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Starscream stirred, awoken by the shifting light.
“Oh good,” you sighed.
The silver mech was groggy and his limbs ached, but he pushed through the pain to sit up and observe where he was. The space was unfamiliar, but thankfully your voice was not.
“Hold on,” you cautioned, “You’re still beat up pretty bad and I don’t want to see you getting worse,” you said while gently guiding him to lay back down. “Honestly, for a second there, I didn’t know if you were going to make it.”
“You?” Starscream mumbled to himself, still disoriented while looking over his patched up wounds. “You did this?”
You gave him a skeptical look before gathering up supplies to redress his injuries. “I hate to say it, but who else do you think would do this for you?”
Starscream thought back to the handful of times he’d convinced the Autobot medic to help repair him. The difference was that Ratchet wasn’t doing it out of the kindness of his grumpy old spark, but you were. Your loyalty was resilient, sometimes to your own detriment, but it was a loyalty Starscream craved.
He sheepishly thanked you. His ego was bruised, but Starscream knew what it would have meant if you hadn’t found him. Anyone else would have finished what the predicons started, but here he was, in so much pain he half wished he was dead, in the presence of the only bot he could genuinely trust.
You resisted the urge to act like you didn’t hear his thanks just so you could get him to repeat it. But you decided not to make him more embarrassed than he already was. One heartfelt ‘thank you’ was more than enough. It’s not like you needed the acknowledgment anyway. You weren’t doing this for the praise.
“What’re we gonna do with you, huh?” you lightly teased in an effort to distract him from his pain while you worked on his injuries. “If I didn’t know better, I’d make you promise not to do this again.”
Starscream sneered, “Good thing you know better.”
You couldn’t help but grin at his arrogant tone. If he had enough energy to be an aft, he must be feeling more like himself.
“There he is,” you said.
“What?” Starscream asked.
“There’s the snarky seeker I know,” you answered with overenthusiasm.
Starscream rolled his optics and winced as you hit a particularly painful spot, but he didn’t talk back. He didn’t have the processing power to quip and he could feel exhaustion once again creeping in. For now, he’d be a good patient and rest, content with the knowledge that he had a second chance, and now you’d be the one to watch him try again, even if he failed.