Chapter 3
No Light, No Light
"You want a revelation, you wanna get it right, but it's a conversation I just can't have tonight, you want a revelation, some type of resolution, you want a revelation, no light, no light in your bright blue eyes, I never knew daylight could be so violent"
"They are worried."
"They're scared."
"Rightly so."
"Primus, you're just like them, aren't you?" Strikezone rounded on Optimus, pulling a U-turn on the narrow road and spraying sand into her undercarriage. Ratchet would be pissed but she couldn't find it in her to really care right then. She was stressed and on a hair-trigger and just couldn't believe Optimus was spewing such scrap.
"I am worried Strikezone, for the both of you. There is something truly not right happening. Your twin is here and yet you act more and more as though you have a broken bond. You remind me far too much of Sideswipe now and you must understand why I hold a certain amount of distrust towards her," he said and she hated how logical he sounded. She hated that he had it all reasoned out. She hated that he had an answer for everything. She hated that he couldn't (wouldn't) say her sister's name.
She just hated.
Strikezone still loved him, though and that made the whole thing worse. Would they really make her choose?
Would she be able to?
"She's my twin. Mine. Doesn't that have any bearing over what you think of her?" Striker said, agitatedly rocking on her shocks.
"That is precisely the problem. She has not acted as your twin in countless vorns and suddenly, here she is with you as her fiercest protector. You, who should hate her most. I simply find it very hard to believe and harder to watch you go through what is clearly torture for you," he rumbled out. Prime was agitated too, the Peterbilt's smokestacks belching thick smoke and his engine working overtime, if the sound of it was anything to go by.
Strikezone's instincts picked a direction they wanted to go in and stuck with it then. Away. She rocked back a few inches, not out of fear but an intense need to be away from all of them. So she said, "Nice to know what my opinion means to you, Lord Prime," in the coldest voice she could manage and Prime visibly flinched back. It was no surprise and no great mystery why; she had never used that tone with him (he had likely never heard it from her, since she tended to be fairly level around him) and Strikezone had never once in their many vorns together called him by that title. Never.
This was the breaking point.
"Sister moon," he said, an admittedly weak attempt to get her to stop moving, listen to reason (since when had he been the voice of absolute reason? Since hers had seemed to run away).
And she almost did stop then because that was his name, the one no one else called her but her only reply was, "Don't call me that." She offered no other explanation as she continued to back up before smoothly transforming from car to tetra jet (they hadn't quite gotten around to giving her a plane to scan yet) and taking off back in the direction they had come.
Optimus pulled U-turn as well to face that direction and watch her go, feeling as if he had made a terrible mistake.
0o0
Once Strikezone had flown herself out (more like calm, she could never get tired of flying), she found herself in one of the less-used hangers on the island.
"Fancy meeting you here," came a waspish voice from the door.
"Lightningstrike," she breathed. There was still that insistent non-tug on her spark. It wasn't like normal twins, but it was there and a painful reminder of what she had. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for a new dark place to hide, since Ironhide found my last one." She was right and the hanger was dark. Most of the windows had been boarded up and the ones that weren't only let in a hazy half-light that highlighted the dust in the air.
"Come and sit, then. I was just about to set up a little pity party and who better to pity myself with than my own distant half-spark?" Striker said in a gratingly cheerful voice. She was bitter.
Lightningstrike sneered, an expression disturbingly similar to a derisive and lucid Starscream. "I hope you didn't expect us to be perfect again, because that will not happen. We aren't those femmes anymore," she said and her voice was lilting, almost like a song- the siren song that lured sailors to their deaths.
"I know, but that doesn't stop me from missing it. It certainly doesn't stop me from hurting and you being near all the time doesn't help." Striker knew she was being stupid, but she was too tired. She didn't want to be the mature one today.
"You want me to say something, huh? You want me to spew out some slag about being sorry for being a Decepticon? You want me to be sorry? You want a revelation?" Lightning said, nearly fed up.
"No, I don't want any of that. I just want to know what wrong. I just want to know why we're not... us anymore," she said, words almost failing when they were the only thing she had left. Because Strikezone wasn't sure that she really had a twin anymore.
"You know why. You know why. And plus, you've got your Prime in your spark and I'm not really sure there's enough room in your spark for the both of us."
A grinding metallic sound made its way from her throat, a vicious Cybertronian snarl as she and her sister faced off. They wouldn't actually fight, instinct wouldn't let them, but this... She couldn't back down on this. "You're family, you've done the prerequisite threats, that's all you get. We haven't seen, nor acknowledged each other in vorns. You don't get to tell me who to love, let alone bond to. He's mine."
Lightningstrike looked at her sister and took in the cold, pale blue optics, glossy black finish and aggressive stance. It was all so different from the bright blue optics and eternally shimmering meteor shower painted by their Creators and knew that this wasn't the same femme. She knew she didn't have a right, but rights were something that had never stopped here before. "He's Optimus Prime!"
Striker gave a laugh without humor that was barely heard over her growling engine. "And I love him!" she yelled, he voice cracking and raising to meet her sister's volume. "I love him, something that's pretty fragging hard to do with this broken, pitiful spark of mine." And if she sounded a little bitter, oh well.
"You mean half a spark," Lightning said in a quiet little voice. She felt it too.
"Something like that," because Striker couldn't bring herself to crush Lightning so completely by blaming her for this. Not now.
Lightningstrike would let it go- for now. She didn't like and she wouldn't accept it, but she would let it go. First though, to make sure her twin understood this part, "He's the Prime," which was really her only problem.
"You don't have to like it or accept it; I know you well enough not to ask for that," Striker said quietly. Damn their twin bond for letting the femme know what she was thinking. "But understand that I do love him. He's Pax too, a mech that breaks down and cries and feels remorse and heartbreak and so much love. He gets jealous and he's just as stubborn as me. He throws tantrums still and can be the clumsiest mech sometimes but everyone has flaws. There isn't a single one of us left without flaw or sin so if he can put up with my half-afted love, then I can put up with his baggage. Primus knows I've got my own."
"Fine." The word wasn't an agreement, just a call for a truce that Striker took because it was the best she would get.
She'd take anything she could get. "Let's just not have this conversation tonight. I don't think I can finish it."
"Yeah," was the bitten off answer.
"Oh and Lightning?" she called as her twin turned to leave, "Word to the wise. Decepticons stab you in the back but you know it's coming because its expected but Autobots... Autobots are all frontal attacks straight to the spark. Problem is, you never see it coming. Watch yourself, sister."
Lightningstrike left without saying anything, mulling over Striker's words. Somehow, she knew she had set herself up for that kind of attack unknowingly.
She was in for sparkache, but from who?
0o0
"I see nothing in your eyes and the more I see, the less I like."
"Oh," she said, not quite startled, "Bumblebee. I wasn't expecting you."
He stood there quietly, the shadow of his biped form stretching to meet her sitting one. Striker pulled herself together quickly. She hadn't been crying, Cybertronians couldn't, but she was privately enjoying her own pity party. It wasn't pretty and definitely wasn't anything she wanted her surrogate little brother to see. He did, of course, because he was still Black Ops and he saw everything. "She's dancing with strangers, she's falling apart, she's waiting for... sisters with nothing between," said his radio.
Striker didn't say anything for a minute. She didn't want to admit that she was falling apart, that her sister's physical proximity and mental distance was ripping her apart but- "Is it really that obvious?" she asked quietly. "I had hoped to spare them their guilt." The last part came out dripping in acid. So maybe she was a little bitter, oh well.
"Mm whatcha say, oh that you only meant well, well of course you did."
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions, isn't it?" she said with a sharp-edged smile, not quite looking at Bee. She preferred sitting on the cliff and looking at the ocean, contemplating flying away to turning back to look at the yellow bot and Diego Garcia and all her problems.
"And she smiles, oh the way she smiles," his radio sang and Bee somehow managed to make the upbeat song sound regretful.
"What do you want me to say, Bee? Just tell me what you want me to say," she whispered. She couldn't speak louder, not now with everything crashing down.
Bumblebee didn't have an answer, so he simply knelt and gave his older sister a hug. She needed it.
0o0
Songs used: Breath by Breaking Benjamin, Waiting for Superman by Daughtry, Run for Your Life by the Fray, Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap
