Despite what others thought, he and his brother, Sunstreaker, were quite different. The main line of difference between the twins was that Sideswipe was capable of restraint. He could think of revenge, want to kill someone, but not actually follow such thoughts through.
But as the ship's alarms went off indicating that a bomb had just exploded near the cargo bay directly by where the Seekers were staying, he knew, even before the smugness came through from his brother that whatever had just occurred his brother was a part of it.
Another thing that made them different. Sideswipe could accept blame. Coming upon the Seeker talking to the human, no, hearing her respond had unsettled and unnerved him. Not because Alexis had hardly talked to anyone since her return to the ship, but because there had been a layer of intimacy to the exchange that made a sick feeling settle deep under his chassis.
Something had occurred between the two. He knew that in the astonishing gentle way in which the Seeker approached and talked to her, touched her. He followed the Seeker back to his quarters. Sides meant to confront the Seeker and to demand what the slag was going on. But by the time Thundercracker disappeared behind a closed door, Sideswipe's thoughts had taken off on several different paths.
Nothing happened between the two. Nothing ever would. He was just allowing himself to believe in the Seeker's own presumptions. That didn't stop the Autobot from returning to his own quarters, volatile and filled with unresolved energy, didn't stop him from telling his brother in very clear detail exactly how he would terminate the Seeker, if he was so inclined.
So, yes, he could accept blame, because it was he who gave his brother the idea of how to kill Thundercracker. Approaching the hardly recognizable corridor, a large gap of a hole covered the entire left side. The view of space was vast and dark and apparent from the explosion, a protective field shimmering in place of where the wall should have been. Wisps of smoke were already dissipating as the ship's repairs and cleaning instruments came online.
His brother came up behind him.
"That was easy," Sunny remarked with glee, a pleased chuckle reverberating through the flickering hallway. Side's optics caught the gash of an identifying mark lining the wall, his idea carried out in full as his brother used The Line to cover his own actions. His brother came up closer and stood at ease by his side. He frowned at him with clear disappointment. "You aren't pleased?" Sunstreaker shifted with displeasure. "I take care of both our problems and you can't even thank me."
"All this because of a girl you can't..."
Sunny stiffened. "This has nothing to do with her. Is your processor so full of your own problems that you can't even recall that not long ago that Seeker had the misfortune of trying to get the better of me?"
Images suddenly surfaced through their link of Thundercracker attacking Sunstreaker on the neutral space station. Then a long buried memory of the Autobot coming online to the vision of Alexis trying to protect him, of saving his life, followed by her staying with him in the medical quarters as he was repaired. The emotion behind the images was not entirely unexpected but their potency was.
It wasn't only Sideswipe that had been stirred by Alexis' show of loyalty. But it was the first time that his brother recognized his own attraction toward the female.
Sides saw more unfiltered images, of Sunny's time with Alexis on the fighting barge, of an exchange on the Vildan's home planet. There was anger, amusement, frustration, befuddlement, jealousy, lust, possessiveness and a mixture of gentler emotions far buried from the other ones that had remained unidentified and claimed but no less unexpected.
Even with what he saw, he knew his brother was hiding things, things he knew that Sideswipe wouldn't have been happy with. And that was enough for him to probe further, enough to open his brother's mind to him completely when it shouldn't have been closed at all.
He saw everything. Enough to take several steps back in disgust, enough to come barreling back at him. The two rolled on the floor, their tussle stopping short when they bumped into a familiar pediform.
Two undamaged and very alive Seekers looked down at the twins, the sounds of charged weapons filling the suddenly cramped corridor.
"Was it your idea, or your brother's?"
Thundercracker had a very annoying habit of being able to appear next to the Autobot without any sensory warning. Having thought that he corrected that glitch, Sides unintentionally showed his startlement when he dropped the data pad he had been using to keep track of needed inventory for his upcoming departure. So even before he answered, the Seeker already had him at a disadvantage.
Starscream believed readily enough that The Line had been behind their attempted assassination. He thought that Thundercracker believed the same. But he now knew that he was wrong. Thundercracker commenced with a domineering inspection of the Autobot that should have made him squirm.
"I don't know what you are talking about," the Autobot tried, but the Seeker only frowned and moved closer, pushing the Autobot against a small shuttle.
"You made a mistake," Thundercracker thickly rasped, his tone echoing inside the landing bay.
Sharp prickles appeared on Sideswipe's servo when the Seeker released his talons and dragged them down his chassis near his Autobot symbol. He didn't dare move as he calculated the Seeker's intent. He readied his blade within his servo, an uncomfortable tautness spreading inside his cabling as he kept it hidden and retracted.
"I didn't make a mistake," the Autobot spoke with derision and agitation. "Take your servos off of me. Now," he demanded.
Thundercracker chuckled at that, a disturbing sound that made Sideswipe momentarily forget about the damage being done to his body work. The Seeker didn't appear tense, but he was no less imposing. The rumors he had heard about the Con surfaced. Suddenly, he didn't doubt them. How unfortunate for the Seeker that the Autobot didn't care. And that the more he was threatened, the more he...
"You're right. You made several. The first of which was trying to kill me."
"What makes you think you alone were the target? What makes you so sure we did it?"
The Seeker looked at him as if his words were asinine gibberish. When Thundercracker spoke, he did so with a displeased rumble, "The Line kills their prey in person. And the symbol they leave, you should have paid more attention to where it is positioned. Such errors, such cowardice. Such stupidity."
Getting a blaster loose, Thundercracker only batted it away. The weapon discharged past his wing. Optic ridges lifting from the closeness of the shot, the Seeker grabbed the back of the Autobot's head and smashed it against his rising knee plate. Stars pulsed before Side's optics. He extended his blade.
Sideswipe should not have left the landing bay with a missing servo, a scratched up chassis and a crushed pediform. The Autobot should have not left the landing bay alive. The bay's security had been disabled with its weapons offlined. Even his bond with his brother had been blocked. Such precautions taken by the Seeker just to get him alone and to not kill him was, for a Decepticon, obscene.
The Seeker had caught him off guard the moment he found him. And while Sideswipe had attacked and held nothing back, he had lost even before the fight started. The vulnerability, the weakness, the knowledge of what should have been truly irked him even more than the physical scars.
It took two days for the repairs to be done. Two days that he had to listen to his brother's mocking ramblings, two days in order for his confidence, which usually was never in short supply, to replenish itself. But it wasn't often that someone bested him.
Even Optimus Prime had been known to be caught of guard, and would have had a challenge facing one or several Seekers. He had not been weak, just unprepared. To be attacked on his own ship had not been expected, but he now knew, should have been.
And underestimating Thundercracker's intent was another error he was not about to make again. He expected another attack, which would have been foolish with the security detail at full alert, expected some sort of confrontation but none came.
That was when he knew that Thundercracker did not inform Starscream of the truth. And that along with him still being alive added to the enigma of what the motivations of the stoic Seeker were.
The Con had become unpredictable, uncharacteristic and more dangerous than ever.
Things were bound to get interesting.
Picking another to assist in the infiltration of The Line halted when Josh came and told the small group that Alexis had changed her mind and that she would go as long as one condition was met: that they left immediately.
Thundercracker and Sideswipe had already been chosen, Thundercracker for his knowledge of The Line, Sideswipe, because having Sunstreaker go would never be an option. He could have argued that Bluestreak would have made a better choice with his gregarious nature and fondness for organics, but he couldn't bring himself to. Not with the knowledge that he would be working with Alexis. Also what they were about to do would have a better chance at success the fewer people that knew.
They left the next day.
He watched Alexis say goodbye to her friends and family, hardly saying a word. When she turned and walked up the ramp that led to the shuttle, the emptiness in her eyes startled him.
Thundercracker spent all his time in the small planning room. Alexis never left her quarters. He expected the trip to be eventful, maybe even violent, not boring and mundane. It would take two weeks to reach the coordinates provided by The Line. Only two days had passed so far. It felt like two mega-cycles.
Exhausting the reading material he had brought with him, not wanting to read anything else, Sides decided to head to the training room. It was cramped as was everything on the shuttle, but held enough room that he could rid himself of some of the boredom.
His assumption that Alexis never left her quarters was proven wrong. He found her inside the training room with a Vildan gun in hand firing widely at a holographic target that was far too big for her.
"You're too stiff. You need to loosen up," he said. She stiffened further, the grip on the gun tightening. He issued commands to the AI. The target got smaller and shifted closer.
She fired again and barely scraped past the edge. Activating his holo-form, he stepped up behind her, not doing anything until her body language allowed. He lifted her hand and widened her legs. Alexis fired again and managed to at least hit the target.
"Show me more," Alexis spoke, her voice was small and far from unpleasant and even as she didn't look at him, his heart, which was already thumping against his rib cage from touching her more than he really needed to, soared from her acknowledgment of him.
He did. And for the next two hours he verbally guided her through the basics. She hardly spoke in exchange. And he didn't touch her again. He didn't trust himself to.
As they traveled, that one lesson ended up being five more. His boredom was forgotten.
A terrible revelation came three days before their rendezvous with The Line. The decision had been made that now that they were close they were to activate their human forms and take the rest of the journey in a smaller human sized shuttle.
Sideswipe didn't expect Thundercracker to become Timothy.
And maybe he shouldn't have believed it as readily as he did, or for him to feel aggrieved that such a thing had been kept from him, but he did. He was already having doubts about how the three would be able to work together, now, he didn't even know if it was possible.
"How long have you known, Alexis?"
Timothy was supposed to be dead. Alexis grieved for him, he knew she did, so this did not make sense. He had her blocked by his arms in front of the shuttle door when she refused to answer him. Alexis slowly took in the sight of Timothy one more time, flinching and paling and the beginning of a tremor working down her body.
Sideswipe let her go. With an answer or not, certain things were starting to make sense. And as he watched Timothy's eyes avidly follow Alexis as she disappeared in the back compartment, he was starting to wish they never did.
"The day he died."
Working on a memory module that was being uncooperative, Sideswipe ignored Alexis and continued what he was doing. It wasn't as if she hadn't spent plenty of time ignoring him, avoiding him, barely speaking to him. Even when they had been together that very short time, she hardly spoke to him then either. He didn't expect her to have feelings of amity toward him, but the idea that he meant so little to her offended him.
"I didn't mean to keep it from you, from anyone really," she paused and took a deep bracing breath, as if just being there and talking to him was an excruciating task to perform. "I was used and deceived. It's not exactly something to be..."
He cut her off and sharply turned around from the table he had been working at. "And yet I am sure you told the Vildan. Is he the reason you refused to communicate with me?" His words came out sharp and cruel, the hostility fueled by a resentment unlike any other.
He tried to calm himself, but when he stood to his feet and Alexis tensed, he knew he wasn't projecting such. His tone emulated the acute stiffness he suddenly felt in his joints.
"What else have you lied to me about?"
She took a step back and shook her head, making a mistake when she turned away from him, a gesture he read as dismissal. Bending down, he put his hand in front of her, forcing her to turn back around.
They stayed like that for several long minutes, Sideswipe keeping his hand pressed heavily on the floor, Alexis' head downcast, her thoughts her own. And then she took her hand and reached out and lightly touched his face, bringing his optics down to her eyes. The rage dissipated, the blame scattered away with the remorse he saw in her gaze.
"I'm sorry, Sideswipe. I never meant to hurt you. I guess," she swallowed hard, her hand noticeably dropping away. "I guess I never knew that you actually cared."
Her words rocked him more than the identity of Timothy had. Sideswipe felt exposed and vulnerable. He wanted to argue and set her straight. He could have even denied it. But after the astonishment and anger at her presumption settled along the edges of the truth, he found himself rendered speechless.
Taken on board several different shuttles by representatives of The Line, their course masked, their destination continually changing, they finally boarded The Line's ship, a stolen and modified Decepticon warship.
Truly, Sideswipe probably shouldn't have felt as impressed as he did, not with what the Line had done to the Autobots. And when he saw a security detail waiting for them as soon as they departed the small craft that had brought them onboard, his eyes couldn't help but linger on the weapons the unit held as he identified what they had been converted out of, and made smaller or not, the deadliness they were capable of.
"You will need to hand over your weapons."
Thundercracker and Sideswipe did, Alexis, however, did not. And when one of the males stepped forward and placed a hand on Alexis' arm, he saw Thundercracker tense, but it was Alexis who acted first. Her hand swiped down and out, her staff extended and pushed the man back.
Sideswipe allowed himself to be impressed that time and a couple of other emotions that heated the blood that swam through his fleshy veins.
The male really shouldn't have tried to touch Alexis again. Before he could make the demand again, Sideswipe had the male's arm twisted behind his back, the weapon thrown to the side. Weapons lifted and aimed at the three. Sideswipe twisted the man's arm further. Despite the predicament, he couldn't help but grin at the security detail, waiting for what was to be their next move.
"Lower your weapons," a female voice ordered.
Unlike the others, this one didn't bother with masks of subterfuge for the face. But really there was no longer a point. It was clear knowledge among everyone there that The Line was humans.