A/N: This was origionally a prompt by DeathStallion and chimeradark on LJ. All transformers are property of Hasbro/Takara and their respective creators. I own nothing.
It always hurt when the symptoms started. Sideswipe could feel it in the trembling in his muscle cables, the sudden weakness in his fingers. He hid it from Sunny, sealing their bond. He watched as black fingers trembled as he struggled to clench his hand into a fist, failing continually until he could no longer feel his arm at all.
Sideswipe looked up from his hand, smiling at the shoppers meandering through the marketplace. "Ah, ladies, you're loveliness rivals the beauty of the new fallen snow," He waggled his optic ridges with exaggerated suggestiveness, earning amused twitters from the morning shoppers. He leaned casually against the edge of his stall letting his weak and trembling arm rest as he spoke.
"It's cold today, and I've just the right mid-grade perfect for warming you up." He pulled a series of small silvery cubes from below his countertop, allowing them to rest in the pale sunlight.
Optics bright, the femmes leaned closer, watching in awe as the cubes responded to the weak morning light, natural pearlescent shimmer brightening while the softly falling snowflakes turned to vapor as they landed on the cubes.
"Oh! Bayonet it's amazing. Can we get them?" The tallest of the three asked as she loomed over her companions' shoulders to stare at the small cubes. The others smiled indulgently up at the obviously younger femme.
"We're supposed to be getting supplies, Cross-Blades; not indulgences." The third admonished even as she stared longingly at the warm cubes now shimmering in the frosty air.
"Why not, Stiletto? Lady Esmeral did tell us not to get too cold. We'll take three." Bayonet finally declared as Sideswipe continued to smile as he listened to the sisterly banter.
"Th-Th-three i-i-i-t i-i-i-sss." Sideswipe stammered in the cold, internally cringing as Sunstreaker watched his every move hawkishly. "I might have to get one as well." He covered his worsening symptoms with a longing sigh towards the radiant cubes and a roguish wink for his patrons.
The femmes giggled at his antics, dimming their optics appreciatively towards Sunstreaker's unwavering gaze before sauntering off with their purchases, providing free advertising as they warmed freezing hands and chilled systems with their warm drinks.
You're shutting down early then we're finding Ratchet. Sunstreaker ordered over the bond, moving to his twin's side to help with the sudden influx of sales.
He's still avoiding us. Sideswipe murmured softly, weakly as he coyly juggled energy cubes singlehandedly to draw the crowd, nearly dropping them as Sunstreaker shoved his metaphysical way into their bond, stealing away Sideswipe's pain.
Not for much longer. Sunstreaker replied firmly, once Sideswipe's pain had lessened and the red prankster could finally move more easily.
They worked throughout the day long past the lunch hour and late into nightfall. Yet, no matter how much they yearned to feel the medic through their inner connection Ratchet continued to firmly shut them out as he had since they day after they had seduced him.
Smug with their duping of the spoiled lordling Sunstreaker and Sideswipe strode on silent pedes through the darkness of Blackfang Inn in the early hours of dawn. Expecting to curl around Ratchet's resting frame, and watch him as he dreamed they slipped into the shared suite only to find it empty.
No note waited for them, no sign the healer had ever been there. They rested uneasily in disturbing silence waiting for their systems to recover from the long day in the sun. Despite the wax that protected their frames from the painful effects of the sun, they still were exhausted from their plating constantly regenerating through the day.
Come dawn they found only First Aid moving silently through the halls, their miniature bodyguards for the apprentice healer nowhere in sight, but their scent nearby.
"Good morning, is Ratchet up yet?" Aid greeted genially, eyeing the pair uncertainly.
"He already left." Sideswipe replied darkly, voice surly and hurt.
"Good," Aid grinned smugly, "May I ask you two a favor?"
"Why should we help you?" Sunstreaker snarled darkly, making Aid backpedal swiftly from the fearsome looking merchant.
"What do you want?" Sideswipe demanded of the apprentice, angry at being the one duped, hurt that the healer had loved them then left.
"Ratchet is only one mech. He is afraid the nightwalkers he freed will come after you, just as he fears for me and 'Jack. Ten years ago his method of helping the villages one by one worked, now," Aid shook his helm, "This region is on the border of the Nightwalker horde from Kanon. The healers here need to be able to stand on their own throughout the winter without Ratchet. That's why I was assigned to Ratchet. My journeyman obligations were fulfilled before I left Imperial City. I need the healers of Pax Crystalia to assist the surrounding villages, that's why I need you two to hire runners to deliver letters to the different wards."
"Who cares?" Sunstreaker turned away, spark hardening towards the healer, ready to fade into darkness, longing for the aching nothingness from their imprisonment.
"Jack says he's afraid. If he gets too attached, they might come for you. If that happens then it's Ratchet's fault, just as every spark lost in Steeldale, Greensteel, and Coldsteel Garrison lie on his spark. Only losing you to the night walkers, and finding your bloodless husks would kill him." Aid placed the letters on the bar along with a satchel of credits. "He has to confirm my efforts with the five wards I finished yesterday, and he has six to visit on his own. I have four others, then we have the destitute the day after. We will leave tomorrow." Aid watched the somber pair momentarily before turning towards the inn entrance. "Do what you want. Just remember he has more than the desires of his spark at stake. Every winter he endangers his life for others, how have your attentions been for anything but your own pleasure?"
Sunstreaker shoved the memories away as late evening faded into night. Their last customers faded into the darkness with their treasures. With the stall finally closed for the night Sideswipe sagged onto Sunstreaker's stool unable to stand, exhausted from his inherent glitch. Systems trembling, stuttering and starting from the cold he gasped trying to cycle vents that continued to seal themselves off.
As Sunstreaker sealed the stall, ensuring that none could access their stores a fluid, soft, vaporus litany of profanity trickled through the thin winter air, growing in volume and substance - and inventiveness as the speaker drew closer. Curses that brought the twins to a standstill made the pair look up in amazement. There, being drug through the snow by a huffing Wheeljack and a grim faced First Aid was Ratchet, optics shining in fury, face plating vibrant with life as he fought against his brother and his apprentice.
"I am not slagging going near them and that's final!" Ratchet roared, voice cutting off as his gaze landed on Sideswipe, spinal struts stiffening as he wrenched himself from his captor's grasp. "Why in the slagging misfired pits was I not summoned sooner? This could have been treated without this much pain fragged hours ago!"
"We don't need your pity healer" Sunstreaker snarled fiercely standing between his brother and the mech who had used them.
"Pity?" Ratchet asked with line chilling calmness, optics glinting in a manner that made Sunstreaker backpedal until he pressed against Sideswipe's seated frame. "I don't pity morons who know they have a condition that requires a healer, spend two slagging weeks traveling with said healer then blithely, as you please, never once mention said condition." Ratchet pushed past Sunstreaker to Sideswipe's side.
Kneeling fluidly he looked over the red frame, sensitive hands taking in the chilled plating, noting temperatures no mortal should sustain. As he knelt there, a familiar fragrance tickled his nasal ridge, stilling his movements as dawning realization chilled his spark. "Get him into the Wanderer's Roost." Ratchet barked to 'Jack and Aid, grabbing Sunstreaker by the arm, forcing the taller mech to look at him.
Sunstreaker looked at Ratchet's brilliant optics, enraptured as he had been from the moment he registered those optics dimmed in the pleasure of the thrall. Staring into optics fierce and determined he found the depths of Ratchet's indomitable will shining before him.
"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't steak you throughout the spark right now, nightwalker?" Ratchet hissed as all the sensations through the mental connection he shared with the Steeldale nightwalkers, the strange night fluxes, the feeling of being watched even when he was alone suddenly fell into place.
Sunstreaker gasped as Ratchet leaned in close, optics bleeding to brilliant green with his fury. The healer was transformed, glorious in his rage he once more stole Sunstreaker's spark. He raised a perfect golden, hand, the guise masking his ruddy hue fading as he traced the healer's furiously clenched jaw.
"Kill me, or walk out of our lives the result is the same. You saved our fragmenting spark when you first walked into Steeldale. We felt you, in our eternal tomb, your brilliant spark freeing us from the void we had fallen into. Then, despite your fear, and your mortal longing for the Unmaker to take your pain, you saved our frames. You, only you, are the reason we exist. The reason we turn to artificial mechblood instead of feeding on nightwalkers."
"What?" Ratchet roared, optics narrowing to dangerous slits as he focused on Sunstreaker's last words. "The mechs of Coldsteel were mortal!"
"They hurt you." Sunstreaker hissed defensively as he sheltered Ratchet with his frame, looming over the healer as if shielding him from the world. "And, we were starving."
"Why Nightwalkers?"
"Sideswipe gets sick on mortal mechblood." Sunstreaker shrugged, his voice no longer rich and controlled, now lost like a youngling's and looking like one himself.
"Has this happened before?" Ratchet demanded, dragging Sunstreaker to the inn by an arm, steering the larger mech effortlessly to a chair in the suite the inn keep had assigned them. The suite he had not stepped foot in since he learned the merchant twins had followed him from Pax Crystalia here to Crystal Spire.
"Our keepers just bled him when it did then made a new batch of young Nightwalkers to feed him until he could revive." Sunstreaker replied blandly. "Can you bleed him?"
Ratchet shuddered at the description of such barbaric treatment. Spark chilling as he thought of the hundreds who had perished before their imprisonment to sustain them. "Aid, I need a basin, towels, scalpel." He turned to Sunstreaker hesitantly, "Do you have any of this mechblood alternative ready?"
Smirking Sunstreaker pulled two cubes of shimmering blue from the cupboard in their suite, "There is a reason we never fed on you, here."
Shutting out the golden menace Ratchet turned to the berth room, pushing past Aid to Sideswipe's spasming form. "Jack, fetch -" Ratchet paused, several pieces of the puzzle that was the twins beginning to fall in place.
The most misunderstood ... veil born lycan and nightwalker ... if they went into the sun they would be rendered into ash. Ratchet looked back at Sunstreaker, fear playing along his relays. "Get me my hunter kit." Ratchet had kept all his lessons on being a hunter close to his spark, along with lessons learned from other types of hunters he had run into over the passing vorns. His kit, a hidden cache of weapons and fiend specific vials to combat the monsters of the night, would hold the strange potions and rare herbs he needed to keep the red nightwalker alive. The nightwalker he owed his very life to.
Sunstreaker watched with worried optics as Ratchet worked on Sideswipe. Like their past keeper's the contaminated mechblood filling his lines was bled out. Only, Sunstreaker knew too well, they did not have enough substitute to refill Sideswipe's tanks. In the eons before their imprisonment they had fought for their lives constantly, this however was a battle of a different sort entirely.
His mind brushed closer to Sideswipe's the idiot silently crowing throu the agony that Ratchet was actually looking at him, touching him. Despite the fond bemusement that filled Sunstreaker for his brother his mind wandered to the past and the life they had left behind so long ago.
The crowd roared, fists pounding chest plates and shields to further the violence of the battle beneath them within the gladiatorial rings. Five beasts circled the paired younglings in the ring. Crimson and gold the pair circled each other, backs together, as they matched the pace of the beasts circling them. They were young, they were strong and everyone loved them, wanted them to win and die with excruciating pain and didn't care which they witnessed.
A resounding gong reverberated through the mechs' frames releasing the beasts and gladiators for the fight. Metal clashed on metal, fangs and claws ripping against the bare metal of the young mechs' armor. Unfazed, undaunted the pair the pair whirled, using bare fists and spikes torn from the howling forms of their opponents they turned five larger beasts into three piles of slag to the approving howls of the audience.
"Show offs, those were Lord Megatron's best beast fighters!" The gladiator pit boss snarled, cuffing the smaller younglings harshly. "Keep killing our best and you will be served as chew toys on the next lycan hunt."
"Try it, we'll kill them all." Crimson snarled, white-violet optics glaring proudly up at the taller nightwalker. Known only by their colors, the younglings, not yet grown had no names and their color designations were rarely used. The pit boss shoved the pair roughly into their cells, welded metal cubes that kept any light from entering. Small servings of energon waited within, no one reached into either of the pair's cells when they were inside. Too many hands had been lost that way…
Fully grown, their frames now bristling with weapons, armor thickened to be nearly indestructible Crimson and Gold were unleashed on the world. Directed by urgings they had felt from their earliest memories the slaked their thirst for spilt energon and terror from their victims in the palaces and castles of the world. Their feasts turned entire families into ghouls for their master, into new turned younglings to increase their master's strength and a sea of corpses for his glory.
:: Why for him? :: Crimson asked spitefully as they surveyed yet another speck of a town turned into a sea of ghouls. :: Why all this for him? ::
:: What else is there? :: Gold countered, unaffected by the carnage, uncaring of the sadistic glee that washed in from their master's side of the connection. Violet optics the color of spring flowers met and held as each challenged the other.
:: They were laughing, earlier. Smiling and talking. I didn't know mortals could laugh – like us. ::
Crimson and Gold shrugged, they had no answers. Turning they melted into the night, guises rising over their features to mask them as mere mortals passing through to the next town filled with living prey …
Iacon, Imperial City of the same named province, the sparkling jewel of the new, young Nova Prime. The city sparkled in the darkness, the people called to their curious natures. Crimson smiled, teasing a local merchant as he bartered for energon wine.
"Here, we'll need this for tonight." He handed one of the freshly obtained crystalline flutes of magenta energon. Gold only nodded dark violet optics unstable in the moonlight. Crimson sighed, Gold got worse after every death. Maybe it was the promise of ending the cycle. Their lives had grown weary long ago.
"Come on Spin-Out, Primus don't do this. We take down Iacon tonight and we're free tomorrow." Crimson whined as he resorted to their rarely used spark names, waggling the cube entreatingly before the blank face of his twin.
"Sun," Gold murmured as he stared off into nothingness, his face raised to the dark sky.
"No, that," Crimson pointed above them, "Is the moon."
"Skid-Out," Spin-Out sighed dramatically, "I want the sun, I'm tired of darkness. I want the golden light the mortals talk about." Gold looked over the torch lit courtyard filled with stores and wares. "There is no beauty in the moonlight."
"Then we make tonight spectacular. Tomorrow, I'll get you the sun." Crimson smiled at his twin, vowing to finally break the connection that held Gold firmly tethered to their master's will. They grinned their forced smiles at each other, sauntering off into the darkness…
Clean, plating buffed perfectly smooth and wax polished to a high shine, they stood ready to face the first rays of the sun. Spin-Out kept his optics locked on the distant mountains just graced with the first light of false dawn. Skid-Out kept his optics locked on his twin.
"How did you convince Master to let us go?" Spin-Out asked pensively as the slim tracing of electric blue brightened and faded back into darkness.
Crimson sighed, "Do you remember the last time we were in the ring?"
"Yes, Master placed a wager with Lord Galvatron that we would be given to the last mech standing in the ring." Gold looked to his brother nervously, "But we were beaten by Lock Down."
"Uh, actually you were beaten by Lock Down. I just went with you to the surgeons." Crimson flinched at his brother's frown, "I went back into the ring."
"How did you win?"
"Well, I didn't. I paid SinnerTwin to change the bet, and Cutthroat to kill off the other winner. According to the legers we freed ourselves." Crimson finally smiled. He knew his latest stunt would kill them both eventually, but for the first real smile to ever grace his twin's features that rivaled the glowing dawn for its beauty, Skid-Out knew it was worth it.
"Sunstreaker," Ratchet's voice pulled the yellow nightwalker from his musings, across the room Aid and Wheeljack starring with near tangible terror at him pulled him fully from his musings. He looked down at once sunny yellow plating to be greeted by his old sunset golden hue and cursed as he realized he had lost his guise. "Sideswipe is stable now."
Ratchet stepped back, fists clenched tightly at his sides. "How the Pit did you two keep this from me? From 'Jack?" he snarled as long constrained emotions finally loosed themselves.
"We've had a lot of practice." Sunstreaker replied flatly, wondering in his silence if he would have to feel Sideswipe's spark shatter when Ratchet left them for good.
Ratchet shook his head in tightlipped denial until he could finally get his voice to work, "He's suffering from impurities infiltrating his neural relay centers. Jack has tested his blood against several potions and we think we've found one that works. I – I need a sample of your's for comparison." Ratchet hedged, wishing he could delete the surge of warmth that rushed through his lines as Sunstreaker looked up at him gratefully.
Without question the nightwalker held out his arm, giving silent permission for Ratchet to do as he wished, even bleed him dry if it would save Sides. He wanted to watch Ratchet's hands as he worked, but found himself staring at Ratchet's optics as they held steadily on his task despite the raging emotional turmoil that surged behind their caring depths.
"If you terminated us your life would be simpler." Sunstreaker finally spoke as Ratchet handed Jack the vial of shimmering, bluish mechblood. Jack and Aid whipped their heads aroung to stare at Sunstreaker in horror before smartly vacating the room at a near run.
Ratchet let them go, grateful that he did not have an audience as he turned with slow, deliberate, menacing purpose to stare down the heathen nightwalker looking abashedly at the door. "You – would have me – terminate – my own patient?" He asked with lethal calm that rose into a bellow of rage. "How dare you even suggest that! First and foremost I am a healer. I do not kill my patients!"
Sunstreaker found himself on his pedes backed up against the far wall behind him to evade the healer's wrath, green optics nearly blindingly bright and hands that glowed with fearful intention that made his armor crawl to get away.
"You were hunter trained." Sunstreaker pointed out as Sideswipe shifted and moaned in his restless slumber. "You know our weaknesses, how to terminate us."
"I am a healer! My hunter training was years ago and aside from advising villages on how to defend themselves against your kind I have never used it." Ratchet snarled as he savagely punched Sunstreaker and immediately froze as the cheek plating on Sunstreaker's face began to darken and crumple beneath his fist.
"No!" he retreated, backpedaled in dismay at having damaged one of his patients.
Sunstreaker raised a steady hand to brush the charred plating from his face, looking calmly down at the grey-black granules that smudged his hand. He huffed, and flicked away the grime, looking to Ratchet helplessly. "Any other mech would have been in pieces before he got that close. No one has ever lived after damaging my plating."
Ratchet gulped, optics bright, scared of what Sunstreaker might do, appalled at what he himself had done, and listened mutely as Sunstreaker continued. "I can't hurt you, I can't hate you for leaving us. I can't even stay angry with you for breaking our spark."
Ratchet blinked his optics, head shaking slightly in confusion, "You left me alone, cold, sticky and without any reason! You two seduced me, I didn't seduce you."
The perfect features lifted into a bitter smile, "That was not the plan. Our supplier took most of the night with negotiations we should have been there holding you when you awoke."
"What?" Ratchet asked looking between Sunstreaker's bitter face and Sideswipe's unconscious form.
Sunstreaker finally stood, approaching Ratchet's too still form as he tensed for whatever blow might come. Instead, Sunstreaker only gathered him with infinite gentleness into his arms, holding the healer close. Ensconced within the nightwalker's arms Ratchet found himself unconsciously relaxing as if he had always been meant to be here, within the golden embrace.
"We killed the mechs and nightwalkers that had hurt you. We stole your burning thoughts of what you would like to do to them. You have our admission of guilt." Sunstreaker whispered, forehelm nestled against Ratchet's shoulder, bending becheechingly into the smaller mech's cautiously returned embrace. "Our fate is yours to decide."
Ratchet stood silently as he held Sunstreaker's suddenly trembling form while his thoughts spiraled over the last few weeks since Coldsteel Garrison. These two were nightwalker hybrids posing as mortal merchants. They had followed him like loyal beast hounds through two cities and three villages, uprooting their profitable merchant stall the moment he moved on.
He wanted to remain bitter at them. He desperately wished to keep hating them for using him, but somehow it was devolving into a horrid love ballad of misunderstanding, one of those nasty sappy songs that ran on endlessly while only the young fools stared with moon-optics towards the skies wishing for their own traumatic loves. With a huff of annoyance Ratchet pressed his nasal assembly into Sunstreaker's bent chest, inhaling the rich scent of nightwalker and high quality wax.
"You both need your rest." Ratchet finally spoke, pulling a sedative tipped needle from Sunsreaker's exposed neck cable. "And I'm not ready to forgive you just yet." With a grunt he maneuvered the unconscious Sunstreaker to the berth beside Sideswipe. Once the twins were adjusted he looked down on the 'terrifying nightwalkers' and saw only young mechs with too hard of young lives. He shook his head sadly.
"I need to go check on 'Jack." He spoke aloud, turning for the door and the brief respite from having to feel the restrained emotions that seethed beneath his calm facade, seeking to escape and make him a worthless wreck. There was a reason, he reminded himself disgustedly, why he did not pursue relationships on the road. They were just too damn taxing.
