Tangled Destiny

Chapter 1: Deviations

…

Starscream was laughing as they landed on the ice covered ground, sending up puffs of snow and ice chips to swirl around their frames. His excitement was infectious. It trickled across the bond in warm, playful waves, and Skyfire couldn't help but smile back at him. The air currents that had taken them here were some of the roughest on the planet, and his engines were aching pleasantly from the flight. He didn't share Starscream's—all Seeker's, really—obsession with testing himself against the elements, but he always enjoyed sharing the relaxed, pleasant vibes from his bondmate after flights like these

Skyfire glanced around the barren landmass they'd landed on. White surrounded them for as far as he could see, White snow, white hills, and even the grey sky above them was only a shade darker than the ground. There wasn't much to study here, but Skyfire already found himself itching to find out what kind of organic organisms could survive in a climate like this.

They'd already gotten all the data they needed for their report from the rest of the planet, but Starscream had insisted on ending their journey here. Now, Skyfire suspected Starscream had just wanted to test himself against the unpredictable air currents.

"C'mon, Starscream," Skyfire said. "We need to get some actual readings taken before we head out."

The wind was, thankfully, dying down now, so he didn't have to yell to be heard. As enjoyable as the air currents on this planet could be, Skyfire preferred a calmer environment while he worked. Not that the data mattered all that much now—this planet, while unbelievably rich in energy sources, was much too far away to be of any use to Cybertron. They were mapping out this planet so thoroughly to satisfy their own curiosity more than anything.

"Relax, Skyfire," Starscream said, raising his hands over his head in a luxurious stretch. "We've got plenty of time."

Starscream indulged himself for a while longer before taking off in a random direction. Shaking his head, Skyfire meandered in his own direction, though he kept the bond wide open. As they worked, Skyfire was careful to keep his partner within sight. It was harder than it seemed. Starscream would often flit from place to place while he explored, gazing intently at whatever new marvel had caught his interest. On organic worlds like this one it was often worse. Starscream tended to get distracted by the miniature life around them. He'd never admit it, but the Seeker shared his fascination for organics.

A thread of annoyance twisted its way into the back of Skyfire's consciousness, and he let out a soft chuckle. Starscream. He'd grown accustomed to the constant thrum of the Seeker's spark in the back of his processer and the occasional, flitting emotion from his partner over the last few vorns. The hint of irritation didn't bother him. Honestly, the annoyance from the fickle Seeker was more amusing than anything. Starscream was probably frustrated by some harmless drop in the ice or snow in his intakes. It wouldn't be the first time.

Skyfire bent down to examine a fissure in the ice, absentmindedly noting the darkening clouds above them as he examined the untouched patterns of frost beneath. He idly bottled and sub-spaced a small sample, stumbling slightly to regain his balance as the snow shifted under his weight.

There was no warning before the storm hit.

It was nothing like the rough currents that had brought them there. Those winds had been harsh but predicable—a mesmerizing dance of air and power that nonetheless followed its own shifting patterns. The storm was different. It wasn't a dance; it was a brawl. Unpredictably, uncontrollable, and so very, very dangerous.

The world shifted around him with unbelievable speed. One moment Skyfire was calmly studying the ice patterns, half his processer still occupied with the flutter of emotions coming from his partner, the next was chaos.

The grasping, violent hands of the wind hit him first. Already half unbalanced, Skyfire was thrown off his feet by the sudden blast of air. The wind caught on his outstretched wings, forcing him off the ground before he could even register the vicious change. He was thrown once, hard, against the ice before the gale forced his dented frame back up.

His vision dissolved into white flecks, audios filled with a muted roar of air as the blizzard consumed him. Sensors going haywire, Skyfire reached out for his partner. His com and navigational systems glitched from the crash, but their bond strengthened easily. Starscream's presence clicked reassuringly against his own.

Relief, fear, and frustration flooded the open connection. Skyfire sent a flash of concern and reassurance back at the feel of his presence. Starscream was still functioning, but he'd been caught as well and his lighter frame would make the grasping hands of the storm even more dangerous. Skyfire tried to control his frenzied flight path to follow the link to the Seeker, find a way to reach and protect the slighter mech, but the storm stole his sense of direction and barred any semblance of control over his frame.

With a wordless prayer to Primus, Skyfire activated his thrusters in the direction of what he hoped was the ground. The extra power let him break free of the dizzying currents and stabilize himself somewhat, but the chaotic swirl of sensations stubbornly refused to make sense. He could only face towards what he hoped was open air, mind still open to his bondmate's condition, and hope for the best.

Later, when he was calm enough to look back on the frenzied breems in the blizzard, he knew it was pure luck that got him out. Even with his thrusters working full force, the sheer, immovable force of the gale stole any sense of what he was doing. His optics were all but useless, and an unknown number of important systems had been jarred violently offline. There was only ice and wind and mindless, instinctual reaction. He was flying wildly, directionless.

Starscream was the only constant in the chaos. Skyfire clung to his bright presence of the Seeker as he struggled with the spinning world. The feel of his fury and determination was both a solid connection to center himself on as well as a reassurance that his partner was still online. He had no doubt that Starscream was in pain from the storm, possibly even damaged as he'd been, and blocking the feeling from the bond, but his spark still felt strong.

Then, almost worse than the wind, ice began jamming his joints. The white flecks burrowed their way into the cracks in his armor, robbing his systems of energy and mobility. A burst of heat from his thrusters melted some of the ice, and Skyfire hissed in pain as the freezing water caused his circuits to spark.

Then, almost as suddenly as it had started, it was over. Skyfire burst out of the ice flakes into jarringly clear gray skies, the wind's grip slacking into something he could wrestle control over. He was higher up than he'd expected- his wild flight had, thankfully, carried him into the skies instead of the ground.

The first thing he did was to send a pulse of relief at Starscream to let him know he'd found the edge of the storm. Acknowledgement and concentration filtered back to him, the bond opening further as the Seeker started trying to follow it out. Skyfire angled himself towards the faraway ground. He may have gained control of his flight, but the still-harsh winds jerked painfully against his wings, pulling at the already damaged metal. He was able to touch down a few moments later, the ice caving in slightly under the impact. It was a relief to have the near-solid ground under his feet again.

He stared worriedly at the direction Starscream was in, but the flecks of white in the air blocked his sight. Starscream was strong, but he couldn't help but worry about the lighter Seeker still trapped in the wind. There was nothing he could do to help him, and Skyfire hated being safe when his partner was still in danger. Going back into the storm would only get himself lost again; the best thing he could do was try to guide his bondmate to him and safety.

The dark emotions that flickered into his spark were both a blessing and a curse. They reassured him that Starscream was still aware, uninjured enough to feel the spiteful frustration and fury at the tempest. They also reminded him that his partner was in danger, struggling, and there was nothing he could do to help.

He jerked to attention as a flood of emotions suddenly choked the bond. Starscream's emotions started going haywire- anger, pain, even flat-out terror hit Skyfire like a blow. He immediately tried to send something back, to do something, but Starscream didn't respond to him at all.

Then there was a blast of pure, utter panic from the Seeker that sent Skyfire's systems into overdrive, and- nothing. The bond went completely, terrifyingly silent. No emotion, no words, not even the familiar, constant hum of Starscream's spark against his own.

Nothing.

For a moment, everything stopped as his processer locked up, refusing to process what the empty bond was telling him.

When he could think again, his first, panicked thought was that he needed to find Starscream. Now. He needed to get his partner out of the storm and safe, fix whatever was blocking the bond (because there was no way he had actually deactivated. Not Starscream, not from some slagging storm). He nearly flung himself back into the chaos where he'd last felt the Seeker's presence before his logic center reasserted itself.

The chaos of the blizzard was still fresh in his memory. If he flew back into that without even a semblance of a plan, the probability of making it back out again unharmed was distressingly low. The probability of managing to find Starscream again, especially without the bond's help, was nonexistent. And that was unacceptable.

If he wanted a chance of finding and repairing his partner, he would need to wait until it was calm enough to fly. To at least be able to see where he was going. And much as his spark screamed at him to go immediately, he forced himself to follow his logic.

Instead, Skyfire tried to reach out across the bond, to find anything that could lead him to Starscream. He tried to sense a hint of the other's presence, but there was only emptiness where there had once been emotion. Coldness instead of familiar spark-warmth. His systems faltered for the moment at the jarring absence, but Skyfire forced himself not to flinch away. He carefully probed the edges of their connection in search of something- some clue to his location or hint of his condition. But there was nothing.

And as the numbness started to recede from the bond, the broken edges where his spark had once melded seamlessly with Starscream's started sending out painful, torn signals. Skyfire let out a soft sound of pain and his hand automatically darted to his chest, but he couldn't soothe the ache in his spark.

He tried to access his navigational systems again to pinpoint his coordinates and have some way to identify where he'd landed in the unvarying land, but the system only came back with errors. He had no way of marking where he was or where he'd last seen Starscream. He would be flying blind, no matter what he did.

Skyfire couldn't go back into the storm, but that didn't stop him from moving. The wind was too strong to fly, so he paced laboriously along the outskirts of the blizzard, looking for some sign of Starscream's presence. His optics desperately scanned the impenetrable air, but no color broke up the constant white.

The storm had to be moving, shifting gradually away from where he'd first broken out, but he had no way of telling. The ground was too uniform, the snow too fluid, to measure any change in location. He tried to keep track of how far he'd moved, but he wasn't used to functioning without half his systems to guide him.

Even on the outskirts, the specks in the air made it impossible to see far. He could only pray that when the blizzard ended and visibility increased, he would be able to find the swell of the Seeker's frame along the flat background.

But when the air finally calmed, there was only white, unbroken snow.

-/-

Skyfire didn't know how long he searched.

Desperation drove him for the first cycles after the storm. A certainty that Starscream was injured, fading, somewhere, and he only needed to find the Seeker and he could fix him, restore the connection. As the air continued to calm, he flew in ever widening circles, looking for some deviation in the ground that would lead him to where his partner had fallen.

There was no way to organize himself. The constant shifting of the snow obscured any signs mere kliks after they were made, and his navigational programs were useless. When flying failed, he tried to coordinate some sort of system on the ground. Starscream could easily have been buried by the snow, systems shutting down to contain the damage from whatever injuries he'd sustained.

Starscream was resilient. He could survive for a while in emergency stasis, even damaged and buried in ice. He'd just have to remain online long enough for Skyfire to find him. Skyfire would not even allow himself to consider how damaged Starscream would have to be to deaden the bond. (And Starscream was damaged, not deactivated, never deactivated)

He used every scan he could think of to find any abnormality in the ice, but most of his diagnostics had been offlined from the storm, and he didn't have the knowledge to repair the delicate circuitry. He was stuck with only his optics and rudimentary systems he had to tweak from their original purpose just to work.

As cycles faded slowly, terribly into orns, a new problem came up.

The energon converter they'd been using was gone. Lost, somehow, during the storm. Skyfire didn't remember whether Starscream had been carrying it or it had been ripped from him during the blizzard, but it didn't matter. It was gone, and he had no way of synthesizing more energon. It meant that he had a time limit. Without fuel, there was only so much time he could spend searching before his frame gave out on him. Desperate, Skyfire doubled his efforts, but he still couldn't find a hint of the Seeker. As the solar cycles dragged on, his hope that he would find Starscream, unshakable in the beginning, began to fall away from him.

Time was measured only by the rare occasion that low energy levels forced him to find temporary shelter for recharge, and by his steadily dropping fuel levels. He'd long since turned off his chronometer, along with every other non-critical system he could spare to conserve energon. It wasn't enough.

The orns stretched on without success, and eventually, unavoidably, his energon levels went critical. And Starscream was still lost.

-/-

Skyfire stared despondently at the empty ice, the fuel level indicated flashing cruelly at the bottom of his HUD. Sixteen percent was left- the absolute minimum amount that would let him return to Cybertron. Any lower, and even if he did manage to find Starscream he wouldn't have the fuel left to bring him home.

If he stayed any longer, he would deactivate. There was no other option. No clever strategy to get around it, and he knew it. He needed to leave the planet if he wanted to survive.

Leaving meant abandoning Starscream.

Yet- his processer wouldn't let him delude himself anymore. He'd been searching for so many of this world's solar cycles without a sign of the Seeker. Starscream had a smaller fuel capacity than he did. Even if he had remained online after the crash, he would have deactivated from fuel depletion already. Skyfire's frame shuddered in spark-deep grief.

Starscream… Starscream was gone. The miniscule chance that Starscream had somehow survived whatever had torn apart their bond had dwindled with each passing solar cycle. He was searching for a cold frame, not a mech.

Was finding his frame really worth his own life?

Skyfire's spark cried out that it was. The part of him that refused to accept Starscream's deactivation without touching his empty frame demanded that he keep looking until he found the Seeker, no matter what. It insisted that Starscream didn't deserve to have his frame abandoned on some strange, alien planet.

But his processer disagreed. His logic center brought up the illogicality of Starscream's survival and the uselessness of staying here any longer. The irrationality of throwing his life away to find a broken frame. He'd be walking willingly to his own deactivation. No matter what his spark demanded. Starscream… Starscream wouldn't want that.

So Skyfire turned away from the unfeeling ice where his partner was buried.

The path back to Cybertron was engrained in his processer as it was for every planetary explorer, part of his very code. It only took a klik to activate the sub-routes that would guide him home, a call so fundamental he didn't need his navigational systems active to follow.

The first few steps, knowing he was leaving his partner behind, were almost impossible. Agonizing, and Skyfire almost turned back, logic be slagged, instead of abandoning him. But his desire to live was too strong, and Skyfire kept moving.

His thrusters activated, and the ground fell away from him in strips of white.

Maybe… maybe someday he'd be able to return. He could find a new expedition or gather funding to return some other vorn when he had the resources to bring Starscream's frame back home. Give the Seeker the honorable burial he deserved.

He laughed bitterly at the thought- the excuse to justify leaving the planet alone. Leaving was logical, was necessary, but that didn't mean he could comfort himself with useless platitudes. He was leaving Starscream behind. His partner had deactivated with only a wall of ice-filled air between them, and their bond would always remain silent and broken.

It would be a long, lonely journey back to Cybertron.

~.*.~