Silverbolt ducked through the medbay hangar's doorway and straightened up, head close to the rafters. Ratchet, who was busy pulling fiber optics through an armored conduit for Elita's leg, did not look up. Elita, however, did, and said in a friendly tone of voice, "Hey, Silver. Do you need something?"

Ratchet added, "And if you're going to whine about the C-130 again, can it, Bolt-bucket."

He didn't like the C-130 form. It was incredibly slow, primitive and ugly. He would have much preferred to be a very large, sleek hypersonic jet -- and this world even had a few, though none currently in service, and none that could transport the other 'bots. However, he did acknowledge it was an aerodynamically stable craft, and well suited for potentially rough conditions. Regarding the Hercules, he had griped at Optimus a bit, and at Magnus a good bit more on general principles, but not at the medic at all. He felt Ratchet's response was, therefore, unwarranted, and he sighed in mild offense. "That is not why I'm here, Ratchet. Where is Sunstreaker?"

"He's next door in the rec hangar," Elita said, when Ratchet simply growled. "Ratchet couldn't take his whining anymore."

"Alone?" Silverbolt asked, and winced.

"I warned him," Ratchet said, "that if he said one more nasty thing he was going to be spending the rest of the day out of my earshot."

"He's injured." Silver's eyes narrowed in irritation. Injured, in pain, and an Autobot.

"So is every other 'bot on this base." Ratchet looked up at Silver, finally, and Silverbolt realized just how tired Ratchet looked. "We're all walking wounded, including you, Silverbolt. You're scheduled for my tender mercies tomorrow at oh-seven-hundred hours."

"Ratchet," Silver dialed his annoyance down several notches, and asked with real concern, "When was the last time you recharged?"

"Oh, don't you even start on me, 'Bolts." Ratchet pointed a finger at him, then moved it to the door and stabbed the air in the direction of the exit mercilessly. "Get. Out. You looking for Sunny? He's next door. Primus only knows what you want with him ..."

"His brother is doing reconnassaince at the moment," Silver said, mildly. "I was concerned about Sunstreaker's emotional state."

That got him a bemused look from both patient and medic. Elita lifted an eyeridge at him; her opinion of Sunstreaker could generally be summed up as, 'Would slag him in a heartbeat if he wasn't useful in a fight.' And she'd stated this plainly quite a few times. She also knew that he didn't care for Sunstreaker much either, though Silverbolt, as a rule, made a real effort to get along with everyone. Life was simply easier if he had friends rather than made enemies.

Ratchet snorted, "Silverbolt, he's bugfuck crazy, probably sociopathic, his anger management circuits are fritzed, and he only behaves at all because if he doesn't he stands a good chance of losing Sideswipe. And Sideswipe is even irritated enough at him, at the moment, to take a long recon mission to avoid him."

Silverbolt inclined his head in a nod of acknowledgment. "Thank you for directing me to him, Ratchet."

That love for his brother -- the only person in the world that Sunstreaker cares about -- is what I am counting on.

Silverbolt had been a leader, once, though he hadn't commanded anyone in millenia. The Autobots had a deep, talented pool of officers, and Silverbolt was content let the others take charge. However, he had observed that the usual low-level irritation that most of the 'bots felt towards Sunstreaker had jumped up recently. He had known the twins long enough to realize that Sunny was useful in battle. He didn't want his team to lose any possible advantage, even an advantage as unpleasant to live with as Sunstreaker.

Sunstreaker was, as Ratchet had said, in the recreation area in the hangar next door. Specifically, he had been deposited, legless and armless (and Silver was very sure that Sunny had been in posession of one arm after the fight, but perhaps it had been removed for repairs) on the floor. The room had a large ring drawn on the floor for sparring practice, and not much else -- they were still trying to get actual recreational items set up in here. A large projector was on order, for group video-watching, and a few other things. For now, though, it was a mostly empty space with no other 'bots in it.

Sunny glanced up as Silverbolt entered, then said sourly, "Come to stare at the slag heap? Or has Optimus finally decided to offline me until the end of the war?"

Silverbolt sighed, and sat down next to the self-described slag heap. Offlining you until the end of the war is a real possibility and we both know it. He didn't say a word. Being the leader of a gestalt team of combiners had taught him a lot about dealing with angst. And he'd known Sunstreaker for almost as long as he'd been online. Sunny was a bit of a jerk -- okay, a lot of a jerk -- with prickly edges and a nasty sense of humor that often involved only one-sided amusement, on Sunny's end. But he was also hurting, and if there was one thing Silverbolt knew, it was what emotional pain was. He might not like the mech much, but he figured he could at least get his head screwed on a little straighter.

Sunstreaker, as Silverbolt well knew, liked to talk.

"Go away, and leave me alone. I don't want to talk to anyone," the 'bot informed him, sounding quite angry.

"Sideswipe is with Ironhide and Arcee. They seem to make a very good team," Silverbolt said, quietly. Sunny wasn't as bad as Bluestreak, but he was still constitutionally incapable of sitting in sullen silence for long. He would talk to Silverbolt.

"What do you know about fucking ground troops? They're infantry. You're a damn flier." Sunstreaker cast a baleful look in Silverbolt's direction -- they had replaced his optics, at least, though his face was a charred ruin.

Silver shrugged expressively. "I was speaking more of the relationship between them than their tactical prowess. They trust each other, and there's cameraderie there. Your brother has made good friends with the two of them."

And I wonder if the decision to split the twins does not have something to do with Optimus and Magnus believing Sideswipe needs friends beyond just his brother. The two of them are so tight that might as well be welded together at the hip, but 'Siders is a good bit more sane and reasonable than his brother. There's every chance that we will someday need to offline Sunstreaker for our own good, or he could be killed in battle. Sideswipe will survive the loss much better if he has other friends to turn to.

Silverbolt well knew the need for 'friends' in the face of that sort of loss. If not for Bluestreak ...

"Yeah, well, friends won't always keep you alive," Sunstreaker snapped. Then he huffed a sigh and said, "I should be there with him. I'm supposed to be watching his back, not a geriatric gunner and mech with a bad case of multiple personalities."

"You're worried something will happen to him and you won't be there to help. Can't be there to help." Silverbolt leaned back, somewhat cautiously, against one of the pillars supporting the hangar's roof. He regarded Sunstreaker calmly.

"Yeah, well, thanks counselor, any idiot would be able to figure that out." Sunstreaker didn't have arms to fold, but he hunched his shoulders as if he was thinking about doing so. Then he snarled, "And you? You had four brothers and you couldn't keep any of them alive."

Silverbolt had been expecting Sunstreaker to lash out, though perhaps not exactly in that manner. He couldn't help the purely mental flinch, or a sudden flare of anger, but he had not been the leader of his brothers for nothing. He'd actually heard worse a few times. Instead of lashing out right back, he quietly said, "We were a gestalt, Sunny. A combiner team. The first, among the Autobots. We had a relationship very much like between Cybetronian twins, except that there were five of us. We knew each other to the core of our beings -- which didn't mean we always got along."

"You and Skydive were always a bit tense," Sunstreaker observed.

"Mmm. Yes. I often think that Skydive should have been our leader, not me ... I was designated leader because I am good at looking out for others, and good at diplomacy, but he was so much better at tactics. And he was the first to die." Silverbolt sighed. "You know I tried to save him."

Sunstreaker snapped, "I was there."

Silverbolt inclined his head in agreement. "Strapped to a Decepticon's work table with datalink cables coming out of your aft, as I recall, but yes, you were there."

Sullen silence met that reminder of what the Decepticons had done to him. Green optics glared coldly.

"We rescued you and Bluestreak," Silverbolt said, after he'd managed to calm himself. "And lost Skydive in the fight. Two for one dead -- a fair trade, I suppose, though for us it was as if we had lost part of our sparks themselves. We were right there, Sunny, flying in formation next to him in battle, and we lost him anyway. There was nothing we could do."

He shuttered his optics, remembering Skydive -- daring, brave, so very smart. Skydive had been keenly analytical, yet intensely courageous at the same time. He had not liked fighting, but he had been good at it. His favorite memories of Skydive were of him pushing himself -- pulling off stunts that were well beyond the design specs of his frame, sometime successfully and sometimes not. He'd popped welds more than once; had stalled out on a regular basis; had crashed a few times. Silverbolt had lived in fear that someday Skydive might manage to permanently offline himself by smacking into a rocky planet somewhere, but in the end, it had been, perhaps predictably, a Decepticon missile that had killed him.

"After that, we weren't a combiner team any more -- but we were a team, Sunstreaker. We were four brothers." Silverbolt rested his hands on his knees and regarded the mangled remnants of the other Autobot in silence, waiting for Sunny to say something back.

He didn't have to wait for long. "This is supposed to make me feel better? First you point out I'm worried about 'Sides. And then you tell me you lost your brother and couldn't do a thing about it? You're daft."

"We lost Slingshot in another battle, on some blasted moon with just enough atmosphere for us to fly," Silverbolt didn't rise to the bait, and kept calmly speaking. "You weren't there -- I think you and your brother were off on a mission somewhere. It was a supply run, and routine. So routine the rest of us were in recharge when it happened. He was ambushed, and I don't even know who did it. The moon was in orbit around a gas giant so large it was nearly a second sun, and the Decepticons shot them off the moon and into the planet's atmosphere. He was alive, but we could not rescue him from that gravity well. He could radio us, though. He was conscious. We had to ... we had to retreat, Sunny, as the Decepticons were beating us to slag, and flee before the gravity and pressure claimed his life. We had to say goodbye knowing he was going to die, and knowing there wasn't anyone in range with the ability to get him out."

Silverbolt shuttered his optics again. Slingshot had been harsh, abrasive, and had no few character flaws, including an irritating tendency to take sole credit for victories that were rightly shared by the whole gestalt. As leader, he'd spent more time smoothing over difficulties between Slingshot and other Autobots than the rest of the gestalt caused all together. And it had hurt, hurt to the very core of his being, to say farewell, our brother with Slingshot screaming for them not to leave him behind, and knowing he was going to die alone.

Neither Fireflight nor Air Raid had been inclined to follow orders and leave Slingshot behind. He had been forced to chose between one dying brother (who he could not possibly rescue) and two living ones. He and Magnus and Grimlock (because this was before the Decepticons had captured Grimlock) had been required to take Air Raid down when he'd pulled a pulse cannon on them. Meanwhile, Hot Rod, so very young then, had somehow managed to cajole Fireflight into leaving without physical force -- possibly, Roddy had convinced 'Flight that he needed to stay alive to protect his other two brothers. Though getting 'Flight to think that far ahead would have taken a small miracle.

Sometimes he could still hear Slingshot's helpless screams as he woke from recharge.

He continued, despite a low growl of irritation from the other mech, "You and your brother were with me when Fireflight died."

Unwillingly, Sunstreaker said, "Shockwave's missile."

"On that sparkless moon, yes." Silverbolt had been offline when it happened, knocked out by a separate missile. He'd woken to find another brother gone, and Ratchet so worried about his own emotional state that the medic had dropped his customary surliness -- at least, until Silverbolt had pointed out that a sympathetic Ratchet was scarier than a cranky Ratchet.

"I don't know what happened to Air Raid," Sunstreaker said, quietly, after a moment.

"He's not dead."

Sunny glanced over at him, the gears and pistons in his neck groaning as he moved his head. "I thought he was."

"You know Optimus's rule about not attacking other Autobots, right?" Silverbolt spoke without opening his optics.

"Yeah." Sunstreaker sounded positively surly. Had there been enough of his face left to do so, he probably would have been glowering. "I know it."

Because you're on a final warning. Silverbolt was well aware of Sunstreaker's record. He was still an officer; it was still possible they might ask him to lead a team into battle. He got reports from Ratchet on the mental status of the other Autobots, and disciplinary reports from Magnus, just like the other officers.

"Air Raid blamed me for a lot of things," Silverbolt said, quietly. "But things were okay until they needed me to go on a mission behind enemy lines. Air Raid was injured, and I was the only flier at the base. There was a group of Autobots pinned down and they needed me to do an airdrop of medical supplies to them -- two were too injured to move."

Silverbolt huffed a sigh through his vents, and said, "I must have been with Optimus and his crew."

"Yes, you and your brother were that mission to the Nebulans with Prime. Prowl was in charge at the base , and Prowl was one of the 'bots behind enemy lines." Silverbolt blinked open his optics, and regarded Sunstreaker for a moment. "You understand, we had to get supplies to them -- weapons, rockets, fuel. And I was going to drop in First Aid, as Prowl had an energon leak, and had taken a hit to his coolant pump."

"Of course."

"I am not a very good fighter," Silverbolt was only too willing to admit that. "I don't have the reflexes for dogfighting, and I just don't like it. But it was Prowl, and the others, and we had to get them out, so of course I agreed. And Air Raid ... Air Raid disagreed. He was not able to fly himself, but he threw a huge stink and finally turned his weapons on Ratchet. Damn near killed him. And when I stepped in, Air Raid shot at me, screaming it was better that I die at his hand than be captured and tortured by the Decepticons."

He could still hear those screams in his head. Air Raid's utter and absolute fury, and the insanity in his optics. He'd lost three brothers and was convinced he was going to lose a fourth, and was willing to do anything, including kill other Autobots, to save him. And when that didn't work, he'd tried to kill Silverbolt himself to 'save' him from a fate potentially worse than death.

Silverbolt added, "I was wounded, in the fight, and unable to deliver the supplies they needed. The 'bots behind enemy lines, they were all killed, though they never found Prowl's body. We don't know what happened to him."

He added, "That was twice. The first was when Air Raid disregarded direct orders from every officer in the field to try to save Slingshot, when there was no hope of saving him. Attempting to kill me, and shooting Ratchet, was twice. They offlined him after that. The only ones who know what happened are those who were there that day -- he cost us Prowl and four others. He'll face a trial at the end of the war, assuming there ever is an end. I don't think I'll be there. I'm still furious at him. Not only did he cost Autobot lives that day, and try to kill me, but I lost my last brother in the same moment of stupidity."

Silence, from Sunny, for a long moment. Then Sunstreaker said quietly, in an unusually civil voice, "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because," Silverbolt said bluntly, "You're being an idiot. With no arms and no legs you still managed to piss of Ratchet so badly he doesn't even want to see you. Ordinarily, you would be getting the first repairs, but I note he's dumped you off here by yourself. You've threatened Mikaela, you've refused to cooperate with anyone who tries to work with you, and why -- because your paint is scratched?"

"If you haven't noticed, it's a bit more than missing paint," Sunstreaker said, and the anger had returned to his voice.

"Yeah, I get that." Silverbolt stood up. "But as long as you're sitting here like a pile of slag, you can't keep your brother safe. The fastest way to get repaired is going to be to stop pissing off the Chief Medical Officer and his assistant."

"Like you care about me getting repairs. Or my brother."

Silverbolt stared down at the crumpled ruin of a 'bot. Sunstreaker really did look pathetic.

"What I care about," Silverbolt said, short and sharp, "is that the Decepticons have killed three of my brothers, and the fourth is deactivated, and I want to win this war. Preferably as quickly as possible. That's my motivation and you, Sunstreaker, are an important part of that goal. By contrast, what you care about is your brother. You can't keep him safe if you're in this state. You might be able to protect Sideswipe once you're on your feet again. -- Now, you can sit there like a lump feeling sorry for yourself, and or you can start being a lot nicer to Ratchet and the other medics."

Sunstreaker stared, wordless.

Silverbolt leaned over and hissed, "I honestly do not care if you are crazier than a glitch mouse that just got into the high grade, as long as you can keep it to yourself and we can aim you at the Decepticons as needed. But everyone on this base would much prefer that you keep your special brand of crazy to yourself. You have managed to piss off every commanding officer you've ever had, plus the entire medical staff, plus every Autobot I personally know and plenty I don't. Even your brother has reservations about your mental state. And Sideswipe loves you more than his own spark."

"What can I say, I'm talented that way."

"We are short on resources and limited on medical staff. It is entirely possible that they may decide to simply deactivate you because the cost/benefit analysis doesn't work out for repairing you and getting parts is going to be a huge challenge. At the moment, there's zero emotional reason for anyone to fix you. They'll offline you until the end of the war -- or until our race dies a slow and lingering death. You may never wake up again. And once you're deactivated, where does that leave Sideswipe? Would you rather be a pile of slag quietly rusting away somewhere, or would you like to be back on your feet so you can watch his back?"

Sunstreaker grunted. It sounded like it might have been an affirmative.

"I know you are perfectly capable of being charming," Silverbolt poked him in the crumpled chest armor with one finger. "I would suggest you apologize to Ratchet, then do your best to be nice."

"They know me. They won't buy it."

"They're medics," Silverbolt snorted. "They don't have to like you. Ratchet would fix Megatron himself, as long as Megatron wasn't being actively vile and said 'please'."

"Would not."

"Okay, probably not Ratchet the Hatchet." Silverbolt grinned, letting Sunstreaker see the smile. "But you are not Megatron. You're an Autobot."

He knew he'd made his point when Sunny said, "Go away, Silverbolt. You're annoying."

"Probably," Silver straightened up. "But I'm also right."