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Being in regular contact with Starscream was like watching a trainwreck in slow motion. Knockout didn't know why he stuck around– certainly not out of fondness– was it morbid curiosity? Or perhaps he instinctively sought companionship from the only other mech who had been there, who could understand what it was like to be a Decepticon in the closing days of the war.
Perhaps he was simply lonely. Patients came and patients went, but none were so consistent as Starscream had been. Too much time now to think about things, with Breakdown gone and retirement drawing ever closer by the vorn. There were perks to being the only mech willing to listen.
In any case, he found himself once again at the doorstep of Starscream's modest apartment, diluted engex in hand. He sent a short-range ping. After a few moments, the door opened with a neat little whoosh of hydraulics, allowing him to take a hesitant step into the dismal nest of misery and perpetual licking-of-wounds.
It was dim. He adjusted the sensitivity of his optics and peered around at the mess of ruffled fabric and broken furniture, interspersed with the occasional dull gleam of discarded bottles of engex. A pair of tattered curtains was drawn across the space's lone window, and motes of dust danced in the single sliver of golden light that poured through the crack between them.
The air was still as an undisturbed tomb. From his left, on a worn old couch, there came a grunt.
Starscream had been neglecting himself. His joints creaked in protest as pulled himself into a sitting position, and in the shadows of his elbow-guards Knockout could see traces of congealed oil. His finish was tragically dulled and covered in a web of thin scratches, reducing what had once been a mirror-shine to an unfortunate matte gray. And his smell...
Oh, the smell he really could have done without.
But he was here, now, and Starscream had spotted him– and Knockout prided himself on being the more mannerly of the two. His thin smile betrayed nothing as he offered the bottle neck-first to his unkempt host.
Starscream, possessing no such lofty principles, squinted and sneered.
"By Vector Sigma and the Thirteen, what in the Pit is this?!"
Knockout's smile twitched at the corners.
"High-grade, dear Kommandant," he replied smoothly. "Expensive high-grade. They say it's a new formula– thought I'd give it a try." Starscream's expression soured further.
"It looks like swill. Is that sand I see floating around in it?" Knockout's smile tightened further.
"Those would be flakes of corundum." Starscream made a sound low in his throat.
"Repulsive."
Knockout's smile dropped altogether. He pulled the bottle away.
"I suppose you don't want it, then–"
"I didn't say that!"
Starscream rose and snatched it from him with startling speed, clutching it jealously to his chestplate. Knockout watched with detatched fascination as he broke the seal and took a long, deep swig of the stuff.
Lethargy. Dishevelment. Erratic behavior. Desperation. All textbook symptoms of overcharge dependency.
Primus, but Knockout was relieved that Starscream's health wasn't his responsibility anymore. His former patient resurfaced from the bottle with a grimace.
"This is horrible," he rasped. Knockout hummed in fake sympathy.
"It's a new distillery."
"Run by whom?"
"Couldn't tell you. Probably newsparks."
"Newsparks these days," Starscream hissed venemously, one slender servo draping itself across his optics as he fell into a familiar rant. "Always going on about the inherent value of sentient life and whatnot. Making all these new laws about assault and murder."
He tilted his head towards Knockout, revealing the sharp glow of his optics through his digits.
"Do you know what they taught us in the flight academy at Vos? They very first thing they said to me: your life isn't worth a scrap. I was such an arrogant child then, thought to myself 'Surely, that must not be so,' but what do you know– they were right! The only thing that really matters is what you bring to the table, so to speak. It's a simple fact of life. If you want someone to keep you around, you have to earn it– and no one understood that better than Lord Megatron." He laughed mirthlessly and passed Knockout the bottle. "This 'new world' isn't going to last five vorns. I tell you, they'll eat each other alive."
A vorn ago, it had been four. And three before that. A vorn from now, it would be six. Time flew on, forever leaving Starscream in its evaporating contrails.
"Riveting conversation as always, Starscream," Knockout replied crisply, unsubspacing a glass and pouring himself a drink. "You know, some would argue that you're just bitter about losing the war." Starscream's mouth twisted.
"Hardly," he spat. "I'm simply stating the facts."
"If it's any consolation to you," Knockout found himself saying, mouth running away from him as per usual, "you probably wouldn't have lasted this long had Lord Megatron had anything to say about it. You were on borrowed time, Screamer."
A deep silence like a rift opened between them. Knockout bit his tongue and braced himself for whatever shrieking tantrum (or, Primus forbid, a sobbing fit) that Starscream tended to unleash upon him whenever he was told something he didn't want to hear.
Starscream, ever one to subvert expectations, simply hummed. He looked more lucid than Knockout had seen him in a decade.
"I don't think that's true," he finally said.
"Enlighten me," Knockout replied, intrigued against his better judgment. Starscream snatched the bottle back and stared at its label as though it held the secrets to the universe.
"He was a brutal old rustbucket, but he looked out for me. He gave me purpose." Knockout raised an optical ridge.
"Is that how you remember it?" He asked mildly, tapping his digit against the side of his cube. "Perhaps he knocked something loose in your memory core, Starscream. Your neural net is about the only thing in your frame that hasn't been replaced." Starscream scowled.
"You wouldn't understand," he hissed, falling back into a miserable haze. His optics were washed out, bleached bright with overcharge. "Looking back on it, isn't it funny? No matter how cross he was, he never did kill me. I don't think he wanted to. We had something, him and I, something personal. Something he shared with no one else." Knockout synthesized a snort.
Had he cared at all about Starscream's opinion, he would have said that he hadn't spent all those vorns patching him up just to be written out of the narrative.
("...And then, you would come crying to me, and I would fix you," he didn't say. "I didn't have to polish you every time, or listen to you whine, but I did. You need me more than I ever needed you.")
Thankfully, Knockout didn't care. He didn't have to.
"Whatever helps you sleep at night," he replied instead. "When was the last time you left your apartment?" Starscream's face soured considerably.
"What are you implying, Doctor?"
"Nothing," Knockout replied smoothly, "nothing at all– simply offering you a little food for thought." Starscream finished the bottle in one long, ill-advised swig.
"Keep your human idioms to yourself," he slurred. "'Food for thought.' Pah! It's all nonsense. I always did hate your... Your penchant for speaking in riddles!"
Knockout frowned.
"Take a shower, Starscream." He rose from his seat with a grunt and a mental note to lubricate his joints when he returned home. He was getting old. "And drink some real energon– you're going to corrode your tanks at this rate, and I don't care enough to fix it for free. I ought to stop visiting altogether."
"But you won't," Starscream muttered, the dim red of his optics reflecting off his lazy, lopsided smile. Knockout set his jaw.
"We'll see about that," he replied. "Goodbye, Starscream."
He left.
Knockout's sensors were immediately assaulted by the corridor's bright fluorescent lighting, and he cursed, lowering the sensitivity of his optics.
"What a deranged fossil."
Starscream was spoiled. He only appreciated what he couldn't have. Knockout ought to leave him alone for awhile, let him stew and fester in his self-imposed isolation until he could at least greet him with a smile.
After a moment of hesitance, he set a reminder for the same time next week.