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Mirage's internal timer went off, and he came online to find himself pinned under heavy purple limbs.
It wasn't an unusual way to wake up these days, and didn't that speak volumes about the strange turns his life had taken of late. Mirage turned his head to see Skywarp was still deep in recharge, his mouth twisted like he was dreaming of grit stuck in his seams. There was a pocket of warm air trapped between their frames—seekers ran hot in more than one way, Mirage supposed—and he basked in it for a little while, reluctant to move. Most of the shuttle's non-essential systems had been turned off to save power, and the eighty-joor planetary night could get very cold indeed.
The cabin was dark, its quiet gradually broken by an arriving storm rattling against the hull. A faint green light washed over the far wall in one-second intervals: there was some indicator on the cockpit console that Mirage knew he needed to investigate. Perhaps it was the comm array, and the distress calls they'd sent out had been answered. But checking it meant he'd have to leave this bubble of warmth…
He vented out, perhaps a little louder than he'd intended. Skywarp made a quiet noise of discomfort, and the arm lying across Mirage's chest tightened, pulling him a little closer. One wing fell partly over him, as if trying to hide him from sight. Mirage's optics cast a blue glow over the surface of that wing, picking out the Decepticon insignia with icy clarity.
It was a reminder he needed. The sooner they returned to the status quo, the better off they'd be.
He brushed the back of Skywarp's hand, which was curled possessively around one wheel-wing. "Skywarp. Skywarp?" No response. "Let me up, Skywarp. I need to check the console."
"Hm?" It didn't seem right, Mirage thought distantly, that he knew what it sounded like when Skywarp's engines slowly shifted out of sleep. "Wha—what's goin' on?"
"Green light on the console," said Mirage, trying to sit up. Skywarp agreeably raised his arm and shifted so he was reclined on his side, propped up on his elbow. This released the warm air between them, and Mirage missed it fiercely; the tarp they'd spread out in lieu of a recharge slab barely held off the chill from the cabin floor. "It could be a response."
"'Bots or 'Cons, d'you think?" asked Skywarp. His tone was flippant, but Mirage glanced at him and saw his expression was… rather more complicated.
Mirage left the question unanswered. It should be obvious which side he hoped to be rescued by, and in any case the answer waited a few steps away. There was no need to guess. But a peculiar inertia kept him seated where he was. It was a nonsensical way to think, but—if he didn't move, he didn't find out who had answered their distress calls. They didn't have to prepare for their rescuers to arrive. Their strange alliance could last a little longer.
A hand brushed his shoulder. "You there?"
"Yes, I'm here. I'm fine," said Mirage, getting to his feet. He moved to the cockpit and seated himself, flicking the switches that would bring the console to life. A prompt to view the new message appeared on the main screen; Mirage tapped through and got strings of jumbled glyphs. The sender had encrypted it, good—and a quick examination of the message's metadata revealed they'd used base-level Cybertronian standards, meant only to keep eavesdropping aliens off their scent should they somehow intercept an ansible transmission. He'd warned for that possibility…
"Refiner's nearly out," said Skywarp, approaching him. A cube appeared in Mirage's periphery, and he took it and sipped without complaint. Skywarp leaned against the pilot's chair and slurped noisily at his own energon. "What's it say, then?"
"There's an Autobot corvette inbound from Outpost Raisaris," said Mirage, summarising. Skywarp didn't have the onboard software needed to decrypt on sight. "I'm not certain where that is, but they estimate it will take around seven hundred joors to get here." Relatively fast in the context of subluminal space travel on the frontier, where there were no space bridges to speed things up.
"Raisaris…" Skywarp made a noise of recognition. "That's—Pylos, right? This scrapheap have a map?" He leaned in further, his weight tilting the chair.
Mirage didn't think the locally available map would be of much use. The shuttle, like everything else in their abductors' collection, was a few generations old, meaning any cached data would be severely out of date. But he opened it up anyway, leaning back and watching as Skywarp squinted at the screen and mumbled under his breath. His outlier ability gave him an uncanny knack for finding mass distortions in space—it was how they'd found their hideaway, a cold little planet in the orbit of a barely-lit brown dwarf—so perhaps he knew something about this part of space that Mirage didn't.
The wing closest to him wiggled slightly, the little flaps along its forward edge jittering in apparent concentration. He wanted to reach out and run a finger along that edge, watch it flick him away… and maybe he would, later. They still had some time.
Skywarp seemed to come to a conclusion. "Pylos—" and here he glanced at his audience and gestured at a clump of stars towards the middle of one galactic arm, "—is right next to Cybertronian space. You 'Bots are already in the area with Raisaris, and I know Starscream's been making noises about heading that way." He glanced back at Mirage, like he'd suddenly remembered he was talking to an Autobot. "Mostly for the energon. You saw this rock, right? Pylos is lousy with the stuff." He turned back to the map, his expression pensive. "That used to be why, anyway. Screamer's going to lose it when he hears about the Collectors."
The Collectors. It was Skywarp's name for their abductors, but Mirage found it quite appropriate. There was a detached efficiency to the way he'd been kidnapped and transferred to Collector custody that reminded him of the exotic organics trade that had flourished on pre-war Cybertron. "If the Decepticons move on Collector space… Prime won't like that." Optimus Prime would want to parley, even after what the Collectors had done. He would want to broker peace, to clear up any misunderstandings between their peoples. It was an impulse Mirage admired, even as he doubted its achievability: the Collectors did not deem modern Cybertronians capable of meaningful communication.
Skywarp only smirked. "Bet you wouldn't mind, though." He stepped away from the console, satisfied, and Mirage tapped out of the map module, leaving the screen on for illumination. "So. We've got, what, six-fifty joors to get our story straight? That's plenty of time."
"Not much to straighten," said Mirage, turning in his chair. When Skywarp's brow rose, he added, "I intend to turn over as much information on the Collectors as I'm able." He'd already assembled a sizeable dossier. The first thing he'd done on slipping his restraints was find a server room—they tended to look somewhat similar across spacefaring civilisations—and run his infiltration suite on one of the terminals there. Crunching all that data had taken some time, but at the end of it he'd had a fair grasp of the Collectors' language and network architecture. That gave him everything he needed to figure out an escape route… even a shuttle he knew how to fly.
Mirage suppressed a shiver at the memory of the cavernous gallery where he'd found it. A giant metal sphere covered with hexagonal cells on the inside, each cell full of Cybertronian objects arranged in ghastly little tableaux—a mess hall on a Decepticon ship, a pre-war oil house, an Autobot hangar complete with an Autobot shuttle… every item real, collected from various points in their history—and all of it impeccably maintained. The Collectors had seemed quite proud of that aspect of their collections. Which meant they would likely have kept Mirage and Skywarp functional as well, whatever that meant in practice.
Good thing he'd never be finding out. And none of the other Autobots would, either, not if Mirage got his information to them in time.
"Obviously," said Skywarp, sitting cross-legged on the tarp. "I'm talking about after. Won't the Autobots have questions about me? Do they know?"
Mirage pursed his mouth. "They're… aware. I expect they've already drawn their own conclusions." His distress call to the Autobots had included all the code-glyphs needed to convey that Mirage was both safe and in control of Skywarp, but that didn't necessarily mean he'd be believed. Some degree of cooperation was understandable—Mirage was hardly the only Autobot who'd found himself in a hostile situation with only Decepticons for allies—but Skywarp was significantly more dangerous than the average Decepticon, and Mirage had done rather more than just cooperate.
How had it gone this far? Mirage couldn't say. He'd always been an intensely private person, even before the Autobots, and Skywarp's constant presence should've been beyond unbearable. Interpersonal friction was a known risk of space travel, neither of them were known for being easy to get along with, and their shuttle was tiny. It should've been a disaster.
That would have been easier to handle, in some ways. It would certainly have been easier to report.
"Damn," said Skywarp, not without sympathy. "There goes your chance to make up something good." He tipped his head back to lick out the last of the energon in his cube, and Mirage tried not to be too obvious about watching him. Not that Skywarp would mind, but he liked to think he could still be discreet about these things. "I kinda want another cube. What's the weather like?"
Mirage turned and flicked a switch to get an update from the shuttle's external sensors. "Windspeed eighty points."
Skywarp hissed through his teeth. "Yeah, no. That would rip my wings off." The storms on their little hideaway were brutal, thick with hail and impossible to see through—but they were also short, so he wouldn't have to wait very long to go energon-gathering. "There's enough for a couple more cubes, but you know what I'm like."
Mirage hummed in acknowledgement. It really was remarkable how much he knew about Skywarp now, and how little of it was useful from an Autobot perspective. He knew Skywarp had a deck of beaten-up cards on him at all times, and that he cheated at Triad; that the curious scent-flavour that clung to Skywarp's plating was a side effect of his outlier ability, caused by his atoms interacting with exotic unspace energies; that Skywarp severely disliked going hungry—enough to insist on maintaining a large reserve of raw fuel, more than was strictly necessary or safe, but Mirage didn't press the issue.
He had no doubt Skywarp now knew just as many useless things about him. Anecdotes from his life before the war, his preferred fullstasis openings, the way his Towers accent returned when he was excited—or overwhelmed. Skywarp had called it cute and made a game of trying to bring it out again. Mirage knew he would've objected if it'd been an Autobot saying that, but he let Skywarp get away with it. Which was more than easy when the results were so pleasant…
This wasn't intimacy. Skywarp was trying to keep the peace with a dangerous ally, just as Mirage was. He understood that, even if his spark refused to play along.
Not that that mattered now. Their alliance had ended, even if that end point was six hundred and fifty joors in the future. Corvettes were large enough for brig modules; Skywarp would be transferred into Autobot custody immediately, and Mirage would be sent in for a remote debrief and medical examinations. They would never need to interact again. Depending on the results of the psych evals Mirage knew Headquarters would put him through after this, it was possible he'd never be given the chance.
Six hundred and fifty joors. Both interminably long and barely any time at all.
…
"You're in a good mood," said Mirage, running his thumbs over Skywarp's helm vents, savouring the heat streaming from them. The planet had only grown colder as they waited, heading into winter on its orbit, and Mirage's systems had long been overhauled to leave the faintest heat signature possible.
"I've got a full tank and a pretty bot on my spike," said Skywarp. Mirage choked on a laugh. "What's there to be sad about?"
"The Autobots?" He couldn't have forgotten. "They'll scrap the shuttle, Skywarp. You can't stay here."
"Why would I want to do that?" Skywarp's thrusts slowed into a decadent grind. "Autobot brigs aren't so bad. And when Starscream finds out he'll call for an exchange." He shrugged. "Could be worse. Could be a lot worse."
"You'll be interrogated," said Mirage, not sure what he was trying to do. Warn him?
"I know." Skywarp dipped his head to kiss Mirage's neck cabling, tonguing the healed-over weld there. "And I've got a story ready for them. Not my first time doing this, spybot."
Mirage wondered how he'd explain that particular wound. By the time it took to find out where Skywarp was being kept, the Collectors had long discovered that the easiest way to subdue a seeker was to starve him… and Mirage had offered him the only energon he'd had at the time, though they'd had to make do without syphoning equipment. Vulgar as it was, the act had been done in extremis. Mirage was sure Headquarters would understand. But Skywarp had quite ruined neck kisses for him now—hard to forget the way he'd clung to Mirage in the wreck of his restraints, dim-opticked and ravenous, each deep draw making his engine whine and rattle in desperate relief.
Fear might have been the rational response to the threat of another bite. Mirage only tipped his head back and pulled Skywarp in closer, shuddering at the feel of sharp teeth against his throat, clenching down around a fresh wave of lubricant. Skywarp moaned into his shoulder at the feeling, venting hard, his fans at full speed. When he started moving again, Mirage braced himself against the floor and rolled his hips up into each thrust, soft sighs leaving his mouth every time Skywarp sank home.
At least they had plenty of fuel to replace what they were burning. Not much could be done about the stains, though—they had no solvent save for melted hail, and that was only some percentage benzene. There would be no hiding what they'd been up to together, at least not from the Autobots coming to retrieve them. Mirage didn't expect any punishment, given the circumstances, though his reputation would certainly suffer once the news got out. Not that that ever took much… Autobots liked their cracks about interfaction dalliances, but actual infractions were socially penalised. One's actions had to be unimpeachable. Mirage didn't doubt he'd failed that test.
Some time later—after they were done and they'd cleaned up somewhat, because Mirage wasn't so gauche as to bring up family business in the middle of interfacing—he returned to the question of Skywarp's fate. "So… I'm guessing Starscream's used his influence before."
"Hm?" Skywarp looked at him, roused from his drowsy vigil over the energon refiner.
Mirage elaborated. "That's where your confidence comes from. You're not worried about being in Autobot custody because you know he'll take care of everything. He's done it before."
"There's gotta be some benefits to being trined to that glitch," said Skywarp, sounding fond, denying none of it. It was unfair that being high up in the Decepticon hierarchy could fast-track a prisoner through even Autobot procedure, but Mirage was more than familiar with the way rules bent around power.
And the reminder that Skywarp was so close to Megatron himself, the core of Decepticonism, the enemy of every Autobot… that shouldn't have been as alluring as it was.
"Shame it's not the 'Cons picking us up," continued Skywarp, his eyes brightening with amusement. "I'd have introduced you."
"Of course," said Mirage, his tone droll. All the data he possessed on the Collectors would make him quite valuable to an army looking to fight them. And that's before they got to all the other Spec Ops secrets in his head. "We'd get along, would we?"
"Screamer doesn't really do 'getting along'," said Skywarp, making a face. His signature warpaint had long flaked off, softening his expressions, and Mirage had privately enjoyed getting to see him without it. "But it's easy to handle him once you know how his brain works."
"Do tell," said Mirage, unable to help himself, but Skywarp just stuck his tongue out at him. "And what about Thundercracker? Would we get along?"
"Like seekers, do ya?" There was an uneasy edge to the question.
Mirage scoffed. He'd always been somewhat contemptuous of those mechs with flightframe fixations. "I like you, Skywarp. And I know your trine's important to you." Not that he wasn't charmed by Skywarp's top-heavy gait and the way his wings flicked at odd sounds, but it wasn't a seeker thing.
Skywarp mellowed at this admission. "Aw. I've grown on you."
"Like rust," said Mirage. The expected joke, but it wasn't an inaccurate comparison. He would need to sand this off and paint it over if he wanted to return to full functionality.
That thought hurt, and Mirage was distantly surprised by how much it hurt—but his spark had always been the weakest part of him. It had clearly been taken in by their involuntary proximity, taken comfort in something that wasn't real. But they were not friends. They were certainly not lovers. They were enemies playing nice: an Autobot with a valuable captive, a Decepticon with his ticket home.
And Skywarp talking about him meeting his trine—his family, his House—had been just that: talk. A threat, possibly, if Mirage wanted to look at it that way. That he'd attached any deeper meaning to it was his own problem. Skywarp wouldn't know the importance of such a meeting in Towers culture.
Skywarp bunted Mirage's cheek, startling him out of his thoughts. He'd shifted closer at some point. "What's going on in there?"
"I—" Telling the truth was out of the question. "I was—" But that didn't mean he had to lie. "I was thinking about you, actually." He turned his head to look at Skywarp, and their noses brushed. He could pick up that char-and-ozone scent that clung to the seeker's plating, and it—it did something strange to his brain module. That was the only explanation he had for what he did next.
He moved slowly, but Skywarp offered no resistance. Mirage had him flat against the floor with surprisingly little force, straddling his waist and pinning his upper arms down. Skywarp's engine whined, sending vibrations up Mirage's legs, and he felt charge simmer in his chest. This seeker, this frontline warrior—so much stronger than Mirage, so much deadlier, and here he was under him, supine, restrained. And happy to be there, if his fans were any indication.
Skywarp tested the grip on his arms with an experimental wiggle. His wings twitched under him, rustling against the tarp. "Has anyone told you you're kind of intense?"
Mirage tilted his head, considering it. "After a fashion. But the Autobots use far less flattering language."
"Really? Damn." Skywarp's fans kicked up a speed. The points of his cheeks glowed with heat. "Their loss, I guess. It's hot."
This startled a genuine laugh out of Mirage. "Is that so?" It was not something he'd heard before.
"What can I say? I've got a type."
Mirage smiled and leaned down, intent on kissing Skywarp's grin off him—but the energon refiner chose that moment to ding completion. Skywarp's attention was immediately elsewhere, and he began wriggling and smacking at Mirage's thighs. "Gerroff, I gotta—my cube—"
Mirage slid off him and Skywarp scrambled to the refiner. For all his urgency… he could've easily shoved him off if he'd wanted to, Mirage was by no means a heavy mech. But he hadn't. It was little things like this that made him wonder if Skywarp was on his best behaviour for him, and why. Was it for Mirage himself, or for the Autobot he was stuck with?
It was the height of foolishness to hope Skywarp might feel the same way about him, but Mirage knew what his spark wanted.
…
There was a hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake.
Contingency protocols activated, kicking Mirage into full alertness in seconds. He onlined his optics to see Skywarp leaning over him, looking visibly startled. "Wow, that was fast. Spec ops thing?"
"What is it?" asked Mirage, not answering the question. "What's happening?"
"Blinky light on the console," said Skywarp. "I think we're getting hailed."
Mirage sat up and took stock. The shuttle was dark, as it had been when they'd settled in to sleep. It was their last extended recharge before the Autobots arrived, so he'd set a timer to wake him four joors ahead of touchdown. That would let them refuel, perhaps make an attempt at cleaning up. Maybe Skywarp would want to preen, now that Mirage had grown proficient at getting grit out of his wingseams. He wouldn't get an opportunity for a preen once in Autobot custody.
So far nothing was going according to plan. They were both awake, but it was nowhere close to the stated arrival time. Skywarp had somehow dragged himself out of recharge without rousing Mirage—how? The seeker slept like a rock—and now there was a hail waiting for them. Could the Autobots have arrived early? It wasn't impossible. Mirage got to his feet and stepped over to the console.
The incoming message indicator was indeed blinking—next to the lightspeed comms unit, though, not the ansible. Meaning this message had come from within their system. There was a ship here! How had the Autobots managed that? Mirage tapped through, his spark leaping at the thought of rescue. He spared a glance for the metadata: standard Cybertronian encryption, just as he'd asked, all good there—
His lines turned to ice as he read the decrypted message: the ship hailing them was the Decepticon battlecruiser Essorant.
Mirage stared at the glyphs, his mind whirling. The hail mentioned both Skywarp and Mirage by designation, so the Decepticons had likely intercepted his initial message. He glanced at the shuttle's ansible unit, which he'd used to send it… the unit was several generations out of date. No wonder Special Operations had its agents destroy old ansibles—they were all compromised.
But that didn't explain how the Decepticons had dispatched a cruiser so it got here before the Autobots. Cruisers were much larger than corvettes, and that mass made them slow. The timing didn't make sense—unless the Essorant had arrived through a spacebridge. The larger Decepticon strongholds certainly had enough bridging capacity to send a cruiser through. To send one for a rescue mission, however—was it all for Skywarp?
Mirage glanced at the seeker. He'd been saying something, but Mirage hadn't heard a word of it. "It's the Decepticons."
Skywarp… did not look surprised by this. He smiled and his wings rose, but there was none of the shock Mirage had expected from him. And that meant—
He frowned. "You knew it was the Decepticons."
Skywarp looked for a moment like he wanted to deny everything, but then his wings dipped. "Yeah, kinda." He tapped the glass over his spark. "It's—look. Look. I know what it sounds like, but it's Thundercracker. He's here, I'm sure of it. That's what woke me up." His voice was tight with exhaustion and relief.
But Mirage only felt dread. He didn't know the first thing about trine bonds—surely the telepathic connection was a myth?—but Skywarp's claim made sense. If Starscream had sent a battlecruiser out to retrieve his lost trinemate, something he was entirely capable of doing, Thundercracker could very well be at the helm… but that spelled trouble for Mirage. He did not like his chances in Decepticon custody. He wasn't the sort of high value inmate Skywarp would've been in Autobot hands, and there was a lot of sensitive information that could be extracted from him.
The incoming message indicator flashed again. Mirage numbly read the relevant parts out loud. "Hold position. Two joors to touchdown." He had two joors to figure out how he was going to hide—
"I can't wait," said Skywarp, cheerfully. "A shower, some polish, a proper berth… that'll be nice, huh? TC's gonna have questions, too, so better you than me." Skywarp's tone was light, teasing. He didn't seem to care—but he didn't have to care, did he? He didn't have to be well-behaved for his Autobot captor anymore.
Mirage couldn't look at him. "You're going to turn me over." Not a question.
"What are you—you're not going to stay here." Skywarp sounded confused, for some reason. "Seriously?"
It wasn't ideal. The planetoid they'd landed on was coarse with lava tubes and impact craters Mirage could use to hide, but the cold was his enemy: too long outside and his frame temperature would drop below sustainable levels. His actual chances of making it any distance were low—especially with a teleporter chasing him, laughable odds—but he needed to get it in his report. He needed to have tried to escape. And the longer he stood around talking, the more time Skywarp had to figure out what he intended to do.
"Mirage," started Skywarp, but he was already off, cranking the door release and letting it blow outwards as the shuttle depressurised. He threw himself into the biting cold outside, a map of the local terrain already up on his HUD, his optics furiously compensating for the barely-there glow of the brown dwarf overhead—
He activated his outlier just before Skywarp slammed into him from behind.
The seeker was heavy on his back, but he hadn't secured Mirage's arms—for that he'd need to see them first—and Mirage had learned how to account for a flier's centre of gravity. He flipped him easily—"Agh, ow!"—and scrambled forward, only for Skywarp to somehow catch one foot and send him sprawling with a single tug. "What is wrong with you?" The hand gripping his foot shook it a little. "You'll freeze out here!"
Mirage tried to sit up—but his hands slipped on the icy grit and he landed so hard his cloaking flickered out. Cold immediately began to leach in through his chestplate. "I know."
Skywarp sighed, opaque vapour rising from his helm vents. "You're a few steps ahead of me, spybot. What's going on here?"
"I'm not walking into a Decepticon prison," Mirage bit out. "You'll have to drag me there."
"Why would you be in a… what, because you're an Autobot?" Skywarp sounded genuinely incredulous. "Mirage. That's not gonna happen. You saved my life!"
Mirage grit his teeth. "What does that have to do with anything?" At the end of the day, the Decepticons had protocol to follow, and said protocol had very specific instructions for dealing with Autobot agents. Skywarp being trined to Starscream didn't mean he could simply do whatever he wanted. Surely not.
The wind chose that moment to kick up, sending frozen sleet into the gaps in their armour. Mirage shivered uncontrollably, his temperature dropping even further, and Skywarp groaned out loud. "Right, we're not doing this out here. Come on." He heaved Mirage up by the foot he'd refused to let go of, caught the smaller bot securely around the hips, and marched to the shuttle with Mirage gripped tight under an arm. Mortifying, but it was a necessary reminder of how strong Skywarp was, both as a flightframe and a close-range fighter. He made for a formidable enemy.
Skywarp stepped back into the shuttle, yanking the door shut behind him. He gently deposited Mirage on the floor and stood against the door with his arms crossed, blocking the way out while the shuttle repressurised. Mirage slowly sat up, resenting his relief at the warmth of the cabin.
"Okay. Now that we're not freezing our afts off," said Skywarp, and he tilted his head towards the console. "What did it say to spook you this bad?"
He made it sound like Mirage was jumping at shadows. "The Essorant."
Skywarp's eyes widened gratifyingly, and his wings dipped a little. "That's TC's capital ship. If it's out here… Starscream's definitely involved. Pit, Megatron probably knows about this. Oh wow." He looked pleased but also slightly alarmed.
"You see why I ran," said Mirage, bitterly.
"No, I don't," said Skywarp, scowling. "Now I really don't get it! You have any idea how much energon it takes to run a ship that size? And Megatron sent it out here for me. Me!" He smacked his chest. "That's only possible 'cause of you. And you seriously think we're gonna toss you in the brig after that?"
Mirage glared at him. "I'm not naïve, Skywarp. I know what the Decepticons do to captured Autobot agents."
Skywarp's wings flicked in irritation. "So? Those agents didn't save me, you did. If Megatron has a problem with you—and he won't—Screamer'll just bug him till he backs down. He does it all the time." He sank to his knees and placed his hands on Mirage's shoulders, shaking him a little. "Trust me. You're gonna be okay. Better than okay, even. TC's gonna set you up in one of the nice rooms, and I'll come by with snacks and say 'I told you so.'"
Mirage couldn't meet Skywarp's gaze. His spark desperately wanted to believe him, but it was prone to that kind of foolishness. "Do you really have that kind of authority?"
"You're usually smarter than this," muttered Skywarp. "'Course I do. I'm Elite Trine."
Elite. Mirage considered that term. The Decepticons were not a meritocracy like the Autobots tried to be. Skywarp and Thundercracker truly were the closest thing the Decepticons had to nobility—their relationship to Starscream gave them power disproportionate to their actual merits, skilled as they were. The Essorant had been sent out here to retrieve a noble, not a soldier. Not even a soldier with a valuable outlier ability.
He thought again about how close Skywarp was to Megatron—to the seat of ultimate power, to royalty—and it made his spark do flips in his chest. It shouldn't mean anything to him, to the Autobot he was supposed to be, but the Towersmech in him was incredibly pleased to have someone so powerful in his corner.
"Very well," said Mirage, finally. "I'll come with you." Skywarp's wings sagged in relief. "But I refuse to be cuffed. Or shackled, or sedated."
"Yeah, we can do that," said Skywarp, just as the console let out a sharp sound. They both turned to look at it.
"The Essorant's within tightbeam range," read Mirage, getting to his feet. The cruiser was likely in orbit above them, which was close enough for live voice communications. Mirage stepped over to accept transmissions, feeling uneasy. He wanted to hear other Cybertronian voices again, even if they were Decepticons, but…
"—bot Shuttle Omicron 8 on the starward side of system body A, this is the Decepticon Cruiser Essorant on interfaction channel 16. Do you copy? Autobot Shuttle Omicron 8—"
Mirage pressed transmit and was about to respond when Skywarp teleported to his side and yelled, "Yeah, we copy!"
There was a pause. "Primus in the Pit," swore the comms officer. "Was that—Skywarp? Is that you? Uh. Is that you, sir?"
"The one and only," crowed Skywarp. He wrapped an arm around Mirage's shoulders and dragged him in against his side, probably to keep him from running off. Mirage gave in and leaned into his warmth. "Been a while, hasn't it?"
"Too long, sir," said the comms officer, slowly, warily. "We didn't expect—it's an Autobot shuttle, sir. You have to understand."
"Expecting some kind of hostage situation, huh?" said Skywarp. "Now that you put it like that… it looks super sus, actually." He then opened his mouth and emitted a string of binary noises Mirage guessed was some kind of verification phrase. "There. Take that up to TC. He'll want proof it's actually me."
There was some commotion on the line. Mirage could hear Decepticons shouting at each other in the background, their words indistinct but harried. "Code checks out," the comms officer said finally, his voice shaky, unmistakable relief in every word. "We're sending a shuttle right now; should take about a joor till touchdown. Welcome back, sir!"
…
"And so ends nearly a vorn of searching," said Thundercracker, his hands steepled, his eyes on the datapad in front of him.
Mirage waited for him to continue, sitting before him in the captain's office aboard the Essorant. Thundercracker had been a gracious host so far, just as Skywarp had promised: Mirage had received a sizeable stateroom, medical attention, and a full detailing kit, as well a whole shift to rest before he was called on for answers. The other Decepticons on board didn't seem to know what to make of his presence—the medic who gave him his nanite shots had nearly stared a hole in his Autobrand—but none of them disobeyed their captain's instructions. And Thundercracker himself had been entirely courteous, if a little cold.
Being treated like this by the enemy—it was bizarre. Unnerving. Almost upsetting. And Skywarp had dodged all questions by vanishing into the depths of the ship. Mirage hadn't been able to recharge, so he'd spent his rest shift compiling a report on the Collectors, trying to guess what Prowl wouldn't object too much to the Decepticons knowing. He'd given it to Thundercracker on being summoned to his office, and Thundercracker had read the entire thing right there in front of him.
Mirage had taken the time to study Skywarp's trinemate. So much for the idea that all seekers looked alike… that was like saying Sideswipe and Cliffjumper were indistinguishable because they were both red and had wheels. Thundercracker was solid where Skywarp was gracile, his features blunt where Skywarp was sharp. There was an air of carefully coiled-up, restrained power about him—or perhaps that was an air pressure disturbance caused by his outlier. It was hard to say.
The seeker's eyes flicked up, studying Mirage. "Skywarp didn't say anything about the Collectors helping you escape." His tone was blandly curious and his expression stayed blank, but the accusation was there.
"I didn't tell him," said Mirage. Their abduction had been extremely unpopular among the Collectors themselves—live samples contaminated their data, apparently—and it was this dissenting faction that had made sure Mirage's fuel tank wasn't drained, and that his cell door was poorly secured, and that their shuttle was fueled and ready to go. Or so he'd guessed; they'd never communicated with him directly, but he knew the Collectors were far too scrupulous with their collections to make such critical mistakes. "It would've sounded like I was trying to defend the Collectors, and he wouldn't have taken that well."
"No, he wouldn't have," said Thundercracker, pensively. "What does this mean—autolysis? It's not a glyph I'm familiar with."
Mirage straightened slightly. How interesting… Thundercracker didn't know the word but he could still read it. That meant he was plugged into Autobot-origin data dumps, which included raw vocabulary lists but no dictionaries. "It is a scientific term, describing a process unique to organics. Once they deactivate, their bodies self-digest into more simple components—which are then consumed by other organic creatures." Thundercracker looked revolted, but that was only understandable. Mirage was just intrigued he'd asked at all.
"And the Collectors believe that is what they're seeing with us." Thundercracker considered this for a long moment, his expression darkening. "They aren't wrong, are they."
That hadn't been a question. "I couldn't possibly say." What a pleasantly strange Decepticon.
Thundercracker shook his head, and his face cleared. "What happens to them is fortunately not up to me. I only came out here to find my trinemate." He tipped his head towards Mirage. "You didn't have to bring him with you, but you did, and for that you have my sincere gratitude. Starscream's as well—he's told me he wants to meet you in person."
"Ah," said Mirage, forcing his voice to stay steady. "If that's some sort of euphemism…"
Thundercracker's brow furrowed in confusion for a second before he smiled. It made him look a lot less intimidating. Handsome, even. "No. No, I was being literal. Skywarp's been singing your praises, and it's made him curious."
"I see." Mirage's spark might have fluttered slightly at that tidbit, but he still didn't want to be anywhere near Starscream. "I'll be honest—I was hoping for an expedited prisoner exchange."
"Not in your near future, I'm afraid. We're headed back to Kolkular." His smile took on a pitying edge when he saw Mirage's expression. "You won't be in any danger. No Autobot can enter Kolkular without Soundwave signing off on it, and Skywarp won't let anything happen to you." It was still Decepticon headquarters, somewhere Mirage had very little personal interest in being, not while he wore the Autobrand.
The door opened behind him. "I heard my name! If you're talking about me, I wanna know."
Mirage turned, eager to see Skywarp again, but he truly hadn't been prepared for the return of Skywarp's warpaint. It was back in full, stark black against the pale plating of his face: thick crisp lines that went around his eyes and terminated in points on his upper cheeks. Mirage had seen it before, sure, in image captures and field video, but now he could see how the dark paint brought out the architecture underneath. How it sharpened the angular lines of Skywarp's face and made his large upturned eyes look almost vulpine.
Skywarp smiled slowly, deviously. "You like?"
Mirage wrestled with his fans. Any higher and they'd be audible. "I, ah—yes. It's stunning. It suits you."
"We were talking about Kolkular," said Thundercracker, mildly. "Mirage worries for his safety."
"Ha. I'd like to see those slaggers try." Mirage would rather they didn't, but Skywarp was clearly spoiling for a fight. "Gonna warp my hand into their guts and wave."
"As long as you clean up after," said Thundercracker, but his tone was fondly indulgent, and when Mirage turned to look at him there was that little smile again. He seemed entirely unconcerned about Skywarp's obvious affection for Mirage… but perhaps he was just that relieved to have his trinemate back. "Show our guest back to his room, would you? I'm sure you have things you'd like to discuss."
"That's a word for it, yeah," said Skywarp, grinning. "Come on, spybot."
Mirage stood, nodded acknowledgement at Thundercracker, and left the room. They headed down several flights of stairs and many identical corridors, often passing other Decepticons at work. They all saluted Skywarp—and they either stared at Mirage or ignored him, an uncuffed Autobot on their ship. Mirage doubted this was less about Decepticon discipline and more the power Skywarp held here. Any move against him was a move against Starscream's trine, and no Decepticon would dare.
Surely Skywarp knew this, but he whistled as they walked, apparently unconcerned. Mirage found himself staying in the seeker's shadow, oddly fearful that he'd turn a corner and vanish on him like before. He'd been all alone among possibly hostile strangers, true, but he'd also genuinely missed Skywarp. Where had he been?
Perhaps he'd just been off getting repairs. Mirage hadn't really noticed it till now, his attention drawn elsewhere, but the seeker had done something to the way his armour sat on his protoform. Even the kibble on his back had been rearranged slightly. All the damaged plating along his spine—Skywarp had refused to go into details, but Mirage had gathered the Collectors were the cause—had been removed entirely, replaced with a sort of flexible metallic scaling in Skywarp's dark colours. Every step and wingflick made it ripple under the corridor lights, and together with the vee formed by the lower edges of his wings, and the narrowness of his waist—
Mirage's fans audibly kicked up a setting. He could only muster a weak smile when Skywarp twisted to grin at him. "You're really happy to see me, huh."
"An understatement," admitted Mirage.
Skywarp squinted in concern, and he turned fully. "Wait. Did someone—you look okay—tell me who and I'll space 'em, I swear."
"No, no. Not at all. Everyone's been perfectly professional." And that was the truth. It seemed the troops on the Essorant valued their captain's approval more than exacting revenge on some Autobot spook. "I—I just—" He couldn't say it. Not here, out in the open.
"Mm. Wait a sec," said Skywarp, sensing his hesitance. He put his hand on Mirage's shoulder, and in a mildly disorienting purple-tinged instant they were in Mirage's cabin on the ship. Skywarp was immediately distracted by their surroundings, looking around and making approving noises. "Pit yeah. Told ya TC'd set you up—"
Mirage pulled Skywarp down and kissed him, feeling the floor vibrate as the seeker dropped to his knees. Skywarp's face was slightly lower than level with Mirage's now, so he took full advantage of the new angle, bearing down slightly, cupping his face and the back of his helm to keep him in place. Skywarp kissed back eagerly, holding Mirage close, his turbines making desperate little whining noises and his wings trembling so hard it stirred the air around them. He kissed like he hadn't expected Mirage to want to kiss him. Time to disabuse him of that notion... Mirage deepened the kiss and he startled slightly—and then he made a noise a little like a sob and opened up to Mirage like a crystal bloom.
Skywarp looked almost drunk when Mirage drew back, his mouth scuffed and his eyes dimmed. "I, ah," started Skywarp, and then he seemed to lose track of whatever he was about to say and simply gazed at Mirage instead.
"What is it?" murmured Mirage, stroking the sharp lines of his cheeks.
For a moment Skywarp struggled visibly to find a good way to say it. "TC knows," he blurted finally, a little too loud, clearly panicking.
This struck Mirage as impossibly endearing. "What does he know?"
"He knows I want you," said Skywarp, his chin digging into Mirage's sternum. "And if he knows Starscream knows, or he will soon enough. I—you can't really keep secrets from a trine bond. I mean, you can, passwords and that sorta slag, but not something this big." He grimaced, and hid his face against Mirage's neck. "And this is really big. I'm—ugh. You know you don't gotta do anything. It just felt like I'd explode if I didn't say it."
"I don't want you to explode," said Mirage, smiling, tipping Skywarp's face back into view. His spark had begun a mad spin at I want you and it had only grown more raucously happy since. It seemed both of them had desired the same thing…
"TC's calling it limerence," said Skywarp, his eyes brightening, clearly coming to the same realisation. His arms slipped around Mirage's waist, and he pressed them close enough to sense the mad activity behind Mirage's chestplate. "Said I was infatuated with you just because you saved me from the Collectors. He could be right about that, you know." It didn't seem to be discouraging him in the slightest.
So Mirage responded in kind, winding his arms about Skywarp's neck, tucking his face against his seeker's, reveling in the warmth of him. "The Autobots cannot be allowed to learn of this—but you know that." He vented deeply, indulging in Skywarp's unspace-scent. "How is it that your trinemates don't object?"
Skywarp's nose nudged his cheek. "Every 'Con's got a 'Bot they left behind. Someone they used to love. Maybe still do."
Mirage sighed, his spark slowing in resignation. What a horrible, pointless war… if only they could both outlive it. But it was possible they wouldn't even have that, not if the Collectors were correct in their estimations. Perhaps this was the only chance they'd get, unwise as it was. "I don't see this ending well, my love."
"I know." Skywarp's joy at the endearment came through in his voice. "I wanna try anyway."
"I want that too," said Mirage, and kissed him again.