This chapter is NOT pleasant. Subjects include but are not limited to gaslighting one's self, mindfuckery, and emotional manipulation alongside violence to a trauma victim. If you have PSTD of any kind, you are strongly advised to proceed with caution. I can't warn for everything and I am deeply, deeply sorry if I trigger you by accident.

Sinnertwin did not want to online. He did so anyway into a haze of confusion, pain, loss, and fear. Into a desperate, pathetically weak attempt to scramble back from the processor-shattering terror-fear-panic which threatened to devour him whole. He could see it. It gaped and bled energon and the raw sparking of things that should have been there but –

Systems, cascade-coding, instinct shrieked and howled, reeling back as panic and loss and nononononono punched him in the face with a force easily outmatching Hungrr's bite. Repeatedly. The pings to his brothers kept returning null-and-void with errors ranging from 100-700 errors to a slew of other errors that had him seeing sparks as his own internals malfunctioned.

He pinged each of his Gestalt.

They returned with exactly the same class of errors.

NO NO NO THEY WEREN'T GONE. THEY COULDN'T BE.

He let loose a scream of a roared shriek as his shattered mind reached for links no longer there, grasping at nothing but the painfully raw silent void of darkness that bled energon and sparked things that could have been warnings. Those were shunted aside, second to everything happening right now.

They were gone.

They couldn't be gone. "No-Nonono."

Something moved. A blot – a blob because Blot was gone gone gone of white green black that was familiar yet not. Optics whirled, trying to focus. A mech stood over him, just in sight –

He only had one optic, not two. One of his alt-mode heads had been damaged. The optic swivelled around, taking in everything, trying to see the mech who stood over him. His head couldn't - refused? to turn on command. It was – familiar. Greens and whites and blacks. Wings. Red optics. blastmask/faceplate/battlemask. Big. Bigger than the Lord Protector-

It – he – stood over him.

Sinnertwin fought, throwing everything he had against the bonds that kept him belly up, submissive. Weak. Vulnerable. Struggles ceased and fear bloomed across his processor when a thick, very large, white hand pushed against his chest, pinning him effortlessly to the slab. As if it was needed. He couldn't get free of the bonds, what –

Soft words in a familiar voice swept across his processor, but he refused to listen, shaking his head in denial (now it moved. Why didn't - oh. Motor controls were in a cascading branching failure and he - would have known that if he were sparked but he wasn't. Was this what it meant to be sparked? Learning everything over again and again?) No. nononono he was belly up, vulnerable. There was a hand on his chest. Over his spark. This was bad. So very very very bad -

The voice spoke again, firmer now. It cut through the hazy-fog-void of his processor like an energon blade. "I'm not going to hurt you, Sinnertwin,"

"No!" He hissed, optics still that sickly yellow as fans and vents rattled, attempting to suck in air to cool overheated systems. His t-cog screebled in protest as it came up against very deliberate anti-transform code. Nonono! This wasn't happening to him. He –

His intakes heaved, working overtime. Systems wrote warnings in lurid rust-red, and the lone Terrorcon ignored them. Where the frag was his team. Where the frag were they? He was the bottom of the pile, yes, but he was needed. They stuck together. So why was this-

They were not gone. He was malfunctioning. It'd happened to Rippersnapper once. It was only a matter of time before Cutthroat was at his side with her own manner of comfort, spinning gory stories of defeated Autobots that eventually had Blot yelling at her to tell the truth. Hungrr too, because it was expected? No. They cared about each other in their own ways. They were siblings. They fought and slagged off against one other but they were family. A Unit. Onlined and designed for each other in ways few understood.

(Sixshot had understood-)

They would come. They had to, and Sinnertwin refused to show any weakness to the mech above him, known or not. It would dishonour what being a Terrorcon was. What a Decepticon was.

"You don't have a choice," the voice said, still soft, calm. In control. Sinnertwin hated it. Loved it. Clung with everything he had to the voice. It – a feeble, weak light in the darkness and he wanted it to grow. It – He should want to snuff it, flee from the tiny, tiny thing that was smaller than him. Smaller and smaller and terrifying, but he needed it too- The voice spoke again. "The others are gone. You're going to be with me from now on."

They were not gone. He saw them, there. The inky void was a lie and if he reached for them and got pain, that was normal-

"Lies!" The dragon hissed, optic flickering red for a split fraction as reality cascaded into his shattered mind (that was Sixshot. Sixshot who'd left innermost energon for them all at one point or other. The same Sixshot who let them curl around him in alt-mode after a mission or because they wanted to, who accepted them and understood the bestial instincts and dynamics, though he claimed he didn't. But actions, not words, spoke loudest within Decepticon ranks).

Sinnertwin screebled and the fragile fragments of his mind spun dizzyingly out of control to the point it hurt to think too much. He just wanted his teammates, wanted to be in a pile of lazy Terrorcons who'd completed a mission, who were sated and content until boredom struck and they resorted to terrorising whatever base they were suck in, or playing tag with a Phase-Sixer who could easily kill them all, or rutting said Phase-Sixer-.

"What would I gain from lying to you?" Sixshot's hand left Sinnertwin's chest. Fans clicked over, as if it were suddenly easier to breathe. Stupid, foolish; he wasn't organic. "If you'll allow an uplink, I'll give you the report myself."

Sinnertwin couldn't curtail his manic, broken laughter as he struggled against the bonds. He felt sluggish, overheated, overclocked and Sixshot was.. odd. A blur of metal-and-warmth-maybe-safety? yet something was missing and he didn't know what –

He wanted to curl up. His processor hurt. "Submission. Weakness. Not giving. Never."

"What choice do you have?" Sixshot leaned in and Sinnertwin was now more than ever acutely aware of his inability to read any emissions field. Not his own, not Sixshot's. "I could simply offline you now."

NO-

The hand returned, and the dragon hissed in denial. He blanched when the restraints tightened, Sixshot staring at him unrevealing, unknowable, as if a monster. Suddenly the depths of the abyss that called, oh so tauntingly and sweetly for him, seemed like a Good Choice.

Yet Sixshot was also a code-wisp. A wisp and thread and a hope he clung to because if the Senior officer was there then so was the rest of the team and he only had to resist the call long enough to see his siblings again-

Sixshot's hand was heavier than before, vents and fans heaving now and the lurid rust-red warnings seemed brighter. Ominous.

"I could kill you very easily." Claws dug into metal and Sinnertwin moaned in protest. He didn't like pain-. "I fixed you, but it would be easy to undo it all." Sinnertwin knew he blanched fear, judging by the way the Phase-Sixer's optics lit up in - in delight. A distant, feeble part of him knew Sixshot was within his rights to murder – kill. Punish him in a fatal way. Sinnertwin was a grunt without a Unit, and potential liability. The Decepticons hated liabilities. If he had a Unit, he might have had a chance.

(non-adults and civilians did not count as liabilities.)

He had no Unit.

LIES. He had a Unit – he had to have Abominus- "LIES. LIES. LIES."

Mercifully Sixshot's fist offlined him in one blow.

Sixshot stared down at his friend-sometimes-rutting partner, vents heaving, field blaring distress. Flatline had long ago pressed himself against a wall. Sixshot's head swivelled to the medic. "Keep him offline and stable."

Or else.

"-Sir?" Flatline ventured, squealing and pressing himself back against the wall, as if Sixshot were Tarn himself looking at him.

"Need I repeat myself, medic?" That wasn't Flatline's official job and he knew it. He didn't care.

"No, sir. Keep him offline, and keep him stable. W-What about-"

"As long as he's offline, his mental state won't deteriorate."

Flatline nodded, optics pale energon-pink. "Yes sir."

The six-changer grunted, and made his way out the medbay. He was emotionally compromised and he didn't care. Between this and Danny's death, he was entitled to emotions. Megatron would understand. Gigatron's successor himself was compromised, even if he didn't see it. Though Sixshot really didn't feel like going against him by bringing that up.

Sixshot turned the corner towards the firing range, wishing Lockdown was within range. His Amica knew all the places to vent and didn't ask questions until the venting was done and Sixshot was on his knees, emotionally spent. But Lockdown wasn't here; the last time they'd been together had been after Danny's death and he'd invited the other to slaughter an Autobot base. His Clan... Hnnn. Perhaps later.

Sixshot touched his commlinks. It paid to be the Senior Officer of a base. "Oilslick... I need live targets. Autoblock-C will do."