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Danny had been sitting beside Starscream for hours, just watching as his vents cycled air, far too afraid to close his eyes.
If he slept, he couldn’t stand guard.
If he slept, Starscream would be defenseless.
If he slept, something would go wrong and Danny wouldn’t be awake to stop it and Starscream would die-
“Why do you care so much about him?”
Danny startled, whirling to face the speaker.
Ratchet stared back at him. “What are you talking about?” Danny huffed. He crossed his arms so the mech wouldn’t see how his hands shook, glaring up at him.
“Why do you care about Starscream? He doesn’t exactly seem like the type to be friendly with an organic.” Danny rolled his eyes. “He wasn’t very friendly at first, but I wore him down.” The faintest smile flickered on his face at the memory of their first meeting. Ratchet’s optic ridges furrowed. “How did you even meet him, anyway?”
“Oh, I found him breaking into an old observatory and then he tried to kill me.”
“What?!”
“You heard me.”
There was silence for a few moments as Ratchet visibly reevaluated his opinion on Danny’s intelligence. “Why- why do you care about him if he tried to kill you ?!”
Danny turned away from him, eyes narrowed. He didn’t want to have this conversation.
“What, do you have a death wish? Why do you care about someone who-”
“Because he didn’t lie.”
“What?”
“He didn’t lie to me. He didn’t pretend to be kind, or caring, or benevolent, or any of that crap.” Danny was practically snarling at him now, eyes as cold as ice as they drilled into him. “The first thing he did was threaten me. He didn’t lie. He didn’t try to trick me. He was upfront about it, unlike you people.”
“We-”
“Shut up. I don’t want to hear what you have to say. You all have done enough to me and mine, and I don’t want to hear you try and justify it. I’ve heard enough of that shit already. When he tried to kill me, he was truthful about it. They all were. You know what’s really dangerous?”
He seemed haunted now, staring up at Ratchet with a look of disgust.
“What’s really dangerous is the people who say they care, that they’d never hurt you. And they watch, and they wait, and when you turn your back, that’s when they go after you.”
Ratchet looked horrified, taking a step back in the face of the horrifying picture that the boy’s words painted. “What… happened to you?” His voice was hardly even a whisper.
Danny turned back to Starscream, taking a deep breath, and for a moment, Ratchet thought he wouldn’t get an answer, but then-
“They cut me open.”