A/N & Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers nor am I affiliated with it in any way, nor any thing else in here.

Many of you might remember this from before. Well, I tell you what, I got mad one day and I took it down. Oh, I was mad at the world, and LTF incurred my wrath. I am TRULY sorry, since it disappeared off of everyone's fav list or watch list (not to mention the reviews *sob*). Please don't be mad! *hides*

*Comes out of hiding* So, since it was taken down, I did some stuff to it.

If this story seems sad, it's because its supposed to be. I was listening to the song Learning to Fly by Pink Floyd.

Starscream thought he was clear of all dangers as he took off for Cybertron to tell them the news of Megatron's fall and the loss of the Allspark. He had nothing but space between him and his home planet. One in his stature should know that there are forces at work that are not to be underestimated but his pride stood in the way of his intelligence, something that happened often.

Unbeknownst to him, Earth had a Planetary Defense System – something he should have considered but hadn't since it hadn't shot at him on the way in. He had figured if the organics weren't advanced enough to protect their own planet, it was worth taking. However, much to his surprise, a satellite had picked his unknown signature, saw him as a threat, and it targeted a weapon at him.

He would pay for his arrogance and underestimating the 'inferior insects' as he referred to them as, that inhabited the planet.

He hadn't expected it, let alone knew about Earth's ugly little secret. Even most of the people of Earth themselves didn't know. Others said the cannons did not exist, a few swore that they did and that upper government factions were hiding them. The controversy went on. Starscream found out the hard way that they did in fact exist. They were capable of shooting just about anything they thought were threatening from Earth's orbit.

Too excited about getting to Cybertron and his thrusters on full, he hadn't even noticed when the streaming ball of orange headed right for him. When it registered on his HUD that he'd been fired upon, it was too late. He banked hard, but not fast or hard enough to avoid it completely. It hit his right wing, blowing the end off and ripped him up. The force of the blasé sent his now badly damaged and sparking body hurdling through zero gravity. He screamed from the pain as his systems tried to correct him and told him of errors he was paying little attention to at the time being he was in too much pain to care. He was only a couple of thousand miles from the planet when he was hit, so he was not far enough from the Earth's powerful gravity that was now pulling him back.

It took him a few seconds after the shock to realize that he had been hitharder than he thought. His repair systems, after the jolt, alerted him to a plasma wound, and an almost completely missing wing along with other parts. He was spinning with no control, his body flipping and rolling from the sheer force of the blast. He felt himself falling back to the planet and internally he cursed. He knew this feeling. He had been forced to painfully transform and his thrusters began sputtering and zapping as his Navigation systems went erratic. He started plummeting towards Earth at a frighteningly increasing velocity with absolutely no control.

Ice is forming on the tips of my wings...
Unheeded warnings, I thought I thought of everything...

From burning heat to freezing cold, his body went from one extreme to another as it fell back to the planet. His processors came up with only one solution after working the problem as he was pulled back into the planet again – Hope to Primus you don't survive the really nasty fall that was coming.

The silver mech went into Stasis Lock as he fell, his processors and body unable to cope with what was happening. He could always defy gravity with flight, but not this time, now it had become his worst enemy.

No navigator to guide my way home...
Unladed, empty and turned to stone...

The large red-hot ball of metal slammed into the ground with such force that dirt and rock was thrown many feet into the air, hitting trees and covering any other foliage that was in its way on the ground. Perhaps the mech was lucky that he wasn't aware when his body hit the ground and slid to a stop in the middle of absolutely nowhere. When his body finally stopped sliding, a clear trail of dirt and metal from his broken body remained in his wake. Fortunately, he remained hidden by the density of the forest that he had landed in.

Energon oozed and wires sparked from numerous places. The damage made him nearly unrecognizable. The parts of him that were recognizable had been covered in leaves and branches, or masked by burnt metal and scorching. Other parts that had been ripped from him lay scattered from the crash. Trees, grass and upturned dirt and clay covered the rest of him.

When the mech finally came back online, he could hardly see, only outlines and shadows making up his vision. He tried to focus his optics to the obvious bright daylight that assaulted them. His chronological systems came online and tried to right themselves as well. It took a moment of calibration before they finally fixed in his senses. He was stunned a moment to find them saying two Earth years had passed since his last online. That long? He'd been in stasis lock for two years?

What of what he last knew? Surely more Decepticons had arrived by now. If other Decepticons were around, they would have come for him, he was sure of it, but they hadn't. Why hadn't they come? Why had he even been spared? When he tried his communications, he found he had no outer contact, those systems were offline – and would be for some time it seemed, as his repair system hadn't even attempted to check as it had the rest of his body.

As he continued to survey his surroundings, he found himself in the middle of what his flickering HUD registered to be a dense forest. His optics continued to improve, giving him foggy but correct vision. When he got a good glimpse of his own wreck, he stared in wonder. His left leg appeared to have new covering, showing healing and his other was still mangled almost beyond recognition, so he knew for certain he could not walk. How had he actually survived? How was he still functioning in this gruesome condition? His right arm was connected by life support alone while the other was under him, pinned. Slowly he tried to move his head, dirt ground in his servos as he did.

He continued to look around, assessing the rest of his condition. The first thing he noticed was he was very much alone, apparently having never been found, so that was good, although how, eluded him as he was still in the crater and split earth that he had landed. As he continued to evaluate his grim situation, he realized one thing was for certain, he had never been so destroyed in his life. Even Megatron hadn't devastated him as badly as he was now.

Grass and various knocked over trees were around him but did not do much to cover him leaving much of his upper body exposed, so he was susceptible to any curious onlooker with a good eye.

His optics still flickered out of focus. His repair system finally got around to telling him the really bad news. One he, since he had been onlined, never ever thought was possible – His flight system had been damaged heavily, even one thruster was completely gone. As he checked for solutions to the problem, his HUD reported back that he was damaged beyond even the best repair.

It took him a few seconds to comprehend fully what his repair systems were actually telling him. The Seeker scoffed at his systems. That couldn't be right. Surely, they were erroneous and had to be malfunctioning. While Starscream took the bad news of the rest of his body easily, his flight system errors made him panic. In his panic, he tried rerouting all power to repairing only his flight systems, but his own repair systems refused his command, seeing that not as much of a threat as his Spark chamber and surrounding damage.

His repair system had also reported its Energon leakage and how much he was producing was keeping his repair systems only partly working, which meant they would take even longer that normal to repair him, since he couldn't get any fuel of any sort.

After several calculations and recalculations, he was alarmed to find he would be lying here for at least another three more Earth years before he could even attempt to move the rest of his body. This was officially far worse than anything Megatron had ever subjected him to, worse than his own demise and humiliation – and he was completely alone.

Starscream, for the first time in his life, just wanted to cease to exist. There was no point. He was bound to be found he was sure, and he knew that the Autobots would be merciless on him once they did, and if any humans found him, he would probably be a subject much like Megatron, which was worse than death. But most of all, he didn't want to face never being able to fly again. There was no equivalent to taking a seeker's wings. Having them ripped off was sacrilege in itself, but to completely take their flying ability?

There was no seeker that he'd ever known to not have their ability of flight, and it was their love of flying that they could even perform the task, their regular bodies had gone under extreme changes, more power to their thrusters, until finally, a true seeker was born. There weren't many of them, because they were an uncommon race.

Starscream stared at the sky for hours as he lie unmoving. He dimmed his optics and sighed as he thought about it.

How long until he was found? How long until he was exposed? How long before he'd eventually go crazy from his loss of flight?

He thought he was stronger than insanity, which was sure to come if he couldn't repair himself. Insanity had been following that idiot Megatron to this obviously-not-so-simple planet in the first place, and then it proved even more stupid when that little fleshling killed Megatron, and destroyed the reason of their war. He had no reason, no meaning, and even if he wanted to take control of the Decepticons, wherever they were, he wasn't doing it right now.

He checked his repair systems again and it was as if it was a completely different sentience, only reporting itself and its fixes/problems to him when his core processor deemed it necessary. Never once had it told him that he was going to die, or that his survival was in the least bit threatened, which in a way disappointed him.

Starscream now understood what it meant to crash and burn. He had heard the phrase, or similar to it back on Cybertron, and it usually referred to seekers that for some reason gave up their will to live or became such a danger to themselves and society that they were terminated. Was this his crash and burn? He started a shut down stasis lock that he set to wake him when he was fully repaired. Well, fully as he could be and the system went to work, shutting him down slowly until his optics finally offlined.

There was no actual proof or sighting or anything of the like about some silly plasma cannon that the governments had secretly installed, or that it was the reason that the Decepticons never made it to Earth. The Autobots wouldn't have known either, however they were curious when they were told that there was 'incoming Cybertronians' and was asked if they were the good guys or not, and when they had told the humans that they were Decepticons, the proto-forms never made it to Earth.

The Earthbound misfit that lied in the middle of the forest would never be found by anyone. As if Primus himself had commanded, Starscream's body had been completely covered by plants and foliage hiding him from prying eyes, making him look like a normal part of the scenery when someone happened to fly overhead, which wasn't often, anyway.

Hopefully it will turn out better!