re_alignment | voice, forward dated post rescue

Entry tags:

✘ tf: idw | starscream

voice, forward dated post rescue

[it is still not decepticon to admit weakness so this post sounds hella jovial]

Next time it looks like I want an all-expenses paid vacation to Cybertron-knows-where, I'm not going to risk it. I'll just book a few days off from whatever it is stressing my processor and do the mountain retreat thing. Or drink.

So. Giving due credit to the planet for an overdue and pretty decent assassination attempt - I think, still a little fuzzy on that, I'll get back to you - what else have I missed? Vandal, how's your flimsy excuse for a house, any stiff breezes take it down yet? Blurr, are you still overworking yourself? Miko, Knock Out, your friends ever turn up? Soundwave, I'm thinking Sinatra? It's human, but nobody's perfect, right?

Megatron--...

...Still here?

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Starscream, I had heard you were gone.

I am still here, I hope that is a good thing, in your opinion.

How are you fairing?

[ahah here's a conversation he was worried about]

...It's a good thing, yeah. [he struggles to find a response that doesn't betray weakness, doesn't sound needy, because he is a little hurt and a little broken and a little vulnerable, and a lot eager to hide the aforementioned facts.]

I have no complaints, Megatron. --Has anyone else from your world arrived?

[At that response Megatron takes a moment to encrypt the connection from his end. He could both read a little bit that Starscream was being evasive, but also his question was something of peculiar interest.]

Please tell me honestly Starscream, what prompted that question? It's not that I distrust you, but it seems oddly specific of a topic and that does raise some interest for me.

[His expression is non-judging, and he has put on his best 'feel free to talk to me' look, all of his attention firmly on Starscream.]

[that brings him up short. It's easy to underestimate this Megatron because he's so gentle and modest, while forgetting he's still as incisively intelligent and a judge of character as Starscream's Megatron.

Honesty it is.]

Just wondering if you'd met up with your Starscream yet. [and thus needed him all the less.]

I see, is it curiosity to meet your counterpart from my world?

[The question is asked with nothing but curiosity, there is no judgement to it, nor is there any attempt to imply that it is anything else in his tone.]

To answer your question, if he is here he is being uncharacteristically quiet, but in truth I highly doubt he has arrived here. He is confident enough to send out a hailing call for any other Decepticons here, I am sure.

No. If he's here, you don't need me.

[uncharacteristically honest, from a Starscream to a Megatron. Any excuses in this vein would sound unconvincing]

[Megatron's expression shifts from one of surprise to a soft smile, there isn't sympathy in the expression, since he is fairly sure that is far from what Starscream wants, but there is affection.]

Starscream, even if he were here, I would still look to you for the things that make you and him different from one another. You are, I admit, a much more likeable person than I had hoped to meet in regards to Decepticons from your polarity universes and I appreciate knowing you all the more for it. You have a great value of your own, and that can not simply be replaced by one who shares your name, just in the same way that you do not fully replace the Starscream of my world for me.

Even if I were to remove the emotional factors, you have experiences, in your home universe and here, that the Starscream of my world does not have. To consider you any less of an ally, of a friend, because the Starscream of my world had arrived would be a grievous disservice to that experience, and to you.

[he stops dead at that comment about "decepticons from your polarity universes", and looks. Just. Utterly crushed for a second.

And then he shakes his head slowly and the rest of the words are pretty much water off a tarpaulin.]

...right. Okay.

Thanks.

[he doesn't trust himself to say anything else.]

[He sees the look and he a look of worry settles on his face.]

I have the feeling I said something unintentionally hurtful, did I do so? Would you help me to understand what I might be thinking or saying wrong?

[oh it's an invitation.

Inadvisedly, he takes it. And his voice is brittle and hard.]

I thought you of all people wouldn't paint all Decepticons with the same brush. [and if he'd just left it at that, it'd be fine, but Starscream's temper and his mouth have a way of running off with him and he values Megatron's opinion ordinarily far too much not to be both hurt and angry.]

The atrocities in my universe weren't just committed by us. It wasn't like the first Transformer to put on a purple badge decided to kick some poor whimpering guileless Autobot in the teeth. I served my people with honor and dedication and the conviction that I was fighting corruption. Whatever happened later in the war, our beginnings were beyond reproach.

[and his voice levels off and becomes that special kind of apathy designed to protect himself mid monologue as he realizes he's strafed the wrong bombing run and he's going to be in serious trouble, trying and failing to emotionally break off] It doesn't matter. Think what you want about our Decepticons, and about me.

I'd wager you weren't beaten half to offline in a backroom for leading a peaceful protest.

[The hurt in his expression is clear and well defined, not a physical pain, but an emotional one. After having been misjudged to be someone who would simply toss aside this Starscream in favor of the one from his own world, and now to see what about his words had hurt someone he considered a friend. These things combined to squeeze his ember.]

Starscream, I am sorry. I did not mean that my original understanding of Decepticons from polarities like yours remained the same. You were the first Decepticon from the other polarity that I ever met, knowingly, and you were a pleasant and wonderful surprise. I hope you can understand, what I had been told of the Decepticons in your polarity was describe as 'alike to the Autobots' of my own universe. The Autobots in my universe are unbearably cruel, they once had a reasonable founding for their wish for change but they forced that change with violence, acts they delighted in. This is what I used to understand other polarity Decepticons to be like.

Meeting you that was proven very wrong and so I realized that I could not judge anyone, no matter name or faction, by those things or expectations of a complete inversion of what I am used to.

I never meant to say that, knowing you now, I thought you were one who would commit atrocities, or act without due reason. I am sorry if the way I said my words conveyed that idea to you. I think no ill of you Starscream, nor of any Decepticons from your polarity simply based off that alone, I have been proven to that I must judge each myself for their actions.

And since you brought it up, no, I never have been, instead we were told 'join the Autobots or perish' and though I survived I watched as Polyhex burn. I will not say that either of our experiences were worse then the other, but I do know what it is like to be persecuted for peaceful action.

[He hoped, desperately, that he hadn't managed to alienate Starscream from him completely. He genuinely enjoyed the mech's company and not as some kind of stand in for his own Starscream, they were far to different for something like that.]

So an idiot informed you. [his voice is dull again, quieter, withdrawn, far from the danger of hope.] You don't have to apologize to me.

Look, I... [briefly he looks away and blinks his optics off, letting out a frustrated and sustained hot vent in an attempt to cool down.]

...Thank you.

[it was insufficient, but in the face of that speech, that hurt on Megatron's face, he wasn't sure what recourse he had. Certainly didn't want to argue the point with Megatron, particularly when he was apologizing--it was a shocking relief that he hadn't uncovered some hidden nastiness in this Megatron that he was familiar with in his own.] --as for your Polyhex, I'm not saying you didn't suffer. I'm saying the Autobots in my world were no better than what you'd been told about us. Probably worse, considering the financial backing they had.

Just - it's complicated. It's really, really complicated.

I'm sorry I reacted like that.

Perhaps in his world that kind of all inclusiveness is well placed, perhaps not, I can not know without asking more. All the same I have learned that I should set aside any preconceived notions about any one and learn them for myself.

I feel I owe you an apology, if not for what I said just a bit ago then for the short sidedness of allowing myself to judge individuals by a group concept.

You had every right to react as you did, my words were less well measured than I had hoped and they clearly did you injustice by that. My greatest worry is that I have managed to strain our friendship, which I value greatly. I do not expect you to deny any strain, but I hope you will honestly tell me if there is still something discomforting you in our discussion so that I can do what I can to sooth any harm I have caused.

It's all right. I mean it, it's okay.

Just relax, you haven't caused any intentional harm. [mutters] It's not like I'm happy with what the war turned into, anyway.

I don't expect you not to try to apply your experience in a general sense to this world. That's what people do. [he just wishes Megs weren't so similar in voice and appearance to his Megs, so when he applies his experience it's not so... affecting.] And I can't expect you not to be who you are.

My worry is hardly about intentional harm, but harm despite a lack of intent.

Nor do I expect you to be someone you are not, this includes feeling unjustly accused if it sounds to you as if that were happening.

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voice, forward dated post rescue

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