#i got halfway through the virtue of selfishness for the first time since i was 14 just for this

[unrestedjade]

More baseless Ferengi headcanons no one asked for: LATINUM EDITION~~~

- Almost every home is a rental, as almost all usable land is corporate-owned. Might as well daydream about owning a moon, it's no less realistic than owning the house you grew up in. (No I'm not frustrated with my $1500 rent at all, no I'm not miserable watching 40-year-old trailer homes selling for $250k to a property management firm that's going to rent it out. Surely a place like Ferenginar wouldn't be equally ridiculous, hahahahahahahahHAHAHAHA. Ahem.) - Latinum as religious fetish. We see Quark offering slips of latinum while he prays to the Blessed Exchequer before bed. He even has a little shrine. What's unclear is whether you're meant to reuse the same slips each day or if you have to actually "give up" the latinum over the longer term for the offering to count. You can break a piggy bank, but it's probably bad to break an image of the Exchequer, unless he's very chillaxed compared to the majority of gods. - Assuming really giving up the latinum is better, is destroying it extra good? Or are you sinning by removing it from the Continuum? Are there Ferengi extremist sects that sink latinum into bogs or launch it into a star?

- What do they think and feel about latinum with regards to the Exchequer? What does a god need with it? Is it meant to be his lifeblood, figuratively? Or literally, via transubstantiation? (Catholic Ferengi. Cathipitolists.)

- How was latinum treated in the days before they knew to process it with gold so it could be handled safely? It's very pretty and ethereal-looking in its raw form, and also very, very toxic. Depending on the symptoms of latinum poisoning, I wonder if it had anything to do with it gaining religious significance? Ancient Ferengi priests seeing visions and going a little funny in the head from handling raw latinum for years and years?

- The way Quark and Brunt talk about taxes in S7 suggests there's not a lot of taxation in Ferengi society (officially, anyway. idk what else you'd call their ubiquitous bribes/tips than unofficial taxation). In any case, since one of the major purposes of taxation in modern economies is to control inflation by removing money (governments create/destroy money; they don't really keep a little checkbook register of surplus/deficit the way a household does) offering latinum to the Exchequer as an act of worship could be a good way to take money out of circulation for a while. - Latinum vs fiat money? Latinum is canonically used as coinage by multiple species. (It would seem like Ferengi are putting themselves at a bit of a disadvantage by also attaching a spiritual importance to it, but who knows, and this is a tangent on a tangent.) Is all their money backed by latinum? It can't be, right? Just conceptually, their stock markets and banks can't possibly be tying every value in every account to a real, physical measure of latinum, that's horribly inefficient. Can "latinum" also mean any legitimate liquid asset? Or does the Exchequer insist on the real thing? Much to ponder. - Brunt implies in Family Business that Ferenginar has houseless people and beggars. There's no point in begging if no one ever gives you anything, so some people must give charity to beggars. What's that look like, is it something kind-hearted Ferengi do in spite of the RoA explicitly stating that charity is only acceptable when you come out richer than you started? What's their rationalization in that case? Are they left feeling shameful about it? (Obviously the people stuck begging feel shitty, by design. Ironically, they might feel less shitty than we would, since the Exchequer doesn't appear to care how you get money, only that you get it.) - If you're moved to give money/material aid to a needy person, you'd probably do it quietly. Here in the good ol' US of A a common view is that "hand-outs" hurt the needy person in the long run because you're removing their impetus to stop being lazy sponges. And that's from people who follow a religion that commands them to care for the needy! So it's gotta be even harsher under a religion that's completely mask-off in its worship of individual prosperity. - (You just know Keldar was one of those people tossing a few slips of latinum for someone sleeping under a shop awning each morning. His business sense sucked but Ishka made him sound like a warm person. Folks gotta eat.) - Reincarnation... Alright, so if you were a dude and you die broke it's implied you can't reincarnate/are damned to the Vault of Eternal Destitution. Cool and fair, nothing to unpack there. What about women? They're half the population but seem to have been overlooked on this point in this here 10k-year-old religion. Which is telling in itself, of course, but you'd think someone would have addressed this? Who reincarnates female? Is the accepted understanding that females reincarnate female and are totally removed from the requirement to bid on their life? But that still doesn't solve the problem, because even if reincarnation were assigned-sex-segregated (god what a shitty idea, compels me tho) you're still losing X number of men to the Vault each generation. - I want to see what Ferengi religious debates look like. Pel is shown to be a serious scholar of the RoA as they've dug into not only the text itself but all the commentaries and refutations and deep-dives others have published about it. That's gotta fuel some spicy convo around the tongo table once everyone's a few drinks in. - Are there multiple sects? People arguing whether this or that rule is meant to be taken literally vs as metaphor? Everyone can't be in lockstep on this stuff. Quark seems to have been raised within the currently-hegemonic sect, but surely there's others.

- There don't appear to be any clergy or equivalent persons, so I wonder if there's different sects how they organize themselves? Do they host different subs on Ferengi Reddit? (Ferengi Reddit...shudder) - Ferengi atheists slacking at work or living as drifters because there's no point saving money for a next life that's not real. Life must drive them to drink. That's when you go out into space to live with the sane people and never call home.

- Is the rest of the population chill with atheists, or is that a no-go? I guess it would depend on how loud the person is and whether they follow the Rules or not.

- You know who they're definitely not chill with: socialists. Do they have Satanic Panics about this or that media turning the youth into commies? If you're an outspoken socialist, are you looking at exile? Arrest? An unexpected date with an Eliminator? - Conspicuous consumption seems to be a thing, and it's interesting in light of the whole "needing a good high score for a good reincarnation" idea. It still boils down to showing off how much you can afford to waste, but the stakes are undoubtedly higher for the faithful. - If something happens and you're at risk if losing everything, is it safer to just off yourself while you still have money? What if you're going to lose more than you'd ever be able to make back? (In economics this is called a perverse incentive lulz)

- The Great Monetary Collapse must have suuuuucked. It's the Great Depression x100, and also your god is mad at you, maybe??? And your next life is totally screwed now, too. Fuckin' dire, man. When Quark mentioned it in the show, it was with this flippant air like he was waiting to see how Miles and Julian reacted. He might have elaborated more if they hadn't reacted...the way he probably assumed they would. (Partially a self-fulfilling prophecy given the way he primed them to treat it as a joke, but I digress.) - Suicide rates are measurably higher in societies that elevate achievement and work ethic (see the Protestant vs Catholic divide on this, it's interesting and very depressing as a lapsed protestant in a protestant-dominated country). Just saying. - On this same bummer track: hedonic depression could be very commonplace among Ferengi. Every minute not spent working is spent on distraction because life is just such an exhausting grind, and a lot of factors determining whether you're a good/successful person are out of your control. Booze, porn, and gambling are all very distracting, and thus very popular. If a lot of this just sounds like regular degular capitalism: yes. It's actually proving difficult to push the fictional society further out because we're already living beyond satire. Maybe that's why I like these awful little guys so much. (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

#star trek #ferengi #meta #meta being a generous term for me making shit up because that's just how i party #i got halfway through the virtue of selfishness for the first time since i was 14 just for this #couldn't make myself power all the way through but i think the depth of my ardor should be proven anyway #suicide mention #because their society is an ancap hellscape

[marjansmarwani]

hold you ‘til the morning comes

1.6k || ao3

Carlos has known nothing but fear since he first got the report that a firefighter had died in the line of duty. After hours of wondering, here TK was: very much alive, but far from okay. But Carlos is not going to let him suffer alone.

Inspired by the scene in the promo of Carlos comforting TK --- Carlos Reyes Week Day 7: Anything goes

This idea came to me while I was watching the promo and @officereyes, being the wonderful enabler she is, encouraged me to write it. I carefully avoided any mention of who dies so I could be right either way, but I have my theories. Anyways, enjoy some Carlos introspection as he worries about TK 💕

--------------

When Carlos and Mya returned to the precinct, there was a tension hanging in the air. 

At first, he ignores it, choosing instead to focus on the path to his desk and the prospect of sitting down. A volcano erupting in the center of the city had left everyone a little crazier than usual, and after a full shift on patrol, he wanted nothing more than to collapse at his desk and bury himself in paperwork for the remaining hour. 

But as he and Mya headed to their adjoined desks, he could feel eyes on him. 

“Am I imagining things, or are people staring?” he asked his partner under his breath. 

Mya looked around and frowned. She paused in front of the desk diagonal to their own and stared down at its occupant, “What the hell is going on, Johnson?

Johnson, a young, quiet officer nearly jumped out of his skin at the mere prospect of being directly addressed by Mya. He swallowed nervously, glancing around the room before he responded as if hoping someone else would step in and save him. When no takers arose he swallowed again before speaking, “A report just came in. It...said that a firefighter died.” 

Carlos froze mid stride, a cold dread seeping through his chest. He turned and faced Johnson, catching the worried gaze of his partner as he turned. He kept his voice as calm and steady as possible as he asked the question he desperately needed to know, “did it say which station?”

Johnson shook his head frantically, nearly vibrating out of his seat with anxiety in the weight of Carlos’s gaze, “no, sir.” 

He felt Mya’s hand, warm and steady on his arm as she leaned closer, “there’s no saying it’s him, Carlos.” 

He nodded, jaw tight, but didn’t voice what he was thinking: but there’s no saying it isn’t either. 

Somehow his feet find their way to his desk where he sits, hyper aware of all the surreptitious glances thrown his way. It wasn’t just that it could be TK. It was that it could be Mateo or Judd, Paul or Marjan. It could be Owen, for all he knew. It could be any number of the members of the little family they had built for themselves in the midst of all the chaos and uncertainty, and Carlos didn’t want to lose any of them. 

But it could be TK, and Carlos didn’t know how he was supposed to live with that. 

The room was quiet and Carlos could feel more than one pair of eyes on him. He did his best to ignore them. He didn’t need their pity, and he had more than enough fear all on his own. He couldn’t really blame them though; in the months that he and TK had been together, his boyfriend had become known around the station. At first by virtue of being a fellow first responder himself, then later because he would stop by on days he was off to meet Carlos for lunch, or just to say hi. TK got on well with his coworkers, so he understood the heightened fear. They weren’t just worried for Carlos’s boyfriend, they were worried for their friend. 

He ignored the whispers and Mya’s concerned gaze and pulled out his phone, hands trembling ever so slightly as he accessed his recent calls. He tapped on TK’s name and waited, each ring another spike of fear being driven into his soul. All too soon the automated voice of the voicemail sounded and Carlos ended the call, placing the phone on his desk without a word or a comment to anyone. 

Not answering didn’t mean anything. TK often didn’t answer when he was on shift: it was hard to answer your phone when you’re scaling a building or doing whatever else the day might require. 

Or that’s what Carlos told himself, at least. 

He turned back to his paperwork, trying to bury himself in the routine, resisting the urge to check his phone every other second. The minutes tick by and soon his shift is over, but he can’t bring himself to leave. If he leaves and goes home to his empty condo, he might actually go crazy. So instead he stays, willing to trade off the unpaid overtime for the comforting monotony of paperwork. 

At some point, he realizes that the desk in front of him is still occupied too. He looks up to find his partner sitting resolutely at her desk, shuffling through her own paperwork. 

“Mya,” he began but she shook her head, effectively interrupting him. 

“I go home when you go home,” she declared firmly. “I’m going to be here for you no matter what, so just get over it.” 

Despite everything, he had to smile. “Okay,” he agreed, knowing when to admit defeat. He turned back to his paperwork, but not before checking his phone one more time. There were still no new messages, and he tried to ignore just how much further his heart sank each time. 

He had just turned back to his paperwork when the sound of loud voices outside the room filter to his desk. 

“They’re saying that fireman just ate it,” someone was saying, “he was dead before they could even get to him.” 

Eyes all over the room turned to Carlos, some more subtly than others, and clenched his jaw, determined to keep his expression neutral. 

“Carlos,” Mya began, already halfway out of her seat with the likely goal of telling whoever was talking to kindly shut the fuck up, but he shook his head. 

“It’s fine Mya, I’m just going to step outside and try calling him again.” 

She nodded and gave him a tight smile as he grabbed his phone and headed towards the back door. He opened it and stepped out onto the stairs, taking a deep breath of the crisp night air. It doesn’t fortify him as it usually does, but there is only one thing in the world that could make him feel better tonight. 

The fear that he has been burying inside his chest all night is ready to burst but he pushes it down one more time. There’s still no saying it’s him, there’s still no saying that he has anything to fear at all. He pulls out his phone with shaking hands, ready to try again and already dreading the sound of his voicemail. He’s just about to dial when he sees someone at the bottom of the staircase. He frowns, pocketing his phone. This isn’t the public entrance to the precinct. Most people didn’t even know it existed. He was about to call down, to see what the strange figure wanted when they stepped into the yellow light of the floodlight and their features came into focus and suddenly Carlos couldn’t breathe. 

He took the stairs two at a time, rushing down to TK, because it was TK. He was here, he was standing, and he was alive. He might just be the most beautiful thing Carlos had ever seen. 

He called TK’s name as he rushed down and when his boyfriend looked up at him Carlos was struck by the sadness in his eyes even from a distance. 

He slowed as he approached, taking in his appearance. He seemed to be unhurt, as far as Carlos could tell, but he looked smaller than Carlos had ever seen him. 

He stopped short of pulling TK into his arms, though he wants to so desperately. He studies him up close first, before speaking, “There were reports saying a firefighter had died and you weren’t answering your phone. I...” he trailed off, not sure how to explain what he had spent the past few hours feeling and not wanting to burden TK any more with his own feelings when the other man was clearly drowning in the weight of his own. 

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

TK’s voice is too small and Carlos’s heart aches, “It’s fine,” he assures him, “I’m just happy you’re safe.” 

He wants to ask what happened, he wants to ask all the questions echoing through his mind but TK is shaking and Carlos feels fear start to climb up his spine again, “Are you hurt?”

“No,” TK assures him, “I’m not hurt. I’m okay.” 

As they stand on the stairwell and look at each other Carlos reflects that in all their time together, that might just be the biggest lie TK has ever told him. He steps forward, hesitantly at first but when TK makes no move to stop him he pulls him into his arms, sheltering his shaking body with his own. He can feel TK’s body sag into his, losing some of the tension. It’s only a moment before he can feel his shoulder getting wet as TK’s body quakes with silent sobs. He pulls them down so they are sitting on the stairs and gently rests his chin on the top of TK’s head, running a hand in soothing circles on his back. 

His boyfriend is safe and he is beyond grateful. He wants to bask in the feeling of TK in his arms and the knowledge that he is safe, that he hadn’t lost him, but it feels selfish in the face of TK’s grief. He had lost someone today, and though Carlos doesn’t know the details, he understands. Whether or not it was someone from his station, whether or not it was someone from his team, the loss of any firefighter could feel like the loss of a family member. It could also serve as a reminder of what he stood to lose every day; that when the ones closest to you are the ones running into the fire beside you, there is so much more to risk.

Carlos would ask those questions later, he would help him through it, whatever it was. For now, they would just sit here, curled together in the stairway, savoring the warmth and existence of each other. 

Everything else could wait, for now. 

#911 lone star #911 lone star fic #carlos reyes #tk strand #tarlos #911ls season 2 #my writing #carlosreyesweek2021 #userkimmy #userac #usermaximus #userjilly #tuserpaige #tuserjamie #jazzyjezz #aanathema

[doubleshotofsomething]

To Hell & Back

Part Four:  “My wings are frayed and what’s left of my halo’s black”

--

Summary: Your exit strategy involves your neighbour... Well, it is your neighbour.

Prompt: "I don't want to live on this planet anymore."

Warnings: swearing. (Typos that will be fixed). That's it??

Pairings: Bucky Barnes x Reader

-----

Series Masterlist

-----

You weren't always this...angry.

You weren't always this spiteful and short tempered, and malicious enough to deliberately poison muffins.

At one point in life, you were everything you'd ever wanted in a friend. Kind and compassionate. Even patience was a virtue you had an abundance of.

Then, one day, some guy from Asgard came with an army of aliens and ripped a hole through your father's finances. Apparently damaging a bunch of buildings, including the one your father worked at, was bad for business and so it closed down.

Just as your mother's job had barely managed to get your family out of the red, her boss gets murdered at some important meeting that blew up – along with some world leaders. In her boss's place, the son took over and ran the company into the ground.

Luckily, your sister had a bakery that made just enough to cover your parents' costs and your summer jobs had saved you enough to get you through college. Then, some other guy came with another alien army, and decided to take half the world with him – or whatever he did

The wrong half of the world, in your opinion. You could have lived without watching your sister's husband run her business into the ground. And life would have been a little easier if you didn't have to stretch yourself thin, to make sure your mother saw the next day.

"Then half the world came back," you continue, eyes focused on the cat. "And some random family showed up in my apartment. I'm pretty sure the husband had a heart attack when he saw me–"

Bucky places another beer in front of you. You hate the taste, but coffee on an empty stomach has never worked well for you.

"–so I moved," you take a final sip of your second beer, before placing it down and reaching for the one he just placed in front of you. "Now, I'm here. Stuck with a nosy neighbour and his cat."

"You can keep her." Bucky sighs, leaning against the wall next to you. Your shoulders brush. "I don't know the first thing about cats."

You frown and look up at him. "Barnes... You are cat. And I already have you, why would I want another one?"

He scoffs, blue eyes meeting yours. "I am not that kind of lady."

"Oh god," you roll your eyes.

"Gotta buy me dinner first, doll–"

"Not a doll."

"Maybe take me dancing," he continues, lips twitching at the sight of your scowl. "If you're lucky, I might invite you in for tea."

You glance at the coffee machine, still boxed, sitting on his counter but don't comment. You know what it means, you know why he bought it, and the thought alone makes you queasy.

So you look back at the cat, curled on your bare lap, and sigh. "Sorry I came in without pants."

You don't say anything else and he chuckles. He found you in nothing but an old shirt and socks that night, so he's not really surprised.

"Sorry I helped you without a shirt." He replies. He would've answered you immediately, the second you said his name, but he had to find pants first.

Silence falls between the both of you, and it takes actual effort for Bucky to look away from you. Tempering down the disappointment that has the audacity to knaw at you, at your stubbornness, you turn back to the screen of his laptop.

He was reviewing CCTV footage of your building's basement garage. Two hours into the viewing and he heard you calling him from the balcony, so he had to pause.

Now, four hours, three beers on your side and a weird trip down memory lane later – you're helping him sift through footage at a faster rate.

"So," you begin, eyes glued to the screen. "I have a question, about that whole serum thing."

"Hmm?" It's the first question you've ever asked about that part of him, that part of his history.

"How does it work when it comes to diseases?"

Blinking, Bucky has to pause the video to look at you. "Diseases?"

You nod. "Like flu, chicken pox, tonsillitis. You know, that stuff."

"I'm confused–"

"Do you not get it or does it run through you like water?"

"What?"

"Or does your immune system just basically butcher it within the hour?" You blink at him, eyes wide with curiosity. "'Cause like, I had this friend with one helluva immune system. He never got sick, so does it work like that?"

He pauses, lips pursing as he considers you. "Do you wanna know if my blood cells can cure AIDS?"

"If that were the case, you'd be in a CDC off-site lab right now–" you put down the beer you've been cradling. "–so, no. I wanna know what kind of illness can knock a super soldier out long enough for me to use it as an excuse."

He blinks. Once. Twice. "Huh?!"

"Saturday is in a few days."

Oh.

"What does that have to do with me?" His face scrunches up into the most confused expression you've ever seen.

"As we both know," you narrow your eyes at him. "Ever since you saved my life, like the asshole you are, my parents have taken a liking to you. And since I poisoned their favourite couple last week, I'm in deep shit this week unless I can find a good reason to not show up."

"I'm not gonna apologise for saving you."

You raise an eyebrow. "Of course not. That would mean admitting it was very selfish of you."

This is not how he expected this conversation to go. Or how he wanted it to go. So, he decides to turn back to the screen and continue watching the footage.

You know you struck a nerve, and it would be easier for you to blame it on the beer, but you can't. You want answers, just as much as he does.

You want to know what gave him the right to knock down your door, or the audacity to have his friend fly you to the hospital. He won't straight up tell you, you tried when you woke up in the ICU and found him there, and it pisses you off that he might not ever tell you.

Bucky frowns at the screen. "The camera's get switched off right after I leave–" he glances at you. "Did you bribe security to switch them off?"

"We have security?"

"The guys at the front desk?"

You frown at him. You know those guys, you bring them baked goodies from work three times a week.

"Hang on," you place the cat on the couch next to you, cross your legs and turn to move closer to him. "Let me get this straight."

Your knees gently press into his thigh and he forced to look at you.

"You're telling me that Laurence with sinuses, down in the lobby, and Percy with the three-legged rabbit. Those guys–" of course you'd know that. "–they're security? For this apartment building? We have security?"

"You can't be serious–"

"We have a biometric system at the door and like cameras, and a patrol car that frequents this neighbourhood–" you're pressing a little to hard on your fingers and he's worried you just might snap one off. "–what the hell do we need security guards for?"

You continue rattling off all the safety measures the building has, which means your fingers have to suffer throughout the list, unless he does something about it.

Which he does. Almost as if instinct, his hands are clasping yours before he can make the decision to reach for them. They're warm and cold against yours, but the right kind of warm and cold that makes you frown at them.

His hands swallow yours, which isn't something that surprises you. It's the way you're not pulling away, the way you're not fighting it, the way you can't blame the alcohol because it almost feels...normal.

You haven't felt normal in such a long time.

"You gonna stop tryna break your fingers?" Bucky starts. "Or do I have to stay like this 'til you knock out?"

You blink. "Does a concussion knock you out long enough to warrant an excuse?"

"You're relentless."

"Says the guy watching CCTV footage because of a cat."

"It's... For a good cause."

"Me missing Saturday dinner is a good cause, Barnes."

He sighs. "Doll–"

"–I'll owe you one."

Bucky is about to argue, his mouth was halfway open before your words registered. That's really what happened.

It's not like he was looking for an opening or anything. A way of asking you, that wouldn't resort in an argument or anything.

It's not like those were the words he's been waiting for, for quite some time now.

Not at all.

Of course not.

But, who is he to argue with the mysterious workings of a universe.

The room you're in is dimly lit, the only light originating from the kitchen and the streetlights. But you can still see that dangerous glint in his eyes.

He grins. "Is that right?"

You swear you heard yourself gulp.

-----

"Okay–" you're fidgety and anxious, and can't seem to stand still as the elevator doors close. "–now, let's go through this again. What's our exit strategy?"

Bucky turns to fully face you. He's been trying to keep you calm ever since the parking lot, but even he can admit that he was far too distracted to be helpful.

It wasn't even his fault he was distracted, it was completely yours. When he invited you to Sarah's party , the party celebrating the expansion of the success revamp of the boat business, he had said to dress comfortably.

Not dress like you were put on this Earth to be the end of him.

He was waiting in the parking lot, the same one that had the camera's switched off right after he left, when you came barrelling towards him.

You had narrowly escaped your sister. She was getting off the elevator just as you were nearing it, so you quickly opted for the staircase beside it. You were a flurry of floral black and white and pink in a summer dress, your hair barely in place – you tried using pins and thought about ribbons, but then forgot about them when you couldn't find your other shoe – as you basically pushed him inside the car.

You used the passenger window to try and fix your hair, as best as you could. And he spent the drive trying to reassure you that you looked fine.

You looked more than fine, but he couldn't seem to muster up the words.

"Doll–"

"Not a doll." Is your automated response.

"You look fine, " sweet as sugar, is what he wants to say. "And, well, there is no exit strategy."

You gape up at the mammoth of a man in front of you. His words, a ballad of heathens in your book, echoes in your head.

"No exit strategy?" You whine, fisting his shirt as you desperately meet his eyes. "Bucky, no. Please. You can't do this."

The elevator doors open before he can respond to you. Sam is waiting on the other side of the doors, champagne glasses in both hands.

Hands still gripping into Bucky's shirt, hair almost presentable, Bucky's face flushing from hearing you say his name, and your expression portraying pure fluster. You and Bucky both turn to find Sam staring at the scene in front of him.

His eyebrows shoot up, golden brown eyes lighting up at the sight. "Okay. This definitely makes up for you being late."

Bucky blinks, seeming to snap out of his stupor. "Wait, wha–"

"No–" Sam cuts in. "–I know how you 40s guys are about kissin' and telling. I won't pry."

"Hang on, Sam–"

"Bathroom's on the next floor," he has the audacity to grin. "Just be quick about it. The speech's in twenty minutes."

With that, he steps away from the elevator, gives a curt nod and – with a Cheshire grin – walks away.

You slowly peel your hands away from Bucky and take a few steps back.

Bucky clears his throat. "So, about the exit strategy..."

---

TAGS :D : @sunflowerxbarnes , @ginger-swag-rapunzel , @arctic-duchess , @sltwins , @thewayilookatbacon , @buckyisperfect , @paryl

#bex's 1.5k meme challenge #bucky barnes #reader insert #sam wilson #x reader #bucky x reader #bucky fanfic #bucky fluff #mcu x reader #bucky x you #marvel fic #neighbour!bucky #neighbours au #enemiestolovers au #bucky barnes x reader #marvel masterlist #to hell and back #part 4 #bucky x y/n

[justaghostingon]

Forgotten Alters Part 2

Buried Secrets

As the Academy readies itself for the Hunter’s big festival, Gyrus gains the chance to learn a secret about the god and himself.

The courtyard of the academy was bustling with activity. Magicians and casters of all types ran back and forth, some balancing gigantic barrels of paint, others with ceremonial white robes to soak in glowing powder so that no one got shot, and even someone driving a whole herd of wild boars through the center, fattened and grunting and ready to be doused in bright greens and yellows for the festival’s Great Hunt. 

Gyrus dodged around a stray boar, tripping backwards until he collided someone soft. He looked up to see the familiar face of his astrology professor frowning down. 

“Gyrus,” Professor Iro sighed. “Where have you been?”

“I was double checking some of the preparations for the release of the boars,” Gyrus lied through his teeth, not wanting to explain how he’d gone to his secret altar, again, to wish the Hunter good luck on the Great Hunt. He hadn’t been there, which Gyrus really ought to have predicted. The hunter might occasionally masquerade as a priest in Gyrus’ company, but he no doubt had better things to do to prepare than accept the well wishes of a random mortal who kept stumbling into his hidden altar. 

That didn’t stop the disappointed drop in Gyrus’ stomach at the empty altar though.

Professor Iro’s sigh brought Gyrus back to the present. “That’s priest work boy,” he grumbled. “Don’t go doing their job for them. They do little enough as it is.”

“They lead the Hunt!” Gyrus protested, feeling slightly offended on the priest’s behalf. “It’s their job to make sure that everyone has a good time, and that all the boars get caught!”

Professor Iro snorted. “Yeah, theoretically. All just an excuse to Hunt these so called ‘Great Beasts’ and try to imitate their god’s own Great Hunt,” Professor Iro waved a hand at the boars in the courtyard, now being sprayed with the bright green paint. “We’re the ones who actually have to create these ‘great beasts,’ to match the Great Traitor’s monstrous form,  and guide the less experienced hunters to a good catch while the priest frolic in the forest.”

Gyrus looked down at the ground, cobbled stones splattered in glowing emerald paint. The academy did put a lot of work into preparation for the Great Hunt, from painting the boars to guiding the poorer families towards the fattest finds. Still, “At least we’re not in charge of the cooking.” The feast afterwards could last for days, and the smell of blood and grease clung to the priest and peasants for ages after they prepared their kills. 

“Hunter grant us small favors,” Professor Iro muttered. “That reminds me,” he gave Gyrus a peircing look. “The headmaster wants to see you.”

He does?” Gyrus jumped. Running an anxious hand through his hair. “What for?”

“Not sure.” Professor Iro shrugged. “I’m just the messenger. But it sounded important. So whatever it is,” his hand squeezed Gyrus’ shoulder, “make the astrology department proud okay?”

“Of course,” Gyrus gulped. Mind racing. What had he done lately that would warrant a call from the headmaster himself? Was he going to get a reward for his latest project? But why a call to the office? Usually rewards were offered in big ceremonies. This sounded more like a reprimand. Or discipline. But it wasn’t like he’d done anything bad recently. Or anything worthy of reward either. Just his last paper on the Hunter... Oh no. 

“You okay there Gyrus?” Professor Iro’s brow furrowed. “You look kinda pale.”

“I’m great!” Gyrus pulled his lips into a terrible approximation of a smile. “Which way to the headmaster’s office again?”

“It’s in the west wing. Behind the big gold doors, where it’s been since day one.” Professor Iro raised an eyebrow. “Gyrus are you sure you’re okay?”

“Completely!” Gyrus began to back away. “See you at the Hunt!” Not bothering to see Professor Iro’s reply, he took of running west. He needed to find out what the headmaster knew, for the Hunter’s sake. He’d trusted him, Gyrus flashed backwards to their meeting, months ago.

----------

“You’re back,” The Hunter’s voice caused Gyrus to whirl around, the picnic basket of Mandu nearly falling from his hands. The god was leaning against the entrance, effectively cutting out Gyrus only exit. An ethereal light from outside bathed his skin and made him seem to glow. Or he was actually glowing. He was a god after all.

“You’re here!” Gyrus gaped. He’d been so certain the Hunter wouldn’t return, he so rarely manifested twice. Unless - “I’m not going to do the project!”

“Huh?” The Hunter cocked his head, stretching his arms up above his head. “Why not? Seemed like you were pretty excited.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to hurt your...I mean I don’t think the Hunter’s going to like it if I broadcast this failed duality everywhere.” Gyrus glanced at the shadow burns on the wall.

“It’s just a school paper.” The Hunter rolled his eyes. “No one’s going to be consulting some apprentice caster’s first year paper for the next great religious guidelines.”

“Final year” Gyrus corrected, then shoved his hand over his mouth, realizing he’d just contradicted a god.

The Hunter merely raised an eyebrow. “Still an apprentice.” His eyes roved over Gyrus’ body, taking in his tense shoulders and his hand over his mouth. “Relax.” His voice softened. “You’re not gonna offend the Hunter. I’m a priest. I would know.”

Oh so he’s still pushing the whole human thing? Gyrus thought to himself. Ok. He could work with that. “I guess I’ll trust a priest’s word,” he smiled. “But if I’m failed for blasphemy, I’m saying I got it from you.”

“Fair enough,” the Hunter shrugged. His eyes fell on Gyrus’ picnic basket, and flashed bright blue. “Is that Mandu?”

“Yes,” Gyrus lifted it up, watching the hungry god with slight amusement. “Do you want some?”

“If you insist,” the Hunter waved a hand, trying to appear indifferent. Gyrus giggled.

-----------

“There you are Gyrus.” The headmaster stood up as Gyrus burst through the golden doors. 

“I can explain!” Gyrus cried, and the headmaster raised an eyebrow.

“I should hope so.” The headmaster smiled. “Considering this work on the Hunter’s possible connection to a star god is quite ground breaking.”

Oh no. It was just as Gyrus feared. “It’s just a theory!” He held up his hands. “I’ve not got that much evidence, and...” The headmaster held up his hand, and Gyrus’ jaw snapped shut. 

“Modesty is a virtue Gyrus, but not in academia. As it stands, your paper qualifies you for a very special duty for the Great Hunt.” The headmaster smiled, warm and inviting.

“It does?” Gyrus shifted from foot to foot. He’d never heard of any special duties involved. Was he going to have to guide some one important? He hoped it wasn’t the lord. He couldn’t stand that guy.

“Yes.” The Headmaster moved from behind his desk. “If you’d follow me, I can fill you in on the details as we walk.” He moved to the side to open a simple looking brown door off the side of his office. Gyrus hesitated, confused. This all seemed far too convenient. The Headmaster paused. “Gyrus,” his voice held a note of steel beneath the surface, and Gyrus felt his body jump to comply before he told it too. 

The hallway they stepped into was neat and well kept, with other little wooden doors lined up along the way, like any other hallway in the academy. Gyrus’ shoulders relaxed at that. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him.

“...truly excellent work,” the Headmaster was saying, “how did you figure it out?”

Gyrus jumped, nearly tripping over his feet as he tried to figure out what the Headmaster was asking him, and what he was supposed to say. It was probably about the paper, he thought as he tugged at the edge of his shirt to buy himself some more time. But he didn’t want to explain about the altar, or about meeting The Hunter. He knew if he did it would be covered in scholars and magicians and priests. Call him selfish, but he didn’t want to share. Not yet.

“It was just a feeling,” he said instead. “The Hunter likes the stars.” 

“Does he now?” The Headmaster’s eyes narrowed, giving Gyrus a searching look. But Gyrus wasn’t paying attention, mind drifting to the first time he stayed over night at the altar. 

--------------

“Tell me about the stars,” The Hunter leaned back against the alter, looking upwards through the natural window to his constellation above. A stain of purple on his lips from the berries Gyrus had brought to spice up their daily picnics.

“What?” Gyrus blinked at the man across the picnic basket from him, hand halfway to the berries inside. “Why?” Surely the god knew everything already. If anything, Gyrus should be asking him that. There were so many secrets to the stars he’d love to know more about.

“You’re studying them aren’t you?” The Hunter said with a shrug. “Tell me about what you’ve learned.”

Well, if he insisted. Gyrus sat up, wiping the berry juice on his pant leg. “Stop me if i bore you,” he advised, knowing how long his rambles tended to run. The Hunter gave a nod, and that was all Gyrus needed to launch into a long lecture about astrophysics and the value of science in magic, a subject that only Professor Iro truly seemed to appreciate. The Hunter’s bright blue eyes focused on his face, sharp and interested, and never once did he interrupt him, even as the stars above faded to the blush of dawn.

-----------

 “Tell me, What do you think of the Hunter Gyrus?”

“I think he’s amazing.” Gyrus’s cheeks reddened at the daring of his own words. Hardly a normal thing to call a supposedly distant god. He hoped he didn’t come off sounding like a zealot or a priest.

“He is indeed.” The Headmaster’s voice is solemn. Gyrus glanced up at him, wondering if he’d met the god too, or if he was secretly a zealot. “Do you know why the academy is in this forest?” 

“Because it was a good place to build?” Gyrus asked, absently noting they were coming to the end of the hallway.

“No.” The Headmaster shook his head. “Because before we served The Hunter, we served his duality.”

“We what?” Gyrus stopped short. “Why doesn’t anyone know about this?” Surely this myth was preserved by the hunter’s priests, if it was still so relevant to the time. Unless... “Did I stumble on a Mystery?” Gyrus groaned. Everyone knew how protective priests were of their more sacred texts. If he’d accidentally found a secret from one of those, he was facing a severe scolding at best, and an indictment into the priestly order at worst. 

“Yes,” the Headmaster nodded gravely, and Gyrus’ heart sank. “But not for the Hunter’s priests. No. This is a Mystery of our own academy. A Mystery that today you are privileged enough to learn.”

“So you know which god the duality was.” Gyrus felt his curiosity bubbling up inside him. “And you’re going to tell me?” Induction into the priests would bore him to tears, but induction into the academy’s own staff? That was a dream come true. 

“Yes.” The headmaster stopped in front of the last door, solid Iron carved with an intricate designs of the Hunter among the stars. “Behind this door lies a secret we’ve guarded for a millennia. And today Gyrus, may open it.”

Gyrus reached to the heavily bolted handle, pulling the polished brass forward with a click and stepped inside.

The room was dim, and he blinked as he moved forward into the amphitheater, towards the only light streaming from a skylight four stories up. Was it that far to the surface? How had they gotten so far under ground? As Gyrus eyes adjusted, he realized they weren’t alone. Rather several people stood on sloping marble steps above them, cloaked in the shadows of the circular room. Gyrus turned his head to the center of the room, where a shallow pool lay at the bottom of the circular steps, water perfectly still, reflecting the image of the carved glass, above, the only light in the room. An eight pointed star.

“The Loadstar.” Gyrus’ legs gave out from underneath him as he gazed downwards at the symbol in horror. The great traitor himself. “But... no...” The Hunter wouldn’t. Not with him. 

“I’m afraid so.” The Headmaster said, and Gyrus heard the audible click of the door closing behind him. “Back before his fall, the Loadstar and the Hunter were in a duality, and to commemorate the occasion, the Loadstar placed the Hunter’s constellation in the stars. A trick, to distract the Hunter from his true intentions. Much like he used his patronage of our early institution to go behind the backs of the gods and plan his atrocities.”

“I don’t understand,” Gyrus shook his head. It was to much, to soon. The Hunter with the Loadstar? The academy serving the enemy? Nothing was making sense. Gyrus’ head was spinning. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because the Hunter took up our patronage from his duality, saving us from disgrace and destruction for one reason alone.” The headmaster lit a torch with magic, casting his face in shadow. “That when a human student with green hair and a love of the stars inevitably showed up and started asking questions on truths he shouldn’t know, we’d turn him over to the Hunter.”

The headmaster touched the torch to the ground, setting a ring of fire blazing around the circular room. In the new light Gyrus saw the faces of board members, professors, even Professor Iro stood among them, jaw set and eyes hard. 

“I don’t...” Gyrus shook his head, trying to make sense of the words coming out of the Headmaster’s mouth. “You think I’m the Loadstar?” That didn’t make sense. Gyrus clutched his chest. He was Gyrus. Just a normal human. A normal human who ate lunch with a god sometimes. But a normal human nonetheless. Wait. “The Hunter,” Gyrus gasped out. “The Hunter can vouch for me.” The Hunter wouldn’t have been so kind when he’d stumbled on the altar if he were his enemy. He couldn’t have known who he was and not told him. Right?

-----------

“You need to be careful,” the Hunter said, Mandu untouched at his feet.

“What?” Gyrus looked up at the Hunter, furrowing his brow in confusion. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know,” The Hunter bit his lip, frustration in his voice. “This shouldn’t be the first time. But it is. Someone’s been interfering.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” Gyrus shivered. If the god was worried, then whatever it was must be dangerous. “What should I be looking for?”

“I don’t know that either,” The Hunter shook his head. “Just promise me if something happens, you’ll come here. It’s safer. Probably.” He shot a dark look at the shadow burns on the wall.

“That is not very reassuring,” Gyrus admitted. And the Hunter glared. “But yes!” he raised his hands in defeat. “I’ll come here.”

--------------

Yes. The Hunter would save him. He'd told him to run to him. He wouldn’t shelter his greatest foe, nor his treacherous ex-duality. A strange confidence filled Gyrus as he raised his head to smile at the Headmaster. “ Summon the Hunter, he’ll clear up this misunderstanding.”

“We aren’t summoning the Hunter,” The Headmaster frowned. “Our reputation would never survive. To serve the Loadstar before his fall is one thing, but to attract him again and again as our academy always does? No. The priests would have us completely disbanded for heresy. There’s only one solution, which has served our founders for a millennia.” One of the professors threw an ax in the air and the Headmaster caught it with one swift motion. “We are going to kill you Gyrus, before the slumbering god awakens within you.” He raised the ax above his head.

The ax sung down and instinct took over. Gyrus dodged sideways, scurrying up the steps and away from the ax’s swing. He looked back for the exit, but the fiery cycle had sealed it off. Above him the professors began to press forward, weapons glinting in the light, and Gyrus took a step back down the stairs to avoid them. 

“You’ve got no where to run,” the Headmaster said, taking another swipe at Gyrus head. “Just surrender and I’ll make this quick.” Gyrus ducked, turning to run, but the amphitheater had nowhere to go. The headmaster chuckled behind him. “You don’t have to die by my ax,” he offered. “We’ve got fire and water too. Although I’d say my ax is probably the quickest.” Gyrus shook his head, picking up speed as he hurried around the edge of the pool. But the sloping steps were not made for running, and his foot slipped, sending him sliding down into the pool below. 

He screamed, kicking outwards as the dark water closed over his head, swallowing him. He tried to swim, but the water folded unnaturally around him, like a tongue dragging him downwards. Malevolent and cold. He looked back at the light of the stars, swimming above him through the murky water. Was the hunter’s constellation above? Or the loadstar? He wasn’t certain. His last thought as he faded to black was if the Hunter would miss the Mandu he couldn’t bring to the altar.

-----------

“Do you want to live?”

“What?”

“You heard me. You’ll die here. But I can save you. You can save you. Do you want my help?”

“Yes!”

“Say it!”

“I want your help!”

The world flashed white.

#room of swords #room of swords fanfic #strawbarrow drabbles #gyrus #kodya

[ckret2]

The Dead Unsung Heroes Club

Pairing: Starscream/Wheeljack Wordcount: 13800 Notes: This is my gift fic this year for @secretsolenoid​, for Ray! The request that I was writing: IDW RiD/TAAO: Starscream/Wheeljack, Prompt: bonding over doing something science-y.

Summary: One moment, Wheeljack is dead. The next he's on the inside of a dark bubble-shaped planet listening as Starscream explains that Unicron was defeated, they're somewhere midway between life and death, and Starscream hauled Wheeljack there because he needs an engineer's help upgrading some busted Unicron parts into a machine that will let Starscream get back to the living world. But the longer Wheeljack helps Starscream, and the more he talks with the other mechs scattered through limbo with them, the more certain he is that Starscream is keeping secrets from Wheeljack about the purpose of this project—first and foremost that his motives aren't nearly as selfish as he's led Wheeljack to believe.

The afterlife wasn't something Wheeljack had spent a lot of time thinking about, but he supposed that if he were to guess what it would be like, he wouldn't have guessed this. The Afterspark, if that was what it was, was a tiny pinprick of light, so impossibly small, so impossibly far away and yet so close it might have been within him. In a way, it reminded him of... but no, he supposed there was really nothing he could compare it to.

It was so small. How was he supposed to fit into it? But then the more he stared at it, the more he realized how dazzling the tiny light was. Maybe it wasn't small; maybe Wheeljack was the small one, closed up so tight he could only get a glimpse at the light. Maybe if he opened up... unraveled... piece by piece, let himself dissolve and drift away... and the more he stretched out, the more he dissipated, the more he left behind who he had once been, the brighter the light got, until...

Just before he dissolved into nothing, something behind him reached out and grabbed a hand he didn't remember he had, and said a name he'd almost forgotten. And then he was pulled backwards into the dark.

The next thing he knew was Starscream.

"That was a close one. We almost lost you," Starscream said, a little too close to Wheeljack and smiling like he meant it. "A few more minutes—or whatever passes for minutes around here, I don't know—and you would have been gone for good. You're welcome."

Wheeljack was getting a little too used to waking up from certain death, disoriented and confused, to be greeted by an overexcited Starscream in a new body. "You're blue."

Starscream beamed. "More blue, yes."

"And... curvy? Your optics are magenta." Nobody had magenta optics.

Starscream was practically preening under the factual analysis of his new frame—thrusters humming, wings tilting. "Do you like it?"

Wheeljack shrugged vaguely. "I thought you looked nice in red."

Starscream immediately scowled. "Excuse me. This is my body. My true body! It's how I'm supposed to look."

"Oh," Wheeljack said, completely uncomprehending. "Okay."

He was, he realized, splayed on the ground; he very carefully sat up and looked around. "... Hold on. It's... is this the... that city in the center of Cybertron?"

"It looks like it, doesn't it?" Starscream scanned the empty organic city and blank black sky with obvious disdain. "It's a pity, but we can rip out the trees."

"What's... where are... Where's Unicron?"

"Primus. I expect he's off cuddling with Optimus somewhere."

Wheeljack gave Starscream a blank look. He was still too dazed to be shocked.

Starscream shrugged. "Yeah. I know."

"What about Elonia?"

"Saved! The population, anyway." Starscream clapped a hand on Wheeljack's shoulder, beaming, and Wheeljack jolted as his fuzzy thoughts jerked back into focus around the point where Starscream was touching him. "You did great work. You rescued everyone except yourself. I don't think anyone's bothered to recognize your sacrifice besides me, though. But hey, welcome to the unsung heroes club. We don't do it for the glory, right?" Starscream, who could probably count on one hand the number of things he hadn't done for glory, gave Wheeljack a rakish and thoroughly convincing smile. He tried to stand back up, but Wheeljack clapped a hand over Starscream's to keep it in place; so, after a moment of hesitation, Starscream knelt down next to Wheeljack. 

His thoughts were coming back into focus now, and working at double time trying to piece together what had happened since Elonia.  "Hold on—'except myself'? What's going on? Where's the sky? Where are the other people? Why is—no, how—no, why is Optimus cuddling Unicron? What do you mean, 'unsung heroes'? Did..." He looked at Starscream, somewhere between nervous and horrified. "Are we dead?"

Starscream didn't look back at him. "Wwwellll..." He raised his shoulders, grimacing uncertainly. "Define 'dead.'"

Wheeljack slid out from under Starscream's hand, flopped on his back, and stared at the blank sky.

"Welcome to infraspace."

Wheeljack made a strangled noise.

Starscream left Wheeljack alone for a bit to adjust.

Well. "Alone." He spent about half an hour doing aerial acrobatics through the empty sky directly above Wheeljack. Wheeljack kind of thought Starscream was trying to sell him on the new body. Wheeljack kind of thought the look was a little "Thundercracker develops Primus apotheosis," but it was growing on him.

Once he'd recovered sufficiently, Starscream filled him in.

Unicron was dead, but so was Cybertron and every one of its colonies except Earth. They'd all evacuated from one planet to another and most people had made it. Some had died. Most didn't! But a whole lot of stars were eaten. Starscream hadn't heard about how the rest of the galaxy was faring yet.

Anyone who'd died in direct contact with the Talisman's energy had ended up here, in infraspace, the Afterspark's waiting room. Starscream was here, of course—died activating the Talisman to burrow its way into Unicron, as he explained to Wheeljack in excessive detail, and of course Optimus was the only one getting recognition. Blurr was here, another member of Starscream's "unsung heroes" club. Kup was around somewhere, he liked to tell everyone tales about how this place was just like the Dead Universe but not as bad, and what's his name that guy with six modes—anyway, a load of Autobots, so they and Starscream politely tolerated each other. Optimus was shacking up with the organic that made/was Unicron and wanted to be left alone, and Starscream, for one, was more than happy to respect his wishes. Sometimes Shockwave ducked in for a few minutes, but they threw stuff at him and shouted insults until he stopped astral projecting from Prowl's prison ship.

And then Wheeljack had to lay down and stare at the sky again.

"So," Wheeljack asked, "How do—how do you know what's going on back in—what's the opposite of infraspace? Ultraspace?"

"We've just been calling it 'the real world,'" Starscream said. "Wouldn't ultraspace be..." he made a gesture like something leapfrogging over an item, "beyond normal space?"

"Oh. I guess so." Wheeljack shrugged.

They were sitting on the rim of a nonfunctional stone fountain. It was a little low for comfort, but it was nearby and there weren't exactly Cybertronian-scale benches around here. Starscream kept switching between crossing his legs and pulling his knees halfway to his chest; Wheeljack's legs were stretched out in front of him. 

"Okay, how do you know what's going on in the real world, then? You haven't been getting news from Shockwave, have you?"

Starscream scoffed. "Please! As if I'd accept anything from that one-eyed, two-faced spawn of a glitch—even information. In fact, I'd go so far as to say especially information."

That was a bit more emphatic than Wheeljack had expected. Sneering disdain, sure—but not that scowl, not that venom. "Something happen?"

Besides the ores, the time travel, the attempt to destroy the universe, the weird manipulative mind game he'd played with their entire species, and the fact that he'd spent like three fourths of recorded Cybertronian history pretending to be a horse. Starscream wasn't bothered by what people did to other people. Despite what most believed about Starscream, Wheeljack didn't doubt that Starscream did have a strong sense of right and wrong; it was just that, for him, most of the time, right and wrong were merely an intellectual exercise. He wouldn't start burning in rage over what Shockwave had done—even if Cybertron, or the galaxy, or the entire universe should fall—until and unless it affected Starscream personally.

And Starscream evidently understood that was what Wheeljack was going for, because he didn't waste time reminding him of Shockwave's many reprehensible crimes. He snorted. "It's a long story and I'm not going to tell it. Let's just say Shockwave is the pettiest mech I've ever met in my life—and I'm including myself on that list—and that my last couple of days were pretty bad for my ego, and leave it at that."

Well, that could cover just about anything. "Does your ego have very many good days?" He said it wryly, but part of him genuinely wondered—and worried.

Sure, Starscream was far from the best bot to ever peel himself out of the ground (or, no, come off the assembly line, hadn't he?) but he wasn't completely without virtues. He was brilliant, he was cunning—those were two different things—he had a wit as sharp and precise as a scalpel, and he was a machiavellian mastermind in a way that was a wonder to behold when it was turned toward more noble end goals, even if "noble" wasn't anywhere among Starscream's intentions. All of his virtues had a faint miasma of ill intent around them, sure—but they were there, and they were undeniable. Wheeljack wondered how many people actually bothered to acknowledge that. It didn't seem like nearly enough.

Starscream replied to Wheeljack's question with an equally wry smile. "Well, I realize you were having a pretty bad day at the time and probably don't remember, but I was elected supreme leader of Cybertron this one time. That day was pretty good for my ego."

Wheeljack laughed. "Right! Of course."

"And I made it to precinct senator once," Starscream said. “That wasn't a half bad day. Oh, and I was made second-in-command of an army. Perhaps you hadn't heard of that? I think you may have been on the other side."

"Okay, okay, you've made your point."

Wheeljack was just beginning to wonder whether Starscream had ever felt validated on any days other than ones where he'd just been handed some massive promotion and an equally massive amount of power, when suddenly Starscream glanced away, his smirk slipping down to a smile that was a little smaller and a little more genuine, and said, "Chosen One Day wasn't bad either."

Really? It ranked right up there with being declared supreme ruler of the planet? "Well—"

"And your little speech."

Wheeljack shrugged, suddenly self-conscious under the way Starscream was glancing sideways at him. "Oh. Well, uh." He shrugged again. "It—wasn't a bad holiday. So. Good going on that." He reset his vocalizer noisily. "Anyway, you still haven't answered my question."

"Which question?"

"About—about the real world. Living world. About how you know what's going on out there."

"Oh, that!" Starscream's optics lit up, and he leaned closer toward Wheeljack, grinning conspiratorially. It was a look that Wheeljack had only seen him make a couple of times before—even with a new faceplate and paint, it looked the same—and it always showed up immediately preceding Starscream asking Wheeljack to do something outrageous, dangerous, and miraculous. He was wary of the smile.

But he always did what Starscream asked when he made it, so, what did it say about him?

"Can you keep a secret?"

Wheeljack hesitated. "... From?"

"From—the others." Starscream gestured vaguely around. "You know. Them."

"The other Autobots?"

"Yes, them."

"You're, uh, doing things that the Autobots wouldn't approve of," Wheeljack said, "and you think I—a whole Autobot—am gonna be okay with it?"

Starscream scoffed. "You're sixty percent Autobot at most." Wheeljack didn't have time to work out whether Starscream meant that as a compliment or an insult, much less which way he personally was going to take it, before Starscream went on, “Anyway, it's not that they wouldn't approve. They'd want in on it. They'd want Optimus in on it. And I'd rather he not. Call me selfish, but I'd rather keep this one little project to myself."

"Why don't you want Optimus in on it?"

"When you see, you'll know."

"And I don't get to see until I've already promised not to tell, right?"

Starscream smirked.

Wheeljack sighed. "Well, with terms like that, how can I refuse?" He knew he'd regret it just a little bit more if he didn't go than if he did.

"I knew you'd see it my way." Starscream slung an arm around Wheeljack's shoulders, and he tried not to focus on the weight of it, the warmth of him. For the first time, Wheeljack really realized just how cold this place, this strange demilitarized zone between life and death, really was. No—not cold, exactly. Devoid of warmth. Temperatureless, somehow. All except for Starscream. 

Wheeljack really wasn't doing a very good job of ignoring Starscream's arm.

"Come on!" And now Starscream had his hand on Wheeljack's shoulder, squeezing, and it was going to be a miracle if he could think of anything else ever again. "Let's get going. You're going to absolutely love this."

Prowl had found out, and Jetfire had confirmed, that Unicron was sucking energy from the cores of distant stars in order to power itself. Half of the machinery that allowed this feat had been located somewhere inside Unicron itself; the other half had been located in the black hole at its heart, deep inside infraspace. Which meant, somehow, the machinery could reach out from infraspace to the real world. And if it could, maybe it could be used to help someone else in infraspace reach the real world.

Well. No "maybe" about it. It could. And Starscream had. Not quite corporeally—he'd gone as not much more than a specter, and thus far had only managed to make contact with Bumblebee, Starscream suspected it was because he'd also spent a fair amount of time in infraspace—but he'd gone. It had only worked a couple of times, though, and then stopped; now Starscream needed Wheeljack's help to get it working for good.

Wheeljack had spent too much of the past few hours feeling flabbergasted for this new revelation to blow him away. ("Hours"? Were hours still a thing here? Wheeljack wasn't sure how long he'd been here, but his fuel levels hadn't fluctuated, nor his energy levels. It felt like his body was in limbo, ever-unchanging.) So he immediately got to work examining the machinery.

It was located inside a misshapen facility, lit by only a few large high windows and sparse lighting that Starscream thought must be powered by this “magic” thing they’d all heard so much about lately, because it sure wasn’t electricity. The interior, alien though it clearly was, looked like a cobbled-together mix between a boiler room and a factory floor.

Much of the machinery had been very clearly—not shut down, because it didn't appear capable of being shut down, designed to run forever without end—but disabled, panels removed and wires expertly snipped, components and cogs neatly removed. Starscream took credit for that—"I think they were still sucking up stars—just slower—so I shut those parts of it down,"—and not for the first time, Wheeljack was struck by the way that, if Starscream didn't have anything immediately self-serving he needed to do, the next thing he defaulted to doing was almost always the right thing. And again not for the first time, Wheeljack wondered what kind of an amazing person Starscream might have been if he wasn't so frantically trying to convince everyone around him that he was amazing. He'd wasted his life on a con telling lies about himself that would have all been true if he hadn't instead wasted his life on the con.

And sometimes Wheeljack ached to think of it. He'd ached whenever he watched Starscream put on that self-assured, self-deprecating smirk he wore when he wanted everyone to know he'd done something secret that they'd hate him for if they knew, and he'd ached when he'd watched Starscream stand before the whole world and politely confess to every crime he'd committed while wearing the crown, and he'd ached when he heard the previously-penitent Starscream had escaped in the wake of "Onyx Prime's" jarring arrival and was running riot with the Decepticons.

And he ached now, hearing Starscream explain how he'd saved all the stars in all the galaxy from slowly suffocating, with a wirecutter here and a ratchet there—how he'd saved the entire galaxy, not for laudation, but simply because it needed to be done and Starscream was here and could do it.

One mechanism controlled the flow of energy back and forth from real world Unicron to infraspace Unicron, and that was where they were focused now. It was a particularly tall, roughly cylindrical machine standing by itself in a circular room with a couple of high windows that didn’t so much bring in light as suggest that light was invited in if any happened to be in the vicinity and wanted to drop by. Instead, the room was brightly illuminated by a plethora of glowing orbs that liked to hover a few inches over whatever surface they’d been set on, and that Starscream advised Wheeljack not to touch with his bare hands. He’d scavenged them from New Prysmos.

“It's really quite simple for anyone who knows a bit of rudimentary mechanical engineering," Starscream explained, one side of the machine peeled open so he could lean in with a flashlight and explain which Cybertronian parts were equivalent to these alien components. Every once in a while he would stammer over a name, call it a "doohickey" or "the fast zappy bit, you know," and Wheeljack would supply the real term, surprised and pleased that Starscream knew what they were for and how they worked, even if he didn't know all the right terms. "Just about any species that's invented faster-than-light travel could have made a thingy like this to instantaneously transfer energy across vast spaces—"

"An energy ansible," Wheeljack said.

"I thought 'ansible' was only for faster-than-light communication devices?"

"Sure, unless you put the word 'energy' in front of it. Then it communicates energy instead of messages."

Starscream straightened up to give Wheeljack a skeptical look, then shrugged and leaned back into the energy ansible. "I mean, hell, Megatron's gun has something like this in it; this isn't revolutionary tech. The only unusual thing about this thingy is that one half is in the real world and the other half is in infraspace. I still don't know how they accomplished that."

"It'd probably take, oh, a week or two to figure this thing out," Wheeljack said, trying to lean in around Starscream to examine the alien tech. "So I'll have it in a day."

"I love it when you do that."

Wheeljack's spark spun. "What?"

"What?" Starscream quickly straightened up and held the flashlight out to Wheeljack. "I should hope you can figure it out. That's why I hauled you back from the afterlife."

Wheeljack's spark was still a few RPM too high—he could feel it like static humming through his wires—but he took the flashlight and tried to act as much like nothing happened as Starscream clearly thought there had. "No surprises there," he mumbled, trying and failing to focus on the wires in front of him. And then he registered what Starscream said. "Wait, back from the afterlife?"

"Yes?"

"Not infraspace? The—the afterlife afterlife? Like, as in the Afterspark?"

"Yes?"

"Not—I wasn't here?"

"No? You don't remember me hauling you back?"

Wheeljack tried to think. Between Elonia and waking up with Starscream over him, it was all a murky black smear and an indistinct white light. "No. Why didn't I wake up here? You said anyone who'd interacted with the Talisman ended up here, right?"

"Interacted directly with it, while they were dying."

Wheeljack was staring at Starscream now. "You pulled me back from the afterlife?"

"Ah..." Starscream averted his gaze, staring at the same bunch of wires Wheeljack had unsuccessfully tried to focus on a moment ago. "Well, I needed the help of an actual proper engineer, but—obviously—needed a dead one, and you were dead but still only on the threshold of the Afterspark instead of actually in it, so..." They sounded like excuses instead of explanations. They sounded like that thing Starscream did where he justified his altruism by pointedly providing selfish motives.

"How did you get to the afterlife and back?"

"See that?" Starscream leaned back into the energy ansible and pointed up.

Wheeljack aimed the flashlight at a translucent, glasslike cylinder, with a plus and a minus recently scrawled onto each end of it. "Uh-huh?"

"I reversed the polarity."

"That's it?!"

"Yep."

Wheeljack grabbed the energy ansible's casing and laughed so hard he couldn't stand up straight.

"You can see why I don't want the other Autobots to find out about this, right?"

Wheeljack thought he could see, but stayed quiet for a moment. He wanted to hear Starscream's explanation.

If you walked through infraspace long enough, you found that it curled upward, like a bowl. Keep walking, and you found yourself back where you started. The surface of infraspace was like the inside of a bubble, and the sky hung heavy and black in the middle. The engine that sucked life from the stars was a building-sized tumor of misshapen components embedded in the bubble, with a warped umbilical cord that stretched up from its roof into the sky. From their vantage point, sitting on top of the roof, they could see the cords of another four or five sites of Unicron parts stretching into the black.

Far away and left of New Prysmos, so far that the sky's cloudy darkness almost obscured it, was a tiny facility that would have been unnoticeable from this distance if not for the severed umbilical cord that lay in a loose coil around it. Starscream stared at it as he spoke.

"Right now, Optimus is content with his undead retirement," Starscream said. "But he's got an ugly little tendency to come back from retirement the instant people start to say his name with nostalgia instead of scorn. Whenever he does, he takes charge, does something crazy, makes things a million times worse, and then gets people pontificating and debating about the moral ramifications instead of stopping him like they know they should."

"I think you're a little biased," Wheeljack said, uncomfortably—uncomfortable because he could say that Starscream was biased but wasn't sure he could say he was wrong.

"Am I? What do you think about his little conquest of Earth?"

"Well—I mean—" He stammered for a moment, trying to put a couple years' worth of hopelessly tangled opinions in order. "It's—it's a complicated—it brings Earth into the international community, which can only be good for it, especially since they're already dealing with other alien threats like the Dire Wraiths—"

"You're pontificating," Starscream said, "on the moral ramifications.”

Which he was, and knew he was. He fell silent.

"And you didn't deny that it was a conquest."

Wheeljack could have argued that he'd thought the exact terminology being used was less important than the question being asked, but that would be dodging the truth and they both knew it. "I didn't," he said, defeated. "It was a conquest."

"And usually you Autobots are all about overthrowing conquerors, aren't you? But what did you—you, Wheeljack, what did you do when the conqueror was Optimus? What did all of you do, you collective Autobots and Prime-worshipers? It's wrong, it's unacceptable, it's worth fighting a war over—until he does it, huh?"

Wheeljack grumbled, but he supposed he couldn't really argue with that. Every time he thought about Cybertron taking over Earth, something inside him twisted and squirmed with guilt. And when a defeated voice in his head said there's nothing I could have done, an angry voice answered that doesn't mean you had to collaborate. 

He'd collaborated with Starscream, too. What was the difference?

Starscream stood, balancing on the edge of the roof, his pedes half hanging over the edge—was that a flier thing? Brainstorm did that too, and it made Wheeljack just as nervous—and planted his hands on his hips. "Smarter defectors than me have said that the day the Decepticons went off the rails was the day that the Cause became conflated with Megatron himself. Maybe the Autobots should've taken that as a cautionary tale."

All right, comparisons to Megatron were too far. Wheeljack elbowed Starscream's shin. "You were saying about not telling anybody about this."

Starscream kicked Wheeljack's thigh. "If the Autobots here know that there's a way out of infraspace, the next time there's an emergency, the first thing they're gonna do is bust down the door to Optimus's love shack and tell him he needs to go save the universe again. And then he's running wild again, with even fewer checks on him because now everyone loves him for martyring himself for the umpteenth time to stop Unicron.”

"Do they?" Wheeljack asked. "All love him, I mean? You've been out there."

"Of course they do. Nobody says anything bad about the guy who died saving the galaxy."

"What about you?"

It was the wrong question to ask. Starscream winced and mumbled, "Not saying anything counts as not saying anything bad, I guess." For Starscream, Wheeljack expected, even the worst sort of infamy would have been better than being forgotten.

Dryly, Wheeljack said, "Comes with membership in the unsung heroes club, right?"

Starscream laughed bitterly. "Anyway. You get it, right? Why I don't want them to know?"

Wheeljack considered what it would be like for Optimus to come back to life again.  Sure, he'd deal with the crisis of the day—he always did—but the decisions he made when the crisis was over, when they were at peace, when everyone (hell, including Wheeljack himself) did everything he asked no matter what they thought or how they felt about it... Cybertron didn't need any more de facto dictators, even benevolent ones; and no matter what Optimus or anyone else intended, that would be what he'd become if he went back. And he would go back, if for a second he thought he was needed and knew it was possible. And if he didn't think he was needed, the others—Kup, Blurr—might persuade him otherwise. "You're right. I won't tell."

Starscream smiled down at Wheeljack, and the fact that he was smiling made Wheeljack immediately second-guess his decision, even as his spark spun a little faster again. "I knew I could trust you."

And he said it like he meant it.

"I don't know how you managed to get this working the first time. All by yourself?"

"What, do you think I had help? Me? From who?"

Wheeljack was examining some components high on the side of the energy ansible, the part designed to actually store energy. "This thing is designed to only work one way. It takes energy in; it doesn't push it back out. But you were able to get it to go the other way?"

Wheeljack was balanced on top of a stack of tables—they couldn't find a ladder—and leaning inside the energy ansible. From here, he couldn't see Starscream, but he could hear him pacing around at the base of the machine. "Yeah. Can't you make it go the other way?"

"Well, yes—"

"Then great. No problem."

"But how did you do it?"

Starscream was silent a moment, just long enough that Wheeljack knew he had to be deciding whether to tell the truth or make up an answer. "Decepticon secret." Okay, that sounded like the truth.

"And do I get to learn the...?"

"Oh, not a chance. It's not going to work again, anyway. It's all on you now."

"It might help me figure it out faster if you—"

"Nope."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

Wheeljack decided he could believe Starscream on that. "Anyway, it shouldn't be that difficult to make a new way to reverse the flow. It'll be hard, but pretty easy."

He heard Starscream stop pacing. "You wanna try that again?"

"Uh... Labor-intensive, but simple."

"Oh! Sure." The tables shifted slightly under Wheeljack's pedes as Starscream climbed up them. "So, already figured out what we need to do?"

"'We'? You're actually helping, not just supervising?"

"Sure! If there's room for me to. I'm not going to get in your way." Starscream's voice got steadily closer, until he was standing on the same table as Wheeljack, one forearm resting on the open casing of the energy ansible and the other resting on Wheeljack's shoulder. He was, Wheeljack noted, a lot more touchy-feely in death than he'd been in life. He wondered if it was because of the new body. Or maybe—Wheeljack had to wonder, darkly—maybe it was because nobody could hurt the dead.

In any case, he wasn't complaining. Touching was—nice, touching was fine. (He felt a little less oppressively neutral and a little more alive, where Starscream touched him.) He was just curious.

"But if I can help..."

"Definitely," Wheeljack said. "What kind of engineering experience do you have?"

"Maintenance skills. And soldering, welding, so on. I liked to get hands-on with our super weapons."

Wheeljack brightened. "Yeah? Me too." Of course, Wheeljack mainly got hands-on with the ones he'd designed himself, but it was still nice to hear. "How are you with chemistry?"

"Eh." He wiggled his hand in a so-so gesture. "I can make bombs out of bird crap."

Wheeljack was dying to ask when that had ever been relevant to Starscream's life. "Think you can identify some piezoelectric ignition sources in the wreck of New Prysmos?"

"Tell you what: I'll bring you anything I can find that sets fires, and you tell me if it's piezoelectric or..."

Wheeljack hadn't noticed that his own arm had been snaking around Starscream's back until the instant his fingertips brushed Starscream's waist and Starscream fell silent. It had felt like the right thing to do—why had it felt right?—because Starscream's arm was on Wheeljack, and—balance, and— But now Starscream was silent, his optics wide in shock, his wings raised, every piston and pulley in his body frozen.

"Sorry." Wheeljack pulled his hand back.

And the second he did, Starscream darted away from him. "Piezoelectric!" (For a moment, Wheeljack couldn't recall what Starscream was talking about.) "New Prysmos! Got it!" His voice was a shade shriller than usual, and definitely louder. He climbed down the tower of tables so fast that Wheeljack had to grab onto the open casing of the energy ansible for balance. (What happened, he wondered, if you got injured in infraspace?)

Right—right! Piezoelectric! "Hey!" Wheeljack leaned around the energy ansible. "If you don't find anything in a couple of hours, come back here. I'll probably have a list of other things for you to forage for by then."

Starscream stopped, perched on a windowsill high above the ground—Wheeljack supposed that was an easier exit for a flier than the door, huh—and turned back to look at Wheeljack. He had a wild, frightened, frantically happy look on his face. his smile shaky and wide and crooked.

"Chronometers don't work right in here," Starscream said, "but I'll guesstimate it the best I can." With that, he rolled backwards out of the window. Wheeljack heard him transform, and out the window he could see Starscream do barrel roll while heading toward New Prysmos. Like a five-day-old MTO, showing off that he was finally steady on his new wings.

Wheeljack watched until he was long gone. Then forced his attention back into the guts of the energy ansible.

His fingertips blazed where they'd touched Starscream's waist.

Wheeljack was wondering, for the dozenth time, just how Starscream had gotten this thing to work the first time, when he heard the sound of an approaching jet through the window. He stopped his work, wiped off on some kind of weird sleeveless robe he'd found in a closet and been using to clean grease off his hands, and carefully climbed down the tables just in time for Starscream to transform and land. "How goes the hunt?"

"You tell me." Starscream popped open his cockpit, and a pile of miscellaneous objects tumbled into his hands. "Everything I could find that starts fires, just like I promised."

Wheeljack peered over the objects. "Is—that a piece of charcoal?"

Starscream held his hands out so Wheeljack could better inspect it. "Looks like it."

"I said piezoelectric."

"Yes. You did. I'm not actually entirely sure what that means."

Wheeljack gave Starscream an exasperated look. Starscream shrugged. "The molecules flex when you electrify the object or something, right? I didn't exactly come in here with a taser and a microscope. Anything else look good?"

"Wel—" Wheeljack stopped. And stared at Starscream. "... Weren't you blue?"

"Oh!" Starscream was definitely not blue now. He was, in fact, quite red. "Yeah, thought I'd, uh—what do you think?" He smiled winningly.

What did he think? What did it matter what he— "What happened to blue? I thought that was your—you said it was your final form or something?"

"My true body," Starscream corrected. "And—yes, but—the paint job doesn't make a big difference, does it? It's still the same body. What do you think? An improvement?"

"Uh..." Wheeljack shrugged, baffled. "I don't—I don't know. I was still getting used to the blue." Starscream's smile faltered. "Where did you even— Who brought red paint in here? When did you have time to repaint? How long were you gone?" It didn't feel like that long. A proper repaint took, what, probably half a day? If you didn't want to get sloppy, and Starscream's was definitely not sloppy. It hadn't been half a day. Had it? Wheeljack hadn't been working half a day. Had he?

"Not however long you thought I was." Starscream dumped his findings on the table. "Anyway, does any of this work."

He'd brought back some flint, a couple of damaged lanterns that appeared to turn on by magic—a wonder that they still worked—a wood torch, and several small canisters of different types of fuel, including—"Where did you get this?" "Blurr had it with him, talked him out of it,"—a single, solitary can of engex. None of it what Wheeljack needed, but not bad to have around. Especially that can of engex.

"We'll split it," Starscream said, "when we finish upgrading this thing."

"We should give it back to Blurr," Wheeljack said.

Starscream shrugged. "Hey, if you don't want the only can of engex in infraspace, it's no paint off my back."

"I'll look for a piezoelectric ignition source," Wheeljack said. "And, in return, you get a scavenger hunt."

"Ooh, fun."

Wheeljack held out a datapad with a list of materials he needed to convert the energy ansible from one way to two. "And this time? Tell me if there's anything you don't recognize on the list before you go searching."

Starscream skimmed the list and flashed another smile. "I don't see the word 'piezoelectric,' I think we're good." He claimed the datapad and stowed it in his cockpit. "Are you gonna be in New Prysmos?"

"Probably. I might visit some of the other places with the, uh—" Wheeljack made an up-and-down gesture with one finger, pantomiming the strange tangle of cables stretching up into the sky.

"Oh, yeah. The vacuum hoses."

"What?"

"Kup's term for them. Just don't go to the one with a cut hose; I don't think Optimus and his new alien squeeze are taking visitors."

Wheeljack picked up and stowed the can of engex. "Are they actually...?"

"Hell, I don't know." Starscream was apparently content to use the door like a normal mech this time; he walked out with Wheeljack. "So. The vacuum hose station that's—we've been using New Prysmos as north—the one that's east by southeast of New Prysmos—"

"Hold on. If New Prysmos is the north pole, then isn't everything else south of it?"

"No, like— Okay, if you were flying straight toward the center of New Prysmos, from wherever you are, that direction becomes north."

"Okay."

"So if you were to turn—well, I guess you could just drive in reverse—that becomes south. And east and west are perpendicular to the north-south line, through the center of New Prysmos."

"Yeah. Okay. Got it."

"So. The one east by southeast of New Prysmos—that's the Autobot base."

"Oh, we've got a base?"

"There's an Autobrand on the door and they glare when I come over, so if it's not an Autobot base, it's doing a good impression of one."

They probably weren't glaring because of Starscream's former faction so much as because of who Starscream was as a person, but Wheeljack wasn't about to mention that. "Blurr's there?"

"Either that, or out seeing how fast he can circumnavigate infraspace. I try not to keep up with his latest records; it reminds me of how small our bubble is."

"Then I'll see you later."

Blurr hugged Wheeljack.

Kup hugged Wheeljack.

Even Quickswitch hugged Wheeljack, which was just a tad awkward, since Wheeljack didn't really think they were close enough for that.

Still, he'd hugged everyone back—with extra squeezes for those who'd been dead before him. 

"Didn't think we'd see you here!" Blurr was grinning from audial fin to audial fin, probably in part because Wheeljack was here and in part because Wheeljack had said that, as great as it was to see everyone, he'd mainly come to visit Blurr. He was quick to lead Wheeljack over to his section of the "Autobot base"—which was a half-built home inside a dark, decrepit silo. The weld lines were still visible on the walls where whatever equipment the silo originally held had been ripped off by the Autobots. Blurr's area was haloed with what had to have been half the lights in New Prysmos. "Starscream thought you might've got enough of a dose of the Talisman to end up here instead of dead. Kind of surprised he was right—not upset, though! For once. It's good to see you alive again. Ish."

So Starscream had lied. Surprise. Or Starscream had told the truth about what he believed, realized he was wrong, and went out to rectify his error?

"It's good to be alive again. Ish." And good to be around someone other than Starscream. Not that being around Starscream was bad, per se—and it really wasn't bad, he'd found over time, especially since the longer you were around him, the closer he got to shedding his masks and layers and acting like himself. But Wheeljack also found that, if he was around Starscream for too long, if he let himself synchronize too neatly with the way Starscream thought, the way Starscream spoke, sometimes he nearly forgot that there were other people out there. And that probably wasn't a good thing. Was it?

Blurr gestured for Wheeljack to take a seat on a crate, and sat on one across from him. "What took you so long to get here?" he asked. "You didn't get lost, did you?" He grinned. "New Prysmos isn't that big."

Wheeljack laughed. "No, no way." What else did he say about where he'd been? Telling Blurr he'd been dead-dead meant telling Blurr how he'd got un-dead, which meant explaining what Starscream was up to, and he'd promised he wouldn't. He'd agreed he shouldn't, even. But there was a difference between keeping it a secret and telling a lie about it. He'd never promised that. So what did he say? Blurr was looking at him expectantly.

"No, I was—I don't know where. Somewhere dark. Just... floating." Which wasn't dishonest. If he left it at that— "Maybe since I wasn't directly connected to the Talisman energy when I died, it took longer for it to tug me here."

Blurr shrugged. "Huh. Maybe. Who knows how that thing works."

There. He'd done it. And Starscream's secret was safe. Wheeljack waited for the guilt to come over him—the guilt like when he'd meekly followed along with Starscream's more dubious orders, the guilt when he'd said nothing in the face of Optimus's conquest—but it never came. What, was his guilt chip broken?

Or maybe he hadn't done the wrong thing.

"Oh—I came by to return this." Wheeljack took out the can of engex. "Don't know how Starscream got it off of you."

Blurr waved off the can. "Keep it. It's the only can of engex in infraspace. As long as I've got it, I'll be worrying about finding an opportunity to celebrate big enough to justify drinking it."

As Wheeljack stowed it away again, Blurr asked, "How'd you get it off Starscream?"

"Uh—" How did he answer that without admitting what he and Starscream were up to? "He—just gave it to me." Oh, stupid.

But Blurr laughed. "For you? I'm not surprised." And he gave Wheeljack a knowing look. Wheeljack wondered what it was he knew.

"You probably said something nice about his new paint."

Wheeljack looked up at Kup, who was now on top of a loft that had clearly been constructed recently, and— "Why are you standing on your head?"

"I'm meditatin'," Kup grunted. "Passes the time. It was a big help in the Dead Universe. Far as I can tell, only difference between there and here is the good company."

Wheeljack snorted. "You're flattering us," Blurr said.

Something about Kup's comment about Starscream's paint had sounded a little too wink-wink-nudge-nudge for Wheeljack's tastes, so instead of letting it lie, he replied, "Actually, I think what I said to him was that I'd only just been getting used to the blue. Where did he find red paint in here, anyway? I mean—I'm sure New Prysmos has paint somewhere, but not any that would look good on Cybertronians..."

"I'm sure he didn't use paint." Kup rolled down onto his back until he was sitting up, with only a couple of clanks and clunks—pretty graceful, for his age—and scooted around to face Wheeljack and Blurr again. "Probably did the same thing he did to get that new body of his—think it up into existence."

"What? Wait." Wheeljack looked between Kup and Blurr, optics wide. "You're saying he made that new body of his? I thought it— He called it his true form or something. I thought he... got it automatically when he died, or something."

They both shook their heads. Blurr said, "No, he showed up dead the same way he looked when he was alive, like the rest of us."

Kup said, "It took him—I don't know, time's funny here—maybe a week to work out how. He got the optics first, then started switching himself out piece by piece."

"So Starscream can shapeshift now." Wheeljack took a few seconds to absorb that. "Yeah. Okay. Sure, why not? Can we all do that?"

"Probably," Blurr said. "No one other than him has figured out how yet, though."

"Why do you think I'm over here meditating?" Kup stretched, and Wheeljack winced at all the pops, squeaks, and scrapes that emanated from his hips, back, and shoulders. "I'd sure like to shapeshift into something younger."

Wheeljack said, "Starscream always is pretty fast at figuring new things out."

"Yeah." Blurr's face screwed up in annoyance. As though Starscream's brilliance, his ability to think five steps ahead, his ability to combine ideas and schemes and politics and people—to make bombs out of bird crap—was one of his biggest flaws, rather than one of his saving graces.

And Wheeljack was reminded, jarringly, that when he was among Autobots, he was among people who didn't think Starscream had saving graces. Any virtues, any assets that Starscream had, to them, were just more things that made him dangerous to them.

It was like an invisible wall had come up between Wheeljack and the others. He didn't see Starscream like that anymore. How did he see Starscream?

He pressed the tips of the fingers that had brushed Starscream's waist into his palm.

Wheeljack found several sculptures and support structures in New Prysmos that he was pretty sure were made with piezoelectric crystals, but he didn't have the materials to easily turn them into ignition sources. He made note of them, in case he had to resort to them later, and kept searching.

Starscream was buzzing around the New Prysmos ruins, collecting his own list of materials. Wheeljack saw him from time to time in the sky, hovering in bot mode as he scanned the city for his next target, or flying back toward their worksite with a bundle of wires wrapped around his nosecone.

Just as Wheeljack was getting tired of breaking into far-too-small homes and guessing at where aliens might keep objects to start fires, he saw Starscream heading out toward the worksite again. Might as well take a break and see what kind of success Starscream had.

Wheeljack transformed and headed toward the site as well.

"You know, when one person has a twenty item scavenger hunt, and the other person has a one item scavenger hunt, usually you don't expect the guy with twenty items to pull in the lead."

"Oh, shut up. I gave you the easier list." Wheeljack was crouched on the floor, looking over Starscream's finds, which were piled up in a clear space: cords and cables and wires and struts and crystals and glass and tools and on and on. Wheeljack held up a tool that looked like some unholy cross between a wrench and a pair of pliers. "... Huh."

"Yeah, I know. I've been raiding the other Unicron sites for supplies. I'm guessing these are tools used on... which colony was he originally? Elonia, Arduria—no, Ant-something. Antonia? Why do all our colonies sound the same?"

"Unicron was a colony? As in—as in one of our colonies?"

"Oh, right, you weren't around for that. Surprise: we're our own worst enemy, again." Starscream crouched down around the pile of supplies, near Wheeljack—but, he noted, out of his arm's reach.

"You know, just once, I wish somebody else was our enemy." Wheeljack started reorganizing the scavenged supplies, arranging them so it'd be easier for him to quickly grab what he needed while he was working. "Just some whacko pack of invaders that we've never heard of and that’ve never heard of us, but that’ve decided they want a piece of our planet. I'm tired of every one of our enemies being 'each other,' 'the natural consequences of our terrible history,' or 'Shockwave again.'"

"If it helps, right now our enemy is the cold, uncaring concept of death itself."

"... Kinda does help. Thanks." Wheeljack sat back, looking over the rearranged supplies. "Do you believe in the Necrobot?"

Starscream scoffed. "As a supernatural entity? No. But I believe there's probably some weirdo out there that likes counting corpses. Do you?"

"Nah. Mythology."

Starscream appeared to consider that for a moment, then stood up. "I'm trading lists with you."

"What?"

"As reluctant as I am to admit to any of my very few flaws, I confess that I got the easy stuff first. The rest, I'd only trust a genius engineer to get right." Starscream half smiled. "Besides, we've both had a stab at the piezoelectric thingy now; it's my turn again."

"You sure? You don't have to." Didn't Starscream still not know exactly what a piezoelectric ignition source was?

"Sure. I found another place to search. It’s promising."

"In this little bubble?"

"I'm a miracle worker."

A miracle worker who was hiding something. But how much trouble could Starscream get into here, anyway? What was the worst he could do, kill someone? "All right, switch."

Starscream handed the datapad back to Wheeljack. Wheeljack was careful not to touch his hand. The items he'd already found were checked off. Yeah, he had found the easy things first. "Good luck."

"Thanks."

Wheeljack didn't see plating nor paintchip of Starscream for... for a good while. (He missed time. He missed the need to refuel and the way it ordered the passage of events into cycles instead of a single interminable line.) He collected most of the materials he needed, hauling them one at a time back to their worksite; and as often as he looked to the sky, or along the far-off curves of infraspace's bubble, he didn't see Starscream flying around.

But on his third trip back, there Starscream was, leaning against the energy ansible with arms crossed and one foot crossed over the other, grinning triumphantly.

Wheeljack stopped in the door, two chemical-filled jars and a bundle of foil in his arms. "You found it?"

"I give you," Starscream said, "one piezoelectric ignition source."

He held up... Wheeljack couldn't even see it. He walked closer and squinted at Starscream's hand. It was an extremely tiny plastic brick, on the tip of one finger. "That's it?"

"It's called a lighter." Starscream said the word in human—Wheeljack wasn't sure what language just from one word, they all sounded so alike, but you could always tell when someone was speaking in human. "You push a little button, here," he tried to point with his other hand, which was basically useless, "and it squeezes something inside the lighter to make a spark and start a fire."

"It's tiny. I was hoping for something a little bigger than that."

"I got more." Starscream held his hand under his cockpit, opened it a crack, and hundreds of lighters spilled out.

Wheeljack dropped the foil bundle to the ground so he could hold one hand under Starscream's, catching any lighters that slid off. "Primus, Starscream, where'd you find all of these?"

"You know the humans that were trying to destroy Cybertron but dropped New Prysmos on us instead? I found some of their supplies on the edge of the city a while ago. I thought they might be useful, so I stowed them somewhere secret."

"And they brought this many lighters?"

"Probably to set off explosives. Or ignite those paper rolls that they like to stick in their mouths. Did you notice if any of our invaders used them?"

"No idea."

"Me neither."

Wheeljack carefully knelt so he could set down the jars of chemicals, and cupped both hands over the lighters. "They're so tiny."

"I'm sure we can find tweezers."

"You're sure they're piezoelectric? I'd have to take one apart before I was sure."

"Of course I'm sure," Starscream said. "I looked it up."

"Where?"

Starscream didn't say anything. Wheeljack glanced up at him. Starscream was looking back with a curiously blank expression that Wheeljack suspected was concealing blind panic.

It hit Wheeljack that nothing Starscream had told him about where he'd found the lighters was true. Wheeljack had just asked him for a part of the story he hadn't prepared yet.

He stood, looked at Starscream, and asked—no anger, no accusation, but very seriously—"Where did you get these lighters?"

Starscream looked back at him, and said, just as seriously, "In the supplies the humans left in New Prysmos."

And there they stood. Staring at each other. Hands full of hundreds of lighters.

Starscream looked away first, to very carefully drop his lighters in a pile on the bottom table of their table stack. "Let's split the rest of your list," he said. "It'll get done faster."

Wheeljack didn't say anything.

Starscream finally looked back at him. "Your list?"

"Starscream..."

"What." It was a what that didn't invite questions.

"Where did you get—"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes," Wheeljack snapped. He dumped his lighters on top of Starscream's, and for a moment was too uncomfortably close to him. "Yes, it does matter, because it means you're—you're not just hiding things from me—you're lying to me! When I'm trying to help you!"

"Oh, wow. Starscream's lying." He shrugged, hands swung wide. "Are you surprised?"

"No!" Wheeljack was surprised at how Starscream flinched back at the word. "No, I'm not! But I am disappointed!" Starscream scoffed; it wasn't convincing. "Disappointed and, and—and furious! And why? What, does it matter where you got the lighters? Did you, I don't know, have to murder a tribe of infraspace-dwelling aliens to get them?"

"Of course not," Starscream said defensively.

"There's no 'of course' anything with you! I can't take anything for granted!" Starscream flinched again. "Starscream—Starscream, I'm helping you. I'm on your side. Why don't you treat me like an ally?"

Starscream glowered down at the pile of lighters, jaw set in an angry pout. Wheeljack waited anyway. Finally, Starscream said, "This is how I treat my allies."

And that was so true, and so depressing, that it immediately drained the anger out of Wheeljack. "I guess so." He looked down at the mysterious lighters, and idly scooped them together into a pile.

"So," Starscream said, tone cold and reserved. "Splitting the list."

"Why should I keep doing this?" Wheeljack asked. "If you're just going to lie all the way through it."

"Because if you don't have a project to work on, then you've got nothing to do with yourself other than hang out with the other Autobots, and the best project they can offer you is an opportunity to play interior decorator." Glib and snappy. They were back on questions that Starscream had prepared answers to. Starscream had expected that Wheeljack would want out—and that was even more depressing. "You'd rather be here. You want to be here, stretching the boundaries of science, digging around in Unicron's guts, turning alien machinery inside-out, punching a hole between limbo and life—even if it's with me."

"It doesn't have to be 'even if,'" Wheeljack said. "It could be 'plus.'"

Starscream flinched again, like that was another jab at him.

Wheeljack hadn't meant it as one. "Starscream..."

"Just give me the list," Starscream said. "And we'll get it done and you won't have to deal with me anymore. All right?"

Not wanting to deal with Starscream anymore wasn't anywhere on the list of feelings motivating Wheeljack right then. Not wanting to deal with Starscream like THIS, sure. But he didn't know how to elucidate the difference. He wasn't entirely, completely sure how he did want to deal with Starscream. Not in any way he was ready to put into words.

So he reluctantly held out the datapad. Starscream snatched it up, scrawled a star next to a couple of the items, and handed it back. "The other two are yours." And he breezed past Wheeljack, so quickly and so close that Wheeljack felt a chill where Starscream's wings stirred the still air. He was out the door before Wheeljack could say another word.

Wheeljack looked down at his list of remaining objects, and sighed.

There were a couple of turbines in the energy ansible, but Wheeljack needed to install another couple for his modifications to work. He'd put them off to near the bottom of his list, but fortunately, he had a very good idea where he could find more.

This was the only energy ansible Starscream had mentioned, but Wheeljack had been staring at its guts long enough to figure out that it wasn't pulling enough energy from the stars to keep Unicron moving. It just wasn't efficient enough. Energy ansibles rarely were. Even if Unicron had alternate sources of fuel, he'd need at least a couple of energy ansibles to keep him going.

Wheeljack started driving, cutting between New Prysmos and the tiny facility with the cut vacuum hose. And as he drove, a structure slowly appeared underneath the heavy black sky: a building that looked just like the one where he and Starscream were working. A second energy ansible, on the exact opposite side of infraspace from the one where Wheeljack and Starscream had been working.

There were his turbines. And, ideally, some answers about Starscream.

Wheeljack had no doubt that Starscream was telling the truth about having done something to the energy ansible that let him escape a few times before failing. If he hadn't done it once already, he wouldn't have been so sure that it was possible that he’d willingly spent what was probably his last trip hauling Wheeljack out of the afterlife to accomplish it; and if it hadn't broken down, he wouldn't have needed to haul Wheeljack out at all.

But by now, he also had no doubt that the energy ansible he'd looked over had never been modified by Cybertronian hands. The one Starscream had modified must have been somewhere else.

Wheeljack had been content to let Starscream keep his secrets as long as they had been only that—secrets. But now that they were lies, too, perhaps he'd better find out just what the hell Starscream was up to.

The building for the second energy ansible was laid out much the same as the first. Starscream had even taken the time to disable the same mechanisms. The windows were shuttered and only a few emergency lights worked, but beyond that, the only difference between this site and the other one—

—was Shockwave.

Wheeljack stopped dead. Shockwave was like a data ghost in a bad dream, surreal and translucent and multitudinous. Three versions of him lay over the same space, fading brighter and dimmer as Wheeljack stared: the senator, as resplendent as he had been in his heyday in turquoise and rose gold; the centaur Prime with the cruel gaze; and the shabby, worn-out purple scientist with the lost face and hand. Wheeljack couldn't move as all three forms turned to face him at once, their gazes overlapped.

Some distant part of Wheeljack was relieved to note that despite his appearance, at least Shockwave still had only one voice—dusty, droning, haughty, and supremely disinterested: "You aren't dead. Fascinating."

"You aren't solid," Wheeljack retorted. Shockwave glanced down at himself, as if to check Wheeljack's claim.

"Ah, yes. I've been having trouble consolidating my identity. Forgive me." Shockwave looked up again. "I'm not as good at this as Starscream. He always has been bafflingly quick on the uptake."

Wheeljack had been looking around for something to chuck at Shockwave's face—that was, Starscream had said, the locally accepted way to get him to go away—but at Starscream's name, he stopped. "You've been talking to Starscream?" For a moment, it all made sense: Starscream's insistence that Wheeljack not tell the Autobots anything, especially Optimus; the fact that he'd never mentioned the second energy ansible, the one which Shockwave was apparently haunting; the fact that Starscream had declared in no uncertain terms that he wasn't getting information from Shockwave but was reluctant to explain why— "You're working with Starscream!"

Shockwave made a noise so emphatically disgusted that it not only dispelled Wheeljack's theory completely, but also packed more emotion into a single sound than Wheeljack had heard out of Shockwave for the entire length of the war. "I would not work with him if the fate of the universe was at stake."

Sarcastically, Wheeljack snapped, "Saving it or destroying it?"

Shockwave tilted his head—heads—and gave the question serious consideration. "Either," he said thoughtfully. "Regardless, I am here to visit Orion."

Wheeljack was already mentally reproaching himself for assuming the worst of Starscream. What happened to being one of the only mechs to recognize his virtues? What made Wheeljack any kinder to Starscream than Blurr or Kup if he jumped on the first opportunity to think the worst of Starscream?

"Has he been claiming to be working with me?" Shockwave asked.

"No," Wheeljack said. "The opposite, actually."

Shockwave nodded slowly. "And so you doubted him. Intelligent."

Yeah. Pfeh.

He went on: "But no. If you're looking for one of Starscream's accomplices in the real world, you should be looking to Bumblebee, not me. I'm given to understand he's been visiting him regularly."

That, actually, rang true. Bumblebee had mentioned, in passing, having been able to speak to Starscream from Crystal City; it’d make sense if Starscream sought him out...

But hold on. "'Regularly'? What do you mean, regularly? How regularly?"

"I'm in prison," Shockwave said. "How would I know?"

He knew a lot for someone who wasn't supposed to know anything. "But—not lately, right? Not since whatever he used to get the energy ansible to transport him broke down?"

"You're calling it an 'energy ansible'? Really?"

"Just—answer the question!"

Shockwave gave Wheeljack a long, considering look. "Did he tell you he's been using it to transport himself?"

Wheeljack felt his fuel tank drop. "What—what has he been using?"

"Nothing," Shockwave said. "He simply flies through the Unicron black hole and out. He has the thus far entirely unique talent of being able to effortlessly drag his spark into and out of infraspace and black holes—no need for equipment, assistance, or the tedious practice I put in to learn a shallow facsimile of his ability. I almost wonder if it isn't a previously latent outlier ability that never had an opportunity to express itself."

Wheeljack stared at Shockwave, stunned silent. Shockwave took the opportunity to give Wheeljack a pointed once over. "And now he can even will his spark to the afterlife and back? Oh, that is fascinating."

Wheeljack slammed open the door so hard that Starscream jumped. Good, he was here. (He was blue again.)

"You can leave."

Starscream looked startled at the declaration; then resigned. "Oh. I thought—you might need help putting everything together, but—"

"No!" Wheeljack pointed out the window, toward the sky. "You can leave infraspace! All this time, you could leave!"

"Whaaat?" Starscream said, completely unconvincingly. "Why would you think—?"

"Shockwave."

"Oh, scrap."

"All this—" Wheeljack gestured at the energy ansible, "it isn't to get you out of infraspace. It never was. So what is it for?"

Starscream scowled.

"Starscream."

He kept scowling. He didn't say anything.

"Dammit, Starscream, just—" Wheeljack swept a hand at all the supplies they'd collected. "You've had me working on this for I-don't-know-how-long—"

"Three weeks."

"—you could at least tell m— Three weeks?!" He'd thought it was a couple of days. "You can tell time, too?!"

"No." Starscream's arms were crossed tight, and he was glowering down at his feet. "But I can check when I go out."

"Ah!" He was admitting that he could do it. Progress. "So why? What do you need the energy ansible for?"

Starscream hissed, "What does it matter?" Like his words were snake venom and he was trying to sink them in as deeply as he could. "You're not going to work on it anymore. Why would you? I've misled you. I've lied to you. Make up your own story. I'm sure you can imagine plenty of sufficiently awful things." He stormed past Wheeljack to the door.

"Don't." Wheeljack caught Starscream's arm as he passed. Starscream froze up, tensed like he wanted to push Wheeljack away, but for a moment, didn't. Wheeljack was hypercognizant of the texture of Starscream's paint under his hand. "Yeah, you're right; I can imagine plenty of awful things. And you go out of your way to make them easy to imagine. But I've known you long enough to know that, no matter what it is you're up to, it's not half as bad as you want to make everyone believe it is. You've never been as big a villain as you try to look like."

Starscream stared at Wheeljack. His expression was some desperate mix of fury and bafflement and hope, and Wheeljack had no idea what to make of it, so he forged on: "I don't wanna assume the worst about you, Starscream. The worst is never true. So just... tell me why you needed the—"

Some pressure valve burst; Starscream exploded. "It's you! Okay?! You're the one I did this for! I'm trying to get you out!"

Wheeljack's words stuck in his throat.

Starscream shoved Wheeljack off. (Wheeljack registered, vaguely, that sometime while he'd been holding Starscream's arm, Starscream's body had changed completely, to the one Starscream had been wearing when Wheeljack had woken from his coma to be told Starscream was the new leader of Cybertron.) "The goal is to get you out—out of infraspace, back into the real world. I clawed my way into the Afterspark to save you. All right? Not to get an engineer—I don't need a damn engineer, I can go wherever I want—but to get you! And to get you to work on the energy ansible, because I don't know enough to do it, but I do know enough to know that this," he pointed, "this is your best chance of getting home!"

All that, to help Wheeljack? Wheeljack had known whatever Starscream had been up to couldn't have been as bad as his automatic suspicions (his 60% Autobot suspicions) had wanted to say they were, but to help him? Starscream started pacing; Wheeljack sank down on a chair that was just a little too short for the average Cybertronian.

"The other Autobots already tried to get out," Starscream said. "They can't. We all know that the sky is the way out—it's just an inside-out black hole. The Autobots tried climbing the vacuum hoses to get up to it, they tried sending up Quickswitch in jet mode—nothing. The closer you get to the sky, the heavier gravity gets. I'm the only one it doesn't affect, and I don't know why. It does affect my passengers—I tried flying Blurr up and couldn't carry his weight. If you want to make it out, it's the energy ansible or nothing!"

"Why?"

Starscream threw his hands up. "I don't know why! I haven't studied black holes! Go ask Shockwave, if you two are such good friends now—"

"No, not that," Wheeljack said. "It's obvious to anyone who has a passing familiarity with quantum engineering in curved spacetime that an energy ansible is the only way to get supercompressed matter out of a black hole."

"Oh," Starscream said uncertainly, "right, obviously."

"I mean why are you going to all this trouble to get me out?"

Starscream stopped pacing. That was, evidently, another question for which he hadn't prepared an answer. "Because I—" He cut off sharply. "Because you... deserve so much more than to be just another dead unsung hero."

Starscream meant it. Everything about him screamed that he meant it; the way his voice went quiet and shy, the way he shifted his weight uncomfortably during the admission, they way he couldn't even look at Wheeljack even though his optics were so bright.

However, it wasn't what Starscream said that made Wheeljack's spark spin faster. It was what he'd stopped saying.

Infraspace was so quiet when neither one of them was talking. No wind outside, no distant sounds of vehicles and pedestrians, nothing mechanical shifting inside the building—not even electricity humming through the probably-magic lights. It was so quiet Wheeljack could hear the fans working in Starscream's body, the hiss of the combustion chambers in his thrusters nervously turning on and off.

Quietly, Wheeljack asked, "Why didn't you just say you wanted—" he meant to say to help me, he should have said to help me, but instead he said, "me?"

And they both winced, because you couldn't bandy about that sort of honesty with Starscream. Throwing too much honesty at him at once was like flashing your headlights in a nocturnal creature's optics.

Starscream laughed a nervous, rattly laugh, and that was when Wheeljack knew that he was going to get an honest answer back. "It doesn't work like that for me," he said, with a sardonic smile. "The only way I ever get what I want is lying."

"I'm gonna sock everyone who made you believe that," Wheeljack said hotly. He sat back in his chair and spread his hands wide. "If you wanted me, you only had to ask!"

There was a long moment of silence, while they were both equally shocked by the words that had just come out of Wheeljack.

And a second long moment while they figured out which one of them was going to mildly freak out over it first.

Wheeljack figured that if he was the one who freaked out, Starscream would think he hadn't meant it—and he had meant it; he just hadn't known he was going to mean it until after he'd said it. So it couldn't be him. Instead, he raised his outstretched hands an inch higher, and said, firmly, "Yeah!"

And Starscream shrieked, "You what? Since when?!"

"I—have no idea at all!" The outstretched hands became a shrug. "You give off these—really intense off-the-market vibes, so I sort of... you know..."

Starscream gaped at Wheeljack. And then started laughing. He clapped a hand over his mouth, laughing so hard that he had to lean against the energy ansible. He slowly slid to the floor, and Wheeljack stood up, not quite sure if he should be helping Starscream back up, watching him fall, or joining him.

Joining him, he decided. Wheeljack sat down next to Starscream, and tentatively leaned their shoulders together. Starscream stiffened; then relaxed with an obvious conscious effort, his wings and plating shifting minutely. He'd stopped laughing, but his hand hadn't uncovered his mouth yet. Behind it, Wheeljack could glimpse a bit of the same frightened, frantic smile he'd seen when Wheeljack had touched Starscream's waist and Starscream had escaped out a window.

"Hey," Wheeljack said. He wanted to follow up with something reassuring, but wasn't sure what. But Starscream was looking at him, now. So after a moment too long of silence, he asked, "What happened to your other body?" He pointed at the far more angular frame that had replaced it. "You were wearing the other one when I came in."

"Oh. Yeah, that's—something else I can do now." Starscream lowered his hand and shrugged—it felt like static danced between their shoulders. "It's probably all connected, somehow."

"No, I know that you can do it; the Autobots told me," Wheeljack said. "Why'd you switch, though?"

"Oh. Yeah." Starscream glanced down at himself. "You like it?"

It was dawning on Wheeljack that Starscream had asked for his opinion every single time Starscream switched up his frame since Wheeljack had woken up here. "I—sure. It's fine."

"You said it wasn't bad," Starscream said, "the first time you saw me in it. So." He shrugged. "You know."

It was dawning on Wheeljack that Starscream had been asking what he thought for a lot longer than he realized. "It's not bad," he said, "but you called that other one your 'true body,' right?"

"Oh. Yeah." Starscream looked at the floor. "Yeah. So I'm told."

They were silent for a moment. Wheeljack wasn't sure what else to say. This was nowhere near where he'd expected his day (week? afterlife?) to go. Should they be talking relationships, now? Dates? Dealbreakers? Hammer out cross-faction courting expectations? Was Wheeljack going to have to duel Megatron for permission to conjugate Starscream? Was it too early to think about—

"I thought," Starscream said, "if I could get my true body, I'd feel... better. Like a better person. Like the person I'm supposed to be. Instead, I just feel more like me than ever." He grimaced, like that was some grotesquely unfair punishment.

"Well," Wheeljack said carefully, "who else are you supposed to feel like?"

Starscream snorted.

"I'm not kidding. You can—you know—be someone worth being without becoming somebody else." Wheeljack was more accustomed to saving the worth-affirming speeches for the engineers and inventors under him that liked to bounce between boisterous arrogance and crippling performance anxiety—Brainstorm came to mind—but he got the impression these were things that no one else had ever bothered to say to Starscream. "You're someone worth being."

"What makes you so sure? You're only getting the outside view. You aren't me."

"No. But I do know you're someone worth knowing. Which is close enough."

Wheeljack didn't know if Starscream bought that answer, but he did stop talking. Stunned silent or considering it?

He felt Starscream readjust against his shoulder, and glanced over. Starscream's body had shifted again, back to curvy and blue. He was resting his head against the energy ansible, a dark, thoughtful look on his face, as he gazed at the window. Wheeljack leaned his head on the energy ansible as well, wondered if that look was a good thing, and wondered if he'd said the right thing.

Starscream's fingertips were warm as they hesitantly brushed over the back of Wheeljack's knuckles, waiting for an invitation to go farther. Wheeljack laced their hands together.

Wheeljack's spark whirled so fast it felt like a spinning top, dancing in circles around the room.

Removing the turbines from the other energy ansible, it turned out, was a two person job. They were so deep in the machinery, Wheeljack griped, that he couldn't lean into the casing that far without losing his balance and falling in. Maybe he could open up the casing from the other side and try to remove them that way—

—or Starscream could serve as a counterbalance, Starscream suggested.

After a bit of interrogation, Wheeljack figured out what he meant by that: Starscream would put his hands on Wheeljack's waist and lean back, so that Wheeljack could lean forward and his center of balance would still stay far enough back that he wouldn't fall into the energy ansible. Which sounded to Wheeljack a whole lot like Starscream's way of seeing whether or not he could get away with getting his hands on Wheeljack yet.

"We did this all the time in the Decepticons," Starscream insisted, all wide optics and faux innocence. "We're all quite accomplished at jury-rigged mechanics, you know."

"Uh-huh. Because that's what the Decepticons are known for, isn't it? Getting their hands all over each other in the name of teamwork and cooperation."

Beneath the faux innocence, something mischievous glinted in Starscream's optics. "Well. It certainly helps if you find a partner you like."

And so they extracted the turbines like that: Wheeljack leaning into the energy ansible, Starscream holding tight to his waist, their hips inching way too close to each other to not be distracting, and Wheeljack pretending he didn't know Starscream was wearing that grin he wore whenever he knew he was getting away with something wicked.

"And the best part is," Starscream said cheerily, "I'll bet you anything Shockwave won't be able to get back into infraspace once this energy ansible doesn't work anymore."

"What's it matter? We're not going to be here much longer either."

"I know. But I like knowing he doesn't have nice things."

"So," Starscream said, breaking the silence. He and Wheeljack had been studiously soldering new wiring into the energy ansible for... however long, now. "Bumblebee tells me that, when Autobots are courting, generally the one kicking things off does so by giving the object of his, erm, affections," (he mumbled the word, like he wasn't entirely confident in saying it yet) "a sonnet he wrote, and a really cool rock. Like—an impressive geode, or a lab sapphire grown in an interesting shape. He's messing with me, right?"

"Oh, yeah, completely." Wheeljack used up the last of his roll of solder, tossed it over his shoulder, and walked over to their supplies to grab another. "Need more solder?"

"I'm good."

"However," Wheeljack said, "if you wanted to give me a really cool rock, I'd definitely be thrilled."

"Oh yeah? Would it win me points?"

"Oh, beaucoup points." He sat back down and continued soldering. "You talked to Bumblebee? When?"

"Made a trip while you were collecting all that sheet metal. I don't know why I bothered to update him. All I got was razzing and completely fake advice."

"I dunno... that rock idea..."

Starscream huffed, and they lapsed into silence again as they worked.

"... Is that what we're doing now?" Wheeljack asked. "Courting? Officially, I mean?"

"I... I don't know." Starscream paused, then added, in a mumble, "I've never really done this before. A couple times, kinda, but they don't really count. I was planning to use and backstab them."

"Same," Wheeljack admitted, "except for the using-and-backstabbing part."

"I don't get..." Starscream shook his head. "I know that I'm a pile of red flags stitched in the shape of a jet. I don't know why you'd want to court me. Or be courted by me. I don't know if that's a unilateral or bilateral thing."

Wheeljack shrugged. "If you were planning to betray me, you wouldn't have told me you'd betrayed the last couple 'bots you courted, right?"

"I told the second one about the first one."

"I'll take my chances."

The smile Starscream graced Wheeljack with could have illuminated every hall of a Metrotitan. "Courting, then."

He wondered what in the world Starscream had told Bumblebee, if he hadn't told him that they were already courting.

He wondered what it was like, traveling back from infraspace to the real world. Was it like traveling through a wormhole? A space bridge? Could Starscream feel the black hole—what was that like?

Wheeljack figured he'd be finding out soon enough.

"Energy stable?"

Starscream checked the alien console, referring back to the notes they'd attached above it explaining what the readouts meant. "Check."

"Ignition ready?"

Starscream looked at the massive block of dissected-and-recombined lighters bound into their patchwork machine with electrical tape. "Check, I hope." Starscream glanced at Wheeljack. "Patient prepped?"

Wheeljack looked down at the dozens of wires dangling from his open spark casing. "Check. I hope."

Starscream stepped back from the energy ansible and stood next to Wheeljack, and together they looked over their work. It was an absolute mess.

"Are we ready?" Starscream asked.

Wheeljack surveyed the mess critically. Everything appeared to be connected, and nothing was throwing off sparks, so... "If I commed up the break room in Kimia and asked whoever was there if they thought it was ready, three out of five of them would say yes."

"And that means...?"

"We go for it."

Starscream gave Wheeljack an alarmed look. "Is that how Autobots usually do science? Field testing is decided by three out of five 'bots on their break?"

"It's the polar opposite of the Shockwave method. I see that as a plus," Wheeljack said. "Besides, what's the worst thing a malfunctioning energy ansible could do? Kill me?"

Starscream went over to the energy ansible's controls, but muttered, "In this place? I wouldn't rule out the possibility."

”It’s as ready as it’s gonna be,” Wheeljack said. “Which means…” He rummaged around under his armor.

”What? Means what?” Starscream’s optics lit up in surprise when he saw Wheeljack extract the can of engex, and he laughed. “I thought you gave it back.”

”Blurr didn’t want it. C’mon. Split?”

”You first. I’m prepping the energy ansible.” It slowly started to hum to life as Starscream powered it up.

Wheeljack popped open the can, slid his mask half off, and chugged down half the can—trying to ignore how keenly Starscream watched his rarely-exposed face as he drank. When he was done, he clicked his mask back in place and held the rest out to Starscream.

Starscream’s fingers brushed Wheeljack’s as he took the can, and Wheeljack found his gaze caught by Starscream’s. Starscream’s new optics were the color of a deep pool of energon, and just as full of life and energy just waiting to be unleashed. They were the most alive thing in infraspace.

Starscream pressed his lips where Wheeljack’s had been and drained the can, and smirked when Wheeljack tried to cover up a spontaneous engine rev by clearing his throat. Later—he could follow up on that later. When they were out of here.

"Come on! Just turn it on." Wheeljack gave Starscream an encouraging grin, optics curving. "I'll see you on the other side."

Starscream rolled his optics, but he was still smirking. "No dying this time," he commanded. "I'll see you around Mars." Starscream flipped the energy ansible on.

"Hold on. Mars?"

And then it powered on. It felt like a vacuum sucking his spark out of its casing, and all the electricity in his frame out with his spark. The engex he’d just drank vaporized. His vision swam and darkened. The tips of his fingers were just going numb when he was ripped free from his frame and hurdled away into nothingness.

Wheeljack wondered how many people in the galaxy had gotten to see the view from the inside of a black hole coming out. It was like a billion points of light flying straight through him, like rain whipped by the wind, as he flew the wrong way through the event horizon.

And then he was free, spinning through space, stars whirling around him, a sun flashing in and out of his view, and he was struck by the dizzying wondrous sense of space—of open space, of existence and energy and connection and life.

And then he was falling, slowly, back toward the event horizon.

Starscream caught his hand. "You made it!"

Slowly he stopped falling and stopped spinning. Starscream held him up, weightless, in defiance of the black hole's gravity, and beamed at him. Literally beamed at him. The sun was beaming through his face. "You're see-through?"

"We're see-through," Starscream said. "We're incorporeal, at the moment."

"Uh." Wheeljack looked down at his body, and saw the lights of the event horizon spinning through his chest. "I see that."

"Temporary problem," Starscream said dismissively. "I'm in contact with Bumblebee—he's the only one I can talk to directly, without possessing a TV or anything—"

"You can possess a TV?"

Starscream seized Wheeljack's other hand, squeezed them both, and gushed, "It's amazing. I've got to show you how to travel through the Internet; there's so many things we can do like this—anyway. Bumblebee can get us to Windblade—they're friends now, we can beg a favor off of her—she can get us to Nautica, and Nautica can get us to Brainstorm."

"Uh-huh." Okay. That was a whole lot of travel for someone who'd been dead four minutes ago—was time passing again?—but Starscream had clearly thought this out. "And, Brainstorm will give us...?"

"His expertise on mechs that are dead but still alive—which I think is as close as we're going to get to expertise on whatever we currently are—and hopefully, eventually, new bodies."

"Really? We're trusting Brainstorm to make our bodies?" Wheeljack asked. "You know there's an apocalyptic events scale named after him, right?"

"What's the worst thing he could do? Kill us?" Starscream winked.

Wheeljack laughed. "If anyone could find a way..."

"Then it's a good thing I have an expert engineer with me to check my future body for explosives." Starscream squeezed Wheeljack's hands again. "Ready to go?"

Wheeljack squeezed back. "Ready."

Without needing his thrusters, propelled by his own energy and will, Starscream flew away from the black hole and pulled Wheeljack along with him; two sparks shot through the sky toward Earth.

Also on Ao3, see link on my blog!

#starscream #wheeljack #starjack #transformers #maccadam #secretsolenoid #my writing #forged starscream

[museicaliteacup]

The Correlation Between Expressions of Love and Program Depiction for Minor Characters in Yuri on Ice

A year on from Yuri!!! on Ice, I want to discuss something that I’ve seen floating around various fandom circles through the months. It’s a general dissatisfaction that the show chose to highlight characters like Georgi and Michele by way of showing both their skating programs, and spent less time focusing on other minor but more easily accessible or representative characters: Guanghong, Leo, Emil and Seung-gil.

This inequality of screen time—but moreover, skating time and character development time—is an issue that doesn’t have an easy solution. The anime follows standard broadcasting time limitations, and as such, there are only so many skating programs you can show when considering the ones you have to show (Yuuri and the other eventual GPS finalists), and also all the off-ice time and story progression. Making the decision to show five programs per episode in the qualifying events makes sense, logistically. But how do you select which characters’ stories you are going to develop that little bit further, and which ones you need to condense?

My proposal is that the content of the programs, in a way, reflects the two focal points of Yuri!!! on Ice: how characters embrace, develop and view life and love. When you look closely, there’s actually a very clear distinction in the programs we are shown with regards to love in particular: some skaters emanate love in a way that is love beyond themselves, love for other people; and others either emanate love that isn’t related to people, or don’t express love at all. And that distinction is the line that is drawn between the characters that get more skating time, and the characters that get less.

However, just because characters don’t get skating time, it doesn’t mean they don’t get further development. Many of the characters get a lot of off-ice time and development, and all of the six characters I am going to analyse draw either draw parallels with or become foils for Yuuri. I think this last point is particularly poignant: Yuuri is the main character for a reason, and the ways each of these six characters skate are designed to highlight certain points of Yuuri’s own skating, storyline, and relationship.

Cup of China

Georgi: what happens when romantic love goes wrong

Georgi is our two-program non-finalist in this event, and his entire program is themed around his breakup. His programs are more than overtly about love: they juxtapose two extremes with regards to feelings, with him turning from an evil witch who wants to curse True Love because it doesn’t exist to a Disney Prince™ whose main objective is proving the Power Of True Love etc. And while people think this is boring or unnecessary to watch, it kind of makes sense. Breakups are complicated. They can be really messy, and especially if the other person was the one who initiated the break. When you still harbour very strong affections for someone, it really hurts when they leave you, and those two extremes that Georgi portrays are very much the two extremes you can end up feeling for that person.

Georgi’s performances also serve another purpose: echoing Yuuri and Victor’s relationship. His second program in particular serves as a poignant aftermath to Yuuri and Victor’s messy and difficult conversation in the carpark. Their relationship is strong enough that they are able to go from Yuuri crying and Victor saying all the wrong things to him to walking into the rink with Victor’s hand on Yuuri’s shoulder. A friend commented, upon watching the episode: “That’s not a level of physical closeness you can achieve after a fight like theirs unless you’re really close” (paraphrased). “I’ll always be, be there for you, I promised…” That’s one of those timeless statements that says I love you and this is how I will show it. Having Georgi skate this program about love overcoming obstacles and being a strong force beyond anything that might test it is a natural parallel to where Yuuri and Victor are in the story, and where they’re about to go.

Yes, Georgi seems like a bit of a comical, overly dramatic character and yes, he’s very hung up over his breakup, but he was the one who got dumped, and he has good reason to still be conflicted about it. Yuuri is constantly shown to process his thoughts and come to important realisations while skating; it’s no big stretch to imagine that other skaters might try and do the same. And, after all, Georgi’s emotions didn’t go to waste: he got bronze in the Trophée Eric Bompard, so there you go.

Leo and Guanghong: parallels to some of Yuuri’s subtler skating traits

The interesting thing about Leo and Guanghong is we actually see a lot of them off the ice. Although we get a glimpse of Georgi on the street, it’s Guanghong getting jianbing and Leo on a mission from Phichit to find Guanghong to come and translate for drunken Victor that we first focus on in China*. Guanghong is shown commentating on both Leo and Christophe’s programs alongside Yuuri and Phichit; and the two of them are shown to be trying to stream the GPF together in episodes 11 and 12, which is like, #friendshipgoals.

*(A note here regarding subs: although all the translations lean towards Leo saying that Phichit asked Leo to go to the restaurant and translate, apparently—according to a post from way back when—what Leo says has a much looser interpretation, and can actually be constructed as Phichit asking for Guanghong to go and translate; and since Guanghong hasn’t been answering his phone to Leo, we can presume Phichit tried Guanghong, got no response, then texted Leo to go out and find Guanghong for him. A different kettle of fish, but a useful clarification—after all, it makes a lot more sense that Phichit would be seeking out native speaker Guanghong to translate for him.)

But on the ice, despite their clear friendship off it, their programs either aren’t really connected to other people or aren't connected to love.

Leo’s short program, Still Alive, harnesses his prowess as a choreographer and his connection with and love of music. It’s a program that is very much about him, and what he wants to give to the world. It’s not selfish, but it is self-directed and self-focused, and the focus of the commentary is on Leo’s coolness and ability to switch up choreography to suit the competition from his friends, and about the way music influences Leo and his drive to continue and his courage from Leo himself. It’s about a thing Leo loves and is good at, but not about a person. Leo’s interpretation and self-expression are highlighted, a small parallel with Yuuri being historically noted for having higher PCS than TES; it’s not a large parallel, but it is something you see Yuuri focusing on, and all the skaters focused on here do have things that tie them to Yuuri.

Guanghong’s free skate, Shanghai Blade, is a delve into Guanghong’s thoughts about how to construct a framework for your skate that you can believably sell both to an audience and to yourself, and a look at his own hunger to improve himself and prove his worth in the world of skating. Again, it’s a very self-focused program, and features a brilliant montage of Guanghong’s internal fantasies: himself as an assassin, and then Leo as his ally who Guanghong takes a bullet for. (Also, Georgi as the bad guy. I don’t know why, but it makes me laugh.) It is interesting to note how much admiration Guanghong holds for Leo: he openly comments how cool he thinks Leo is and then fancasts him as his fantasy ally and takes a bullet for him. Even though the program is not about Leo, it is a nice piece of friendship development.

But again: the program is focused on Guanghong’s own imagination, limitations and aspirations, and in terms of the skating, not on anyone else. Now, I said all these six skaters had parallels/foils with Yuuri. Guanghong’s is that little trait of Yuuri’s mentioned in episode 2 and exemplified in episodes 5 and 12: he really, really hates losing. I don’t think in Guanghong’s case it’s hugely significant to Yuuri’s journey, but it is a reminder halfway along the line that losing is frustrating, and eventually that question is posed to Yuuri when Yuri wins the GPF: what do you do when you lose?

(Agree to stay in skating for one more year and compete against your coach/fiance until you win gold at five world championships, that’s what hahahaha.)

Rostelecom Cup

Michele: the foil to Yuuri and his relationship with Victor

I think the most animosity I’ve seen in this series is actually towards Michele, and I can understand why: he’s brash and rude to almost everyone, he’s attached to Sara almost to the point of obsessiveness, and he spends most of his time in a grump. People wonder why the series had such a key focus on him as opposed to, say, Emil or Seung-gil, the other eventual non-GPS finalists at the Rostelecom Cup. And I think there are a number of reasons at play here.

The first is that Michele is basically on par with Yuuri, and could almost be seen as Yuuri’s equal going through this competition. Recall that Michele was also at the GPF the previous year, and came in fifth (so, only just above Yuuri), with a score of about 253, which isn’t really all that high. He doesn’t have many quads, and yet he’s regarded as one of the really good skaters. He’s also the closest in age to Yuuri: 22 to Yuuri’s 23. Michele and Yuuri will have been competing against one another their whole competitive lives. He’s someone who is most likely in Yuuri’s competitive vision.

And recall also that Michele and Yuuri are, on points termed, tied for qualifying for the GPF by the end of the Rostelecom Cup. Yuuri only makes it to the final by virtue of gaining one second placing over Michele’s two third placings, and Yuuri recognises this; he recognises that he was on a knife-edge with regards to placing at this competition because everyone at this competition was on a knife-edge with placing. Michele was the one pre-determined by the creators to gain bronze, and thus there’s just cause for a focus on him.

But also, Michele’s programs are about love. It’s a different kind of love to the romance and Yuuri-and-Victor-something-beyond-coach-student-beyond-mere-lovers that we’ve seen previously. This is familial love, and moreover, it’s sibling love. It’s protective love; and it’s love which is Michele learning about letting go. I think it’s also a foil to where Yuuri and Victor are at this point: where they’ve only been mutually knowing one another and living together for eight months, and realise after a short separation that they basically cannot be apart, that’s how much they love each other and need each other and make each other better, Michele and Sara have spent their entire lives together because… well, because they’re twins and compete in different divisions of the same sport. And after 22 years, Sara knows that she doesn’t need her brother to protect her from bullies anymore, that she has her own desires and goals that are separate to his, and that it’s healthier by far for them to exist independently.

Michele processes this, as so many of the skaters do, through his free skate. He takes the time to process Sara’s message to him, and to process what it says about him and how he needs to act from there. And it’s while he’s going through this mental process and making himself let her go—and thus, actively changing the way he views his love for her and the way he needs to perceive their relationship—that his skating becomes mellower, and he begins to emanate a strong and affecting love that brings Sara to tears as he skates for her for the last time.

Michele is a foil to Yuuri, in short. He has to go on the opposite journey to Yuuri—letting go, as opposed to letting in—and in doing so while being Yuuri’s most constant competitor, falls naturally into the spotlight. Personality-wise, maybe he isn’t widely regarded as a favourite or even particularly likeable in Western fandom. But character-wise and in the way his and Sara’s relationship foils Yuuri and Victor’s, he is important, and definitely important enough to warrant displaying both his skating programs. It's healthy love via independence versus healthy love via interdependence: both options are valid, but which one is the healthier option changes between for different people and different kinds of relationships, and this is so well illustrated here.

Emil and Seung-gil: reflections on some of Yuuri’s indisputable skating strengths and weaknesses

Can I just say, Emil’s theme and music are both AMAZING. (Delving into my own bias but Anastasis is my favourite piece of music from the entire show.) Emil’s competitive but positively competitive: his aim seems to be to make friends with his rivals, and he’s basically focused on running in the Make the Program all about Quads race. He pulls off four quads, including a quad loop for the first time in competition (which, incidentally, is one of the events I think may have thrown off Seung-gil in his free skate).

Although Emil is shown off the ice to goofily and readily attach himself to Mickey and to be someone who loves hugs and generally embodies a light, friendly, open sort of love, his program doesn’t actually reflect this at all: it’s all about bigger and more and ceasing to be human, and the question is whether he can actually pull off his four quads and successfully complete his program. He gets to the end, but falls on two jumps and misses a planned combination, all in the second half; which, incidentally, is Yuuri’s forte, and where Yuuri plans all his big jumps for maximum points value.

Seung-gil performs a program that is based entirely around its objective audience appeal score, and he spends the entire program calculating his base scores in his head. He’s not trying to do a mambo because it has any personal connection or emotional meaning to him; he’s doing it entirely because it will look good and if he can physically interpret it well, up his score goes. He’s the most detached of any of the skaters to the emotive side of skating, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; after all, strong emotions can get in the way of the technical elements, as we saw when Georgi’s distress caused him to fall landing a jump halfway through his free skate.

But Seung-gil still has emotions under his calculations; he’s shown to be visibly apprehensive and nervous before his free skate, and after it’s over, he starts crying over how badly it went. To come back to my main point, Seung-gil’s focus isn’t even on himself: it’s on his numbers and technical elements, and yet we do get to see a very human, relatable side to him. And with regards to parallels and foils to Yuuri: although Seung-gil’s focus on calculating his element scores aids him in success, it’s this detachment from musical interpretation and focus on points that hinders Yuuri in episode 11 when his short program gets a lower score than usual. Additionally, remember that Yuuri knows very well the pain of losing, the pain of not being able to do your best, and there’s a reason Yuuri’s the one that looks up and focuses on Seung-gil’s upset after his free skate.

I have one further point to make, and this pertains chiefly to Leo, Seung-gil, JJ, and, as it happens, Yuuri. It’s to do with the point I just left off on, and explains in some part why certain programs weren’t featured: what happens when a skater messes up their program really, really badly?

Leo, Seung-gil, Yuuri and JJ: loss through failure and why it isn’t shown onscreen

We know from interviews with Sayokan and Kubo-sensei that Leo messed up a lot of his jumps in his free skate, which eventually put him in eighth place. We see that Seung-gil falls on a quad loop, his signature jump, and gets up with a tight jaw and a look of desperation in his eye before his final, very low score is revealed. And we all know that Yuuri came in sixth at the GPF the previous year; that he was grieving for his dog and that he messed up his jumps; consider that the only shots we get of Yuuri’s GPF free skate are those of his falls. This is also likely in part because Yuuri is a horrifically unreliable narrator and wouldn’t want to show us the things he did well; whether he even remembers the things he did well is a mystery.

But apart from that, I recall something Kubo-sensei once said: she didn’t want to portray injuries on the show, because she didn’t want an angsty show (or something to that effect). And in a similar vein, imagine what it would be like if we saw characters fall from multiple jumps and grow visibly more distressed throughout their programs. It would be uncomfortable to watch and it would hurt to watch—we’d be in the same distress we might be in if we saw characters get injured. Yes, there are programs where Yuuri has a lot of flubbed jumps, but he usually has a broader focus, a more secure mental outlook, or Victor does most of the narration there; Yuuri flubbing his jumps isn’t intended to make us or him angst, but to help push his character development. The one time we see a program really go wrong is JJ’s GPF short program, where he unintentionally downgrades all his jumps and basically has a panic attack on the ice. And it’s really powerful to watch, because this is the first time we’ve actually witnessed someone messing up to this extent.

I think Kubo-sensei and Sayokan are trying, in part, to preserve the characters’ dignity when they fail. You don’t always need to see what happened to understand what probably happened and to feel for the pain it caused. And by showing glimpses of what can happen when you mess up, but only glimpses, they then set a really good scene for giving us JJ messing up and what the repercussions of that are. And, as ever, it leads back to Yuuri and his journey: he recognises that this is in a way similar to how he messed up the previous year, but also recognises that JJ isn’t giving up or letting himself become defeated on the ice the way Yuuri did. The other failures tie in less closely (or not at all) with Yuuri’s storyline; therefore, there isn’t a reason to show them.

In conclusion...

The most significant parts of Yuri!!! on Ice are Yuuri’s journey through improving his skating, and the development of Yuuri and Victor’s relationship; thus, the other skating programs that take the focus in the limited amount of screentime available become the ones which bear the greatest significance to where Yuuri and Victor’s relationship is currently at in the storyline. Georgi and Michele, in their respective journeys in love, provide the clearest parallel and foil respectively to Yuuri and Victor’s relationship at the competitions; and accordingly, their skating programs get more screentime than those of the other non-GPS finalist characters.

#georgi popovich #michele crispino #katsuki yuuri #leo de la iglesia #seung gil lee #guang hong ji #emil nekola #yuri!!! on ice #my meta #some thoughts i've held vaguely for the last several months #and now i've finally got them in order #so here have some analysis