Chapter 6

Ungodly Hour

"Don't talk, don't say a thing, because your eyes, they tell me more, than your words, don't go, don't leave me now, 'cause they say the best way out, is through, and I am short on words knowing what's occurred, she begins to leave because of me, her bag is now much heavier, I wish that I could carry her, but this is our ungodly hour."

Three days after the battle in Virginia and two after that disastrous conversation with Galloway and the JCS, Strikezone thought that she could just maybe breathe again. Or maybe not. At least find a nice tree she could sit under and pretend she didn't have work to do.

Honestly, aside from the standard report on Virginia, she didn't have any official work that needed to be done. That in no way stopped her from stressing, though. First problem was that Ironhide was gone. He had commandeered a C-17 the night before to go check on the Lennox family, even though he'd never admit it. He would probably spend a few days wandering across the country, but he always ended up back at the Lennox's ranch so Annabelle could climb all over him to her little heart's content, if for no other reason. His leaving wasn't the real problem, though. It was the fact that Lightningstrike was his apprentice and in charge of weaponry while he was gone and no one trusted her (on top of the fact that his leaving turned her into an epic glitch- she missed him, whether she admitted it or not). The stares were wearing on both femmes, but Strikezone was still determined to do something about it.

That brought her to her second (admittedly biggest and most important) problem. Lightningstrike, and wasn't it just a trip when your own twin was the root of all your problems? None of this was a laughing matter, though. If things kept going the way they were going, she'd end up hating her twin by the end of the vorn. She didn't want to end up like Sunny, no matter how much she loved him.

Lightningstrike was trying and Striker knew that. She wasn't trying particularly hard, but the effort was there. It was enough to seriously torque Striker off when the looks and whispers started right after the meeting with the human brass. She had to hand it to her twin- the dressing down she indirectly gave Galloway had been brutal and Striker was happy to lend a servo. She still hated that weasel. She had even heard a rumor that he had been asked to step down (read: was reamed out and handed his papers), but that was only a slight bright spot. Lightning was being targeted by her comrades and Strikezone was not a happy petro-puppy. It was despicable what they were doing to her. It was all very passive aggressive, really, a fact that annoyed her to no end. Weren't they all warriors on base? Hardened fighters like them should have been able to say something up front instead of resorting to petty whispers.

It was Jolt that finally found the ball bearings to say something and even then, it wasn't to Lightningstrike.

Strikezone stared at the medic in training in pure disbelief. "What did you just say?"

"Your sister," and he twisted the word to make it sound like a curse, "is a danger to us all. She needs to go. Or be put down." He was cold and professional as he worked on recalibrating her wrist and resetting her tire (training could be brutal and Ratchet was going to have a fit when he found out), like he wasn't talking about the death of her sister. Her twin.

Who were these mechs she found herself surrounded by? Where were the Autobots she had grown up with?

She sneered at the dark blue mech. He had never been very mighty and yet, he had found a way to fall. And fall he did. "I know, Jolt. I've had this conversation already," and every time you've all been so wrong about everything, she thought. She jerked her servo away from him as she felt a jolt of phantom pain over the twin bond. Striker didn't know what the cause of it was, but it left her feeling colder than ever. "I think Mikaela can take over from here," she said in her iciest voice. Jolt nodded and stepped away to call the human over as a suddenly furious Strikezone watched.

She was so furious that she didn't notice how her twin bond had suddenly become a live wire, feeding her noxious emotions. She also never noticed Lightningstrike slinking away from the med bay doors where she had been listening.

0o0

Lightningstrike was mostly asleep, stretched out on her back in a little-used warehouse in an ignored and abandoned section of Diego Garcia. She thought that maybe she fit in with the buildings here, bright blue paint job be damned. She felt like them, at any rate- abandoned, loveless and in disrepair.

She frowned and shifted. She couldn't stay like this, she knew; laying still for tool long was never a good idea. So, she concentrated on that annoying program at the back of her processor that seemed to always be on and decided to use it.

A faint stretch and pop in her processor later, she was staring up and the outside of the warehouse. She wrinkled her very human nose and stretched out her hands, turning them over and marveling at the long, delicate fingers and sharp nails that mimicked her servos. The skin was odd, darker than Lennox's near constant tan but lighter than Epps's, and almost paper-thin, with blue veins showing through. She clenched her fist and felt those long nails dig into her skin, picking a random direction to walk in. Hopefully, her small size would keep her from being noticed while she wandered- after yesterday, she wanted to see no one.

There was this stripped down, half dead tree on a particularly empty stretch of beach near the warehouse she left her body in. It was there that she finally decided to stop and sit down. The beach was pebbly and would have been uncomfortable for a real human, but she didn't feel it. She just settled down onto the cold, hard ground, leaned back against a protruding tree root and absently noted that the wind had a bit of bite to it- the chill of September creeping up.

An hour later, she heard footsteps behind her, though the few scans she had access to didn't register it as a real body and she assumed it was someone's holoform. With any luck, her giving them the cold shoulder would be enough to send whichever self-righteous glitch back to where they came from. Of course, luck never worked in her favor, as proven when he kept coming with no heed to her apparent emotional state. It wasn't until he plopped down beside her that she realized it was Bumblebee with his distinctive blond and black hair. The trained spy in her, the one who read people and things automatically, had always found this bot a bit of an enigma and his holo showcased that perfectly. Baby faced kid decked out in hardcore leather, scars all over, the equivalent of tattoos and a spiky black choker, with careworn yellow Converses, a faded yellow jacket covering his skin tight black top and multiple leather belts. There was even a shadow of red inside his baby blue eyes, a trace of ice and backbone. An enigma indeed.

Though Lightning didn't once look at him, she watched him on one of the peripheral screens on the inside of her shades (they gave her 360 degrees of sight, so she thoroughly enjoyed their inclusion in her holo's design), so she could easily see that he was having a debate with himself as he slumped into the root she was leaning on. Bumblebee had done nothing but help her, but she still wasn't welcoming company. She also saw when he made his decision, though she had no way of knowing what that had been. So it was understandable that his next move stunned her into silence.

Without care or hesitation, Bumblebee laid his head in Lightningstrike's lap as though he had done it a thousand times. And, for some Primus-forsaken reason, she was inclined to let him do it. She put her hands on his hair.

Another hour passed in silence, then two before Lightning got around to breaking it. "You're awfully quiet," she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

Evidentially, he still didn't feel like talking because all she got back was a mournful piano and, "I am short on words, knowing what's occurred."

Lightning made an irritated noise. "So why didn't you go find Strikezone?" she asked. She didn't try to move him, thought, because apparently, her body was content with him lying there. She could admit to herself that she didn't want him to go because with him around that restless energy folded itself into a neat little corner and left her the Pit alone for a little while.

He rolled onto his back, effectively dislodging her hands and looking straight into her shades. His baby blue eyes had iced over completely and there was the look of someone older and colder that had seen too much. "Strikezone could never understand. I just need a moment of silence for those I can't mourn. It was you that I wanted to be around. I like you, black spark to black spark," and when his voice ground to a halt he rolled again, pushing his face into her stomach and curling up as if that small admission had taken it out of him. Who knew- with a Black Ops mech, it might have.

Lightning was more focused on his choice of words, though. Black spark. It was a universal nickname that Black Ops used for itself. Their sparks weren't actually black, but after seeing so much, they could never think of themselves as normal. Of course he knew what she was (it was impossible not to, since only higher up Black Ops ever wore visors, especially ones as sophisticated as hers), but to acknowledge her? Admit affection? No, there was something wrong and surreal there, something she couldn't believe. Because, other than a very select few, "No one likes me."

Bumblebee snorted. "No one likes Striker, either," he said, voice grating and muffled in her tank top. And something told Lightningstrike not to argue. Something told her that, young though he was (he was something slightly less than two decades younger than her and her sister), he would never be fool enough to lie. So she just wrapped a hand around the back of his neck- another universal sign, this one of trust and he relaxed a little more.

For hours more they laid on the beach, Lightning with her hand still curled on the back of Bumblebee's neck and lost in thoughts of Strikezone's life with Autobots and the select few on the planet with them. Bumblebee lay in her lap, feeling boneless and complacent just basking in the mutual brokenness of a fellow spy. Eventually after night had fallen, Lightning was the one to break the silence and sounding reluctantly practical, "We should go. They'll be looking for you and I- Strikezone is coming," she said in lieu of a real explanation. Evidently, it was enough for Bumblebee, since he got up without a word. He stood there, all lanky six feet of him looking over her for a minute as he stared before giving her a brilliant smile and flashing his dimples as he walked up the ridge to the island proper and disappeared.

0o0

Lightning's first thought was that Strikezone looked wrecked. Oh, she was physically fine, Ratchet made sure of that, but the little things gave her away. Her Charger alt form somehow managed to kick up a huge dust cloud on a road that had been clean and her engine growled more predatorily than usual. When she transformed in front of the door Lightning was standing in, her wheels never stopped spinning and her optics were as bright as they would be in battle and she stood completely still at attention as she watched her twin standing in the shadowed doorway. Strikezone was never completely still.

"I see you finally figured it out. It certainly took you long enough," Lightning said. She didn't miss the chill in her voice.

Strikezone finally moved, making an irritated noise in her throat and slipping past her twin into the building. Somehow with her greater bulk, she managed to not touch the other femme at all. "You only heard half that conversation," she said as she passed.

Lightningstrike turned to face her, outraged that Strikezone really thought she would buy that. "I was there the whole time. I heard everything."

"But you don't understand," she stressed. "You were there, but you missed the important part."

She let out a bitter laugh that was really too hollow to be called a laugh. "You know what? I think you're right, Strikezone. I don't understand. I don't understand why you choose them over me. I don't understand why you want your own half spark gone so badly."

"Lightningstrike, don't make me do this. You know why I'm avoiding this whole thing. They don't hate you but they certainly don't trust you. Can you blame them? Up until a few days ago, you were the top Decepticon spy under Soundwave, as far as they knew. Up until a vorn ago, we were nothing but distant memories to each other. No even that, just echoes of something we ought to know. I don't think that's really the best basis of trust."

"You want me gone, is that what it is?" Lightning sounded a little hysterical, but she was beyond caring. This whole day had been too much.

Strikezone was right. Autobots can be so much more dangerous.

And here was Strikezone, Autobot extraordinaire, standing opposite her and all but shouting her down. But at her furious words, Striker's face smoothed out the way it always did when she was surprised. Probably shocked Lightning had figured out. "No," she said slowly, shaking her head and stepping forward. "No, that's not it at all. I just want you safe and that's not gonna happen if you keep going like this."

"Like what?" Lightning said, armor-eating acid burning in her words. "Like a Decepticon? Like the lying glitch they all think I am? Like-"

"NO! Stop! Stop, stop, stop! Listen to yourself!" If she had been human, she would have been tearing her hair out. Striker was so slagging tired of it all. "This is what I mean! You're convincing yourself you're the bad guy and you're not! You're not the evil incarnate Decepticon, not a liar to anyone but yourself. They stay away because they know you're not secure in yourself. They didn't really accept me until my decision was set in stone. It's their way of making your decision yours. I don't- I can barely…" Striker trailed off, not really sure how to put it.

"Can barely say what? That it's not my choice anymore? I think they've made it very obvious what they've decided and it seems to very neatly fall in line with your choices, too," Lightning said, watching her twin (were they really twins anymore? She wasn't really sure because this aggressive and emotional creature was nothing that she knew, nothing she could claim. Except for the fact that it was her too) from behind her visor. "Primus, you really do want me gone, don't you? When comes down to me or them, you pick them? Nice to know, sister." And Lightningstrike turned to leave because she can't face this hateful femme that wears her sister's face anymore(the one that wears her face too). "And just so you know," she added, "after everything I've done, I still have as much Seeker programming as you. I could never endanger children."

Then she was gone and Striker was left wondering what she had done and why the lingering absence of their twin bond didn't hurt all or the sudden.

Then Strikezone left as well because she couldn't stay in that cramped little warehouse where she and her twin had finally broken apart at an ungodly hour of the night. She took flight in her little-used tetra-jet form, wishing to go unnoticed by everyone on the small island and somehow succeeded. She didn't stop flying until she reached some small town in the middle of America, far away from where her comrades would look when (if, really) they found her missing.

And that was how she found herself on a slippery highway halfway across the world at three in the morning with no backup.

A grotesque approximation of a grin stretched across the mech's half missing face as he repeated the words he had taunted Optimus with the last time he had seen them. "Say goodbye, sweetspark."

Only her luck.