got old, but that didn't exactly mean that Epps was about to... ask him out for Energon and a grope or whatever alien robots did for that sort of thing.

Even if his wife wouldn't have killed him for those kind of ideas.

Sarah Lennox, Epps noticed, had done nothing of that sort but that just reinforced his long-standing belief that nobody who was entirely sane could stay married to William Lennox. He wasn't sure if it had been Will-the-human or whatever kind of Seeker programming the guy now had that had gone after Tall, Dark, and Not Too Handsome, either, and honestly, he could live a happy life never knowing.

Determined to get off of that particular train of thought before it headed any further into too-much-information-ville, he forced his attention back on the situation at hand with less certainty than he would have liked – sleep, sleep was good, he should catch up on that one of these days – and then pursed his lips in vague distaste as he silently demanded answers of the screen in front of him that it stubbornly refused to give.

"I wish to hell I could help but all we know about Seekers is to get out of the way and let Ironhide and Sideswipe have their go at the slaggers. If you have a plan, sir, I'm all ears."

And just like that he stepped down for the moment and let Optimus Prime take over – it wasn't a situation he had experience with, not a situation he had any idea of how to handle, and he wasn't going to risk the lives of any of his men because his ego demanded he got a say about something he didn't have a clue about. Working for NEST and fighting the 'Cons had a way of keeping you humble. Somewhat equals or not, he'd seen Will step back often enough when whatever they were handling got too weird. He had still been involved, still listened and learned and offered suggestions, but he had also made it very clear that he was in over his head and not afraid to admit it. It had become less common over the years as they had learned more about their new allies and enemies, sure, but he'd still done it occasionally. A lot of common sense for an officer to show but then, NEST had never been normal and Epps was starting to realise that he would have to get used to the weird ways of doing stuff sooner rather than later.

Besides, whatever Will might have been before, however much of the human might be left, he was still a Cybertronian now and that put him solely under Optimus Prime's jurisdiction. The 'Bots might take orders from select humans but when it came down to it, Optimus Prime's word was law.

"We have no choice but to move to stop them," the large mech finally responded as the view on the screen changed at some silent command to bring up the map of potential targets. "The only question that remains is how to handle the matter of our Seeker."

It was silent for a moment as he seemed to consider the situation and then he made a soft sound that Epps recognised as a sigh. "Ratchet reminded me of a human expression during a... previous situation we found ourselves in with regards to William. 'Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.'. To bring him with us would give Megatron and Starscream what they wish and make him a target. To let him remain here..."

"... Would drive him crazy," Epps finished quietly. "Will's not going to sit out a battle if he can fight, we both know that. Not if his people are out there in the line of fire. None of us would."

"All of NEST has shown commendable loyalty," Optimus Prime remarked. "I agree with the assessment. To let him remain here would be unwise at best and leave him open for Starscream's manipulations. Opposing factions or not, Starscream, as the Air Commander, still has a hold on him."

Another of those things that Epps really didn't want to think about but couldn't afford to ignore, either. "How bad?" he finally asked.

"We don't know." Prime's admission was quiet and serious and told Epps far more about how bad the situation was than he ever wanted to know. "Autobot Seekers all went through great pain to distance themselves from their Decepticon kin. Starscream had little, if any, influence left with them. William's responses to Starscream up until now have shown that he is more open to that influence than previous Autobot Seekers have been but how much is something I doubt even he is aware of. The dominant personality at the time would have quite a lot to say in regards to their response to him, I suspect." He paused for a moment. "If nothing else, he will at least be unable to raise a weapon against Ironhide with the intention to offline or injure now. Such is the nature of that kind of bond."

Epps wondered for a moment if that was why Will had done it – it had probably had at least something to say about it – but he doubted that had been all there had been to it, and then he pushed those thoughts away before he could linger for too long on them. "Why him? He's a Seeker, sure, but he's-"

"-Just one mech?" Optimus finished quietly. "He is. It is a matter of principle for Megatron. He is a Seeker and as such he should be at Megatron's side in the war. He who commands the Seekers commands the skies. There are other Cybertronians that can fly but none as capable as the Seekers. To have even one Autobot Seeker free of his rule would be a potential weakness and a challenge he can not afford to leave alone. The few Seekers at our side were always targets, far more so than all but the most dangerous of the ground-bound mechs. That he listens to Starscream to even a small degree only offers further encouragement."

Not the sort of thing Epps wanted to hear, really not the sort of thing he wanted to consider, but he didn't have much of a choice and so he just closed his eyes briefly, wearily before returning his attention to their Prime. All the bits of the puzzle were there. It was just a matter of completing the image he didn't want to acknowledge out loud.

"We're going to lose him." Not a question and not something the mech needed to respond to, either. "One way or another, we're going to lose him. Either he's going to try and run off and Ironhide will take him down, or the goddamn 'Cons are going to shoot him out of the sky when he tells them to go frag themselves."

Optimus Prime nodded slightly. "Yes."

Fuck.

This time, Epps didn't try to resist that urge to rub his face tiredly and try to clear his thoughts a little but it didn't help, the same nasty words and images going through his mind over and over and over again. Maybe that was why his mouth got started before he could stop it or maybe it was just the all-together amazing combination of fatigue and sleep deprivation and paperwork, and oddly he found that he couldn't bring himself to care in the least.

"Why?" he demanded. "You're the Prime, you have the Matrix, you know... whatever the hell is out there, Primus or the Unmaker or whatever the hell you call it. That thing brought Will back, with blue optics and Autobot insignias and the whole damn package, and it did it just so he could go right ahead and get himself killed again."

He was probably breaking half a dozen unwritten rules and likely just as many written ones but right now he didn't care – it was Optimus, he respected Optimus, would go right up and kick open the gates of Hell at Optimus' side if that was what it came to, but it didn't change the fact that right now Epps was tired and angry and confused and Optimus Prime was a convenient target.

Judging by their Prime's calm, measured reaction, he probably knew it, too.

"I would like to think there is a reason," he said, and while the voice was calm it also left no doubts at all that that was about as far as he was willing to tolerate their human commander's remarks, and Epps knew that, too. He forced himself to calm down again and nod briefly in a silent half-acknowledgement, half-apology, and Optimus waited for another few seconds before he continued. "I would like to think there is a reason but we may never know it. I have wondered, too."

And come to think of it, he probably had. Surprisingly, that thought helped a little, and Epps let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

"So now what?"

Another pause and if it had been Ratchet instead of Optimus Prime, Epps was sure he would have felt that tell-tale feeling of a scan sweeping over him. As it was, Optimus knew him too well to really need it.

"Now, you rest. We need you clear-headed, commander, and you are far from it." Gentle amusement, a verbal tap on the shoulder of a particularly stubborn subordinate, and Epps just offered a tired smile.

"I'd argue but I know I look like crap." For a moment he almost did argue, anyway, because there were things to be done, people to meet, reports to write, politicians to glare at, but in the end he didn't bother. Optimus Prime could have made it an order but respect meant that he hadn't. It had been a suggestion, from one concerned comrade-in-arms to another, and it helped soothe the part of Epps that was still worrying itself into an early grave at the thought of being top dog of NEST. "Thank you, sir."

Optimus Prime nodded slightly, regally, and then Epps made his way out of the office, already mentally halfway in bed. He did have things to do, way too many, but it didn't really matter now. They had a war to fight and a battle approaching and he would be of no use to anyone right now.

He should find his own quarters, do it the proper way, but his feet moved of their own accord and he found himself in a familiar Autobot hangar, empty of any inhabitants but with a familiar couch in one human-sized corner. Old, worn, comfy, and Ratchet had left standing orders that waking up their napping new human commander when he finally did sleep was grounds for a massive chewing out to make even Sideswipe pay attention.

He should find his own quarters, his own bed, but the hangar was familiar and empty and safe, and he could always go find his bed later. Rest. Rest was good.

Decision made, Epps flopped down on the couch.

He would wake up again ten hours later, properly rested for the first time in weeks and somewhat ready to face the world again, but for now Robert Epps slept.

---

It was not yet sunrise when the first of what would be a series of alerts was issued on Diego Garcia. To be painfully honest, it wasn't something Ironhide could bring himself to care about much. He would have slagged any rookie who had dared to say the same but Ironhide liked to think that age and experience came with some advantages, and knowing when not to get worked up about a low-level alert was one of them.

He hadn't been into deep recharge when it had sounded and so it hadn't taken much more than a few seconds to bring himself up to speed on the situation – one of the outermost perimeter warnings, three objects approaching in close formation, one thousand miles away and heading directly for the NEST base at close to Mach three.

The Command Trine, of course - he knew as much from experience before that bit of information was officially confirmed - and the fraggers being what they were, it could mean any one of a number of things. The 'Cons knew where their outer perimeter was and if it ended up being nothing more than a brief excursion into enemy air space to trigger an alert or two and drag people out of recharge for harassment's sake, then it wouldn't be the first time.

The fact that they kept up that speed and direction indicated that it might be something else, though - or a very determined attempt at being even more of a pest than usual - and so Ironhide bit back some choice comments about Seekers and resigned himself to a morning spent watching out for the pest of a trine and hoping that at least one of them would make enough of a miscalculation to get within range of their air defences. He doubted it would ever happen, of course - Starscream would not have survived for as long as he had if he wasn't good at what he did, and neither would his trine-mates if they hadn't been able to keep up - but still, the hope was there.

He was up and moving in the command centre by the time the Command Trine hit the five-hundred-mile perimeter and the alert went up a level, but by then everyone important was already aware of the situation. Optimus still treated every one of those alerts with the seriousness that they admittedly deserved and had developed the ability to come out of deep recharge both coherent and functioning long before Ironhide had ever met him for the first time. Arcee had been in charge of what the humans called the 'graveyard shift' and Ratchet, like Ironhide, had long since stopped going into deep recharge unless the situation warranted it. Ironhide was too used to being on the frontlines to be comfortable with deep recharge anymore and Ratchet, he knew, had become used to being brought out of recharge for the simple reason that emergencies couldn't wait until it was more convenient for the medics and hospitals involved. It had been a long time since it had been an issue, a long time since there had been enough Cybertronians left to need more than a few medics, much less multiple hospitals worth of them, but old habits died hard and so did those random bits of programming that your processors would create out of pure necessity.

Their new Seeker was still in recharge but then, Ironhide would have been surprised if he hadn't been. It took a while to adapt to a spark-merge, especially when it happened for the first time. Ironhide had experience and enough survival instincts to keep from letting it show. Will with his lack of experience had no such luck and would be stuck with dealing with it in the traditional ways – time and recharge. Not being given that chance to deal with it would be a pain for everyone involved and experience had taught Ironhide that, too... him, and undoubtedly Ratchet as well, and if their medic hadn't taken steps to ensure Will a proper recharge, then Ironhide would have to wonder about said medic's mental state.

I used medical overrides on the lower-level alerts. He will be brought out of it if they trigger the three-hundred-mile perimeter warning, Ratchet confirmed through their bond. I'm touched by your confidence. I suppose your hours spent in the infirmary haven't been a complete waste.

Ironhide hadn't even been aware that he had transmitted that to anyone and he bit back a sigh as he strengthened those shields around their bond again.

Rattled processors, spark still settling, I know. I'll keep it in mind, he finally said in a half-apology. It did take a while to adapt to a spark-merge, even as old and experienced as he was... even if he had preferred to forget that.

His sensors flared before Ratchet could answer and drew both of their attentions to the entrance of the hangar, knowing perfectly well what they would see.

The command centre always had an air of barely-contained chaos about it, even when they weren't keeping an eye on hostile forces on an intercept course, but it still settled down between one second and the next at the familiar sound of Optimus Prime's approach. The cacophony died completely for a moment and when the silence was broken again, it was with the low sound of voices and a far more orderly feel to the constant hum of background noise.

A Prime-thing or a leader-thing, Ironhide wasn't sure. He hadn't been able to replicate the effect without raising his voice, at least. The same thing, perhaps, that let them all be aware of his presence in the way that they never were with any other mechs they weren't bonded with. The same thing that could make even Decepticons back down at the sound of his voice if he willed it.

Optimus Prime, unaware of those particular thoughts, took stock of the situation with a glance and then focused on Arcee.

"Status?"

"They changed their course marginally nine hundred miles out but their speed remains steady," Arcee responded. "We currently estimate that their closest approach will put them just outside the range of our air defences in fourteen Earth minutes. With the estimated point of near-contact as well as their speed and consistent approach, we doubt it's just another hit-and-run harassment from them, sir. They want something."

In any other situation, Ironhide would have prepared for an attack but in this case he still had his doubts and he wasn't surprised to hear his Prime echo those thoughts out loud.

"A statement, perhaps," Optimus mused. "They know our air defences and they came out second-best the last time they challenged them. Whatever else Starscream might be, stupid or willing to put himself into harm's way for little gain was never on the list. Ratchet?"

He didn't need to elaborate. Ironhide had no doubts about the nature of the question and neither, apparently, did Ratchet, because while a brief pause followed, it felt like hesitation more than confusion to Ironhide.

"It may be a test," Ratchet said. "Their course will put them outside range of our air defences but it might be close enough to make Starscream's connection with Will react. He is their Air Commander."

"Can it be broken?"

"He's too young and they may not consent to it, Optimus. It's a fairly invasive procedure and not without side-effects. Most Autobot Seekers had it done. You knew most of them well. Some barely noticed. Some had... permanent changes."

Ratchet didn't offer any details but their Prime seemed to know what he was referring to as he frowned. Ironhide didn't ask. It wasn't relevant for the moment and if it ever turned out to be, he would ask then instead. It wasn't like he had paid that much attention to the Autobot Seekers to begin with. They had been interesting to look at, as all Seekers were, attractive for their build and abilities, but for the most part not beings he had wanted to spend any more time around than he had to. They might have been Autobot by choice but that didn't mean they had lost any of the arrogance and superior attitude that was so common with the 'Cons and which had always made Ironhide itch to put a hole through their spark when he had been unfortunate enough to have to listen to them.

The three-hundred-mile alert interrupted them, along with the feeling of dawning, reluctant awareness from Will that Ironhide felt through their new, spark-merged bond. He offered a brief update in return before he focused on his surroundings again, late enough to miss the first part of his Prime's decision but familiar enough with him to know the order by spark, anyway.

"-is doubtful this is a genuine attack but we should nonetheless be prepared for every eventuality."

The order was passed on through the proper channels and Ironhide was familiar enough with that kind of situation to know that it would only be a matter of minutes before his own comm-frequencies that connected him with their human troops would flare to life as well. In the unlikely event that it was an attack, air defences would be their main defence and there would be very little for ground-based troops to do but still, it was the principle of it. Megatron was no fool and very capable of thinking up devastating, new attacks, painful experience had taught them that. If nothing else, those alerts kept the base on their toes – not that they truly needed it much, in a war like the one they were currently fighting.

Unlike Will, Ironhide had enough experience and focus to use the strange sort of two-layer perception that came with a spark-merge and he had no qualms about using it now to follow his partner as he came out of recharge and his processors were brought up to proper speed again. The former human did seem to handle everything far better after the conversation with his mate-wife that Ironhide had carefully blocked to offer them at least that bit of privacy but still, Ironhide wasn't about to risk anything. Not with Starscream out there, clearly hunting for something.

The two-hundred-mile alert was triggered at roughly the same time as the NEST team's comm-frequencies started to get active and the low hum of activity in the command centre grew increasingly loud and chaotic again, and not long after Ironhide felt Will move out of his own quarters and towards the main hangar – not entirely back to normal again but coping in his own way, and Ironhide could deal with that. The mercurial moods would take time to get used to but he didn't doubt he would have plenty of future experience to assist him with that. For all that their new Seeker had calmed down, he was still nowhere near level-headed again.

The same two-hundred-mile alert was triggered amidst a growing sound of activity and was followed shortly after by two very clear displays of Starscream's influence that all of them could have done without.

A later examination of the readings would reveal that the Command Trine was one hundred and ninety-four miles from Diego Garcia when Ironhide felt Will freeze in the kind of barely-restrained panic that was becoming uncomfortably familiar to all of them... and that said trine was only three miles closer when a flicker of something from the bond with Ratchet was all the warning that Ironhide got before the medic abruptly blocked it and every bit of his body language told beyond shadow of doubt that something was very, very wrong.

By then Ironhide was already moving to intercept Will before he could do anything stupid, a wall of blind, barely-restrained panic overruling anything else Ironhide might have been able to pick up from the bond - as if Ironhide needed any further reminders of how much easier things had been with just Lennox there and not the Seeker and all its issues along for the ride - but before he or Arcee had time to deal with whatever had happened to Ratchet, their Prime took charge with nothing more than a glance at them.

Optimus' calm "Ratchet?" was the last thing Ironhide heard from that quarter before he stepped back outside and spotted Will instantly, no help from the still-panicked bond needed. Tense body, wings lowered, attention focused on the sky in the direction that Ironhide knew was where Starscream and the rest of the fraggers were approaching from... not good. Not good at all.

He took a moment to decide on a course of action, then swiftly crossed the space between them while letting nothing but feelings of calm support and rock-solid stability show through his own shields. Now was not the time for anger, however much of a pest the 'Con fraggers might be.

One hand on a tense arm, hoping to the Pit and back that any startled reaction would be harmless enough that he could deal with it without causing either of them serious harm, and his own tension lessened slightly when the offending hand wasn't simply torn off in response.

Will?

No verbal response to that but the wings shifted slight, just that bit upwards to give Ironhide hope that some part of him was listening, and then he tried again.

Lennox.

Less careful this time, more the way he would speak to a fellow soldier, and that apparently did the trick as Will's optics shuttered briefly and the body beneath Ironhide's hand shuddered visibly. Some of that raw panic was still lingering but it was somewhat leashed now, at least, and kept under control by sheer stubbornness and the new focus point Ironhide had offered in appearing next to him.

"'Hide." Part question, part hopeful whisper, part instinctive acknowledgement that made Ironhide wonder if Will was aware of his presence at all, and there was something he was missing, he knew that beyond any doubt. Will didn't have much in the way of mental shields when it came to normal bonds, much less a spark-merged one, but he'd still applied every bit of control that he could to keeping Ironhide out of parts of his mind and that was bad sign any way you looked at it. That wasn't the sort of mental breakdown that Ironhide had admittedly known had been an unlikely but still possible result of their merge. It was a deliberate if panicked attempt to keep Ironhide out... or something in.

It took him less than a second to make the decision and settle for acting first and apologising later, and the only warning he got was a sudden flare of panic from Will as he pushed against those shields-

- And then they crumbled and vanished, dismissed by something distinctively not Will, and all Ironhide had time for was a brief, wordless curse before he found himself entangled in the alien feel of a presence that was no longer just his partner.

He was clear-headed enough to know that the fear-panic-submission-defiance he felt came from his partner, not himself, but that didn't stop it from affecting him, anyway, as the alien feel shifted and Ironhide found himself the focus of Starscream's very unwanted attention.

Ironhide.

The voice was at once both smug and vaguely disgusted, like he was some unpleasant bit of slag stuck on a favourite weapon, and it didn't escape Ironhide's attention that it would be one of the only times he had ever actually talked to the fragger, much less had him call him by his actual name. The voice made him itch to put the 'Con out of his misery of an existence but he knew perfectly well that it wasn't an option. Starscream was far out of range and trying anything through... whatever was going on between the fragger and Will was more likely to hurt Will than the 'Con.

Will, he realised... and Ratchet.

Frag it all to the Pit.

Clever deduction. You may be more than just a trained weapon after all, Autobot, Starscream mocked quietly through their bond and Ironhide realised too well that the fragger had picked up on at least part of those thoughts. I am the Air Commander. I hold dominion of all that is Seeker-kin. Will rightfully belongs to me. Your medic still carries Seeker programming and Seeker bonds, for all that he has denounced his proper loyalties and serves the Prime. And you, Autobot... you bonded with the medic and spark-merged with my youngling. You are no less Seeker-kin now than the Hatchet is. Will could have chosen better but perhaps you may not be completely worthless.

Something flared over their connection, demanding submission with enough strength to make Ironhide snarl in response, and Starscream held it for an endless moment before it vanished again and the parting flare of mine-strength-protection-affection-obey from the fragger merged with the harsher sound of the one-hundred-mile perimeter warning and then faded completely.

Ironhide brought up the images from the command centre, watched three glowing, purple markers move in perfect formation as they skimmed by just outside of any air defences that might target them – one fragging mistake was all Ironhide asked from them, and was that really too much to demand – and then the small number in one corner that marked the distance finally stopped its descent and picked back up again as they passed outside of the one-hundred-mile line once more.

Starscream was there again at the edge of his awareness, like some annoying parasite that refused to fragging die but Ironhide forced himself to ignore the presence and the mess of unwanted emotions that came with it to focus solely on Will instead. He'd slammed every mental wall back up that he could at the realisation that Starscream had at least partial access to him and he desperately hoped that it would be enough and that Will had managed the same. Nothing the fragger had said gave any indication that he knew Will was less than a perfectly normal, young Seeker but that didn't mean Ironhide was about to relax. He was in no hurry to find out how Starscream would react to learning that he had been trying to woo away a former human, of all things. Ratchet might go on about the importance of kin and mates but Ironhide wasn't going to believe for a moment that sort of thing would extend to organics as well.

"Will?" His grip tightened slightly on Will's arm and the blue optics seemed to regain a bit of focus even if the pressure from Starscream and the Seeker half's barely-restrained panic remained.

The physical world for the human half and the bonds for the Seeker, Ironhide realised a moment later. Will was a bit out of it but might still be able to be of some use. If nothing else, then to help ground that Seeker bit of his.

"It's about power," Will said – coherent, at least, but clearly still halfway gone in whatever little world he had been wandering around in. "Ratchet's... not going to be happy but he's fine. Can't do anything physically to us. It's just a reminder. I'm a Seeker. You're mine and I'm his. That's the way he sees it, anyway."

A lot more human than Seeker in those words – purely human, in fact, if Ironhide didn't know any better, and a lot closer to the Will he used to know than anything else he had seen since the whole mess started. He felt a flicker of regret at the thought and then pushed it aside to offer a snort that sounded far more confident than he felt.

"In that case, he's got more than a few bolts loose."

Dazed silence greeted those words and this time Ironhide was less gentle when he tightened his grip. "Focus! Snap out of it, Will. Focus on my voice and ignore the glitch. You're a Seeker; being annoying pests and ignoring people is what your kind do best."

The echo of amusement from Starscream-

- Is that any way to speak to your bonded, ground-pounder?-

- and then Ironhide felt the wall of panic through their bond begin to retreat, bit by little bit to leave both his and Will's processors a lot clearer. Theirs, and possibly Ratchet's as well.

On a whim, he focused on a familiar comm-frequency.

"Arcee?"

He didn't need to clarify. Arcee knew perfectly well what he was referring to and responded accordingly.

"Ratchet appears to have snapped out of it again. Optimus spoke with him. I'm not sure of what, but it appears to have worked. Will?"

Suffering from multiple personalities and a bad case of Starscream probably wouldn't go over well as an explanation so Ironhide settled for a more neutral response.

"Improving. I will contact you when it's under control."

He'd barely cut the connection before the tension slowly left Will's body and he finally turned his head to actually look at Ironhide. "He's leaving."

"One hundred and fifty miles out," Ironhide agreed. Another fifty before they'd pass the point where they had first targeted Will and Ratchet but he wasn't about to bring that up at the moment.

Will nodded slightly. "'n my head, too," he added. "He made his point."

He didn't offer any explanation as to what point that might be and Ironhide didn't ask. There would be time for that later and right now, keeping their Seeker and their medic sane and stable had priority. Debriefings could wait, as well as questions that Ironhide wasn't sure he actually wanted to hear the answers to.

There was still some tension left in Will's body and the wings still spoke of guarded caution but nothing that wasn't expected – Ironhide still felt like shooting something into tiny, little smoking pieces of debris, and he could only imagine how Will felt after getting the full force of that attention shoved on him and with his Seeker half frozen like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming Decepticon.

Whispers of something across their bond – fly-claim-kin-free-home, and the feeling of being torn between the defiance of the human side and the instinctive desire to submit and beg forgiveness that the Seeker side had felt – but Ironhide ignored that, too. He knew Will enough to know that if he wanted to talk about it, he would do it at his own pace... and possibly with Ratchet, who knew a lot more about that sort of issue than Ironhide did.

"'Hide?" Still a bit of the confusion there as Will looked to him for orders and for once, Ironhide didn't immediately know what to do.

His first instinct had been to order him off to the infirmary but those words died before he could voice them. Where did you take someone after that sort of thing when their only real medic had been affected as well? Personal quarters, hangars, recharge, command centre...

The first three options had privacy. The last had company, human and Autobot, and maybe that was exactly what Will needed now. He might be a little out of it and probably wouldn't be in the best of moods when it had all had time to settle in, but that wasn't really the point. Company was good and whatever else he might be, Seeker and everything, he had behaved exceptionally well around his NEST team. He was rattled now but if Ironhide had to be perfectly, painfully honest with himself, the Twins and Sideswipe on their bad days were little better. He was a Seeker but he was also an ally, and Ironhide fragging well intended to treat him as such.

Decision made, Arcee's comm-frequency responded instantly at his contact.

"Lennox is stable. Ratchet?"

Ironhide didn't bother with niceties and to her credit, neither did Arcee when she responded.

"Unsettled but unharmed. He refused to take his own usual advice and see himself to the infirmary. He will stay in the command centre for a while still; at the very least until Starscream and his trine are out of range."

Ironhide nodded briefly even if only Will was around to see it; a human gesture he had eventually adapted from their allies and not minded.

"I'll bring Lennox in for company."

The Command Trine was two hundred miles out and counting and Ironhide released the last of his tension. They could still turn around, still find ways to make a pest of themselves, but for now it was... if not calm, then as least less chaotic than before.

Lennox didn't resist and didn't ask when Ironhide's grip on him loosened slightly but remained where it was, and he followed silently as Ironhide led them to the hangar where Optimus and Ratchet and Arcee waited as well.

The human Will would have rolled his eyes and told him to go find Sideswipe if he wanted to hold hands. The Seeker would... probably have tried to 'face with him or beat him up for laying hands on an obviously superior bird-brain.

Neither of them would have had confused and vaguely subdued silence as their instinctive response and right now, that part worried Ironhide far more than whatever bond Starscream had with his bondmates did.

---

William Lennox had an impressive list of grievances about his current situation on a mental list that never went far from the forefront of his processors. On his snarkier days, said list was a source of endless, biting comments – to himself or whomever happened to be around – but on his more level-headed days, saner thoughts prevailed and he honestly tried to find answers instead. Rarely successfully – mainly because a lot of the explanations he got went over his head, despite the best of Ratchet and the Seeker's efforts – but at least he tried.

Right now, William Lennox found himself desperately wishing he had tried just a bit harder to make those mostly-alien explanations make sense. Maggie with her tech-brain and everything or Sam with whatever left-over Allspark was still in the kid's head might have made sense of it – probably could have made sense of it, because Will didn't honestly think it was that complicated if you understood that unique way of explaining things they had – but Will wasn't Sam or Maggie, and Will's university degree had not been in alien geek-talk or top ten ways to please a Seeker, and for all that he had honestly tried and the Seeker had done its best to explain it, too, his understanding of a lot of it was superficial at best.

Granted, some days he suspected that the same was true for Ironhide (and even Ratchet on one or two occasions, even if that was not a thought he wanted to linger on) but that didn't change the fact that Will was well on his way up slag-creek with neither paddle nor boat.

Looking at Ratchet as they stepped inside the command centre, he didn't seem to be alone in that situation. The medic had blocked any sort of connection they had which kept Will from taking his cues from that corner, but his body-language spoke quite clearly on its own. Another habit they had picked up from their human allies, since that body language hadn't been nearly as pronounced when they had first met, but it was another one that Will was grateful for. Him and the rest of NEST. It really did make life a lot easier when you had at least some basic idea of what mood the giant, armed, alien robots were in.

And he was babbling to himself, Will realised, and couldn't even blame himself for it. Not babbling meant pausing to actually think, not babbling meant paying actual attention to all the emotions from the Seeker that he had so desperately tried to block out, and the longer he could keep that from happening, the better.

Welcome to the State of Denial, population: you.

Talking to himself wasn't exactly an overwhelming support of his mental stability but as far as Will was concerned, his lack of common sense, sanity, and anything else that might possibly be associated with desirable qualities in a commanding officer had become abundantly clear when he had actually agreed to lead NEST. And it had been a genuine offer, too, not just an order, and Will understood that reasoning just fine, then as well as now. You didn't want someone with NEST who wasn't there of their own, free will. You didn't want someone who had the least bit of doubt in the whole operation because Primus and anyone else who might be watching knew fragging well that they got plenty of chances to doubt the sanity of it all when they engaged in combat with the 'Cons. A little mental flexibility was a good thing and Will knew perfectly well that he had more than just a little of that. He also knew just as well that this fact was made abundantly clear in the several evaluations he had been put through before he had been given that offer and they had given him the job, anyway.

Whether that said more about his state of mind or theirs, Will wasn't sure, but he figured it gave him at least a bit of leeway when it came to possessing a somewhat flexible view of the world.

Ironhide had undoubtedly been treated to the whole mental rant thanks to Will's utter lack of ability to block him under anything but the most optimal conditions but his only response was to shift his grip on Will's arm slightly in a small, reassuring gesture, and Will felt himself relax before he was even aware of it.

Ironhide still didn't let go completely and even if Will was never, ever going to admit it out loud, he was grateful for that, too. It would have annoyed him as a human, the feeling that he was some wayward brat to keep an eye on before he did anything impossibly stupid, but now the gesture was reassuring more than anything. Maybe it was their spark-merge, maybe it was the bond, maybe it was just because he was a Seeker and they had issues, but his spark craved the proximity with a strength that was more than a bit unsettling. It wasn't that much of a problem when they were outside physical range of each other although still within easy reach, but physical touch just seemed to remind every little bit of his processors and every sensor node in his body just how right it was and how unnatural it would feel to be separated from that contact again.

That said, Ironhide looked about as lost as Will felt. He had dragged him off to the hangar with all the commanding presence of the mech he was but it seemed that had been the extent of his planning. He was watching the ordered chaos around them with the same hesitance as Will felt and only when Optimus Prime's optics locked on them from where he was standing near Ratchet did Ironhide react and half led, half dragged Will across the hangar floor towards them.

Blue optics glanced at Will in a silent question, from their Prime and Ironhide both, and Will was rather proud that there was barely any hesitance in his responding nod.

Go, he offered silently and meant it. I'll be fine.

Ironhide didn't look entirely convinced and levelled a long look first at Will, then at Ratchet, and then he nodded briefly and let go, the brush of dark fingers against his wing a silent, almost imperceptible nudge towards the medic.

Keep the nutballs together? Will suggested through their bond, only partially joking.

Keep both of you stable, hopefully, Ironhide sent back. I caught the echoes of it, Lennox, but I'm not a bird-brain. I don't get it like you and Ratchet do. None of us do and frankly, right now you feel more stable than Ratchet does.

Looking at the medic, Will could have made a comment about how that was really not saying much but he kept his mouth shut, both the physical and mental one, and just nodded instead and followed without further argument as Ironhide nudged him again. The sudden loss of a physical connection was more unpleasant than Will would have expected but he could deal with that. With everything else that had happened, keeping a teenage bird-brain demanding nookie happy and sated was pretty far down on the to-do list.

The barely-suppressed emotions from the Seeker were still there and while it probably wasn't the time or place for it, Will doubted that any time or place would be right. Here and now, at least, he'd have Ratchet to whack him on the head if he did something stupid, unstable medic or not. The Seeker respected him and Primus knew Will did, too.

He knew it would be a flood of impressions the moment he let go, so he tried to adjust it a little and only loosen the reins just enough to let the first suppressed emotions through.

Fear at first, bone-deep and terrifying, but Will knew that was more himself than the bird-brain and the Seeker added its silent agreement now that it was finally able to again. The Air Commander could be as terrifying and imposing as a vengeful god but the Seeker-part knew just as well that as long as Starscream still considered them his youngling, that wouldn't be a genuine concern. He could get angry, most definitely, but never to a degree where it would warrant that level of abject fear. That would come much later and would be followed by words like 'traitor' and 'Autoscum'.

Respect followed, respect-awe-submission, and even if Will never, ever wanted to admit it, he could understand that. The fragger might be a 'Con and a killer and a pain in the aft, but he was damn skilled, damn powerful, and damn good at what he did and Will could respect that. They'd been up against the 'Cons often enough to know what the things were capable of. He did his best to ignore the echo of awe-submission – it wasn't something he wanted to know, really wasn't something he wanted to think about, much less deal with, and it could damn well wait for now. It would have to.

Lust came after that, just as bone-deep and just as terrifying to Will as fear had been because this wasn't 'Hide or Ratchet or even Optimus – it was Starscream and the Seeker half left no doubt at all that whatever Will's issues with the 'Con might be, and however much they might claim Autobot loyalties, that raw lust would always remain, the bits of his coding that told him that a sparkling fathered by the Air Commander would be fast, clever, ruthless, and perfect. Everything a Seeker should be, strong and fierce and proud and a testament to the talents of its creators in sparking and raising it.

The way Ratchet's optics focused on him in a narrow-eyed look told Will beyond any doubt that it wasn't just Ironhide that got the fun of sharing every random Starscream-related thought that went through his vain, little head, but there was something more in the expression that Ratchet gave him.

Understanding, Will realised a moment later; Ratchet understood and for all that Will needed Ironhide's unwavering support, he needed that understanding just as much. No judgement of emotions or images or fantasies dug up by the Seeker at the sound of Starscream's voice, just silent understanding and the knowledge that whatever Will was going through, Ratchet had probably felt more than a bit of that same effect on his own body as well.

You left them, Will finally said, more a statement than a question and carefully shielded from Ironhide because the mech did not need to know and there were things that even Will wasn't going to admit out loud.

Ratchet's optics dimmed slightly and a whisper of tiredness-worry-regret followed through their bond, on purpose or simply too much to keep in.

I did.

Lots of things Will could have said to that but in the end he settled for the only question that really mattered in the sort of situation he was in.

How?

The medic glanced at the rest of the room, revealed Ironhide deep in conversation with their Prime and Arcee even if he did send Will and Ratchet an occasional look to ensure they were still in one piece, and then his frame slumped slightly as if the last bit of strength had just left him.

Youthful stupidity? Fear? Survival instincts? the medic offered tiredly. I was never what the 'Cons looked for in a medic. I doubt I could have adapted very well, either. Their breed was kin but by then it was obvious what side they would join with. I missed them, didn't stop for a long time, but at least I was still online to do so. They were kin, yes, but when faced with the choice of treason and abandonment or eventual offlining... then, as now, I was in very little hurry to rejoin the Matrix. Which, admittedly, is not an explanation that will help much in your situation... a pause as Ratchet hesitated. ... and admittedly, I was never exposed to the full strength of Starscream's influence in my time there, either.

Never been exposed to the full force of Starscream's ego before, Will's mind translated, which meant that they were both groping around in the dark and had pretty much frag-all in the way of something to fight back with. He had wondered more than once about Ratchet's statement that he would be unable to shoot the fragger, had wondered more than once if it hadn't been an exaggeration or a statement made without taking the human side into account but looking back, even the happy State of Denial was not enough to hide the fact that if anything, Ratchet's verdict had been conservative.

Some of those thoughts must have leaked through as well, to both of the mechs he had bonded with, because Ironhide gave him a sharp look and Ratchet just looked... resigned. Tired, resigned, and every day of his Primus knew how many years of existence.

"It felt stronger than it used to be," the medic finally said out loud, enough to draw the attention from the people surrounding them and make their Prime aim a serious look at him.

"Ratchet?" Something about the medic's expression was enough to draw Prime back at their side, Ironhide and Arcee following close behind and frag it all, but his Seeker part should not be so disgusting happy just to have its spark-merge mate close again.

Then Ironhide touched his arm and his world narrowed down to nothing but the feel of metal on metal, scarred fingers against the smooth perfection of his own armour as his Seeker desperately clung to the one thing in its world that made sense and Will couldn't even blame it. Starscream had been bad enough when they could mouth off to him. With the realisation that physical proximity was the only thing needed for said Air Commander to simply overwhelm them and take control of them by sheer force was... unpleasant in the least, and both of them knew damn well that only Ironhide's presence and the combined stubbornness of both the human and the Seeker had kept them on the ground.

That was one thing he didn't think Starscream had been able to pick out of his processors, at least. It wasn't much of an advantage but still, that bit of humanity still counted, especially when Starscream didn't know it was there.

And then Ratchet was talking again and Will bit back a curse at the tunnel-vision that was apparently so very normal for a Seeker.

"I don't know if it's a matter of warped perception or the fact that I've never been the focus of his attention to that degree before, but it felt stronger than it used to be. I would say that I have never seen a Seeker react as strongly before as Will did but that could as easily be a result of never having been exposed to that presence before or Starscream making more of an effort than he might normally would have." A glance at Will, genuinely apology in his features before he continued. "A combination of both, most likely, but we can't rule out the possibility of Starscream being stronger than he once was."

Oh, lucky us.

Judging by Ironhide's snort, he picked up on that as well.

"So we take out the fragger before he gets the chance to try again. What was his range? Two hundred miles?"

"One hundred and ninety-seven," Arcee confirmed. "But it may be further. He may have deliberately waited until he was closer than he needed to be."

And didn't things just keep getting better? Will resisted the urge to groan, felt the Seeker stir in unease as well, and at least they were still working together. That was always something. He wasn't sure he could have handled a hostile Seeker half again and he never, ever wanted to find out. It had come close enough once. If he never felt that feeling of helplessness again, it would still be too soon.

"So that was why he showed up? To harass us?" Not that Will would be surprised if that was the sole reason. Seekers were pests and Starscream was the king of them, in every way that counted.

"Not solely for harassments sake but I have little doubt it was part of his reason." Optimus Prime, joining the conversation proper for the first time. "He has done it often enough before, when we still had Autobot Seekers among us in the past. In this case, however, he had a message to offer as well."

A message.

Anything Will could think of that Starscream would find important enough to deliver like that would be bad, bad news, and his optics shuttered once before he asked the question he knew there was no way around.

"Message?"

"Coordinates," their Prime responded evenly. "The time and location of their intended attack. The time frame is... generous. We would arrive with time to spare."

"A trap," Will said and ignored the whispered correction of 'an offer' from his Seeker half. A trap for the 'Bots, an offer for... him. It. Them. Come fly, claim your freedom, be with your proper kin-

"Undoubtedly," Optimus Prime agreed with the calmness that never seemed to waver. "Sometimes, unfortunately, the best course of action is to spring the trap."

Which leaves only the question of... a glance at Ratchet revealed that the medic clearly had the same thought as Will did and that he had probably reached the same conclusions.

"Jolt's training has progressed to an... acceptable level," Ratchet finally said and his voice sounded a lot more calm than Will suspected he was. "He is not a fully trained medic yet, but he has been trained to an acceptable level in combat-specific injuries."

Translation – Jolt was okay at the basic stuff but anything uncommon or too nasty and they'd be screwed and Ratchet knew it, too, and Will couldn't imagine what it must have cost a medic to make an offer like that.

"The offer is noted," Optimus Prime said almost gently and probably knew what was going through Ratchet's processors even better than the medic himself did. "If you deem it the best course of action to remain here, then I will not question it, but do not do it in the misguided belief that we have lost faith in you."

We know you, we trust you, we've seen you at your worst and we're still here, but damn it, it was different when other people's lives depended on you, and maybe it was his bond with Ratchet that gave the insights, maybe it was experience, maybe it was something he had picked up from Ironhide's long period of exposure to said medic, but in the end it didn't matter as much as the simple fact that he understood. Ratchet had offered understanding. The least Will could do was offer the same in return.

Ratchet was a lot more tactile than the rest of the 'Bots, that was one of the things that had made the human part of Will attracted to him, and he only hesitated for a moment before he carefully put a clawed hand on Ratchet's arm in a silent echo of Ironhide's gesture of support.

Familiar blue optics narrowed on him in a silent question that Will didn't need their bond to figure out and he tightened his grip slightly in what he hoped was a supportive gesture.

You stay, I stay.

A glance at the dark mech at Will's side, then back at the Seeker-human in a gesture that told perfectly well that Ratchet had some serious doubts about his sanity and Will couldn't blame him. He needed Ironhide to stay grounded; he knew it, Ratchet knew it, 'Hide knew it – hell, they all probably did – and right now, it didn't matter as much as the fact that he wasn't leaving Ratchet to deal with it alone. Starscream would probably follow Will himself rather than Ratchet but that didn't rule out the risk that one of the other flying fraggers might go after Ratchet instead... or that Starscream decided that Will was far enough under his influence to spare going after a stray medic, too. Pros and cons to every option they had but maybe they stood some chance of telling Starscream to go frag himself together. Better odds, at least, than doing it alone. It wasn't like Ratchet could fly off the same way Will could but that didn't rule out messing around with his processors so much, it didn't matter anymore.

Besides, it was war and they needed an experienced medic around. Ratchet, Will knew, could no more stay behind than Will could have if there was any chance that his presence could save the life of a comrade-in-arms. Regrets could kill a man just as well as a weapon could and Ratchet knew that, too.

The Seeker murmured in the back of his mind, soundless whispers of support-faith-loyalty that carried through to both Ratchet and Ironhide as well as they were intended to, and then Ratchet finally nodded – faint, almost imperceptible, but a nod nonetheless.

"We will be a liability, Optimus. Both of us," the medic said. "If you can accept that, then my place has always been with you."

There was more to the words than just reassurances, the Seeker programming made that very clear to Will – almost an oath of fealty and possibly enough to at least slow Starscream's influence down a little when they met again – but the thought of echoing those words himself was gone almost as soon as it had appeared. It was different for a true Seeker, different for Will and the Seeker both. Mere words were for ground-pounders, not for the true children of Primus.

"William?" Optimus' voice – and that Pit-spawned tunnel-vision again – and Will nodded once.

"Where 'Hide goes, I go." Because I need him, because I trust him, because he keeps me grounded, but he didn't say that and didn't need to, either, because their Prime obviously understood.

"Then we prepare. Arcee, bring Commander Epps up to speed with the situation." He paused just long enough to look at Will and Ratchet, reassurance and unwavering confidence in them both in his optics, and then he nodded. "We depart in one hour. Autobots, roll out."

---

The first time Will had seen a C-17, he had been amazed it could fly. He had the personal theory that it worked on the same principle as a bumblebee did – that the only reason it could take off at all was because no one had told the pilots that it was technically impossible. Primus-knew-how-many-flights later and he still wasn't entirely convinced that it wasn't all just one giant joke that science had played on them.

That theory only became all the more insistent in his mind whenever he watched their alien allies – which he was technically one of as well now, even if he still wasn't used to the thought – settle into the planes for the flight to wherever the frag the 'Cons had decided to go on a rampage at the given occasion. Logically he knew that something that could carry an M1 Abrams tank would have absolutely no problem with the puny weight offered by something like Ironhide or Ratchet or even Optimus Prime in comparison but somehow the 'Bots just took up a lot more room visually speaking. That, and he still wasn't sure the whole idea had been a good one to begin with. He understood the logic of using an isolated, restricted island for the NEST base and really did appreciate that he had to deal with far fewer 'got spotted by a civilian' incidents than he would have had to otherwise but that didn't stop him from feeling like a sitting duck whenever they took off.

It was an air plane, Primus knew how many thousand feet up, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and their enemy had Seekers. He knew how many precautions they'd taken, he knew the sort of security those planes had, he knew that the 'Con Seekers stayed away for good reasons but that didn't keep his brain from still feeling like a sitting duck. Might as well paint a bullseye on the slagging things, too, and give the 'Cons a laugh while they were at it.

The fact that he was now a Seeker did absolutely nothing to help on his view of it. If anything, the fact that something that big and clumsy and slow and defenceless carried his mates made him want to twitch. They were mates, they were valuable, they were treasures, and they were his, and that worthless pile of would-be scrap metal had no business being anywhere near said mates, much less being responsible for their very lives and well-being.

Going by Ratchet's amused glance, Will's admittedly rather feeble attempt at hiding the Seeker's displeasure about the whole thing was apparently a bit of a lost cause.

"You have travelled in those machines yourself often enough," the medic pointed out as he helped Will get fitted with weaponry – and holy frag, he had missiles now, and if it wasn't because there was a very real risk he could end up using them against their own side, Will wasn't sure he could have kept from smirking.

As it was, he settled for taking comfort in the slight weight of those missiles; not enough to disturb his flight but still enough to be a comforting reminder that he was no longer defenceless, and that was a comfort he hadn't realised how much he had missed until then.

"I have, and I still think it's a miracle those things can take off at all, never mind what Bobby says."

Ratchet just snorted but that was fine with Will, too. He had heard Sideswipe bitch often enough to know that he wasn't the only one who distrusted the flying tin-tubes, even if Sideswipe's issues were more related to vanity than anything else. Will personally suspected that minor stuff like personal safety and potential offlining came quite a bit further down Sideswipe's list of priorities than an unscratched paint-job and newly-polished swords did but then, the 'Vette had the skills to pull it off, too, and like Pit if Will was going to seriously bitch about the issues of an ally who had the skills in combat that Sideswipe did. Even the Seeker, with its long list of grievances with the 'Vette, could agree with that. Most reluctantly, certainly, but agree nonetheless.

"We can't be everywhere," Ratchet finally pointed out as he finished up the last... whatever he did and tapped Will's arm to let him know he was finished. "They serve their purpose in transporting us. They look more vulnerable than they are."

Doesn't mean I have to like it, Will said mentally and shrugged, before flexing his arms to get used to the added weight of his new ammunition. Ratchet ignored the comment in favour of a pointed look and Will answered the unspoken question.

"All good," he reported and couldn't help the bit of amusement at the Seeker's smugness about it all. Then again, if it hadn't been for the thoughts of Starscream constantly running through his head, Will would have been right there being smug with it. They had missiles. "All good, both of us. Target systems are up and running, and the weight and balance won't be an issue. If anything, it feels a little better than before."

Ratchet just nodded at that and didn't look surprised in the least. "You were meant for carrying weapons. You can function just as well without them but your core programming and your very body were designed with armed conflict in mind. It's simply a matter of the sort of weapons used. In this case, an Earth-based missile design adapted by Ironhide to suit your alt-mode. On Cybertron, it could have been a very different weapon in its place."

Which made sense. You chose your weapons according to the situation when you could and adapted what you had to work with when you couldn't. It might be an Earth-based design – alt-mode and missiles both – but it still felt surprisingly... right. It could just be because he was Earth-based himself but he somehow doubted it and for a brief, insane moment, he was tempted to ask Starscream if he felt at home in an alt-mode designed by fleshlings.

The last adjustments done, Ratchet glanced towards the busy runway and a figure waiting by the side as the anthill that was NEST moved around it, humans and Autobots and machinery in one huge mass of organised chaos.

"Your mate is waiting. I have things to do."

A dismissal if Will had ever heard one – not that he could blame him; the medic probably had just as many nasty thoughts on his mind about Starscream and their situation as Will did – and he nodded in acknowledgement before he turned and left, making his way over to said mate-wife in the middle of the confusion around them. It wasn't hard – people gave him space, not only because they were used to the 'Bots but also because he was still something alien and unsettling, and for once he didn't mind – and he saw her follow his progress until he finally reached her just beyond the side of the tarmac, away from the worst of it all and out of hearing range as well.

Her presence made the Seeker purr contently in his mind. It wasn't a bond like with 'Hide or Ratchet but it was still strong enough to matter and make that alien other half of him respond to it as well. She was a lot harder to pick up on than his two Cybertronian mates were and the range of their connection was limited at best but Will suspected that if given the time and chance to practice, his Seeker half could make that connection a lot stronger. They had created that bond and knew how it felt now and those two things seemed to be the hardest parts over with.

The world was a buzz around them, indistinct voices and the sound of machines and occasionally a word or heavy footsteps that stood out among the rest, but for the most part it was nothing but background noise and easily dismissed as he held down his hand and allowed his mate-wife to make herself comfortable on the impromptu metal chair.

This time not even her breathing changed as he carefully lifted his hand again to bring her closer to eye level and his spark felt like it twisted for a moment in response. She was small and fragile and vulnerable and she trusted him and he wasn't even sure he trusted himself yet on most days, and that wasn't even getting into what the Seeker could do on a whim. He knew it wouldn't hurt a mate on purpose but that didn't mean he trusted it not to forget that humans were fragile beings because he shared a mind with the thing and slagging well knew it was impulsive at best and had the common sense and daunting self-restraint of a hyperactive toddler.

It wasn't a comparison the Seeker had been particularly impressed with when Will had actually explained it but then, Will had not been particularly impressed with the Seeker at the time, either, so he'd figured that turnabout was fair play.

He had the echo of Ironhide's presence in the back of his mind but the bond felt muted and distracted and was probably being blocked by the mech in an offer of what little privacy he could have in his current situation. He appreciated the gesture, at least, even if he would never truly have any secrets anymore when it came to Ironhide. That whole thing should probably bother him a lot more than it did, even if he trusted Ironhide with his life, but Will suspected it was a wonderful combination of shock, stress, and stubbornness that kept it all at bay to be dealt with later... assuming they got out of it alive. If not, he still had his list of grievances to air to Primus.

Even the Seeker was being suspiciously quiet but a silent inquiry gave him the feeling of hesitance-worry-impatience-fear and he could understand that. If he could have helped, he would have - for all of their issues, they were still partners and trine-mates - but Will had yet to find anything to help make himself feel better about the whole situation, much less a terrified youngling who probably understood better than anyone the gravity of the situation. He couldn't even reasonably compare it to the first time he saw active combat himself because this was really nothing like it. Ratchet had felt distracted, too, if less so than the Seeker - more used to putting his life on the line and being a target by virtue of being a combat medic and the last genuine Autobot medic around - but still distracted and still worried. His body language had told Will as much, even if their bond hadn't.

To be fair, it wasn't something Will liked to think about, either, and however much he might have been against it before, he was quickly learning the joys of denial now. It wasn't like there was much he could do, not this close to leaving and with no Starscream around to practice against. Worrying would get him nowhere. They would meet up with the slaggers soon enough and he really doubted it would matter then how much he had and hadn't worried about it. It wasn't a matter of skill, after all - he was honest enough with himself to admit that much. Skill wouldn't come into play to their advantage until he actually proved he could go against Starscream in person and he knew perfectly well that 'frozen with indecision' and 'deer in headlights' rather than flat-out treason was probably the best he could hope for in that particular regard.

"Will?"

Sarah's voice cut through his brooding, low and worried, and he cursed his tunnel-vision for good measure before the Seeker made an apologetic sound followed by Will's own sigh.

I'm sorry, he offered quietly.

He expected her to pick up on those unspoken words in the way that she always seemed to know what he thought - long marriage or mind-reading abilities, he still wasn't sure, but he figured it was the former or she would probably have glared at him for his language a long time ago - but he hadn't expected the way she froze in his hand for a second and her eyes widened almost imperceptibly; too little to notice if he hadn't already been paying close attention to her but more than enough to tell him something was going on.

The Seeker offered a short, concerned series of clicks and whirrs in what Will had learned to recognise as that alien Seeker-language, and the meaning apparently carried over just fine from body language and tone alone because Sarah relaxed again in his hand and the blue eyes that found his were looking at him with a sense of wonder.

"I felt you. In my mind, like when you scanned for me," she explained quietly. "Stop being sorry, Will. It's not your fault. You, or the Seeker. You're making the best of a bad situation. You died but I got you back. Maybe in a different wrapping and maybe with someone else I have to share you with, but I can live with that if it means having you here."

Nice, calm, reasonable... which, sadly, wasn't really something Will's human mind was particularly inclined to listen to when it came to that whole situation and much less his own guilt at putting his small family through that sort of thing.

"I was the one who got myself killed by being stupid," he responded just as quietly and brushed one finger against her hair with infinite gentleness, grateful that Seekers needed as delicate sensors as they did. It allowed him to feel that much, at least. "I could have been more careful. I could have not gotten killed in the first place."

Sarah snorted in the way that Will had learned meant 'you're being an absolute idiot' – and he really couldn't argue with that one – and then her expression softened again.

"Then get back to me alive."

Will's optics shuttered briefly at that, the sudden, sharp pain in his spark right back again at the soft words and the answer he didn't want to say out loud.

I can't promise that.

And he couldn't, not with Starscream out there, not with the Seeker unable to do much of anything to resist at all, not with Megatron out to convert or kill him like the slag-aft Seeker-wannabe of a glitch that he was. He couldn't promise it and even if he could, it would still say nothing about the circumstances of his survival. Megatron wasn't going to let an Autobot Seeker wander around and Starscream's protection of a stupid, misguided youngling only extended so far. Coming back alive did not necessarily mean coming back with the same paint-job as he had left with and that thought scared him far more than an offlining did.

Something must have shown through the weak bond with Sarah, or he was just that obvious to the people who knew him, because she shifted in his hand and rested one of her own hands against his much larger metal finger and gave him a look that left little doubt that she knew exactly what was going on in his head.

"Get back to me alive, Will," she repeated softly. "I'm not NEST or Optimus Prime or Ironhide. I'm your wife and I trust you, with myself and Annabelle both. And if you decide that a new 'paint-job' is in order, then I trust that, too."

It was reassuring and terrifying all in once, one less thing to worry about but also one less leash to keep him safely bound at the Autobots' side, and all he could do was shift his own hands slightly as well to curl protectively in a shield around her.

He would keep her safe. He would keep her safe, whatever the cost, because Ironhide could stand his ground a hell of a lot better than Will could and Ratchet wasn't half bad, either, but Sarah was small and fragile and his.

It was as much the Seeker part in him as the human who made that silent promise, and then he carefully uncurled his hands again as the background noise picked up somewhere behind them and the first in a series of pings in his processors alerted him that their departure was approaching fast.

"I'll try," he promised quietly.

He moved to put her down on the ground again but something in the look she gave him stopped him and he watched silently as she took off her small, familiar gold necklace. It took a second for it to click in Will's entirely-too-stressed processors and then his eyes flared briefly in surprise.

Oh.

He knew there were little compartments here and there in his new body, even with an alt-mode like his, but he had never considered them before or paid attention in the slightest even in theory so he put the matter in his Seeker half's clawed, metallic hands and watched with some bemusement as coding flickered through his mind before it finally seemed to settle on... whatever the Seeker had decided on.

Something shifted near the top of the gold-tinted canopy that somehow transformed from cockpit and into being part of his chest, and a pair of small plates near his spark-chamber split apart even as he followed Sarah's unvoiced order to bring her closer.

Her hand brushed lightly against armour plating, lingered for a moment above his spark-chamber, and then she shifted again and he felt the minute change as his sensors picked up on twelve-point-four grams of familiar soft, yellow metal as the small necklace found its way into the compartment and he and the Seeker both made sure their mate-wife was well away from it again before the compartment closed.

"Come back to me alive," Sarah repeated softly before she allowed him to lower her to the ground again and slid down from his hand with practised ease.

For a moment his world narrowed down to nothing more than that small bit of precious metal and the silent, desperate promise that he would do everything he could to fulfil that one request, and then he was brought back again as a second ping intruded upon his processors and he became aware of someone behind him.

Sarah had left but Ironhide was there, waiting silent as Will forced rampant emotions back under control and turned around to face him. The connection was still muted, if less so than before, and that was probably how the mech had been able to sneak up on him. That, and the Pit-spawned tunnel-vision he doubted he would ever get used to.

"Lennox?"

It sounded like the beginning of a serious question about his mental state of mind or his emotions or something else he really did not want to talk about so Will fell back on good ol' army training and settled for a diversion.

"Shouldn't you be all wrapped up in a cargo hold like a Christmas present by now?"

Judging by Ironhide's snort, that little diversion had been seen through immediately – frag his inability to properly block a bond, and frag allies who knew him entirely too well while he was at it, too – but the mech allowed it, anyway.

"As soon as I get your aft on the runway, Lennox."

A glance in the mentioned direction and Will very carefully did not pass along the Seeker's disgusted look. The runway with the actual, human F-22s that would take off as air support for the C-17s if needed and which they were supposed to fly along with to get used to working with other people, and while the Seeker liked its alt-mode, that courtesy did not extend to the actual F-22s, too.

Will had made the mistake of asking what its problem was. The list of insults aimed at said F-22s that he got in return was enough to convince him that he really didn't need to know and he really didn't care enough to push any further for an answer. Slow, weak, and useless had ranked pretty high on the list of insults, though, so Will could have some qualified guesses, at least. Seekers weren't that well-armoured or well-armed compared to a lot of ground-bound mechs but they were fast and the sort of acrobatics they were capable of in the air was nothing a human-built jet could have done. It was their strength and they took pride in it. Looking at it like that it wasn't that much of a wonder that the Seeker was annoyed with their escort to say the least.

"I don't need a runway," Will pointed out on behalf of both of them but followed Ironhide towards the jets, anyway, knowing a lost cause when he saw it.

That was probably why Ironhide looked vaguely amused, too. Will doubted he would have found it quite as amusing if he'd flat-out refused.

"I know," the mech responded. "Be a good bird-brain and play along, anyway. You make the pilots twitchy."

There was more things to say, a million worries and fear and gnawing uncertainties, but time had run out for that and when it came down to it, it didn't matter, either. What Will knew, Ironhide knew as well and he could not yet block it enough to keep secrets. Everything that was gnawing on Will's mind Ironhide already knew, for better and for worse, and he was still there despite it all.

As he approached the runway and felt Ironhide's hand on his arm in silent support, Will sent him a flicker of gratefulness before the Weapon Specialist was called off and Will was left among Earth-jets and pilots and thoughts that had entirely too many opportunities to demand his attention.

What Will knew, Ironhide knew, and still the mech was there, despite fantasies of Starscream and thoughts of treason and everything else Will and the Seeker had put the poor mech through. He was still there despite it all, spark-merge and not, and Will's hand lingered for a moment on the compartment with the small necklace within.

Maybe he couldn't promise to come back alive but he would fragging well keep them safe. He wasn't going to make Ironhide pull the trigger, he wasn't going to turn his weapons on his comrades in arms, and he sure as frag wasn't going to roll over and beg just because Starscream wanted him to.

He imprinted that promise on his very spark and felt the Seeker add its own resoluteness to it, the combined stubbornness of two beings so very much in over their heads and so painfully aware of it, too, and even that didn't matter now.

Maybe the odds weren't good but going by the odds, the whole of NEST should have been dead several times over. Right now, that stubbornness was all they really had going for them and that would fragging well have to do.

---

Unlike quite a few of his soldiers and against every bit of common belief, Megatron held no particular dislike for the insignificant third planet that orbited an equally insignificant star in the outer ranges of an utterly average galaxy.

He was disgusted by the organic life-forms on said planet in general and absolutely despised the so-called dominant species that the Autobots, pathetic as always, had chosen to... ally themselves with, but the planet itself was not something he held any particular dislike for.

On his better days, Megatron actually appreciated it, even if he would never admit that particular confession out loud. It was small and utterly infested with organic matter, covered in mostly water and had polar regions that still made Megatron snarl at the memory, but when it all came down to it, there was a small part of Megatron's processors that nonetheless couldn't help but admire the planet for it. For all of its... unfortunate characteristics it also held a ruthlessness that Cybertron, even at its most untamed, had never managed. Cybertron had been controlled and leashed by its dominant species – if it had ever had weather, it had been long before Megatron's time, and the planet itself was as solid and predictable as legends said its creator had deemed appropriate for the species that had been brought into being to populate it.

The organic homeworld was...different. The ice had been Megatron's first lesson: what looked solid could be anything but and what would have been harmless if he had been given but moments to prepare could still bring him unnervingly close to being offlined because he had been too arrogant to see the deceptive innocence of the surface for what it was, too preoccupied with his hunt to pay any real sort of attention to the matter.

Weather had been a second lesson. It didn't matter as much to Megatron as it did to his Seekers, and even then it was a matter of vanity and complaints about discomfort more than anything – their first encounter with hurricane-strength winds had been interesting, certainly, but hardly dangerous – but it was still something alien to a species that had been used to the ordered world of Cybertron.

The tectonic plates, though, were perhaps Megatron's personal favourite. That sort of potential for widescale destruction with no means of defence for the organic pests that inhabited the planet was nothing short of art, and he couldn't help but admire the beauty of it all, the cycle of violence followed by long periods of peace to lure the organics close again before the planet would strike once more. It was the sort of destruction that Megatron could appreciate. While true that it held no value from a military point of view, it was still art in its own way and certainly something to be appreciated for its destructive power in itself.

Perhaps Cybertron had been like that once, when it had been young and its Cybertronian inhabitants still had to prove their resilience and worth of life in their taming of the planet they had been granted by Primus. The organics, however, had no such skill and so Megatron was free to admire the ferocity of the third planet of Sol for however long that star would last before it burned out... which, in their war, was never guaranteed to be a natural death. With the destruction of the Harvester, the life-expectancy of the star had certainly increased and for now, the planet was... acceptable to Megatron. Better than the burned-out, destroyed shell of their former home, at least. One day they might have the hope of rebuilding Cybertron from the cold ashes and recreate their world as it was before the suffocating rule of bureaucrats and worthless politicians but for now, this temperamental chunk of rock would have to do.

Megatron had spent far more time musing on said chunk of rock than anyone would have suspected him of and that gave him an advantage that his soldiers - Starscream included - did not have. While they had claimed vengeance on behalf of their Lord though the lives of the worthless organics, Megatron had never allowed himself to let his anger and disgust overshadow everything. Retribution was still demanded but that didn't mean he should leave aside all semblance of common sense and responsibility. The worse parts of Megatron's imprisonment had been in fleshling hands but he never forgot that it was the planet itself that had brought him down in the first place, and if it could take him down... there was always the risk, however small, that others had fallen victim to the same.

Normally, he would not have cared – strength and independence were Decepticon virtues and ones they had always lorded over the infinitely weaker Autobots – but this case was different. If Megatron could fall prey to it, so could others, and despite everything that had happened, he was still the Lord High Protector of Cybertron and as so would not leave a fellow Cybertronian at the mercies of pathetic organics like that.

And so, when he had finally been returned online through no help from his treacherous Second, Megatron had asked his Communications Officer to search the planet as time and opportunity permitted and ensure that no one else was left a prisoner as he had been. He doubted it would be the case but the thought had still refused to leave him to his devices and served to be a distraction he could not afford. A last nod to his duties to their kind that he mentioned to no one else because above all, Decepticon valued strength and Starscream would respond to any sign of weakness, imagined or otherwise.

In the end, all scans had come up negative and so begged the question that Megatron found himself musing as battle drew closer and the small symbol that was an Autobot-allied Seeker claimed an increasing amount of attention from his Second in Command.

Where did you come from?

He knew the official explanation was that the creature had been trapped in ice like Megatron himself, found and brought to a fleshling lab for experiments... but given that Soundwave's scans of the planet had revealed nothing of the sort, it left only two explanations to consider: that Soundwave had somehow overlooked the creature or that the official explanation was... lacking in truth at best.

Knowing Soundwave as well as he did, Megatron strongly suspected the latter explanation was correct, which left him with the very same question again.

Where did you come from?

He had entertained some theories but they were unlikely at best.

A new arrival would have been spotted, not to mention that Starscream had kept a close eye on any Seekers turned Autobots and had taken great satisfaction in reporting every single one of the creatures destroyed not long before Megatron left Cybertron for the last time. Starscream was unreliable at best, granted, but in this case Megatron was willing to take his word for it. Starscream had taken the disloyalty of the Autobot Seekers as a personal insult, far more so than Megatron had, and had gone through great pains to remove the stain on his breed's reputation.

A sparkling kept in stasis and only recently brought out of it – because that was truthfully what it was; a youngling at best and in some cases still little more than a sparkling – was not a theory that made much sense, either. If it had arrived with the rest of the Autoscum, Megatron would have known, and that was not even taking into account that it was a Seeker sparkling and that Seekers had kept a close eye on all of their sparklings. Some had been stolen through aeons of war but all had been accounted for – that, too, Megatron was willing to take his Second's word for.

With no Allspark left, and no Autobot Seekers remaining, it could not have been a new spark brought into existence on this planet they now found themselves on, and if Megatron hadn't known the idea was absolutely preposterous, he would have said that Primus himself had brought that spark into being, because Megatron was long since out of any actual, credible theories.

Starscream, of course, had noticed nothing of that sort. Megatron respected his treacherous Second for his skills and his control of what Seekers remained but he wasn't blind to said Second's rather one-track mind, either. It was one of the main reasons why the Seeker would never reign, whatever else the Air Commander might think. No Seeker was programmed to lead anything but their own breed and Megatron knew that... and so, he suspected, did Starscream, however deep down that knowledge might be. It wouldn't stop the Seeker's incessant attempts to take over but it was one of the main reasons why he had never succeeded. If he had been more of a leader, more aware of his weaknesses and better able to control himself, there would have been the actual possibility that he could one day have bested Megatron. As it was now, however, there was no chance at all.

Megatron had focused on the why and how behind the appearance of their new Seeker. Starscream had focused solely on bringing it back under its rightful commander and to his credit, had succeeded to an admirable degree as well. While the creature hadn't abandoned the limitations of the Prime, it at least seemed willing to consider the possibility, which was far more than any proper Autobot Seeker had been willing to do in the past. Megatron strongly suspected that if given more opportunities, Starscream might even be able to lure the thing away completely but that would take more time and effort than Megatron was willing to exert and he knew quite well that patience was not the strong suit of any Seeker, much less the Air Commander.

It was not a trait Megatron shared, obviously, but he knew it lay dormant in his programming. There were other Cybertronians than just Seekers who had been able to fly but Seekers were the most competent of the breeds and when Megatron had gone through the process of a reformat, Seeker-programming had provided the foundation of his flight-abilities. He had not been sparked with wings – and truthfully, a reformat like his was difficult enough to remain out of reach for any ordinary mech – and with new wings, he had needed the ability to control them as well. His core programming remained the same but the wings... the wings and the ability to fly was all Seeker-based and gave him an understanding of the breed that Optimus Prime had never had.

It let him understand the creatures and it let him know now what would be needed to gain control of the wayward youngling that the Prime held. They could likely have lured it away with time and effort but a far more effective strategy would be a display of strength and the physical presence of the Air Commander. He didn't really believe that the Seeker's mates would follow it into Decepticon hands but then, stranger things had happened and Megatron would not refuse the chance to claim one of Prime's mechs if the opportunity arose.

Megatron understood Seekers and that was why he now listened and watched through Soundwave's optics and scanners as his Second in Command passed just out of range of the Autobot base to deliver a message to Prime and exert a last bit of influence on the Seeker before they met in combat. Optimus Prime would not be a willing combatant but Megatron did not particularly care. He had not left the Prime with any options unless he wanted to see some of his precious fleshlings slaughtered and if anyone, he knew his brother's weakness when it came to such things.

The Prime would be there and the Seeker would follow. No creature worthy of the name would refuse a battle, much less one that offered said creature the chance to see its Air Commander.

Megatron watched as the three glyphs that represented his Command Trine passed the Autobot base to head for the location Megatron had chosen for their battlefield, and he did not bother to wait for his Second in Command to deign to contact him with a progress report.

"Starscream."

It was not a question. Megatron knew Seekers and he knew that to control them, you had to control their Air Commander above all. It was a battle to keep Starscream leashed but worth the effort nonetheless, and while Megatron had considered once or twice the convenience in merely removing the pest, it would only result in a new Air Commander to control. A new, unfamiliar pest to replace a predictable one was not a desirable outcome.

"He will be ours, Lord Megatron," Starscream's voice greeted him in response, alluring more than unpleasant for once, and Megatron's optics shuttered partially in satisfaction. There was none of Starscream's normally snide behaviour at the moment and that alone would have been enough to make Megatron listen.

This would be good.

"He is a Seeker. His Autoscum loyalties are a matter of little more than convenience. He spark-merged with Ironhide and claimed the Hatchet for a mate," Starscream continued, still with that infectious allure and undisguised satisfaction in his voice – pleasure at having a lost Seeker returned to him, most likely. Whatever it was, Megatron was not about to complain. "Decepticons with Autoscum markings that only lack the courage to admit it. If they are true mates, they will follow or pay the price. The Prime's hold on the medic has already weakened. He is Seeker-kin. I will make him obey... with your permission, of course, glorious Megatron."

Good news – outstanding news, even, and enough that Megatron allowed Starscream's pathetic lip-service to loyalty to slide for the moment. For once even Megatron couldn't find flaw in his action and competence should be rewarded... even when there was little else but badly-disguised and always useless plans for treason behind it. Ambition was a Decepticon virtue but not in the hands of a Seeker of Starscream's vanity and ego.

The medic. Megatron remembered that one in glimpses of memories he had claimed from the Seekers that had fought for his attention and favour. He knew Ratchet and he knew the name the medic had been given by both sides of their war but it wasn't until Starscream had focused his attention on the new Seeker that Megatron's processors had recalled the memories from whatever deep, dark pit of a hole he kept unnecessary knowledge like that in. Those memories were very different from the weak – if admittedly skilled – Autobot medic he had become familiar with through the war and that one, unlike the worthless Autoscum one, would be worth the attention it would take to claim it for his cause.

"Of course," Megatron finally replied in a deceptively silky voice. "Do not fail me, Starscream. My patience is not infinite and I was under the impression that a worthy Air Commander had far more control over his kin than this."

Starscream wanted to respond, Megatron could feel it, but even Seekers could display some measure of common sense if they had to.

"Yes, Lord Megatron," Starscream responded after a moment too long, still with some of the allure in his voice but far more unpleasant and grating than before.

Megatron dismissed the connection with no further words, as much his right as their Lord as it was the proper way to handle a Seeker to make it respect a superior, and then he focused his attention on the Autobot base and what little information Soundwave could tear from the heavy scrambling fields that surrounded the island. He knew where his own people were, knew that even Starscream would obey without the need for force on this occasion, and so it allowed him to focus on... other things.

Location delivered, it would not take the Prime long to respond, the useless organics were too precious for him and the co-called allies he claimed amongst the worthless beings were too fickle to understand the realities of war and the necessity of sacrifices.

The Prime would respond, the Seeker would be at his side, and if there was any truth in Starscream's words, then perhaps Megatron might even be in a position to... correct the unfortunate decision the ancient glitch of a weapon's specialist had made in defecting so long ago. With some luck and some skills, one battle would rid them of three opponents, one way or another. To claim them for his own command would be preferable but if not, offlining was always a valid option as well. The Seeker was the weak spot. The medic and Ironhide would not yield easily but with their mate on Megatron's side, there would be little else they could do. Seekers, Megatron knew from experience, took a particularly dim view of the betrayal of a mate.

...Even, he supposed, a Seeker as young as Prime's.

Where did they find you?

If he didn't know better, he would halfway have suspected that they had somehow recovered enough of the Allspark to create sparks once more but the idea was preposterous at the very least. Megatron was the Lord High Protector and if the Allspark had still existed, he would have felt it, not to mention the fact that Seekers had always been sparked by Seekers and never through the Allspark.

Megatron knew the planet and he would stake his very spark if needed on that Seeker not having been there before. It had not been there before, it had not arrived with the rest of the Prime's worthless followers, and that left... precious few options to consider.

Where are you from, little creature?

The thought nagged him but in honesty, it was of no matter now. He would know soon enough, whatever the cause and reason behind the Seeker's appearance. There was little that could be denied the Lord High Protector and this would not be one such thing.

The creature was a mystery and Megatron intended to solve it, by whatever means necessary.

---

A/N: Vivienne Grainger wrote a gorgeous fic in an AU-ish verse that bridges 'Four Lives' and this little monster of a Seeker-fic – in which Will discovers that if he thought being around giant, alien robots was confusing, it really has nothing on being dead. It's called 'Death Duties' and can be found on her FFNet account. Go read, because it's pretty and awesome and this chapter will still be waiting when you're done :D

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Will Lennox didn't know what Megatron's fascination was with deserts but despite the amount of bitching and complaining he'd done about it since the 'Cons had first made themselves known, it wasn't a fascination he really objected to. Deserts made for a surprisingly nice battlefield when you had Decepticons to deal with. It didn't leave you a lot of cover but it also didn't have millions of people in close proximity and didn't come with far too many civilian casualties or the headache of trying to keep a cover of nothing-out-of-the-ordinary.

The Seeker, surprisingly, agreed... if for somewhat different reasons. It had quickly decided it hated the sand on Diego Garcia, so that really didn't bode well for an actual desert, but it was quite content with the lack of clouds, humidity, and anything it might fly into on accident. Given a couple of centuries and Will suspected that boredom with nothing but rocks and sandy dunes might make it wish for something a little more exciting, but for now the thing was still young and pretty much anything was fascinating and new to it.

Of course, that also killed off most of the small and very unlikely hope that Will always held that Starscream's attention would slip one day in battle and send him head-first into a mountainside but then, life was full of little disappointments like that.

The Indian Ocean skimmed by below them as they approached the coast with all of the painfully sluggish speed a C-17 was capable of – and sluggish it was, to Will and the Seeker both. Having to play nice with the actual F-22s and not just leave them behind in a cloud of dust had been bad enough. Having to keep pace with something that couldn't even approach the speed of sound had started out annoying and ended up as nothing less than excruciating for the very proud and very, very speed-addicted Seeker-part of him. Worse was the fact that they couldn't do a thing about it. Ignoring the fact that the C-17s held the safety-measures that currently kept the 'Con Seekers from just bearing down on them in a rain of missiles, the fact remained that the pathetically slow, vulnerable bits of flying tin also held what was theirs and neither Will nor the Seeker were about the stray far from Ironhide or Ratchet. Not that there was much they probably could do if Starscream and the rest of the fraggers somehow found a way to attack but it was the principle of things. It was mate and mate was theirs to protect.

As a compromise, they'd finally settled on air acrobatics instead. Fly ahead, fall back, catch up, spin and turn and repeat as desired – it was enough to have made his stomach churn as a human; now it was nothing more than a way to keep himself distracted from the unwelcome combination of the anxious knot in his non-existent stomach and the boredom that left him entirely too much time to think about it.

A boredom and anxiety that he had long ago given up on shielding, too, which resulted in Ironhide and Ratchet both getting the full force of his distraction. Not a very decent thing to do, Will-the-human figured. The Seeker seemed to think that it was perfectly fair.

"And to imagine I thought you had been restless as a human," Ratchet remarked dryly over their comm-frequency.

Of course, they both gave as good as they got and that was a nice distraction, too, so maybe that was why Will insisted on being a pain-in-the-aft about it all.

"Hey, I usually got partnered with Ironhide and he never complained," Will pointed out and evened out his course and his speed to match the C-17 with the medic in it without a bit of conscious thought involved in the process. An amused feeling through his bond told him that Ratchet was perfectly aware of what he had just done but the medic didn't comment on it - he was probably just grateful that Will had stopped 'pacing' the airspace for a while. Their medic might have experience with Seeker bonds and flights but that didn't mean it wasn't necessarily annoying, anyway... even if Will honestly did try to keep the worst of that part of it away from his bonds.

"Perhaps that would be because Ironhide was only marginally more controlled in his restlessness than you were," Ratchet replied and ignored the snort from said weapons specialist as he listened in on their conversation.

"Not my fault the fragging planes are slow. I could have used that time to play target-practice with the flying fraggers and the rest of the Deceptiscum Megatron has left." Ironhide this time, bless his restless, impatient spark, and it was a testament to how far they had come that the Seeker didn't object to having its kind - or its Air Commander - referred to as a flying fragger. It had started to know Ironhide and his way of being and it had gotten used to it, too. It would have been insulted before. Now it was just mildly bemused at the mate that didn't seem to understand how glorious even an enemy Seeker was.

"If the planes were faster, weight, distance, and cargo capacity would be a problem instead. Are you perhaps volunteering to swim the rest of the way if we get you a faster plane instead? Or would a trim of your cannons be better? You seem to have put on some weight in armour as well since I first saw you."

Ironhide huffed. "You're the one with redundant systems."

"I'm also not the one complaining," Ratchet pointed out. "Cope or learn to swim, Ironhide. I'll be laughing from the comfort of my plane and let the Twins fish you out when you sink like the pile of metal you are."

Amusement from the Seeker, amusement and the clear impression of how very unnatural water and swimming was, and then Will let himself fall back again to do another lazy circling of the group of planes. None of the pilots even reacted anymore. He'd heard some insistent inquiries aimed at Optimus earlier on about just what the hell he thought he was doing - being told about a Seeker's little idiosyncrasies and experiencing them in person were two very different things, apparently, and clearly not appreciated in the least by their pilots - but even that had eventually stopped as everyone seemed to accept that their alien jet seemed to know what it was doing and more importantly seemed to have no intentions whatsoever of not doing it, possible orders by Prime or not, thus making the entire argument somewhat pointless in the first place.

Being with NEST tended to be a lesson in futility like that. Anyone who'd tried to teach Sideswipe or Ironhide restraint - or the Twins even somewhat decent English - knew that with painful certainty. Lennox himself, as a good commanding officer, had usually just laughed in the privacy of his office. If they succeeded, great. If not, they could chalk it up to a nice bonding experience with their alien allies and a lesson in having the serenity to accept the things that can't be changed. Or something. Epps had just called it good entertainment as long as they weren't the ones providing it.

There was land up ahead, a thin line of cliffs that grew steadily larger, and Will added that small bit of power that was needed to send them roaring past their group and up ahead of them. He was tired, he was restless, he was anxious, and this was land and not the unnerving unnaturalness of an endless sea that the Seeker seemed to have a bone-deep fear of. Will couldn't blame it, either. The thought of crash-landing in the middle of an ocean with no land for five hundred miles in any direction would have been enough to give the Seeker-part of him some nasty nightmares if it hadn't been for the fact that Cybertronians didn't dream.

"Stay within range, Lennox." Ironhide's voice interrupted before they could get too far ahead – and yes, there was that.

Soundwave was up there, however much Will didn't like to think about it and however much the Seeker wanted nothing more than to tear the winged would-be Seeker imposter to bits for daring to keep them under surveillance in the first place. Soundwave was up there and only the bulky scrambling equipment carried by the C-17s kept the fragger from getting a good look and a good target lock on them. Soundwave and the enemy Seekers that lingered at the edges of Will's awareness with unwanted persistence to match the three marks on their screens, never coming closer than three hundred miles away. Far enough away that chasing after the fraggers would have been pointless, even if their Prime had let them, but still close enough to be a constant source of unsettled annoyance to him. Starscream might think he was doing them a favour in trying to steal the foolish little Autobot Seeker away to the proper side of the war but as far as Will was concerned, he could stick that plan somewhere where the sun didn't shine. They were enemy combatants and no one liked having an enemy lurking in the shadows, just waiting for them to slip up.

Megatron would be up there, too, somewhere, Will had no doubt about it – the slagger did have wings and some idea of how to use them, but whether he was far enough away that they couldn't spot him or just hiding to let his Command trine get the attention, none of them knew for sure.

Their own surveillance was already working overtime to keep an eye on everything. A normal mission was bad enough, even when the 'Cons didn't know they'd been spotted or from what direction they'd arrive. An ambush was a whole lot worse. Starscream, considerate slagger that he was, had provided them with a time and location and not enough time to really pull off a decent attack from another direction. The 'Cons knew they were coming, they knew where and when and the general direction, and that more than anything made everyone on those airplane grip their weapons just a bit tighter.

Your speed is pathetic.

And then there was that. There had been insistent requests from an unfamiliar frequency since the Seekers had shown up on their screen and for once, Will and the Seeker had unanimously turned down every last one of them. They knew perfectly well what they would find on the other end and it wasn't something either of them wanted to deal with, not after the spectacular failure that had been their last talk.

The voice was little more than a low murmur, with barely a ghost of the appeal it held at closer range but that didn't matter. They both recognised it in the snide little insults that had been offered on and off through their flight whenever Starscream came close enough. Obviously, the fragger could contact them from a good bit further away than just two hundred miles. It just didn't carry the same compulsion to submit and obey... which was probably why Starscream had waited until he was closer when he had attacked Will and Ratchet both. Anyone would be stupid to turn down the advantage of surprise and give the enemy time to strengthen their defences before the attack. Why Starscream didn't come closer now, Will had no idea. Maybe they had orders. Maybe it was just another mind-frag on the way.

He felt a sense of soundless support from his bonds with Ratchet and Ironhide both as he passed on the 'message' from the Air Commander, along with the strong impression that he should ignore the other Seeker if he could at all but even at that distance, it was easier said than done and he had learned that fast, too. The voice wasn't strong but the fact that it was Starscream was enough to keep him from blocking it entirely. Whatever Will might say, the fragger was still the Air Commander and it took a lot more drastic means than just pure stubbornness to kick him out for good.

Why do you demean yourself into following fleshling creations like what when you should fly with equals? What proper Seeker has patience for such pathetic pace?

Since blocking it was impossible, ignoring it should have been his second course of action. Starscream, unfortunately, had aeons of experience in just what to do to make a Seeker react and Lennox, unfortunately, for all that his mind was partially human, still carried that Seeker coding and the Seeker hair-trigger temper.

Seeing dry land below him and soaring over sand again – blissful, blessed desert – was enough to cool some of his temper but not enough. Ratchet picked up his intentions a moment too late for his short, sharp reprimand to matter as Seeker programming took over again and the importance of the Air Commander overruled his attention to anything not an immediate danger to his mates.

Says the fragger who puts up with Megatron. At least Prime doesn't pretend to be something he's not. Megatron isn't even a Seeker, he just stole bits of your coding to slap on a ground-pounder frame, Will bit back.

A valiant attempt to correct the numerous flaws in the worthless frame of his creation, Starscream corrected and Will wasn't sure if amusement was any better than anger and arrogance. He may have been sparked as merely another worthless ground-pounder but his choices have made him far more. Science is a worthy ally. Even Seekers can be brought closer to perfection, after all.

The Seeker part felt unsettled – messing with frames or coding was wrong, period – and Will wasn't feeling a whole lot better. Starscream he could deal with. The implication that the fraggers out there might be even more dangerous than he thought thanks to some convenient messing about with their insides and coding was... unwanted to say the least. Unnerving and 'frag it all to the Pit' might be closer in accuracy. His body was what anyone human would call factory new. If he was outgunned and out-armed from the beginning, what with the rest of the fraggers fiddling around with their bodies, then Will had a lot bigger issues to worry about than he'd thought at first. He didn't stand a snowballs chance in the Pit against Starscream, then, not to mention the other two members of the threesome.

Maybe Starscream had picked up on those vague thoughts, maybe it was just a lucky guess, but as he continued his voice was lower, smoother, and had a bit more of that allure in it again – enough to make Will listen despite the best of his efforts and enough to make his Seeker-part freeze in their mind.

Haven't you wondered about the gifts of my trine, youngling? Haven't you wondered why you were not sparked with our abilities? Our kind was perfection when compared to the worthless ground-pounders but that perfection had been left unchallenged under the reign of too many Air Commanders. They lacked the ambition for it. They were content in their little world and saw nothing beyond their own circles.

The voice was... appealing and appalling at once, sent a shiver through his body even under the heat of the desert sun and still he couldn't keep from listening. There was something in the back of his mind – Ironhide, familiar, determined, angry – but the feeling was lost in the sound of Starscream's words as they made their way through his mind with a persistence that Will found himself disturbingly reluctant to fight.

Ratchet, with far more experience and a lot less reservations, had none that reluctance and the sound of his voice through the bond was met by silent relief from Will – maybe it was Ratchet's own former bonds with the breed, maybe it was just the medic's relentless stubbornness at work but whatever it was, Will was grateful for an ally.

You manipulated core programming? Ratchet didn't wait for a response but continued, anger and disgust overshadowing any hesitation the medic might feel from his previous run-in with the fragger. Did you decide in your arrogance that your name was Primus, perhaps, or are you so wrapped up in your delusions that you believe yourself capable of controlling the very core of a being? Did you use innocent Seekers for this, Air Commander, or were they so caught up in your arrogance that they honestly believed in your skills?

And risk abilities like ours in the hand of the unworthy? Will could hear Starscream's sneer through their bond at that. I did nothing I wouldn't accept myself. Our decision was unified, as a proper trine's should be.

I'm amazed you were tolerated as Air Commander afterwards, Ratchet bit back. Or perhaps that was why some joined Optimus. I wondered about that – Seekers, after all, should be unified, and we both know what it takes to remove oneself from Seeker-kin completely. I was surprised any of them joined us at all. Maybe I should have been surprised that not more of them did.

Will had expected Starscream to snarl back at that but instead the Air Commander's mercurial mood shifted again and the full force of that attention descended on Will once more as Ratchet was dismissed with little more than a thought.

You are aware of us, youngling. Is this what you want to be? the voice murmured. A slave to ground-pounders and fleshlings when you could claim dominion of the sky with others like you? None of us were sparked with our abilities and none of them were ever simply given to us. We were born with limitations and we chose to crush them.

There was something in the back of his mind, the faraway sound of his name, but he could do nothing but mentally stare, feeling like a prey watching the approaching predator and being unable to look away at all.

Are you aware of Skywarp's limits? Starscream asked as his voice and presence shifted again and Will could have sworn he could hear the dark glow he knew would be in Starscream's optics.

Maybe, probably – fifty miles with any kind of accuracy at their best guess, but who knew – and he pushed the thought away before he could even finish it but it still wasn't fast enough.

That's the thing about limitations, little one, Starscream continued. Limits were meant to be broken and technology – technology can be improved.

And that, Will realised too late, was all the warning he got. He was still within the range of their defences, but only just inside of it and it wouldn't be enough.

There was a sharp crack of displaced air before he could react, red optics and a Seeker's distinctive frame as it materialised just ahead of Will, and then it was inside their defences, but even that wasn't enough. Something hit him hard enough to make his processors reel and the world spin frantically around them, sky and sand and sky, and his instincts did the only thing a young, inexperienced Seeker could do - they reacted instantly to do whatever they could to slow him down rather than risk gunning the engine and send them straight into the ground at Mach two, but that took time and time was what they didn't have.

The air cracked again, the world warped around him, and then there was nothing but sand and the brief, terrified thought from the Seeker that they were out of time and this would hurt-

- And then the world went black as they hit the dunes at close to two hundred miles an hour and merciful unconsciousness took over.