Title: Followers

Warning: Angst. Annoyance with the fanon "Lambo Twins," especially as applied to IDW

Rating: G

Continuity: IDW

Characters: Sunstreaker, Bob, Ironhide, Sideswipe

Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

Motivation (Prompt): Sideswipe/Sunstreaker, anything

[* * * * *]

There weren't many places for alone-time that the Autobots riding in Omega Supreme's shuttle form could find, but Sunstreaker had managed to find one. It helped that everyone did their level best to avoid him like he had a rust infection.

He'd tried, he really had, but social interaction outside of the structure of duty had rules he just didn't get. He understood them, but there was so much unsaid outside the obvious rules that…weren't so obvious. There was a flexibility, a subtle changing subscript in every conversation dictating when to give and when to take, and Sunstreaker couldn't get a read on what everyone else followed so naturally.

The beautiful, the glorious, the vain - they really only knew how to take. Remorse didn't gift the remorseful with social skills they hadn't bothered to pick up the first time. Alpha Trion had granted Sunstreaker a second lease on life, but that life came with baggage intact.

So now Sunstreaker floundered, because some things had to be learned the hard way.

The nook between transform joint and engine casing was barely large enough to stand in. He'd only been able to fit after Ratchet restored his legs. Scrunching down to sit meant an awkward lean to one side because there was a ledge just low enough he couldn't sit straight comfortably. There wasn't direct lighting, and it cramped his cables sitting bent this way. Worse, having his shoulders thunk against one or both of the walls depending on how he twisted made him feel claustrophobic. The electromagnetic pulse of another mech's field attacked his nerves like a hasp every time metal touched metal; Omega Supreme's massive presence, here in the close darkness, eventually began rousing body-memory of the unwelcome mass field of the Swarm.

He'd been all but dead, fully disabled, but some part of him still remembered being surrounded, enveloped, and always on the verge of disappearing. He'd been a speck of unique energy among the Swarm's devouring unity.

Sunstreaker jolted, shuddering, from the pull of memory. Alpha Trion had freed him from the recursive loop of nightmare delusion and equally terrible memory, but habit had ground a groove into his subconscious. He still dreamed of horror while recharging and woke to a black guilt he couldn't shake. If he deserved to shake it, which he doubted. The other Autobots certainly didn't think so.

He'd tried. Repentance, sacrifice, death - how much pain did he have to inflict on himself before they'd forgive him?

Surviving meant he hadn't suffered enough. Surviving meant living with what he'd done. And that, Sunstreaker had found, was the toughest penance of all.

He jolted again, knocked out of the dragging undertow once more by a nudge to his forearm. Yellow optics, four of them, peered up at him over golden armor. They ducked out of sight. Another nudge, more insistent, and the yellow optics appeared again as a head inserted itself forcefully under his hand.

"Yeah, you found me," he murmured to Bob. The Insecticon wagged his aft, happy as ever to have tracked the frontliner down, and Sunstreaker couldn't stop the slight upward tick at the corner of his mouth. His fingers twitched, playing with the antenna under them. "Good boy."

Bob wriggled into the attention, then began the jigging little dance that meant he was going to try and wedge himself into Sunstreaker's lap in defiance of every law of physics. The frontliner frowned and went to push the Insecticon away, but he gave up the effort before he even started. It'd take at least a harsh word and a smack to deter the bug, and he just didn't have the will to do it now. Maybe if he hadn't been met by yet another wall of stony silence and icy distrust from the other Autobots this joor…

Sunstreaker had always been more of an ornament than a participant, but he'd never been completely cut off like this before. It was hard to justify a high opinion of himself when everyone onboard the shuttle treated him like something scraped off their feet. Beauty didn't count for much when nobody would look at him.

Right now, any company was welcome, even a stupid bug's. At least the bug wanted to see him. "Alright, alright, give me some room to move."

As grateful as he was to have his legs functioning again, right now his knees were annoying the bolts out of him. The ungainly Dance of the Elbows commenced as Sunstreaker tried to get his arms out of the way enough to pull his knees to his chest and move his feet. Bob observed this strange ballet with much interest.

The gold mech managed to kick one foot off the floor, sticking it up against the transform joint that blocked him off from the corridor on the other side. Bob immediately curled himself improbably small to fit in the vacated spot. Since, of course, an Insecticon runt was still an Insecticon, he was still too big for such a tiny floor space. Sunstreaker ended up with Bob's head and neck filling his lap.

The frontliner looked down at the four yellow optics looking up at him. "You planned this. I just know it." They blinked innocently. Also out of sync, because synchronized blinking wasn't creepy enough for the Swarm, apparently. Another shiver of half-conscious memory went down Sunstreaker's backstruts - a thousand optics watching, blinking off and on at random, all around him - and Bob whirred curiously. Sunstreaker sighed air through his vents and made himself pet the bug's head.

Whirring became purring without pause. Sunstreaker angled his head out from under the ledge and plunked the back of his helm against the wall, shutting off his optics so as to not see the telltale multiple optics and mismatched limbs of an Insecticon. The faint stir of memory in the back of his processor subsided uneasily, fighting the whole way. Sunstreaker inhaled and pushed the stale air back out again, cautiously letting his shoulders settle against the engine casing, too. Omega Supreme's field skimmed against his own, not even acknowledging the (relatively) small contact. The golden frontliner was just one lifeform in the midst of a larger one, a single isolated spark so easily lost in the teeming energy surrounding him.

But there was a heavy weight and another presence here, and it stood out even more than Sunstreaker did. Because they weren't in the middle of the Swarm. Bob was the only Insecticon here. Sunstreaker was inside Omega Supreme, not trapped by crippling injuries among a ravenous horde. Memory dredged up the clickety-click of segmented limbs, but a powerful shuttle engine thrummed here and now. Hostile hisses and weird cries from corrupted files kept trying to be remembered, but the gold mech vented the memory surges slowly. The armor under his hand tingled with the odd, not-quite-sentient EM field of an Insecticon, but there was no way to compare Bob's relaxed push to the Swarm's hungry reach. There were no hisses or growls; all he heard was the buzzing drone of Bob.

Bob the loyal. Bob the midget menace. Bob the eternally hopeful for energon goodies. Purring Bob of the hard spiky exterior and marshmallow fluff interior.

Bob, who always found him, even when he got lost inside his own head. Even when nobody else came looking.

"Good boy," Sunstreaker mumbled, head back and optics off. He'd gotten lost in corrupted memory files and terror and pain before. It'd become hatred, and it had destroyed him. This time, he was dealing with the fear and guilt one day at a time, and - this time - he wasn't doing it alone. "That's a good boy."

[* * *]

Bob snuggled closer, recognizing the highly coveted 'good boy' words even if the tone seemed off. Bob didn't understand too much compared to actual mechs, but he was intelligent compared to the rest of the Swarm. Ironhide had made a point of sending vocal, slightly blasphemous thanks for that to Primus every time he'd watched Sunstreaker train the bug. The idea of the Swarm operating at the level of Bob was enough to bleach his paint. One Bob was quite enough.

Too much, sometimes. He'd blistered Sunstreaker's audios the day Bob had finally learnt the trick to opening manual-latch doors. Having an Insecticon a quarter his size and almost half his mass pouncing onto him in the middle of the recharge cycle had nearly given Ironhide fuel-pump failure. It'd also almost resulted in Bob sporting several hundred bullet hole perforations. The next day's training had been an intensive course on 'Doors to never, ever open on pain of a smack and the dreaded 'bad boy' reprimand.'

It'd honestly unnerved Ironhide that Bob had never repeated that particular mistake. In fact, Bob rarely repeated mistakes. How smart was the Swarm if one runty loner understood 'No, don't eat that' and 'Shaddup, ya dumb bug, before I squish ya'?

Was Bob the astonishing exception to the rule, or were they a set of strange circumstances away from every other Insecticon learning to open doors? Well, without eating through them. Every Insecticon knew how to eat through doors. Bob opened them. He also opened windows, hatches, and cages. Pretty much anything with a manual latch fell prey to the Insecticon's dainty forehands. Clever technimal wouldn't repeat mistakes, but he was fully capable of finding new mischief to try. It was fortunate Sunstreaker had insisted on training the living slag out of the bug, because Ironhide really didn't want to think about Bob causing trouble without commands to curb him.

The only commands the technimal refused to obey were the ones that kept him from his master. Ironhide hadn't even been surprised to see the bug wandering the Omega Supreme's corridors after being shut into a cage in the cargo bay. He'd warned the other Autobots that caging the bug wouldn't work, and he'd been right. Not even two joors into the trip, and Bob had gotten loose.

Ironhide had been somewhat amused by the Autobots' reactions when Bob scurried around underfoot, face to the floor as he tracked Sunstreaker's footsteps through the shuttle. The bug had found the hall of tiny cubicles serving as quarters for the trip, and from there figured out which were his master's quarters. It wasn't a difficult trick for an Insecticon trained to track his own kind through the ravaged, if recovering, remains of Cybertron.

He'd acquired a dumbfounded audience as he tried his latch-opening routines on the right door. The door had been coded shut, however, and Bob had eventually given up. Ironhide had opened the door himself when the scrabbling and whining began. He knew what that meant; Bob was weighing 'bad boy' against eating his way through an obstacle. In this case, part of Omega Supreme, which Ironhide had no doubt would result in a squished bug.

Sunstreaker didn't even react to being pounced anymore. He'd just rolled over and slung an arm over the pest to get him to settle down and go to sleep. The silently-goggling crowd of mechs staring through the door had been treated to the disturbing - okay, so Ironhide would privately admit that it was kind of adorable, but only if someone twisted his arm - sight of the Autobot's most gorgeous sociopath and one of Cybertron's most monstrous abominations curled up together in peaceful slumber.

"I'm not bunking with him," Sideswipe had said flatly as the door slid closed, and Ironhide had stiffened warily when an immediate stillness froze the corridor.

"Fine," he'd said easily, because it wasn't a big deal and he wasn't going to let it be one without some sort of explanation. He was slagging tired of running headlong into issues everyone automatically expected he'd take their side on. Most of the time, he didn't even know what the issue was. Memory loss sucked like a black hole. "I will. Bug doesn't bother me."

The red frontliner had turned flat optics on him. "I wasn't talking about the Insecticon," he'd said, words void of inflection, and Ironhide could have sworn the whole crowd had inhaled as one.

Sideswipe had turned on his heel and walked away, movements tightly controlled, and Ironhide hadn't understood why everyone watched him go. The red frontliner hadn't had much interaction with Sunstreaker, at least so far as Ironhide had seen, and Sunstreaker had been sticking fairly close to Ironhide. The gold mech's clumsy attempts to apologize and reintegrate into the Autobots had been uncomfortably to witness, but Ironhide was sure he would have recalled card-carrying members of the Primary Colors Frontliners getting into a fight onboard the shuttle. With their paintjobs, it would have been like a trying to overlook a star exploding.

Frag, Ironhide couldn't think of an instance of the two mechs even looking at each other, much less going so far as a confrontation. And despite everything Sunstreaker had blurted out during their time together on Cybertron, there hadn't been any confessions involving anyone named Sideswipe. Which was sort of telling, in a way. The gold mech's mind was less than stable. Actually, it was more of an earthquake disaster area. He'd insisted on confessing his sins at length to Ironhide, who'd really had more to deal with than one mech's guilt trip.

Nobody resembling Sideswipe had ever surfaced in the vast over-share of information on who Sunstreaker thought he'd wronged, however. Whatever was going on, Sunstreaker's remorseful mind had apparently chosen to conceal that particular problem. Or, perhaps, failed to recognize it at all.

Ironhide had shrugged it off, because it wasn't his business as long as mechs were civil enough to keep the weapons verbal. Besides, he was busy. Bug and golden frontliner were both gone by the time he even had time to get back to the tiny quarters he now shared with Sunstreaker. The door registered someone else's signature, claiming the empty berth for a recharge period. Which suited the old red mech just fine; he'd spent far too much time stuck with Sunstreaker already. Plus, Ironhide had a few things to mull over before recharge.

By that time, the gossip whirling around the shuttle had shed some light on the Sideswipe/Sunstreaker situation. Dim, spotty light, but illuminating nonetheless.

"Traitor's getting what he deserves." Mirage hadn't sneered, but noblemechs didn't need to stoop to facial expressions to ooze contempt. Having a 'friend' return from the dead didn't necessarily mean much to a mech who politely smiled while offlining someone. Manners were very important, after all. "Not even his brother wants him. Not that they were related by more than spark-resonance, anyway. Sunstreaker always thought himself above Sideswipe," Ironhide hadn't commented on the strangeness of that comment coming from this mech, of all people, "but I think it is obvious who has better character. It is only appropriate Sideswipe disassociate himself from someone so base."

"Sideswipe? Solid soldier, but he goes off half-cocked," Rodimus had said, and Ironhide was learning a lot by not commenting on what was coming out of mechs' mouths this joor. "More often than not he ends up shooting himself in the foot because of it. Thinks he has something to prove - maybe that he's officer material, but even with all the Pit-scrap being thrown down, I'd still pick Sunstreaker over him. Sideswipe needs a tough unit commander to kick in his aft into line sometimes."

"I thought he'd lose it after Sunstreaker died. Ah, sort of died. I mean that he always seemed to try too hard to almost…be him, I suppose. He's so set on proving himself that he's unreliable." Red Alert seemed pained by the words coming out of his mouth, especially considering recent history: "Sunstreaker is a cold-sparked killer, but he's more reliable."

"Sunstreaker was always off doing his own thing with his own unit, you know? Sideswipe just kinda got left trying to catch up." Silverstreak had seemed sad. "I dunno if Sunstreaker even cared, though. Sideswipe was the only one I ever heard bring up that, you know, they're brothers. I thought it was really important but, well, it's kinda funny when you think about it. You'd think Sideswipe would've known about Sunstreaker betraying us, right?"

Cliffjumper had just snorted. "I guess they weren't very close after all."

Ironhide coded the door open and stood in the dark, not bothering to bring the lights up. It'd be rude. The other mech inside was trying to get some sleep, after all. The room was small enough to bark his shin plating on the berths, and he carefully turned to edge down the narrow space between them. Omega Supreme's shuttle form wasn't made for long treks, and the Autobots on board were taking turns cycling through the tiny berth compartments just to get some downtime that wasn't sitting in a chair. It hadn't even occurred to Ironhide to wonder why, amidst the apparently random partners they'd been assigned for their recharge time, Sunstreaker's name hadn't even had a partner on the roster. Everyone had just assumed Sideswipe would automatically take the assignment. That assumption had been proven wrong.

The old red mech set himself down on the unoccupied berth and turned that thought over.

Bob chewed through walls and unlocked doors to get a simple energon goodie and a pat on the head. He'd raced back to Sunstreaker more than once on Cybertron, warned by some arcane pet-sense that his master had been in danger, and he'd never hesitated to throw himself headfirst into unfavorable odds, tearing through fellow Insecticons just to get to Sunstreaker's side. Ironhide knew down to his struts the dumb bug would have raced out onto this bridge everyone kept talking about. The bug might have been smart enough to be terrified by the bomb and the oncoming Swarm and Sunstreaker's raging insanity, but nothing could have restrained Bob.

The technimal was just a runty Insecticon adopted and tamed to hand. Sunstreaker never stopped training him, pushing him to do better, faster, quieter. It was a form of narcissism, continually trying to self-improve by improving those around him. Accessories or attachment; in the image of Sunstreaker were they remade. Ironhide had witnessed the golden frontliner beating himself with guilt, struggling to make up for what he'd done, redeem himself. He could only imagine what heights the gold mech had previously attained with that kind of drive. Just look at what Bob had achieved tagging along in the mech's vainglory shadow. He was only a pet, and Sunstreaker didn't push him half as hard as he pushed himself.

Sideswipe was Sunstreaker's brother. He wore no leash. He had no name tag or collar. The other Autobots called Sunstreaker a sociopath, but ruthless self-interest could spread to those around the golden frontliner. There were reasons he'd become a unit commander. A lot of grunts liked being looked at by their commander and identified as 'Mine.' They liked being pushed to be more than they were alone, and being part of a whole meant they didn't fight alone, either. Knowing what he knew now, Ironhide thought that those same reasons accounted for why Sideswipe hadn't stayed in Sunstreaker's units. The red frontliner was obsessed with standing out. He'd never make it as an officer with that kind of selfish attitude.

How odd, that the sociable, likeable mech outside of duty could only be useful as a grunt-level soldier inside it, while his brother was his complete opposite. It didn't seem fair. Nobody wanted Sideswipe to get the short end of the stick, but yet, there it was.

Sunstreaker expected more and better of everyone around him. He'd never settle for 'good enough.' There was no room beside him; only space behind for second-best. Only places available for subordinates and pets, leashes or lower ranks - none of which Sideswipe could ever settle for. Ironhide knew Sunstreaker all too well after far too long spent listening to the mech's endless self-flagellating confessions. The golden frontliner burned as fiercely as any sun, but, like a sun, he didn't burn for anyone else. He burnt for himself and only incidentally spread that heat and light to those the cosmos -or the Autobots - assigned to be near him. Sideswipe was just that: on the side. Marginalized, never as bright or glorious or the center of anything. No matter how hard he tried to be noticed by the one mech incapable of acknowledging him as he was.

The assumption had been that Sunstreaker and Sideswipe belonged together. Ironhide shut off his optics and began cycling down, wondering if the two mechs had ever been connected.

[* * *]

"I thought I'd feel something, bro."

He'd kept his sensor suites offline. Optics, audios, even passive sensors; all offline. Instead, he listened as hard as he could. He lay on the berth, armor drawn tight and wires tensed, gears caught and cables vibrating. Every part of his body strained, as if he could replace sensors with an unplaceable new sense, absorb input mysteriously through his very metal, reach out with his spark and touch another. He laid in the dark and felt blindly for what should have been there.

They were brothers. He knew it. He knew it down to his spark, which resonated at a similar frequency but felt…absolutely nothing from his brother.

He slumped. Not immediately. No, his body eased from fully alert to relaxation and straight on through to despair. His joints ached from straining. His plating shivered just slightly from holding so still. He hurt, but it was physical hurt. There was nothing else the matter with him.

His spark had never hurt. Sunstreaker had gone down in flames on that fragging bridge, and he'd been angry and horrified and confused because he hadn't died, too. The others had whispered 'bondmate' and 'twins' like it were some sort of miracle he'd survived, but they were brothers. Brothers. There had been whispers and frank stares, and he hadn't known what to say. They had shared - still shared - a spark resonance. Sunstreaker hadn't been the other half of his spark. There was no logical reason he should have died.

The other Autobots had expected it. Even he had. His spark hadn't pinched or skipped, however, no matter how many scans Ratchet insisted on running.

So of course it'd made sense that Hunter was still alive, Hunter had preserved a bit of Sunstreaker in his human meat, but no. Sideswipe had let the tortured human die, and still his spark felt nothing. He'd searched himself, looking for a glitch or suicidal grief or anything more than the bitter sorrow already plaguing him, but nothing had surfaced. And some part of him had known already, back from when Sunstreaker had savagely revealed what exactly had been done to him on Earth, that it nothing ever would.

There was no mystical spark-deep link. He wanted there to be - he wanted to believe that they were more to each other than spark-resonance and common past - but the war had done more than just separate them physically. They'd made their own ways in the universe, and it hadn't been together. There was no twin bond. If there had been, he'd have felt the Machination humans pulling Sunstreaker apart. He'd have felt Bombshell manipulate Sunstreaker's mind. Sunstreaker had withered inside, hating Earth so much he'd betrayed the Autobots to kill it, and there hadn't a flutter or a twinge. He should have felt Sunstreaker commit suicide, or Hunter finally die, or, at the very least, Alpha Trion resurrect Sunstreaker's shattered body and mind. He'd have felt his brother lay down beside him, not an arm's-length away.

Denial crumpled. They were only, just, and nothing but brothers.

He got up slowly, blind and deaf and defeated, and edged toward the door. There was no point in staying longer. He had his answer, now.

"…but I don't."