Hello friends! Welcome to chapter 21! And I hope you're enjoying your march break if you're on break, or you week if you aren't! Haha! I hope you enjoy this chapter, and have a wonderful day! Love you guys!

X-X-X-X-X-X-X

She was running. She didn't know from who, or why, or where, all she knew was she had been told to run, and she had to run - she had to. She wasn't quite sure where her final destination was, but she knew she couldn't go back.

How far had she gotten?

No, that wasn't important. Keep running.

She turned down a road and that led further into town. At least there were more places to hide this way, but still she had to keep running, she couldn't stop. She didn't know why, she just knew that the little voice in the back of her head, the tiny little whine, was telling her to keep running, don't stop, keep going.

"Whoa!"

"Hey!"

"Watch it, sparklet!"

She ran around a group of bots on the sidewalk, looking over her shoulder hurridely, not really knowing what exactly she was looking for, but the only thing she could see was the back of bots she'd already run passed. In her hurry, she failed to notice the bump on the side that caught her ped, and she fell to the sidwalk with an 'oof'. She managed to get up and keep running before it even registered with her that tears had begun to fall down her face with vigour.

But now her legs were starting to get tired and she needed to stop without being seen. She could barely stand without her legs shaking, walking - running - wouldn't be much of an option anymore.

There. That hole in between buildings - she was pretty sure she'd heard it been called something before; an a-all-alleyway? Yeah, she could hide in there.

A little voice in the back asked if it would be safe though? She could get caught in there if there was no way out.

No, the safest option would be to keep running.

Then, she heard it.

"Where is she?"

That voice! That was a bad voice. She'd never heard it before, she didn't even know who it belonged too, or what it was doing, what it wanted, but it was bad. It was bad and she had to avoid it. That much, she knew.

"I don't know."

"Can't see her.

"Not sure."

The bad voice growled. "Scan the area. Have you seen the size of her? She's young, she couldn't have run that far."

She didn't seem to have much of a choice, so quickly she darted into the alleyway, looking for some place, any place, to hide.

There! A hole in the wall, just barely big enough to fit her in it. She wouldn't have even seen it if she wasn't so small and close to the ground. She slid to the ground, shuffling underneath it to hide. She tried to slow down her breathing from the constant panting she was going through.

She heard whirs approaching, and then something slid out in front of her eyes, covering the blue shine of her optics from reaching the alley's walls, making her jump out of fear.

Her visor. It had covered her optics in order to conceal the glow and not give away her position to anybody. Good thing too, because a couple seconds later the sounds of footsteps echoed off the walls, the whirring sounds of the bot's knees bending and straightening practically echoing in her audios.

Then, from her tiny little hole in the wall, she saw a ped land in front of her as the bot walked down the alley. The other foot kicked the garbage thing opposite of her away from the wall, as if to check if she was hiding under there.

She held her breath and prayed that whoever it was didn't see her hole in the wall, and didn't look for her under here anyways. When what he was looking for proved not to be there like he thought it would, he pushed the garbage dumpster back to the wall. He walked further along the alley, and Laceburner failed to notice the tear that rolled down her cheek.

The mech, after walking to the end of the alley, turned back around and walked out.

"I got nothing!"

"Not over here."

"Nothing this way!"

"She isn't my way!"

The voice, that bad voice, growl and she heard it punch something like the wall.

"Impossible," it snarled. "You seen the size of her? She can't have gone too far."

"Jet, maybe she didn't turn this way, she may have turned left at the intersection."

There was silence, a growl, then somebot got punched.

"Agh!"

"Let's go get her." the voice snarled lowly to whoever it was talking to. "We go back without her, Boss'll have our helms."

"Ow!"

Right after that, she heard them transforming and their engines roared together as they drove off.

What do I do?

The voice wasn't there; it didn't respond to her, and she freaked out for a second.

She took a shaky breath in, and didn't even realize when a sobbed crawled it's way up her throat and out her lips.

Then, she got up, out of the hole and ran in the opposite direction from where they came. She ran as fast as she could, for as long as she could, until her legs shook to keep her standing, her air tanks seizing and failing to take in air, no matter how hard she breathed. She had to place her arms up against the wall to keep her from falling over as she coughed and choked on air, grabbing her throat with her other hand.

Then, somebody grabbed her by her shoulders. "Come on."

She screamed, kicking and screaming.

Relax!

"Lacey! Lacey, Lacey, it's okay, it's just me, it's alright! Come on!"

She screamed one more time, kicking up into the air.

Look!

"Oof. Right in the crotch plate." a pained groaned sounded as her foot came in contact with something, and whoever it was let go, but their hold was soon replaced with another one.

"Laceburner, relax. Nothing's wrong." the deep voice calmed. "You're okay."

Open! Your! Eyes!

She opened her eyes to see Sunstreaker hovering above her. She panted shakily through her mouth, her chest heaving. His eyes searched for something (probably for her optics) through her visor, even though they failed to find what they were looking for.

"You're okay." he said calmly, "Breathe. Its alright, Lacey."

"We're right here, no one's gonna get you." Sideswipe said as he crawled back up, off the floor and into the bed beside her, still holding his crotch plating.

Her eyes bore into Sunstreaker's as her panting calmed slightly, but then the sobs wracked her frame, the tears streaming down her cheeks rapidly.

"Shh, easy Lacey." Sideswipe cooed, pulling her into his arms.

In return, she wrapped her arms around his just under his chest, and her legs wrapped themselves around his waist as she laid her head on his chest with a sob, her shoulders shaking as she cried.

"N-N-No, ple-ease-e." she sobbed, her her grip tightening. "I don't want-t to-o, please-e don't make me-e."

Sideswipe wouldn't ever admit to anybody besides Sunstreaker, who would've found out any way, but it broke his spark to hear her like this. And it broke his spark to think she'd had to endure his for over a year now with no one there.

She sobbed again, and he closed his eyes, leaning down to plant a kiss on the top of her head.

"You're not going anywhere or doing anything, Lacey, I promise on my life." he swore.

She sobbed again, the sobs sounding more and more tired as they progressed.

"We promise."

X-X-X-X-X-X-X

When Laceburner woke up from her sleep, it was in her room, in her bed, tucked under the blankets. This was usually what happened... it was normal. Except for the fact that the lights were on. Not the big light, the big light was still off, but both lamps in either side of the couch had been flicked on, and she knew she always shut them off, and Mirage always kept them off too whenever he came in and she was still sleeping.

The two heads that hovered over the couch swam in her vision for a few seconds before she rubbed under her visor and her view cleared up to reveal the twins. Sideswipe's attention seemed to be fully trained on the TV, but Sunstreaker was looking down at something in his hands. Her visor recalibrated and her HUD popped up tiredly. The voice, whom she thought was still asleep (she always slept in longer than Laceburner did) growled in the back of her head, but that was all that came from her. Neither bot seemed to hear her as she stood up and stretched, her shoulders popping, but the two of them were too focused on whatever they were doing.

Silently, she left the side of the bed and walked over to stand behind him. He had a data pad in his hand, covered in a drawing of some sort. But it was a really good drawing, it wasn't some crap that's already outlined and you just colour in, Sunstreaker had done it from scratch. It was beautiful.

She took a deep, long breath in silently. "That's nice."

He craned his neck only slightly over his shoulder as if to make sure it was her and not somebody else.

"Thanks," he grumbled. "That's your's." he pointed to the dark blue, almost light purple, cube of Energon on her coffee table.

She walked around the arm of the couch, over his legs and leaned down to pick up the cube. She looked at it in her and for a long second, as if examining it.

"It ain't poisoned or anything." he reassured.

"Probably the only time I've ever purposely grabbed a cube of regular grade though." Sideswipe joked with a shrug.

The older one reached out and punched his twin in the arm quickly before going back to his art in his hands.

"Ow." Sideswipe grumbled.

The golden mech simply grunted back at him as Laceburner plopped down on the couch tiredly and unceremoniously, placing her feet up on her coffe table not even two seconds later as she leaned forward to grab the TV remote and switched the channel.

Sideswipe whined, "Lacey! I was watching that."

She took a sip of the Energon, taking not of the peculiar slight burning sensation it caused as she swallowed it. "My TV, my choice, my rules."

Between Sunstreaker's morning bitchiness and Laceburner's morning grumpiness it was transparent that Sideswipe was outnumbered, and it was obvious that neither bot would ever be classified as 'morning people'. However, because of the similarity of the two of them, neither of them managed to get on each other's nerves during the whole time it took for the small, black femme to finish her cube of Energon - they didn't speak to each other or bother each other, and the two made a point to not be close enough to be touching each other as well. They knew to leave each other alone and to let them really wake up.

Sideswipe clicked everything together, every piece of information he gathered and get together from watching them, and decided to pass over the opportunity to ask her about the nightmares, insead watching the TV with a complete and total lack of interest this time. He would much, much rather be asking her a frag load of questions about... everything, but somehow contained himself.

Like, for Primus' sake, she just woke up. The last thing he wanted was for her to get angry at him just because she was still kind of in recharge and grumpy, and he was asking too many questions to her.

She took the last sip of Energon from her cube, looking down at Sunstreaker's work.

"What?" he asked in a raspy voice.

"You're really good ." was all she said.

He grunted as a thank you, and she stood up. Laceburner didn't say a single word as she passed the golden twin and tossed her empty cube out in the garbage, before she disappeared into the bathroom. They didn't hear the shower turn on, the sink run, or the waste tank flush, but when she came back out fifteen or twenty minutes later, she was drying her hands on a towel. She tossed the dirty towel into a basket of others that she had by the bathroom door, walking back towards the couch silently. She went to go walk around the coffee table, as opposed to walking over Sunstreaker, but stumbled on the carpet just a little. She suddenly jumped, her visor glitched orange, then she froze.

"Lacey?" Sideswipe called.

She didn't respond to the call, and Sideswipe stood up, walking to stand in front of her, waving a hand.

"Lacey?" he asked as he walked over and stopped in front of her. "Hello?"

Her visor glitched orange again, then suddenly she jumped before looking up at his face.

"What?" she asked.

He chuckled. "You just stopped. What's goin' on?" he asked.

She continued staring at him, her helm tilting as she looked at him, her visor lighting up slightly.

"Um..." she trailed off. "I don't..."

Then she stopped talking. He furrowed his brow confusedly as he looked at her; what was wrong with her?

"Are you okay, Laceburner?" Sunstreaker asked, putting the data pad down and walking over to her too, capturing her in between the two of them.

Again, she didn't respond, even once he got fairly close to her. After thirty seconds, she turned to look at Sunny, then nodded.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Why?" she asked, then stared off into space.

Talk about a delayed reaction.

(~ You think she's okay? ~) Sideswipe asked over the bond.

(~ What do you think? ~) the twin retaliated. (~ I'm taking her to Ratchet. ~)

Suddenly, she stumbled forward and almost fell reaching out to grab whatever she could to steady herself, and Sideswipe's hands whipped out to grab her before she could fall.

"Whoa, you okay Lacey?" he asked, helping her to stand up.

She leaned all of her weight against his side. Sunstreaker noticed the way her visor glitched from black to white, as if she was blinking lazily as she looked around. She sighed, a small smile leaking onto her face.

"Sides..." Sunstreaker suddenly said apprehensively. "You sure you gave her regular grade?"

The red frontliner adjusted how she stood against him, taking note of how she locked her arms around his torso and laid her head against his chest, and furrowed his brow towards his twin with a nod.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know it was. 'Cause I grabbed four cubes, three high grade and then Lacey's. I've even still got the other high grade in my subspace..." he opened his subspace to feel around, then trailed off when a bright blue, regular grade cube sat on his palm. "Um... nevermind."

Sunstreaker's optics went wide. "Primus damn it, Sides! How concentrated was that High Grade?" he snapped, looking down at the little black femme between them.

He noticed the way she smiled lightly - oh yeah, she was overcharged.

Sideswipe winced as Laceburner shuffled her feet around. He mumbled something that Sunny didn't quite catch.

"What?" he asked his twin to repeat again, angrily.

"Eighty three!" Sideswipe yelled at him.

Sunstreaker's eyes went wider. "You idiot!"

"I'm sorry!" he yelled back.

Their yelling match was broken up by the little black femme giggling as she stumbled on her feet, away from Sideswipe's side and let herself collapse onto her butt on the couch, laughing again.

Sunstreaker took a step closer to Sideswipe to punch his shoulder, huffing at him with his jaw clenched and teeth grinding in Sideswipe's direction. The red mech shrugged, his optics going wide - he obviously didn't know what to do.

"I'm sorry. I wasn't paying that much attention." he defended.

Sunny huffed again, crouching down in front of the little femme.

"Laceburner. La-Laceburner, look. Focus on me." he said, grabbing her attention.

She looked over at him with wide optics, blushing and smiling at him.

"Hey, listen. You're... you're overcharged."

She had begun laughing again, leaning forward to get closer to him. She placed her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands as she giggled again, only a few inches away from his face now. However, after he said 'overcharged', her face fell into a straight face. She tilted her head curiously before doing something that Sunstreaker would never have guessed her to do.

She slid her visor across her eyes and hid it in it's case, revealing her optics to him.

Sunstreaker had seen beautiful before. After he and Sides had gotten out and they had gone from poor lowlifes to lavished, rich mechs and the amount of credits they had was... uncountable, they had gorgeous, beautiful femmes (and mechs) who tried to throw themselves at the two every day and every night. He'd seen the two moons when they were in full "bloom", as bright as possible in the night sky. Sadly, Cybertron didn't really have a sunset or sunrise, but every once in a while you'd see colours dancing along the sky and he was lucky enough to see it happen once. He had known beautiful. He had seen beautiful before.

But the word beautiful paled in comparison to Laceburner's optics. In that exact moment, he wished she'd stare at him forever. Well, maybe not forever, but long enough that he could try his hand at drawing them. His version would be a pathetic replica of something that's beauty could never truly be captured, but he could try. The brightness of them alone was enough to catch any passing bot's attention, even brighter than Bumblebees' optics. The colour of it astounded him; around the very center of it, where a human's, uh... pupil! That was it! It was almost like Laceburner had a dark blue pupil right in the center of her eye, and within the span of a centimeter of it the colors ombréed from dark blue to light, almost sky, blue, so light that they were almost silver. If you were only able to catch a quick glance that would be the colour you would percieve it as. And the details. She had little details and tiny, interconnected patterns all over her optics - as if someone had taken time out of their days and sketched patterns into her optics while she was in the spark and gestation chamber. Some of them obviously had meaning behind them, but others were just there to be there, essentially. But they were too... perfect to be place their by someone. No, they were too perfect to not be natural.

In the background, he heard Sideswipe gasp. "Whoa."

"Laceburner," he started quietly, clenching a fist together to keep his focus, "You're overcharged."

She blinked at him slowly, then smiled again.

He narrowed his eyes apprehensively. "Lacey..."

Before he said anything else, or before he could, she raised a hand slowly and moved it towards his face. She touched his cheek very lightly with the tip of her fingers, tracing little circles on the polished plating. The atmosphere had quickly changed, and it was now nothing but quiet, the silence practically ringing in their audios.

She huffed out air from her nose in seeming amusement as she smiled again.

"You're a lot more beautiful without the visor." she said quietly, almost whispering.

Her optics looked back and forth between his two own, and her other hand moved to trace between his audio finn, ever so slightly. His finn twitched at the contact and she huffed out in amusement one more time.

"They move?" she mumbed, her optics whirring in circles.

He nodded. "Only slightly." He hadn't realized until then that his clenched fist had unclenched and was now spread out over her thigh, gripping her leg. "They're too heavy, and easily damaged to move more than just in a twitch."

When her optics moved from his audio finns to his optics her smile dropped, her face going serious again.

"Laceburner..." he said warningly.

She took a sharp breath in when he spoke, a smile gracing her face. She leaned in closer to him, tracing his audio finn again. He caught the way she looked down at his lips ever so briefly.

And then, just as she was quite literally only a few centimetres away from their lips touching one another, to the point where he could feel her breath over his lips, and her lips just ever so slightly brush against his, his hand that he had on her thigh tightened. "Lacey..." he wanted to groan and punch himself in the face for what he said next. "Lace, you gotta stop."

She made a whining sound in the back of her throat as her visor slid back over her optics, effectively hiding them, and it took everything - everything - he had to restrain himself from throwing her down and fragging her through the couch until she screamed his-

(~ What are you doing?! ~) Sideswipe yelled over the bond. (~ She likes us and she's attracted to us, what the Pit, Sunny? ~)

(~ She's overcharged, she won't remember any of this when she wakes back up. ~) he snapped back at him.

As if on cue, her optics shuttered, shutting off for a second and her visor went pitch black before reactivating. He looked back at Sideswipe as if to prove a point.

He shifted his gaze back to the femme he was crouching in front of. Her optics shuttered a she took him in once again. She sighed, then opened her mouth to speak. She shut it briefly, opened it, closed it, then spoke.

"I missed you two." she whined.

Sideswipe, who had stayed silent up until this point besides to yell at Sunstreaker, sighed and Sunstreaker scooted to the side as his younger twin crouched down as well. He placed a hand on her thigh, but almost right after raised it all the way up to her cheek. The two of them both noticed the way she leaned her hand into his hand, and her visor let static flutter across as it glitched.

"We missed you too, Princess." he said softly.

She whine again her visor going blue for a split second.

"Why'd you leave?"

Sunstreaker sighed, and Sideswipe's face softened as a tear dribbled down her cheek.

"What did I do?" she sobbed, and dropped her head, sucking her breaths in through her mouth as she cried. "I'm sorry."

"Laceburner, you didn't do anything." Sunstreaker said.

"I'm sorry, I won't do it again." she cried quietly.

"Lacey, we're just... we're just idiots, Princess." Sideswipe promised, raising both of his hands to craddle her cheeks and wiped the tears off of her cheeks. "It isn't you, you're... perfect."

Then, she did something totally unexpected.

She dropped off the couch and onto her knees to be level with the two mechs, and wrapped her arms around Sideswipe's torso, leaned her head against his chest and tightened her grip on him.

He sighed as she slowly stopped crying, and he hugged her back tightly.

They stayed like that for about three whole minutes, before she pulled back and did the same thing to the yellow twin, which was even more unexpected than the first time she did it.

"I miss you." she mumbled into Sunstreaker's chest.

Sideswipe didn't fail to notice the way she said 'miss' instead of 'missed'.

Those three words were the last that she said before her grip loosened, and she fell into recharge against him.