Losing the war wasn't the worst part.

Or - maybe "losing the war" was the wrong way to say it. Skywarp couldn't say they'd lost. Not yet. Not until Megatron stopped fighting, his spark still, the molten-metal glow of his optics gone ruby-dark for good.

Megatron was still out there. Megatron and Prime both, so everyone said, locked in their ages-old combat somewhere far from the fortunes of their armies.

Not losing, then. Being taken prisoner, maybe.

It sucked slag, sure, but it had happened before. But as long as Megatron functioned, Skywarp could hold on. Megatron could get them out of anything. It might take vorns this time, but that didn't matter. He could save them. He always had.

And Starscream was out there too, swooping over enemy-held territory, raining death over the ones who had dared try to conquer the conquerors.

Some said he'd gone mad. Some said it proved, in some twisted, impossible way, that some part of him truly had been loyal, and would be until the bitter end.

Skywarp didn't know about that. He missed his trinemate and Commander. But knowing he was out there and flying made things better, somehow, whether he'd gone crazy or not. It made sense, in some way Skywarp's CPU was inadequate to compute. And that made Skywarp almost - happy. If you could find a scrap of happiness at the bottom of despair.

But some things even Megatron couldn't fix. Those things were the bad things, the worst things. Like standing in the wrong medbay, fidgeting helplessly, as the wrong medic from the wrong side of the war did the wrong things to fix the unfixable.

The worst part was standing here, staring at the mech lying on the medical berth in front of him, still and silent. At the sweep of blue wings, still flaring proudly from their owner's back, as they slowly dimmed to grey.

It didn't matter that the Constructicons were dead. It didn't matter that anyone who wasn't Megatron or Starscream or otherwise prudent or deadly enough to avoid capture was either dead too or a prisoner of war.

This shouldn't be happening here this isn't right here this can't be happening not now not here, some part of him keened. Whether the wail came from his logic circuits or his affect centers, glitched and overwhelmed, he couldn't have said.

He only knew how wrong it felt looking at the azure visor of an enemy. Hearing that enemy speaking to him, directly to him. Talking to him like it mattered. Like he could hear that shrieking voice inside Skywarp's mind and wanted - really wanted - to make it stop screaming.

The gloating voice of an uncaring victor, fighting not to laugh, he could have handled. He could have answered that with hate, hate and bitter anger and the promise of revenge.

But he couldn't handle this, this spark-deep sympathy that almost, almost, almost echoed his own pain, as that enemy laid a hand on him (too gently! much too gently!) and said, in a soft voice, choked with static:

"I'm sorry, Skywarp. There's nothing more I can do for him now."