Title: Mine
Continuity: Animated
Characters/Pairings: Jetfire/Bumblebee, Jetstorm
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nope, not mine...

Watching my brother together with Bumblebee is both exciting and bittersweet.

I can see in his optics his happiness. The way he lights up whenever the yellow bot is near, blushes from casual touches, and sometimes I want to rip Bumblebee's servos away. To claim my brother back as mine, make him understand that I'm the only one he'll ever need.

Even now, as I watch them walk hand in hand through the park from where I am hidden in the trees, I have to restrain myself. To tell myself that my brother deserves this, that I have no right to take what little the war allows us.

It isn't enough.

Because I long, I burn, to be by my brother's side. To once again be two parts of a whole instead of two separate individuals. He doesn't see, can't see, how far apart we are slipping. Not with his servo clasped tightly to the other, not with his optics only seeing the world through rose tinted glass.

My brother has always been the unpredictable one. Fire by its nature is hard to control, and my brother is fire personified.

For me, he burns in greater intensity than the sun. A gleaming point of hope in my world of frigid ice and wind. Only my brother was able to melt me and help me live; only my brother was able to pull me from my own fears.

A snarl rumbles from my throat and I can see Jetfire looking in my direction as he feels vestiges of my anger through our bond. He doesn't understand, he gets angry at me for being angry at him. We've fought more since touchdown on Earth then we ever had before, and that is saying something.

As I watch I get a sudden urge to rip something apart. No, not something, Bumblebee, but at this point anything would do. To vent my anger on someone who can feel the pain, who will know that I'm the one hurting them, and fear.

My processor pathways thread and segment until I hear hundreds of tiny voices claiming my brother. 'Mine' and they call for a visceral feeling, an emotional connection that I can't make, a breaking point that I'm unwilling to consider.

So I watch. I fume and I make promises and silent threats that will never see fruition. I concede defeat because I would do anything for my brother, anything at all, and he tells me this is what he wants.

I can hear their words and laughter over the wind.

"What would you be saying Yellow Bumble, if I was to be asking you of the bonding?"

My spark clenches and I reel away from the scene to purge Energon, Bumblebee's response coming unwanted through my retching.

"I'd answer yes, of course!"

My tank is empty, but it is nothing compared to the emptiness in my spark. An agonizing hole with jagged edges that pulses pain with each vent of air through my systems and I drop to the ground when weakened limbs no longer can hold my weight.

He'd been mine, once. Together we'd trained and fought and captured enemies, lived and served under Sentinel Prime, shared more experiences as one spark.

I curl up into a ball next to the purged Energon, not caring about the mess or smell or even the danger to the humans. My brother was leaving me behind, starting a life in which I was no longer his most important person.

My processor cries out again, 'MINE!'

He isn't mine. Not anymore.