Disclaimer: Transformers; do not own. His Dark Materials/Golden Compass; do not own.
Summary: Semi-crossover; oneshot series. The twins; Despite what every other mech on board might believe, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker don't actually hate the humans and their dæmons.
After
Sideswipe and Sunstreaker
It had been a couple of months since Mission City. There was still a government frenzy going on in the background, covering up the fact that they were not alone in the universe, and there were still plenty of questions and too little answers. Things were starting to get exciting. Prowl's group, which consisted of Red Alert, Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, Bluestreak, and Prowl himself, had recently arrived on Earth.
As the Autobots anticipated, the twins don't get along well with the humans. They had hoped that they would get along better, mostly because the human-dæmon bond was somewhat similar to the bond between Autobot twins, so they should have had some level of understanding right off the bat. They were disappointed, but not surprised, when that hope tumbled down. At best, the relationship between the humans and the twins was one of mutual indifference. Other times, the twins were rude, and condescending, and the humans' reaction was to be openly mocking.
But despite what every other mech on board might have believed, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker didn't actually hate the humans and their dæmons. They didn't like them, but, where their human allies were concerned, they didn't hate them.
The truth was that they couldn't hate them.
The twins knew that the humans reminded all the Autobots painfully of the half-sparks. They knew in the far-away, wistful looks, in the veiled tones of grief, and in the looks of absolute wonder as the Autobots looked upon a race where semi-spark splitting was not a norm, but an absolute rule.
Yes, the twins knew. They knew better than anyone suspected about a lot of things. They felt it more acutely than they showed, too.
Sideswipe and Sunstreaker are in the Autobot rec room, drinking some high-grade while they're off-duty. Sideswipe has his chin on the table, bored, and Sunstreaker, reading a data-pad, couldn't care less.
Bumblebee walks in the room, one hand curled around Sam, and the other hand curled around his dæmon. The human looks surprised, his dæmon looks displeased, and Bumblebee looks petulant.
Bumblebee is angry with Sam. Huh. Now that's something you don't see everyday. Sideswipe gives the scene a bit of his attention—he's bored, and this is just a smidge more interesting than the high-grade at the bottom of his cube—but Sunstreaker ignores the newcomers.
"Come on, 'Bee," Sam says as Bumblebee puts him on a high shelf—high even by Autobot standards. "We didn't mean anything. It was just a comment."
His dæmon gives a huffy yowl as Bumblebee sets her down beside her human. "I'll be back later…maybe," Bumblebee says crossly, and exits the rec room. Sam looks after his retreating 'guardian,' with a look of pure indignation. His dæmon, for her part, growls audibly.
"What was that about?" Sam asks his dæmon when Bumblebee has gone.
"Someone got out of the wrong side of the recharge berth," the twins hear his dæmon say. Then, she notices that she and her human have an audience. Sam looks up.
"Oh. Hi," Sam says. Sideswipe gives a wave, already placing his chin on the table again, and Sunstreaker returns to his data-pad.
Sam looks carefully at the ground, several stories below him. He sits, legs dangling at the edge of the shelf, and his dæmon rests beside him. "You gonna offer to get us down?"
"Nope," they say.
"Figures."
On the Autobot side of Cybertron, the half-sparks were cherished, pitied, taken care of, and feared only by those who did not have a half-spark for creations or bonded siblings or friends. That was the world that most of the Autobots knew.
Very few mechs knew this, and those that did would never dare say anything (if not because they actually cared, then because they were afraid of what the twins would do to them), but the twins were actually raised in a Decepticon area of Cybertron.
Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were actually treated very well on that side, even though both were of Autobot design. Twins were universally cherished on Cybertron, a cultural trait that many of their comrades blamed for their incessant vanity.
The paradox of Cybertron had always mystified them, in which where real twins were treated as though they were gifts straight from Primus, whilst the half-sparks might as well have been children of Unicron.
However, they were not blind to the other side of things. They saw the half-sparks, often abandoned by their creators, cast out to live amongst the drones and treated less than the glitch-mice that scavenged the streets.
Though they had a deep pity for these beings, they were scared of the half-sparks for a long time as well, because in them they saw a twin-bond, twisted and mutilated almost beyond recognition. For a long time, they treated the half-sparks as though they were contagious.
But then…then they met them. Two little femmes, mere sparklings that they had met by happenstance one orn, when they slipped away from their guardians to wreak havoc on the streets.
Those two half-sparks had treated them kindly, let them join in on their crude game.
And then…then when the twins' guardians finally caught up to them, their friends were treated so cruelly. They weren't hit, they weren't yelled at; they were merely ignored, treated as though they didn't exist.
And yet they still laughed.
They always had a far-away look in their optics. They held a vague interest in everything, all the while focussing on nothing. They were small, weak, dented, and flawed.
They were kind.
Sideswipe and Sunstreaker slipped away many more times, just to see them. They became friends. And when a scientist approached the twins, asking them to be studied so that they might find a way to split the half-sparks and make them into real twins, they had agreed without hesitation.
They didn't do it for Cybertron. They didn't do it for Optimus, didn't do it for Megatron (who, at that moment in time, hadn't shown his tyrant-colours). They didn't do it for riches or glory or fame. Most of all, they did it for them. And, young and naïve, they believed that they could save them.
Sam is lying down, his legs still dangling from the edge of the shelf, with his dæmon resting her paws and head on his chest.
"What did you say to him?" Sideswipe asks. The cougar turns to regard the Autobot. The human lifts his head a bit.
"So the great Sideswipe deigns to lower himself and talk to the little people?" he asks in a sing-song tone that thinly veils his surprise. He has a right to be surprised; both twins usually ignored the humans.
"Don't push your luck, squishy," Sideswipe says with a glare. "So what did you say to him?"
Sam gives a careless half-shrug, and his dæmon plops her head back down on his chest. "Just made a passing observation that he's a bit shorter than the rest of the Autobots, that's all."
Sunstreaker scoffs. "So that's it? You called him short?"
"And maybe something about how he's pretty bulky for someone his size."
"So…not only did you call him short; you also called him fat," Sideswipe said.
Sam rose a little, facing them, and then opened his mouth, as if to retort, but then his took on a surprised expression and said, "I guess I did. Huh, how 'bout that?" He chuckles at this, and his dæmon rubs her head against him, chuckling too. "Looks like we owe someone an apology, Tristanne."
Tristanne said, "'Bee's such a drama queen."
The twins looked up. Dæmon names were not as easily given out as the name of their humans, and the dæmons didn't really speak in front of other humans or Autobots. Now they knew the name of Sam's dæmon, and she was Tristanne.
They didn't feel any inkling of surprise or happiness at this knowledge that Sam and his dæmon let them privy to. None at all.
After a long time of study, the scientist believed that he had found the cure. It was a process that he called intercision, whereby a blade of cybertronium would be used to sever the spark energy in between two half-sparks, making each of them full sparks, and real twins.
It was a quiet affair; so quiet that intercision was thought to be a myth by most of Cybertron. It was only known in the small community where the scientist worked.
It failed. The half-sparks placed under the blade all perished.
It was pandemonium then. All the fears and suspicions about the half-sparks reached a murderous frenzy when the inhabitants found out that intercision failed. So much science, so much logic…it should have worked. In theory, it should have worked.
It became as though the half-sparks were monsters, uncanny, belonging to the world of nigh-ghasts and not to the waking world of sense.
Then the whispers started, making wild claims. Even claims that the half-sparks were the heralds of Unicron.
In their fearful frenzy, the witch hunt began.
Sunstreaker and Sideswipe were almost fully-matured mechs by now, and their friends were just a little beyond younglinghood. When they found out what was going on, they razed the streets in search of their friends. Finally finding them, they pulled them to their feet, and started running for the other side of Cybertron.
"What are we doing? Where are we going?" one asked amiably amidst the shouts and screams.
"Don't you understand, you glitch?" Sunstreaker had yelled to her. "Don't you understand what's happening?"
"Yes," she had said. She had smiled at him in her kind, vague way. "Uh-huh. You're taking care of me and my sibling."
They couldn't respond to that, because their hunters were coming nearer, and they had to move.
But when they had finally reached the Autobot side of Cybertron, it was too late.
It's been about ten minutes. Amongst themselves, Sideswipe bets that Bumblebee will cave and come get Sam in another thirty minutes. Sunstreaker bets fifteen.
A small ring pervades the air, and Sam picks up his cell phone.
"Hello? Oh, hi Mikaela!" Tristanne's ears perk, and she circles around Sam's legs as he paces back and forth on the ledge. "Oh, you know, just hangin' around," Sam chuckles into the phone. The boy is looking at the ground and at the ceiling, but never directly in front of him. Tristanne's eyes are focused on the phone. Neither boy nor his dæmon seems to notice the shrinking gap in between them and the edge of the shelf.
"You think we should do something?" Sideswipe asks, gesturing to the boy and his dæmon seemingly making a beeline for the edge.
"Nah," Sunstreaker says, pressing a button to view another screen of his data-pad. "As stupid as humans are, they can't be that stupid…"
"Uh-huh," the boy continues, neither slowing nor turning his path. His dæmon walks briskly beside him, still looking at the phone.
"Uh, Sunny…?" Sideswipe asks, getting up slightly in his seat. Sunstreaker gives his twin a glare.
"What?" He looks carelessly in the direction his brother was looking at, and his optics widen slightly.
"Me and 'Bee kind of got—" the rest of the sentence is cut off in a startled yelp as Sam reaches the edge, loses his footing, and stumbles off the ledge. Tristanne keeps her footing, but yowls in his fear and hers as he plummets towards the ground.
Sideswipe gets to his feet first, but Sunstreaker is closer. Sunstreaker ends up making a dive for the human, catching him in his hands. Then he is pushed, as his brother, running just a spark pulse behind him, doesn't stop in time and careens into him. Both are sent sprawling into the wall.
They get up slowly. Sunstreaker looks to make sure that the human didn't get squashed on the way down. Then his optics narrow.
"Are you crazy?!" he yells at the human. "Even glitch-mice have enough data not to—not to—"
Sam looks up shakily. "Oh," he says dazedly. "Hi, Sunstreaker."
Sunstreaker just stares at the human in his hands, calculating if dropping him from this current height would leave marks. Sideswipe doesn't know whether to laugh or to be slightly anxious for the squishy's life.
"Take him," Sunstreaker says finally, handing the human to his brother. "Just take him."
"Well, you certainly left a good impression," Sideswipe says. Sam is still a bit disoriented, and Tristanne is yowling to be with her human. "Come on, squishy-kitty," Sideswipe says, getting Tristanne from the ledge and joining her with her human once more.
The half-sparked sisters haunted them after long that; haunted them as surely as Optimus' sparklings still haunted him, even eons after the last half-sparks faded. Sometimes they would be racing down a roadway, see something in the corner of their optics, and stop abruptly, thinking that a passing shadow was one of their friends. Sometimes, in deserted corridors, they would hear them laughing, beckoning them to play as they had many times before.
But on some nights, dark nights, they could hear them crying and screaming.
"They'll never forgive us," Sideswipe found himself telling Ratchet after a particularly bad night. Ratchet knew who he was talking about; he had seen to the twins and their fallen companions after they were brought in.
"Maybe they have," Ratchet had answered him. "Maybe it is you that won't forgive yourselves."
Sunstreaker had scoffed. "It's easy for a mech to forgive himself."
"Is it now?" Ratchet had asked. It was one of the very few times in his life that Sunstreaker looked away.
Sideswipe and Sunstreaker are in the Autobot rec room, drinking some high-grade while they're off-duty. Sideswipe has his chin on the table, bored, and Sunstreaker, reading a data-pad, couldn't care less.
Their captive is currently on the desk, being held firmly by Sunstreaker's hand. Not for the first time in the past five minutes, he attempts to squirm out. Sunstreaker's grip tightens.
"Don't even think about it," Sunstreaker says, not looking from his data-pad.
"Oh come on!" Sam bursts out. "So I wasn't really paying attention that one time! Does that mean I have to be shackled somewhere for the rest of my life?" Tristanne paces around Sunstreaker's hand, jumps up his fingers to rub her head comfortingly against Sam, and then paces around again.
"Humans are rather dim, aren't they?" Sideswipe asks.
"What do you mean by that?" he asks. Tristanne pauses in her pacing, looking at him.
"We're not doing this for safety reasons," Sideswipe says, not moving. "You can go jump off a fifty story building and we'd probably celebrate. We just think that Bumblebee should be punished for making us put up with you."
Sam looks confused, but then the twins hear Bumblebee coming. Quickly, Sunstreaker places Sam under the table, Tristanne running and leaping onto Sunstreaker's knee to be closer to him.
"Uh, guys?" Bumblebee says, looking at the empty shelf ledge. "Have you seen a human and a cougar running around?"
"Nope," the twins say in unison. Sunstreaker can tell by Tristanne's change in posture that Sam has caught onto their plan. About time.
Bumblebee is still for a moment, and then his optics widen.
He rushes out of the rec room. "Jazz!" he yells down the corridor. "You gotta help me! I lost my human!"
Sunstreaker slowly lowers his hand to the ground, releasing the human. Tristanne jumps down lightly, using Sunstreaker's leg as a ramp, and joins him.
"Havoc and pandemonium," Sam says, nodding his head in understanding. "Interesting."
"Look at it this way," Sideswipe says lightly. "At least this'll teach him to leave you up on high ledges. Better go now, squishy," Sideswipe adds, as the sounds of hurrying footsteps approaches them. "And remember—this never happened."
"What never happened?" Sam asks innocently, and then the boy and his dæmon exited, using the Autobot base vents.
"Interesting creatures," Sideswipe remarks.
A pause.
"Stupid, but interesting," Sideswipe amends.
"I can agree to that."
Despite what every other mech on board might believe, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker didn't actually hate the humans and their dæmons. They didn't like them, but, where their human allies were concerned, they didn't hate them.
The truth was that they couldn't hate them. How could they hate these laughing, joyous beings who remind them so very much of others who were so much like them?
They were wary of the humans, just as they were wary of the half-sparks. They didn't want to make the same mistake again.
But…but maybe it wasn't a mistake. Maybe all this was a second chance…or…or a sign, or something.
Neither Sunstreaker nor Sideswipe believed in signs, but, the day they stopped Bumblebee's little foolish companion from becoming splatter on their nice clean rec room floor was the day that the crying in the back of their processors became quieter.
Maybe, one day, they wouldn't hear crying anymore.