(EDITOR'S NOTE: This fic is rated PG-13 for some mild language.)

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hasbro owns the Beast Wars and Transformers, I don’t, yaddadadadada.  This is Starscream’s response to the Protoform X experiment…and yes, the title has changed.  It was originally The Bastard’s Denial, which could have been read two ways.  That was very intentional, but there are issues on some websites about the rating of the title, so I changed it.  I really like that title, too…This would be set before Starscream’s appearance in the Beast Wars.  I’m not quite sure what kind of writing style I was shooting for in this, but it’s different than what I usually do…)

We are alike, you and I.  So they have said both proudly and in despair, and so I believe, yet I cannot take that final, fateful step that would allow you the release desperately craved though you know it not.  I cannot, and I will not, permit that.  I did not when you were first drawn from the dark nothingness before life, and whether the chance has passed I neither know nor care.  I have denied the acknowledgement your spark strains for, and I will never go back on that decision.

I did not wish for you to be, as similar as we are.  Your creation was not of my design.  When first that glimmer of strength beyond the mortal pale gleamed past the realm of material things, I could not help but go to its flickering light.  Alone in a plane of existence long dreary in the passage of time, the prospect of the new and different offered the only excitement in a bodiless universe, and this pallid flame was something I had never seen before.  Drawn to it, I noticed the abundance of inconsequential robots surrounding it.  Small, weak, and worthless body shells housing spheres of muted glow that faded into the background of the material world as I approached.  My brilliance threw them into gloom, yet they did not know I was there as they labored, and, disgusted, I left them in ignorance.  I have the ability to consume those feeble lives within my own, possessing their forms and holding them helpless inside the vibrancy of immortality for a brief time, but to wrap my essence around the frailest of these vermin would fill me to agony with what had been in past times Autobot thoughts and ideals.  I could withstand such sickening feelings, but I must have time to recover who I am.  It is far easier to embrace those who are not my polar opposites.

Like it was, a mirror of myself.  They surrounded it in a dense cloud of useless gadgetry that served no purpose in this universe their own centers could but barely sense, and I brushed by the material barriers in my way as I came toward where it fluttered uncertainly.  I existed, I and no other, in this dimension, my shadow the sole survivor in the material plane, and I had seen many pale lights flame on and sequentially burn out.  This spark alone, in all my eons of wandering through shades of the living, had bloomed with enough strength to surge with radiance, patterns of light and dark snapping across its surface as it fought not to dissolve back into the dimness from whence it had come.  Its flares of brightest fire had lured me across a dimension that recognized no material distance, and I watched it struggle toward a goal it did not see, a further luminosity that lay just out of its grasp.

Fascinated, I observed it as the edges began to drift away, taking from its glory and foreshadowing its imminent dissolution.  It was a dying sun in this land of faded sight.  Had I cared, I might have tried to help, but this softening ball of failing light was ultimately a thing of mortals.  My concerns were loftier than one dimming life.  For a moment, however, I lingered near its last display of glory, watching curiously as it started to tear apart under the pressure, great arches of shredding light launching through the machines of glass and metal those trembling shells had built around it as if they could stop the diminishing power of something that had shined much brighter than they could ever dream.  It searched for a prize of forever, but they could not tell it where to look.  In the stress of the seeking it shattered to pieces.

Curious but unconcerned, I did not seek to escape as a shimmering sweep of the nova spark traveled a searing path toward me.  My core was invulnerable to harm on the material plane, and I was confident, perhaps overconfident, that no damage could be inflicted on me in this realm as well.  Indeed, as it approached I felt naught but a shiver deep within my incandescence to be near another presence like my own.  Our collision was short and fiery; to my surprise, there was a quick stab of some feeling beyond my knowledge as we touched in a way far deeper than physical, and the random dissipation occurring all along the tendril’s length halted along with all motion by the small ball of source light it had sprung from.  I hung there in wary confusion as the wisp of dying life grazed back over me, its movements rapidly becoming more frantic as some epiphany broke inside it and it sought to caress my soul and draw my touch in return.  I shied away, avoiding its unfamiliar, unwanted intimacy.

The tendril groped after me, seeking, reaching for what I had taken out of its grasp, but it lacked the strength to pursue me.  Instead, the arches of disappearing light contracted tightly like an explosion in reverse, the dimming spark sucking its life back into it as if by just coming into contact with me it had found the correct goal to seek, a purpose for its initial ignition.  Yet its prolonged struggle had taken the ability to fight toward that target out of it, and I watched in something approaching pity as it cried out wordlessly into the lonely dimension it clawed at in a vain attempt to stay.  It stretched out blindly, knowing somehow through the power of one shared moment that I lay beyond its reach.  I did not attempt to aid it.

The shells that had trembled at its death throes were now hastily forcing energon into the machinery surrounding it, and I began to understand the purpose of the metal and glass as pulsing bursts of energy buoyed the dazzling sphere before me.  I understood, and my harsh laughter rang out over the world of mortals, unheard in the uproar building toward a crescendo as the thing wrapped in an artificial womb became a bonfire that no mortal spark could rival, shedding the last bonds of death and burning your way fully into the plane of existence that had been mine for ages past.

Weary from the effort, you rested there in vivid triumph while around you the material world you had transcended rejoiced in an unearned victory.  Even in the exhaustion of a newborn, you knew that you were not theirs, and you cast about in the midst of their dull glows for the one who had gifted you with your brilliance.  I did not try to hide, knowing that I stood out from the material plane as brightly as you did, but I did not approach you.  You waited; eager, uncertain, and hopeful, you waited for a nearness I did not grant you, a closure I ignored, an acknowledgement you pined for.  I knew you were waiting, begging me to take you as my own, but I stood apart.  Searching for me, bound by a mortal shell in a way I no longer am, you tore through the shells of metal and flesh surrounding you, looking for that one spark, my spark, that was as luminous as your own.  They have different theories as to why you destroy the pathetic forms around you, tearing colorless balls from their housing and ripping them apart in rage and joy that they should suffer for keeping you from your ultimate goal of just touching me again.  Had you been raised like any other body shell, would you have turned out differently?  Would the rage and need to feel their pain have been diminished if you had been reprogrammed?  I think not.

For the truth of the matter is that your spark is but a bastard, forever condemned by your parents to this life you are constrained to live, stained permanently by original sin before you ever had a chance for redemption.  Your mother is a whore, a Maximal slut spreading her legs to her husband science, for a chance at creating life in loins where no innocent spark should exist.  She wanted to conceive a child more powerful than his mother, with the lifespan artificially given to him by his proud father; a tool to use in a war when morals are thrown away and there is no shame in being pregnant with a soldier born out of unholy lustful marriage.  With a father and a mother right there, it would have been a simple, passionless act for the whore and science to recreate what was engendered in you.  Unfortunately for the Maximals, however, their efforts at conception were unsuccessful.  The seed was deficient, the whore’s womb rejecting the artificial sperm, and there was a void where there should have been life.  Yet the whore lay for a time with an immortal in the form of her husband, opening herself greedily for the incident that would make her anticipated child spring from her belly, and you were born.

Did they think that they could keep you from knowing that you were not science’s son?  For you, with your glittering spark of brightest light and deepest dark, cannot have been born of the pale flames you tore free from the body shells that insisted they created you.  You know deep within your burning soul, far beneath your mind and body, that there is another universe you cannot see, but somewhere out there I watch you.  I watch you, but I do not approach you, do not care about you, have not acknowledged you as my own, spark of my spark, essence of my essence.  To me you are but an accident that I regard with contempt, a recreation of someone who should have remained unique, but you yearn for what I could give you if I would just call you mine.  A subconscious need that drives you, punishes you, and eternally scars you.  Is it any wonder that you lash out at those around you?

I could ease it all with a simple touch.  An effortless meeting of brilliance and radiance that would flood your rejection with acceptance, turn your torture into joy, your hatred to wonder.  It is within my power, but I will not do it.  You are a humble bastard, forever paying for the sins of your mother.  There is no absolution for her deed, and you are the one to whom the blame falls.  Beg though you might, I have no mercy, and I will continue to turn away from your outstretched hand.  I will deny paternity for the child of a whore for an eternity, and you will find no forgiveness here.
 

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