Sideswipe POV
It felt like his spark thrumming in its chamber. Sunny was here beside him. Yeah it wasn't the best of situations but he had been given the opportunity to check over his brother. Sunstreaker was doing good his nanites were accepting the repairs Arianna, which he found was her name, had done.
The twins didn't have much luck in anything really so for this human to find his twin and have him well on the way to recovery was nothing short of a Primus given miracle. Then for Sides to have found her and convince her to let him stay. To be honest, the red twin was waiting for the other ped to drop. The terror twins just didn't get life this easily.
Until then, Sides was willing to answer all of this organic's questions and any requests she had. If it was for Sunny, he would because honestly he didn't have anyone else to turn to and his twin needed the help.
The holoform of the red frontliner appeared next to his brother. This close to his not so golden twin Sides could feel his sanity returning and the crazy need to tear everything around him down was gone.
Sides' hands rested on his brother's silvery hoo. The color was wrong on him but the feel of his armor, the fiante thrumming of his brother's spark soothing him in a way nothing else cold. A part of him could barely believe that the only reason he could feel this feeling again was because of an organic femme choicing to pick his brother and fixing him.
She could have picked any car in that place but it was Sunstreaker she chose. His blue optics trailed over his brother and landed on Arianna's handy work. Seams in his brother's armor that were healing rapidly thanks to being closed properly.
His organic digits traced the lining of each weld. Each wound that could have killed his brother.
"Hey." The soft organic's voice cut into his thoughts and caused the red frontliner to look up at her. She had just exited a door on the right of the enclosed area called a 'garage.'
"Hey, isn't it late for you organics? The other two are in recharge right now."
"I have trouble sleeping sometimes, thought i would come down here and put some more work on your brother" Sides stepped away from his brother's alt form to give her better access to him.
"Do all organics have trouble recharging?"
She looked at him from the table in the back that was littered with tools and rags that were questionably clean. "Some of us don't have an easy time. But at least it gives me more time to work on your brother."
"Yeah." Sides agreed but felt like the answer was just there to placate him.
"So, I called James." Arianna said casually. She wasn't looking at him, just grabbing tubing and tools. "I told him that you needed a place to stay and that our living was open to you. I...I said you were someone from my past."
"Don't most organics have a lot of people they connect with as younglings?"
"Are younglings the way you say children?" The black haired woman asked, her hands now fidgeting with tools instead of actually doing anything with a purpose.
"Yeah." He tilted his helm to the side...or was it head in this organic disguise? He continued to look at her while she opened and closed her mouth for a moment.
"It is normal...but I didn't exactly grow up with a 'normal' family. And because of some of the things I went through, I ended up in a...less than savory situation." Arianna looked at him for a moment and then back down to her tools. "So I told them I met you there...The cages."
The way she said the words and the meaning of the words had a coldness settling in his spark and unpleasant memories surfacing. "The cages."
"They are these, well, they are illegal fight rings. It's a good way to make a lot of money quickly, especially as a fighter. But you can also be a bookie, or a medic, or you know a manager but all the same I told him that's how we know each other."
She didn't look up at him and Sides he couldn't look away from the woman. "You were a gladiator?"
She looked at him curiously. "No, I didn't kill anyone...but I have fought people pretty viciously." She scratched her neck and Sides could see her colors change to a dark red. "But that is where the practice came from. I just needed the money and a way to vent my anger." She wouldn't meet his eyes and was glancing at the floor a lot. It was obvious that she didn't enjoy talking about her past. "I got into a lot of trouble doing that and I ended up stealing an old man's wallet because I needed money. It wasn't my finest moment."
"Didn't you get into these cages because they paid good money? Were you bad at it?" Though the tone was joking, Sides felt anything but playful about the current topic. He had thought when they landed on this planet that the inhabits were stupid but he had hoped that some of the worst sides of cybertron wouldn't show up on this planet.
"Nah," She mimicked his grin but it didn't show in her eyes. "I was good but...I had other obligations with my money. I just needed a few bucks between fights. It changed my life stealing that man's wallet. I knew that I was hitting rock bottom." She picked up the tools that she had and the parts before moving to Sunstreaker's hood. He watched her open up his brother's chassis, it made him distinctly uncomfortable for someone to be so close to the lines and cables that were important to his brother's survival. "That life...I was really good at it, hardly ever lost the fights. But I was losing sense of who I was at 16 years old. I was…" She trailed off looking at the parts of his brother in front of her but he doubted that she saw them.
She shook her head and smiled at him brightly, as if the previous conversation didn't happen. A fake smile. "Well that's a story for another time, I just wanted to tell you that we needed to get our stories straight. I told Logan, Sides is what you went by and that you would be free to tell him your story or not. Don't let him try to bully you into talking. Let me know if he does, I'll put him in his place."
Sides wasn't sure what to do with that. Even among the autobots, there were very few that actually liked the twins and fewer still that genuinely cared about the two. Not that they actively tried to get others to like them. But still most, if not all, the autobots knew that they could handle themselves. So it was a kind of odd feeling for someone to say that they will take care of something for them.
The two were silent for a while as Arianna prepped the silver car for care and Sides let the new information sink into his processor. He continued to watch her as she patched the new tubing carefully into place. They stayed like that for most of the night until two in the morning when she decided that it was time for her to sleep. Sides didn't recharge though. Her words were running around his processors and he couldn't get them out of there. Who was Arianna?