Chapter Twenty-Two: Together
Sideswipe and Sunstreaker sit in the brig. The lighting flickers. Outside their walls, an explosion rumbles through the base. They've been in there for ages, seated on the floor on opposite sides of the cell.
Sideswipe tilts his head back. His helm knocks against the wall.
"Sounds like it's getting bad," he says.
Sunstreaker says nothing.
"I wonder when they'll get off their afts and get down here and let us out."
The noise outside is terrific. It sounds like something is tearing through the walls above. Sideswipe stares at the ceiling for a while. He absently rubs at his chest.
"How long have we been down here?" he says. Because he really doesn't know. His chronometer isn't working. It seems like a long time, though. Like a lifetime.
Sunny still doesn't say anything. Sideswipe huffs and says, "Alright, what's wrong?"
He expects a, "I'm bored," or a, "You outta know. You're the one who landed us here, half-bit." At least a, "Shut your face you glitch." But it doesn't happen. Sunny gives no response. He doesn't move. He doesn't speak. He's just silent. Sideswipe finally does the one thing he's been avoiding and actually looks over at his brother.
Sunny is on the floor across from Sideswipe, back to the wall, legs drawn up and arms folded. He's staring at the floor. His face is blank.
"Sunny," Sideswipe says.
No response.
"Hey."
Sideswipe scoots down and kicks his brother in the leg. Sunny jumps. His head snaps up, optics wide and unfocused. His gaze lands on Sideswipe. He stares.
"Sideswipe?" he says. He sounds terrible, voice rough, half static.
"No," Sideswipe says. "I'm the ghost of Vector Sigma. Of course it's me, idiot. What'd you do, hit your head?"
Sunny looks around their cell. His optics are still wide. He draws his legs in closer, folds in on himself.
"Where are we?" he says.
Sideswipe laughs.
"Wow, you really did hit your head. We're in the brig, glitch-face."
Sunny doesn't rise to the bait. He doesn't snarl, doesn't lunge forward to hit his brother. He sits there, unmoving.
"What are you doing here?" he says.
"What do you mean, what am I doing here?" Sideswipe says. "I'm always in here. What are you doing here?"
Sunny doesn't smile. Sideswipe doesn't really expect him to. He does expect a roll of the optics or an insult. He gets neither. Sunny just stares.
"Come on," Sideswipe says. "What's with the silent treatment? How come you haven't tried to kick my aft, yet?"
"You shouldn't be here."
"Where else am I gonna be?"
Sunny shifts to hug his legs. His chin rests on his knees. Sideswipe rolls his optics.
"What's got into you?" he says.
"You should go."
Sideswipe tilts his head to stare at the neural-field over the only way into the cell.
"Go where?" he says. "Unless you've got the codes to take that thing down?"
Sunny's not even looking at him, anymore. His gaze is far away. Sideswipe sighs.
"I'm kidding," he says.
He lifts his foot to nudge his brother. Only Sunny pulls away. His expression is blank.
"Bro?" Sideswipe says.
He knows that look, that carefully neutral mask.
"Go away," Sunny says.
"What's wrong?"
Sideswipe abandons his bored slouch and leans forward. He lifts a hand. His fingers brush his brother's knee.
Sunny jerks away. The mask drops. For one nano-klik, Sideswipe sees past it, sees something wild and desperate.
"I said go away," Sunny says.
Sideswipe freezes. Sunny's face shutters back down, closes off. He turns his head to the side.
"Sun—"
"Go frag yourself."
Sideswipe scowls. "What's your problem?"
Sunny doesn't answer. He sits there, face hidden, silent.
"Oh, yeah," Sideswipe says. He leans back against the wall. "Classic Sunstreaker, right there."
"Just go away."
"No."
Silence.
"You just gonna sit there?" Sideswipe says.
Sunny does.
"Of course. That's your problem. Whenever anyone tries to talk to you, you turn around and bite their head off. Primus forbid anyone actually cares enough to want to get near you. And then you pull this slag. You just shut up and pretend nothing is going on until you slagging lose it and beat someone's face in. No wonder everyone's afraid of you."
He knows they're the wrong words the moment they leave his mouth. He knows when Sunny flinches and curls in even tighter.
Sideswipe winces. "Ah, frag. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."
Sunny is a statue. Sideswipe doesn't even pick up anything through their bond.
"Sunshine—"
"They're afraid of me," Sunny says.
"No. It's not like that—"
"Yes it is. I can see how they look at me. They avoid me. Because you're right. I do terrible things."
"Sunny, it's not your fault. You're not… if you'd just take a chance…"
A small sound escapes his brother. It's a laugh. A quiet, bitter laugh.
"Even you can't stand me," Sunny says.
It's like a punch to the face. Sideswipe's next words are knocked right out of his mouth. He can only sit there, feeling something small and horrible curling inside him.
Sunny shifts again, almost looking at Sideswipe.
"You should go," he says. "I'll stay here."
His optics aren't just blank, they're empty. Sunstreaker is empty. He's broken. And it's Sideswipe's fault.
He's failed Sunny. Their whole life, the whole war is nothing but a string of Sideswipe's failures. He'd let Sunny leave. Time and time again, he'd watched his brother go away. He'd never made a real effort to go after him. Not once. Not even when they were together, in the same room.
Sunny is broken. And so is Sideswipe.
He'd let Sunny go. He'd let them take him. He'd let the Autobots haul him off, let them send Sunny to some backwater planet where they had abandoned him. Just like Sideswipe did. And all because he was too much of a coward. Because he couldn't do the one thing Sunny needed him to do.
"No," he says.
"It's okay," Sunny says.
"It's not okay! How could it be? How is it okay for me to leave you here to rot?"
"Sideswipe—"
"No! It's not okay. I can't leave you. I won't. Not again. I'm your fragging twin. It's my job to stay with you."
"No, it's not."
"Yes,it is," Sideswipe says.
Sunny looks at him. Sideswipe holds his gaze, feeling himself shaking.
"It's supposed to be you and me. And I fragged that up. That was my fault. Oh, you helped, I know. But I had a chance to fix it and I wouldn't take it. It's my fault you're here and I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
"Sides…"
The anger drains away. He doesn't have the energy to keep himself upright anymore. Sideswipe slumps against the wall. He reaches up to cover his face.
"I'm sorry," he says.
A muffled sound, hydraulics. Fingers touch his shoulder.
Sunstreaker has moved. He right there, next to Sideswipe, one hand on his shoulder. Sideswipe looks at him for a moment. Then, before he can think about it, he drags his brother down and envelopes him.
Sunny freezes. He's going to tear free, he's going to start shouting, he's going to box Sideswipe on the back of the head and demand Sideswipe get the slag off of him.
Sunny's arms creep up and wrap around Sideswipe. He leans in. Sideswipe closes his optics. He buries his face in Sunny's shoulder.
"I'm not going to leave you," Sideswipe says. "I'm never going to leave you again."
Scorpinok advances slowly. He knows Hunter is trapped. Hunter can see it in the way he moves, picking his way across the deck as Hunter backs away. He's toying with him.
And Sideswipe… he just lies on the floor, dark, unmoving.
God, Hunter thinks. Oh god, no.
"There's nowhere for you to run," Scorpinok says. "We would tell you to stay still, but you seem particularly incapable of doing as you're told."
Sideswipe, get up. You have to get up.
Even as he thinks it, he knows it's useless. He can see into his chest. It's dark and silent. And it's not just the awful hole punched through him, it's all of Sideswipe. He's still. Hunter has seen that kind of stillness before.
No. We just got Sunstreaker back. You can't… not now.
He hits something and stumbles. It's a control console. His gaze snaps back to the bug. The Headmaster chitters; he snaps his pincers.
Oh god.
He grabs the edge of the console with one hand. The other one doesn't work, it—
Hunter looks down at the pulse rifle his hand has turned into. He lifts it, takes aim at the bug's face.
One of the cannons spins toward him. He sees a flash. His hand jerks. He ducks, bends over backward on the console and slides down and around, staggers a few steps back and lifts the weapon again.
His hand isn't there. Hunter stares at the stump of his arm as it oozes pink energon. It's… it's gone. His whole hand, gun and all, is gone. And it hurts.
He tries not to scream as he folds over his mangled arm. The sound wrenches itself out of him anyways.
Scorpinok laughs. Except that he's a Headmaster. And it's not just a Transformer; there's a human in there, too, and he's laughing.
"You son of a bitch," Hunter says.
"Only half right," Scorpinok says.
His back hits a wall. There's nowhere else to go. The bug fills his vision, the image wavers on the visor over his human eyes. Liquid spills down, onto his cheeks. The pain fills his brain with yammering shock. It makes his knees go weak.
Shit. Oh shit, it's gone, it's gone.
He can't move. Scorpinok skitters towards him and he can't move and the Headmaster is going to kill him. He's going to die if he just stands there, if he freezes. He's going to die.
He's going to die.
"Agh!" Hunter screams.
The missile launchers unfold onto his shoulders. He doesn't even aim. He just fires. Scorpinok moves. His own cannons fire. The air explodes. Heat slams into him. His visor goes dark. His teeth snap together and he crumples. All he hears is the noise, the roar of flame.
Vision returns. He sees darkness, smoke, fire—
Rushing purple. It hits him, picks him up and crushes him into the wall.
Hunter's mind blanks.
"That's it?" a voice says. Deep voice, metallic undertones to it. "You've destroyed so much and that's all you can do?"
Little pinpricks of light dance in his vision. He looks up, into a monstrous, metal face. Scorpinok.
The Headmaster shakes.
"You've ruined us," he says. Hate chokes his voice. Hunter can almost feel it radiating off of him. "You. A human. A child. We're going to have to start over, leave all our work, because of you."
His tail comes up. Not fast, not like Sideswipe. Scorpinok moves slow. He wants Hunter to see it. Hunter thrashes but Scorpinok has him pinned against the wall, his arms trapped at his sides.
Oh god, oh god. God no!
He kicks. He lifts his feet, tries to wrench free. The pincer tightens. Something inside his shell pops. A warning flashes in the corner of his vision.
The bladed tip of the stinger taps Hunter's chest.
No, no, no!
"Hmm," Scorpinok says. "No. That won't do, will it?"
The tips draws up, screeches across armor, up his chest, up his neck, over his chin.
"Because you don't have a spark," Scorpinok says. "Your weakness is right…"
It's stopped dead between Hunter's optics.
"Here," Scorpinok says.
"Fuck you!"
The tip digs in.
Hunter screams. Every vile thing he can think of. He kicks and twists and tries to press himself into the wall, tries to get away from the awful pressure as Scorpinok's tail digs into his outer armor. More alarms. His head makes a horrible groaning sound. He can feel plating buckling in, can feel the stinger burying into his metal face. A half an inch and that thing is going to come through the visor and into Hunter's flesh and blood head and he can't get away.
"No goddamnit!"
A blue flash. Hunter see's through Scorpinok. He yelps and squeezes his eyes shut. A wave washes through him, all warm and tingly.
Scorpinok jerks. The pincer around Hunter loosens and he crashes to the floor. He opens his eyes as Scorpinok whirls toward the flash—
Something moves.
No, Hunter thinks. Someone.
Red and black and silver. He's pushing up with one arm into a sprawl, his head down, moving slow, almost hesitantly.
"What?" Scorpinok says.
"Oh my god," Hunter says.
Sideswipe looks up.
The hole in his chest… it's not dark anymore. It's filled with a brilliant light, white hot, pulsing blue, all but bursting out of him.
"That's…" Scorpinok says.
Sideswipe tilts his head. He stares at Scorpinok. It's almost like he doesn't recognize him. His face is blank.
A peculiar sensation crawls down Hunter's spine. A sense of… not wrongness. It's not bad. It's something strange. Something is off. Sideswipe is different somehow.
"Sideswipe?" he says.
Sideswipe's gaze flicks to him. He studies Hunter.
"Yes," he says after a moment. "That's one of our names."
Phantom goose bumps prickle Hunter's scalp. That pulsing glow inside Sideswipe. It has to be his spark. Not the case, but the spark itself. And maybe… maybe not just Sideswipe's.
"Sunstreaker?"
Sideswipe smiles. But it's not Sideswipe's smile. Hunter has seen this expression before, on another Autobot. It's more of a smirk.
"Impossible," Scorpinok says.
It's both of them. Both of them in one body at the same time. How can it be both of them?
Sideswipe lifts his hand, wiggles his fingers. He looks around the room. His feet move. He makes a whuff sound.
"No," Scorpinok says slowly. "No. We… we must have missed. A slight miscalculation, that's all. A simple error."
Hunter edges along the wall, away from the Headmaster.
Sideswipe—Sunstreaker? They?—bend his legs. He pushes up onto his knees, he lets out a strangled noise and his hand comes up to his chest. He's leaking. He stares at the energon on his fingers. He looks baffled.
Scorpinok clicks his pincers. His tail twitches.
"Yes, that's all," he says. "The angle must have been wrong. But you can barely move, now. We assure you, we will not miss again."
The ion cannons next to his tail hum. He's not taking chances this time. He's going to shoot Sideswipe.
Hunter has no more weapons. He's got one hand. Scorpinok's back end faces him. He's turned completely away, his attention focused on Sideswipe. He's tall, his back is a good six feet over Hunter's head. The tail, though…
No time. He can't think about how stupid this is. All he knows is that if he doesn't do something fast, they're all going to die.
Hunter takes two, running steps and leaps. His arms stretch out. He sees the tail, the armor chinks, the small gaps between them.
He hits. Fingers scrabble for purchase, slide between two of the plates and squeeze.
Gravity pulls him. His arm strains. Scorpinok's armor digs into his fingers and all he can do is hold on.
Scorpinok jerks his tail up. Hunter flies through the air, sees Scorpinok's legs, the floor above him.
He falls.
"Whagh!"
Hunter lands on his stomach on top of Scorpinok's tail, right between the cannons.
"What?" Scorpinok says.
Hunter scrambles to find something to hang onto. He wedges himself between the cannons.
"Get off!" Scorpinok says.
His tail whips overhead. Hunter realizes his mistake as the stinger hovers over him. And then it plunges towards him. Hunter throws himself back, toward the tail. His feet slip. He reaches out, wraps an arm around the base and hangs on.
"Vermin!"
The ship tilts. Hunter flies out behind Scorpinok. He almost loses his grip. Scorpinok snarls.
Hunter twists around and catches sight of red just as Sideswipe buries his fist into the bug's face. His arm is a solid mass of metal. Scorpinok's face crunches.
"Agh!"
The Headmaster rears up. Hunter hooks one leg over the tail as the room spins. He closes his eyes. Then Scorpinok lands with a jolt. Hunter looks up, through Scorpinok's churning legs just in time to see Sideswipe's feet disappear.
Huh?
"Ragh!"
Scorpinok shakes again, a full body thrash, and it's all Hunter can do to hold on. Pincers snap like mad. Hunter can hear them. He's trying to grab something. Metal crunches. Something tears. Scorpinok screams.
Hunter has to do something. He can't just hang there, not like that, with one hand. He eyeballs the ground.
A hand latches onto his wrist. Hunter looks up. Sideswipe is crouched on Scorpinok's haunches, a grin on his face that isn't quite Sideswipe and isn't quite Sunstreaker.
"Great idea," he says. "But you'll miss all the fun back here."
Sideswipe drags him up. Hunter flops onto Scorpinok's back and scrambles up, after the 'bot. Something smacks the back of his head hard enough to knock him down. He tastes copper.
Sideswipe drags him up again. For one second, Hunter stares right into that hole in his chest. The glow is blinding. There's movement in there, something swirling, and he feels very small and helpless and kind of sick looking at it.
"Distract him," Sideswipe says.
Hunter blinks. Sideswipe's face is right there, inches from his own. He doesn't remember that happening.
"Down!"
Hunter is thrown to the side. Scorpinok's cannons fire. The heat is terrible. The air shrieks.
"Listen," Sideswipe says, dragging him close. "We've got a plan. You need to distract him."
"We." Not I, we. Hunter shudders.
"How?" he says.
Sideswipe smiles. It's not a comforting expression. He places a hand on Hunter's chest and pushes. Hunter falls, spins around, and almost gets gutted by a cannon.
"Son of a bitch!" he says.
Sideswipe is gone, dodging Scorpinok's pincers, headed for the head. The ion cannon to Hunter's right pivots towards him. Hunter grabs it and yanks; the shot goes wide.
What did I just do?
The tail slams into Hunter's shoulder. He pitches to the side, arms waving. The deck of the ship lurches. He manages to catch himself before he falls.
Scorpinok screeches.
Sideswipe digs at the Headmaster's neck. The stinger lifts up. It's long enough to reach the Autobot. Hunter staggers to his feet. The tail rushes down. He jumps.
He smacks into it just behind the stinger. His body swings out and the tail drops and the floor and the walls blur together as it whips back up. Hunter is flung into the air. The tail writhes.
Sideswipe snarls something and Hunter can hear the sheer glee in it.
"Filthy abomination!" Scorpinok shrieks.
Streaks of red and purple and green. Hunter's not sure if he's upside down or right-side up.
Do not let go.
Scorpinok rears up, onto his back legs. Hunter sees gray, the wall, coming right at him—
"Agh!"
Impact. His grip loosens. The tail slips from his grasp. He clutches at it but it pulls away and Hunter finds himself flying.
Until Sideswipe snatches him out of the air. The two of them go down in a tumble of limbs and a spray of sparks.
"Ugh," Sideswipe says. "Bad idea."
"Ow," Hunter says.
"I will KILL YOU!" Scorpinok says.
They've landed between Scorpinok's shoulder blades. Sideswipe presses Hunter's head down. A pincer darts overhead inches from Hunter's nose.
"Blades!" Sideswipe says.
"What?"
A hot blast scorches the side of Hunter's face. He clings to Scorpinok's back.
"That body has blades! In the arms!"
Hunter looks at the silver panels over his forearms. Like with the interface jack, like with the rocket launchers and targeting systems and the internet in his brain, as soon as he thinks it, it happens. Two knives pop out of his arms, starting at the wrists and curving back and ending in glittering points at his elbows.
"Get ready," Sideswipe says.
"For what?"
A rush of purple. Air whistles. Sideswipe tucks and rolls to the right. At the last second he reaches out and wraps his arms around Scorpinok's tail and wedges himself and the stinger down.
"Cut it!"
But Sideswipe can't dodge, not while holding that tail. And Scorpinok reaches up. A purple pincer latches onto Sideswipe.
"Got you," Scorpinok says.
Blades on his arms. Blades on his arms and how does he—
"Agh!"
The pincer tightens. Something inside Sideswipe breaks. His back arches. But he doesn't let go.
Chinks in the armor. Exposed wires. The inner workings of the tail.
Hunter throws himself onto it. His right arm hacks and slashes. Energon sprays out. He can feel it running down his face, thick liquid tingling on metal skin. Scorpinok bellows. And Hunter doesn't stop. He saws the blade back and forth, feels it bite into, through wiring and fluid lines and metal—
Crack!
The stinger flops. Hunter stumbles. The tail wrenches and he grabs for it and Sideswipe shouts something. Neural wires stretch and snap as the tail rips away, leaving a torn, leaking stump.
Scorpinok makes an odd, gasping groan. His body shivers. The pincer squeezing Sideswipe falls away.
Hunter crouches there, watching the severed thing twitch and quiver along Scorpinok's back. It's lying in a pool of energon. Hunter has energon all over his arms, on his face. He's covered in it.
Sideswipe pulls the stinger out from beneath Hunter. He lifts it up, holds it like a spear. He takes three steps to Scorpinok's neck. The armor there is broken, peeled back to reveal circuitry and gears and alien machinery.
We have a plan, he'd said.
Sideswipe hefts his makeshift weapon over his head.
"Told you we'd kill you," he says. His face is a mask of manic, ferocious glee.
Right then, looking at that, Hunter knows what fear is.
The stinger slams into Scorpinok's neck. It punctures through plating and armor, severs coolant and energon lines, skewers the struts holding a human Headmaster to his robotic body. Scorpinok goes slack. Hunter pitches to the side as he collapses.
He hits the floor on his side and skids. Sideswipe manages to keep his feet beneath him and staggers to a stop next to Hunter.
Scorpinok lets out a hitching, keening wail. His six needle-legs twitch for a moment and go still, stump of a tail limp, one of his pincers folded under him.
"What," he says, "what did you do?"
"Cut the relays," Sideswipe says. He's grinning.
Scorpinok lies there, on his side. Nothing moves. His severed stinger sticks out of his neck. He looks like a harpooned whale stranded on a beach.
Sideswipe looks down at Hunter. "You okay?"
Scorpinok's body makes an awful, low-pitched grind. The head jerks to one side. Hunter recognizes the sound: he's trying to disengage. The human in there is trying to detach.
"Won't work," Sideswipe says. "We mangled you good. You're not going anywhere."
He says it with such satisfaction. Sunstreaker's hard sneer plays on his face.
"What did you do?" Scorpinok says. His head twitches.
His neck, the clamps that hold the human in place, try to twist and unlock. The very thing holding Hunter up, keeping him together, reduced to a sad, quivering pile of machinery on the floor.
"Take this out of us!" Scorpinok says.
Sideswipe is next to Hunter again, one hand under Hunter's arm. He helps Hunter to his feet.
"We gotta go," Sideswipe says.
"Take this out!"
"Come on, Hunter."
Sideswipe tugs his arm, pulls him towards the door.
"What about him?" Hunter says.
Sideswipe doesn't even look back. "Forget him. He's fragged. We need to go."
"Why? What's—"
"The engines," Sideswipe says. "Sideswipe set them to detonate right before slag-face got through. We don't have time."
"No!" Scorpinok says. "You can't leave us here!"
Hunter looks back. The Headmaster has managed to twist his head enough to look at them.
"We can and are," Sideswipe says.
"Don't leave me! Hunter, please!"
Hunter ducks his head.
"Please! Please, I'm like you. My name is Abraham. Please, Hunter, don't leave me here. I can help you!"
Sideswipe breaks away to lean down and pick something up. When he stands, he's holding Sunstreaker's blackened head. He studies it for a moment, his face impossible to read. Then he tucks it close.
"We're alike," Scorpinok, or the human Headmaster, says. "You and me, we're the same."
"No you're not," Sideswipe says without turning around.
They're at the doors. To Hunter's right is a pool of energon where Sideswipe had almost died—maybe did die. It's the same stuff crusting Hunter's arms and face.
"Please."
Sideswipe climbs through the ragged hole in the doors. Metal clangs as hit feet set down on the other side. He reaches in and holds out his hand.
"Let's go," he says.
"Hunter," Scorpinok says.
Hunter grabs the edge of the hole and swings a leg over.
"No!"
Sideswipe catches him with his shoulder, helps him down. Hunter slides to the floor. Sideswipe claps him on the arm and then takes off down the hall. Hunter pauses for one second. He closes his eyes. Then he heads after him.
Scorpinok's screams echo through the ship the whole way.
I had so much fun writing that chapter. So, so much fun. Thanks to lildevchick, Starfire201, Paleodex, and Jessica Wolfe for your past reviews (and sorry for not addressing you guys earlier-I'm moving cross-country in a week and have been super busy and freaking out, so yeah). And thank you KayDeeBlu for being a wonderful beta.
Also, over 100,000 words! Booyah!
Next chapter: Hang On