The Honor in Duty
Chapter 8
Out of Place
Okay guys, I know it's been almost a whole year since I posted last, and I feel awful about it, but here you all go. Life has been hectic with loads of international travelling and school and my muses just simply have been refusing to cooperate. Hopefully I'll be able to return to semi-regular posting schedules soon, though that's really up to Real Life. Thank you so much for your understanding and patience everyone.
Review Responses: You guys truly are amazing, and I sincerely hope you're all still here, I know it's been ages, but I'd love to hear your feedback again! I don't know what I'd do without you guys.
To Cashagon: Yes, it really does seem like Terabyte knows a whole lot of Decepticons doesn't it? Honestly, it's probably in part due to how much enjoyment I have in the flashbacks, it's a ton of fun to cameo the different 'Cons. Also, since she is in Kolkular, and Kaon before that (the two largest Decepticon cities) it isn't unreasonable for just about every Decepticon in the army to pass through at some point in their career. As a high-ranking Communications and Intel bot, TB's job has her dealing with a whole lot of bots.
To AllSpark Princess: Here you go! So sorry that as soon as possible came so far down the track, but thank you so much for continually checking in on me, I honestly don't know if this update would have been possible without you!
To Sunsetwater: Honest to goodness, the psychopaths are so much fun to write, Blitzwing, Flamewar... Love 'em to bits. Not sure what it says about me that I write the crazies so well, but hey. Enjoy!
To Secretlyapartycreature: Oh my word, yes. Yes. Put the words together perfectly. It always drives me crazy when people go for a Disney-princess-style romance story and you're reading it and it's like five chapters in and they're hopelessly bedazzled and in love when they were at eachother's gunpoints in the first chapter. Fresh air indeed, and that was my goal.
To ZabuzasGirl: Well... It's not exactly immediate, but here you go! Hopefully it's worth the wait!
She drew her gold Energon dagger with a muted shink of the blade and pressed herself against the wall, a trickle of Energon running down her pede from where her mangled hip armor had pierced protoform. The two-wheeler held her mini fusion cannon charged and pointing skywards, dorsal plates pressed firmly into the wall.
Black finials swivelling and flicking out to catch as much sensory input as possible, the femme smirked coldly behind her Prussian blue mask.
Pedefalls. Coming straight towards her.
There was no way the Autobots should have been able to mount an attack on Kolkular itself, but Makeshift was right. The Decepticons had a traitor in their midst, so the murdering scum had known that Kolkular was stuck between troop rotations, and left with less than a quarter of their usual force.
"Did you hear something?"
Affirmative murmuring followed the question, along with hisses of the small team shushing each other.
"This is the CI wing, it's probably just techies and Vehicons."
The spy silenced a huff of dark amusement. These mechs had no idea what they had coming.
"I coulda sworn I heard someone draw a sword."
"Hey, lookit tha' mechs, that's life-En!"
The pedefalls hastened as the group came running straight for her with weapons ready, all of them alert and ready for a battle. She growled, but came out of her hiding place, hands raised in a surrendering position.
"Autobots." She acknowledged, nodding to them minutely. They circled around her, closing her in, confidence in their optics that she was helpless and outnumbered. She shuttered her optics for a brief moment, collecting herself and clearing her thoughts.
Now to wait for the first mistake.
It didn't take long for the leading mech to give her the opening she needed. He reached a servo towards her, stasis cuffs in hand, a wary, but open expression on his faceplates. Fast as lightning, she lunged forward, snatching his wrist and vaulting over the mech's helm, dragging him backwards by his helm fins as she went down.
Not deeming a hostage situation to be effective here, the spy stabbed her dagger through his back and spark chamber, ending him quickly. The other Autobots started to scatter in panic as their leader fell without so much as a cry. She leapt on the nearest mech's shoulders, snapping his neck with her pedes as she shot the third bot in the leg.
He shrieked and transformed, trying to drive away, but she fired another shot straight through his helm mid-transformation.
The largest mech in the team, a helicopter roared in rage and charged at her, swinging his dual swords that made up his alt-mode's blades. The tiny femme easily ducked under the razor sharp edge, hearing them whistle through the air right over her finials. Doing a rushed backflip to avoid the second blade as it came closer to her hip-level, she tripped landing and hissed as she fell hard on her injured hip.
She snarled and managed to roll out of the way as the swords came crashing down where she had been only an astrosecond ago, then she sprang up with a brief flash of static that she ignored, getting a short running start and leaping to kick one of the mech's swords off to the side. The helicopter, black and bright blue in coloring growled at her, his lips curled up in a snarl, rage tinting his vibrant blue optics white.
For just a moment she froze at the gaze, then recovered in time to side-step his flying fist, slicing at his abdomen with her dagger as she did so. She missed, putting a deep gash in his thigh instead. As she turned to feint a blow to his far too high helm, his fist collided with her gut in an echoing crash.
Her vision flashed out and she felt her frame soar through the air, landing with a sickening crunch as she hit the corner of the hall. The femme groaned softly, but shoved herself up to her pedes, pushing off the wall with a sharp war cry, plunging her dagger into the helicopter's chest with her momentum, kicking her pointed pedes into his sides to hold herself on him as he struggled to rip her off.
The spy shrieked as he grabbed her by her helm, trying futilely to pull her away, then he actually bit her arm with a snarl before she fired her cannon straight into his chest. As the mech fell backwards with her still clinging on, she watched his optics go blank, her spark wrenching within her.
She stayed crouched over the husk for a moment, venting heavily and looking around at the carnage. All four mechs of the team crumpled and gray on the scorched and life-En splattered floor. She swallowed thickly, then stood on shaky pedes.
The battle had hardly just begun.
Brig: Omega Outpost 1
Cliffjumper and Skyquake set down the pod right in the middle of the cell, the red mech groaning theatrically.
"So who's the popsicle of doom this time?" He patted the top of the pod then peeked in at the black and white Decepticon. Ex-Enforcer was written all over the mech's posture, paint-job, and weapons all alike, even in stasis.
Terabyte smirked at the mech's antics, rolling her optics at his new title for the sleepers. "His designation is Barricade."
She almost snarled the mech's name and Cliffjumper cocked his horned helm at her, "You know him?"
The little femme shrugged one shoulder, inclining her helm in an affirmative. Her armor was flared out and her posture stiff at the red mech's presence. Stiff to hide the shame that tried to pull her down. "Having worked as Soundwave's second in command for seven vorns, I am acquainted with a significant percentage of the Decepticon forces, either personally or through records."
The frontliner seemed somewhat taken aback and hurt by her coldly formal tone, but he just nodded with a light chuckle, "Fair point."
She sighed heavily, minutely regretting her tone, she continued with a slightly less cold voice, "I knew him only as a brief acquaintance."
"And he was a pain in the aft for every astrosecond of his miserable existence." Skyquake grumbled from behind them. "Everyone in the Decepticon force knows Barricade."
Cliffjumper laughed and gave the stasis pod a loud slap, "Well, he certainly won't be going anywhere any time in the next vorn or so."
"And thank the Allspark for that." Terabyte muttered, leading the group out of the brig with a heavy vent. The last thing they need was another smart-mouthed, arrogant Decepticon running around causing havoc on this mudball.
A Week Later
The sunset was beautiful. They always were in the desert. Now, sitting with her pedes dangling over the edge of the canyon upcropping that concealed their base was not near so nice to her as sitting in the center of her forest grove, but it was still beautiful and peaceful. The open bareness of the desert was not calming to her, not like the forest, but it was peaceful and quiet nonetheless.
Terabyte brushed the hard earth beside her, knocking a pebble down the jagged canyon wall, its clattering journey to the bottom interrupting the harsh stillness. The sky's vibrant hues of magentas, pinks, scarlets, and oranges had begun to fade to indigo and a few of the brightest stars of the night shone dimly now in the sun's dying light.
"So he made you one of them, huh?"
Her helm snapped to the side to watch the unwelcome interruption of her peace as he trudged toward her, coming to a halt a few paces behind her, crossing his arms to glare down at her. The way he said 'them' made it sound as though he was speaking of a rabid animal, and his tone brought her instantly to wary defensiveness.
She rose to face the mech, puffing out her armor a minute amount further. "Good cycle, Bulkhead. To what or whom are you referring?"
The Wrecker thrust his chin out to her with a grunt, "Knockout. He messed with your CNA, made you a Shifter. 'Least that's what the doc said."
"That would be correct." She seized up his confrontational posture with trained optics and shifted her posture to one more deferring and submissive, though not without dignity or confidence. "I was physically altered against my personal wishes for that is what my duty to my Prime required at the time."
"Prove it." Bulkhead grunted, challenge in his deep blue optics.
The little femme clenched her denta to bite back the nasty comment she wanted to make about how a quartex of rehabilitation, the medic's rage, and not to mention appearing before him as a Vehicon and getting her rib cage crushed beneath his very fist ought to have been proof enough for any fool with a two-bit processor to accept.
Instead she quirked an optic ridge upwards at the mech, her tone carefully level and unchanged, "As you might recall from the Medic's reports, the Shifting process is imperfect at best and causes a great deal of pain, which by Ratchet's orders my systems cannot handle at this time due to the malnutrition and stress they were put through in my time aboard the Nemesis protecting our Prime when he was incapable of protecting himself due to extenuating circumstances. Thus I will have to kindly refuse your request."
"Do I look like I care?" The much larger mech took a step closer to her, glaring down at her with an emotion closely resembling the hate she first felt for the Autobots as a whole. He growled at her, "It's gonna take a lot more than this act you have the others fooled with to earn my trust, 'Con. I've had enough of your games, flipping factions and fooling both sides like the traitor you are. You're not a redeemed 'Con and you never will be cause there's no such thing. A 'Con is a 'Con is a slagging 'Con and you'd do good to remember that, femme."
Terabyte inclined her helm to the mech, keeping her expression and voice devoid of emotion, though behind her battle mask her lip curled upwards in the sneer of all of her refrained remarks. She cycled a soft vent, her spark aching, though the past six months had grown her accustomed to such words.
"Your opinion is duly noted, Bulkhead." She turned back to face the now starry night's sky, regarding how the silver moonlight lit up the desert world, giving it a surreal beauty with empty optics, "Be aware that the Prime will be informed of this meeting."
"I'm sick of losing friends to bots like you." Bulkhead huffed, "Optimus is too trusting. Go ahead, run and hide behind Prime, just like all the defects do. They'll see what you are soon enough."
With that, the green ex-Wrecker left and Terabyte crumpled to her knees, coolant filling her optics. The stars twinkled in the sky, their clear, confident beauty seeming to mock her as she wept in silence, releasing the stress of nearly two years of confusion and struggling to find her place and gain trust, first with false intent, and then again and again honestly.
Every time she got anywhere with the Autobots, every time she gained just a little bit of their trust, she found herself kidnapped, or reprogrammed, or altered, or taken captive, or forced to take up a guise under one faction or another. It was as though fate itself deemed that she would forever remain beneath the bonds of distrust and fear.
She buried her helm in her knees and sighed heavily, coolant streaming from her optics as her spark and mind swirled in agitated turmoil.
Some time passed and the femme didn't move from where she sat curled up on herself. She was honestly surprised that Skyquake had not sensed her anguish yet and come to her. Even the Prime with his Matrix ought to have sensed such a pained spark. She knew little of the Matrix, but she knew that it granted the Prime a small amount of empathic ability.
The femme didn't begrudge the solitude though. She wouldn't have it any other way. Company was the last thing she wanted or needed right now. No bot could see her so completely broken as she now was.
A startled and also concerned whirl sounded at the entrance, making the small femme jump in fright only to curl up tighter around herself to hide her coolant-streaked face-plates from whoever it was.
Typical that someone would come just as soon as she thought of how the solitude was a blessing.
"Terabyte?"
She growled faintly at the tentative calling of her designation, sounding so nice in their mother language, toneless or not. Perhaps in a way, the scout's loss was a gift to them all. Nevertheless, she didn't look up, merely burying her face deeper into her knees.
The yellow scout called her name again and her black finials flicked in agitation.
He knelt beside her and laid a hand on her upper back and rubbed her dorsal plates gently, in that same way that he had when Makeshift first broke his bond with her. Like a guardian soothing his distressed sparkling. Her spark twinged with the reminder of the old pain, now added with the new pains compiled in the past year.
"Terabyte? It's three in the morning, what are you doing out here? You need to rest."
Bumblebee whirled softly, still rubbing her back as Terabyte continued to hide her face.
Careful to keep her voice as steady and cool as ever, she replied somewhat muffled, "Now is not a good time to speak reasonably with me, Bumblebee. I would prefer to be left in peace."
He let out a short, derisive little bleep, "You seem to be in more pieces than peace."
At that she looked up to give him a flat stare, her optics clouded with steam from her overheating systems, coolant staining her faceplates and armor. Bumblebee glanced away, taking the wordless rebuke.
After nearly a breem of silence, Bumblebee still attempting to sooth her, Terabyte's exhausted little frame began to slump against him.
Letting out a tiny sigh, the femme mumbled, "Why did you come?"
"I-" The scout shrugged his doorwings with a wry little smile, "I heard you crying."
She nodded minutely, her tone bitter, "Why did you care?"
Bumblebee didn't answer for awhile, just gazing out into the starry sky with his wide blue optics. "I come up here from time to time. It's peaceful." The scout looked into her optics with concern written in his, "Sometimes that's not always a good thing."
Terabyte hummed in agreement, feeling recharge beginning to claim her unwilling processors. She hadn't necessarily been on unpleasant terms with the scout. They'd resolved that after Skyquake recovered from his processor trauma. She could not honestly say that she had made much effort to be on friendly terms with the mech either, though the young Praxian had tried.
"Who came here before me? What did they say that so upset you?"
Flinching a little at the scout's query, the spy sighed. There was no harm in telling him, Bulkhead had continually made his opinions regarding her rather clear ever since her return. She told Bumblebee everything that the Wrecker had said and done earlier that night, leaving out nothing.
She had nothing to hide.
To fear on the other hand...
When she was finished, the Praxian's yellow doorwings were hitched up in anger, but tilted showing his grief and betrayal that his own friend would say such things.
His engine rumbled faintly and the mech whirred in displeasure and concern, "Optimus should know about this."
"So should Skyquake." Terabyte agreed softly, pulling away to rise, one hand held tightly over her chassis as though she could somehow hold her aching spark together, "But we will tell neither of them. In fact, swear to me you will speak to no one of this."
Bumblebee start to bleep out a protest, but she cut him off with a harsh flick of her finial. "It is not my place, nor my desire to be the cause of further contention than I have already been. The Autobots are at peace with me as a whole, I would not have that disturbed by the ill will of one mech."
The scout rumbled in disapproval, "Optimus should know. He can help, so can Skyquake. Ratchet should know too, he treats you like his own creation."
"They do not need to know at this time." She snarled at him, snapping her mask up and flaring her armor in annoyance. "When the time is right, I will tell them, or if they ask, I will answer truthfully, but until that point, I do not believe it would accomplish anything more than cause unnecessary strife and division among the team that we do not need so soon after the long absence of our Prime. The Autobots need to heal."
"And you think hiding this from them, lying to the bots who care about you, will keep their trust and encourage unity? When is lying ever a solution, Terabyte?" The yellow Praxian came up behind her and put a servo on her shoulder, "Lying only ever breaks, it never mends. I won't tell anyone, I respect your choice, but this can only end badly. They have a right to know."
"And I have a right to not tell them!" She bellowed, shoving the scout to his aft, her cannon humming to life without her realizing it. "What right do you even have to be here?! You of all mechs?"
Terabyte vented heavily, her gold optics widening with alarm. She shut down her cannon with a harsh sigh and took a step back from him with trembling armor. The sedative withdrawals were still affecting her. That must be why she was like this. Surely that was it. Nevermind the medic had cleared her and declared her off the drugs.
This wasn't her. She was calm and controlled, coolly professional in any circumstance. Emotional stress was high, but she had been through worse than this on her own. Many times. Except she wasn't alone now, that was the problem. This wasn't a matter of work, this was a matter of trust and friendship.
"I apologize, Bumblebee. I appreciate your presence, truly." She vented, then offered the mech a hand up, helping him to his pedes. "But I am a spy to my spark, what else can you expect me to do? Deceit is my specialty, for good causes as well as bad: you know my record. Perhaps when the time is right, I will share what I have shared with you. Until then, let us hope to contain the breakage."
A Week Later
Skyquake leaned his helm back against the wall with a sigh, his wings flicking uncomfortably as he pressed them into the wall, his pedes drawn up loosely to his chest, his arms casually draped over his knees. The monochrome room was cold and stark, but the jet paid the dull surroundings no mind.
On the berth beside the jet, Cliffjumper lay on his back with his helm hanging over the edge of the berth and his pedes propped up against the wall. The red mech groaned, lifting his hands up in the air and waving them in circles first one way, then the other, then flopping them back down to his sides.
"I am so bored I could offline."
He grunted in agreement, but said nothing in reply to the frontliner.
Glaring at the open brig door that they could leave through at any time, Cliffjumper moaned again. "What are we even doing here? There are definitely better ways to be spending our time."
"We are here because we have a sentence to pay out for the inhumane slaughter of a mech." Skyquake replied harshly, cracking his knuckles slowly and deliberately before resuming his silent vigil.
Cliffjumper lifted up his helm for a moment to look at the jet, then slammed it back down with more groaning, "Well aren't you just a bundle of joy?"
He didn't bother responding to the frontliner. They could both leave whenever they pleased. No one had ordered them to spend every groon of their off-duty time rusting in the brig with the doors wide open. Yet here they both were.
It was his duty. He had a sentence to fulfil, though their superiors had forgotten about the sentence in the aftermath of the Unicron crisis. It didn't matter that most mechs would be thrilled for their brig time to be completely forgotten.
Skyquake flicked a wing, hiding a wince as his wing-cons ground against the wall with the motion.
With the sound of approaching pedefalls, neither mech moved, but both mechs' optics brightened to alertness at the sound, watching to see who would come. The pedefalls were too light to be any of the mechs, so they both knew it was one of the two-wheelers. Skyquake allowed his optics to dim again though, his more sensitive neural sensors picking up that the approaching femme was not in fact the one he wished to see.
Arcee swung around the corner, causing the red mech to fling himself upright, flashing her his signature grin. The warrior femme quirked an optic ridge at the two frontliners, "So this is where you mechs have been."
She glanced at the open doors and stepped in, smirking wryly, "An interesting use of your off-duty time."
Inclining his helm respectfully to the femme, Skyquake returned to glaring at the wall in front of him. Cliffjumper on the otherhand, grinned brightly, patting the berth beside him, "Care to join us?"
"I think I'll pass this time, mechs, I've got a patrol with Terabyte in five." The femme strolled out, hanging off the corner and sticking her helm back around, "Care to join us for a pre-patrol refuel?"
Cliffjumper started to get up, then glanced down at him and sighed heavily, sitting back down on his berth and resuming his original position. "Maybe another time, 'Cee."
Terabyte sipped at her foul-tasting cube of nutrient saturated Energon, Ratchet's special recipe. She made a disgusted face, not bothering to hide it behind her mask. While she kept her battle mask up most of the time still out of habit, she no longer felt the need to hide behind it with the vigil she had grown accustomed to.
Given the past two and a half months of being in physical, mental, and emotional turmoil, it wasn't as if she had anything left to hide from these bots anymore. They'd seen her at her very worst.
Arcee strolled and slid into the seat across from her with a cube of her own Energon, glowing the nice bright blue that Energon should, a stark contrast from the murky gray that her medical concoction was.
"No mechs?" The younger femme asked curiously, knowing that the pink and blue femme had gone to attempt to recruit the two frontliners sitting in the open brig simply drawing out their guilt like she had for so long with her coloring. Serving their appointed brig-time after having been pardoned.
She simply hummed in agreement, downing half of her cube. "You know our mechs, stubborn to the end."
Terabyte swirled her meal with a disgusted expression, then shut her optics and swallowed it down, grimacing as the acrid taste washed over her glossa despite her best efforts. Waiting till the other femme finished her Energon, she rose, "Shall we then? Our patrol is in…?"
"Home state today. Let's go."
In a matter of klicks the two femmes were speeding over the packed, dry earth of the Nebraskan plains, spread out but remaining within visual range of each other, each motorcycle stirring up a large cloud of dust in their wakes. They drove on in silence for nearly an hour, following their patrol grid and revelling in the speed and freedom from the base.
The freedom wasn't such a rare occurrence any longer, but Terabyte was still immensely grateful to be allowed on light duty again by the strict medic. Being physically able to push her speeds again was a pleasure she hadn't had for months. Previously she'd been happy to keep five under the human's speed limits, it was beyond satisfying to see her internal speed gauge rise to a hundred and twenty of the human's miles per hour.
Ordinarily she could have easily gone at least fifty more, but by Ratchet's orders she wasn't pushing to her pre-Nemesis limits so as not to deplete her low energy reserves.
/Question for you./ Arcee commed suddenly, almost startling her from her thoughts.
Sending the accompanying glyph to indicate curiosity, Terabyte replied, /Yes?/
Rather than a question to start with, a memory file came through the comm line and the little two-wheeler would have cocked an optic ridge had she been in bipedal mode. She opened the memory file and skidded to a stop as she saw herself through Arcee's optics, tiny and vulnerable curled up on herself on her berth, giggling and sobbing hysterically.
"Primus help me…" The memory of her whispered, utterly broken.
Moments later a loud crash drew her optics up to a blur of Skyquake actually tearing the door open with his claws and drawing memory Terabyte into his lap, murmuring comforts into her sobbing, trembling helm.
With that image still forefront in her mind, the memory clip ended and Arcee asked her question, /How'd he know to come? You clearly share some form a deeper bond than the average bot, what is it?/
/I…/ Terabyte paused in the quick answer she was about to give, looking back into her own memories of that evening. She had not commed him. She'd cried out for him in her spark, but they had no bond for her spark pleas to reach him through. The femme looked deep into her spark questioningly, but could find no answer. All her spark held was the shattered remnant of a mentor bond with a dead mech. /I do not know./
She started riding again, not wanting to neglect their patrols. A carrion bird squawked at her movement again after having been still. /We are not bonded, nor is he my mentor. I am afraid I have no answer for you, Arcee./
The other femme didn't respond for awhile, then sent a curt acknowledging glyph. /He's a spark-split twin isn't he?/
Terabyte chuckled briefly, /Nor am I his twin./
/Hear me out./ Arcee snapped, then indicated that she heard something she wanted to investigate. Across the plain, the other femme transformed and clambered up the side of a canyon and scouted around it before jumping down and continuing the patrol, satisfied there was no threat. /Twin sparks work completely differently than ordinary sparks, and it's been seven and a half vorns since he's seen his other half./
/Something that ordinarily would kill both halves of the split spark./ Terabyte put in, beginning to see what the other two-wheeler was implying, yet confused.
/What if it hasn't because his spark has been treating you as a valid replacement of its other half?/
Her engine hummed, growing warm from her exertions. Her spark pulsed oddly in its chamber as though it were considering the possibility. She drove in silence for several breems, running her scans over the plains.
/Perhaps./
She said no more to the femme, but her thoughts didn't stray from their conversation. She watched the memory file a few more times, her spark pulsing fondly at the concern in Skyquake's ruby optics as he gazed down at her. Terabyte's engine let out a soft purr and she tilted a mirror, intrigued with herself for this reaction. His optics held such a warm, caring glow to them. It was interesting to watch his treatment of her from another bot's optics.
Perhaps Arcee's theory was right, or perhaps she and Sky were simply so close and so compatible that their spark frequencies were naturally drawn together. Perhaps the Allspark had formed them to unite, their meeting had been Fate. That was what Nightracer would have told her.
Terabyte took a turn and spun out her rear wheel in agitation. She didn't believe in Fate. Everything had a rational answer. She just didn't know it. Twin sparks were unique and no one really knew how they worked. Arcee's theory was the most plausible she'd heard yet.
"Your wings are stiff, the connectors are binding, they require fur-"
"You touch my wing-cons and I will tear yours out of your frame." He snarled at the white jet moodily. The gladiator flicked a wing in annoyance; he knew his wing-cons needed oiled and cleaned properly. They needed it pretty desperately but he wasn't whole. His other wasn't here.
As the only other winger in the base, Jetfire was one of the best mechs he could ask, though Bumblebee with his doorwings would also be fully capable of assisting. Terabyte could, but she hadn't exactly been in the best frame of mind of late, and with the combination of her exhaustion and Ratchet's recharge regime, she was in recharge more often than not.
He used to have an other. One he trusted completely. His mirror, his opposite, his self.
The other jet was still talking, trying to persuade him to let someone help his wing-cons' condition, but his thoughts had tuned out the mech's strange, Old Cybertronian accented voice long ago.
Skyquake clutched a clawed servo over his spark suddenly, right in the middle of Jetfire scanning him in continuance of his quartexly check up, startling the massive white shuttle into dropping the scanner. He let out a shrill keen, his razor sharp claws piercing through his armor. His wings pulled back tight as his spark roiled with pain and shock at sensing its other half for the first time in vorns.
Images and memories flooded through his mind and spark, none of them his own. Fears, honor, loneliness, distaste, an intense longing, and pain. So much pain, every day, every memory was filled with that same burning spark pain.
Faceplates he'd never seen before wailed in his memory as their optics flashed brightly for the last time, and explosions and weapon's fire from a thousand battles raged in his audials. Every second that passed seemed to bring the foreign mind closer and the memories and pain and screams grew louder and louder till his mind and spark were deafened by the roar.
He fell off the berth to his knee plates and howled, scraping at his chest-plates and keening until his vocalizers gave out. Soon he fell from his knees also and lay on the floor, his pedes drawn up to his chest, rocking back and forth wailing under the edge of the berth, his spark and sensory systems overwhelmed by the sudden rush through a bond he hadn't felt in vorns and his damaged processors had even forgotten.
His wings were trembling uncontrollably and his optics were wide with the pain and shock flowing through the bond between his spark and its other half. Little did he know that this overwhelming information overload was only a fraction of what it ought to have been. Skyquake's optics blinked, unseeing as he stared forward into the worried faces of the two medics.
Mouth opening and closing again, vents shuddering to pull air through his soon to glitch frame. Somehow his strained vocalizers pushed forth a single, shell-shocked word in *Daiz'pq'rion.
"Brother?"
*Daiz'pq'rion – Decepticon dialect (as pronounced by the Decepticons)