Lies. What he had been told and forewarned about the dynamics of twin bonds as far as when their connection was severed had been absolute total rubbish.
If what he had been told was true, he would have died the moment his brother was killed. Instead, he felt his brother's pain. His last ending moments of confusion and rage, of finding and knowing, of ecstasy and a processor that was opened with sensations that neither have felt, of thoughts that enticed and surprised.
And then nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The physical pain stopped and Sunstreaker died. At least until his spark compressed and reformatted, removing everything that he had shared with his brother, removing all that had ever mattered or made his existence tolerable.
To come back on-line was unexpected and unwanted. The rage that followed, the all consuming grief an immediate reminder that what had always been two was now one.
He killed every Decepticon on board the Line's ship that had the gall to try to stop him from reaching his brother. And when he left the Relentless burning, a human unconscious on his shuttle's helm, his brother's empty shell of a body a heavy presence in the back of the cargo hold, he planned and simmered in a revenge that tasted bitter and fowl, but comforted beyond all else.
He felt her enter the room. Alexis was now more coherent, no longer the crazy, delusional thing he had the misfortune of seeing after he got her from the Relentless. She didn't really understand what Sideswipe had done to her. And most certainly didn't understand that it was he alone that was keeping her from returning to such a chaotic existence. His spark eased the separation from Sideswipe, giving her fragile human mind time to adapt from the tumultuous after effects of Side's death that followed too soon after his bonding. Her stability was entirely dependent on him at the moment, another thing she was unaware of, another thing he kept from her in case he needed leverage.
Sunstreaker had spent three days cleaning up Sideswipe and repairing his frame, of cursing and yelling at his inert form.
He blamed Sideswipe. He blamed Optimus Prime. He blamed Megatron and Thundercracker and he even blamed Alexis, who should have been a better soldier. Alexis whom he resented above all others because she was now a part of him. A poor substitute to his brother. A terrible excuse for companionship. One who had taken three days just to come see him.
Because of his brother's actions, he was now bonded to the female, irrevocably tied. Sunny understood why his brother did it. He understood Sideswipe completely. They both were so intertwined that even if one tried to close off from the other, they were still aware. And when his brother was killed all his memories and experiences downloaded into Sunstreaker.
He stiffened as she approached, a scathing comment waiting on his glossa for whatever asinine consolation she offered.
Alexis said nothing. The femme just climbed up the side ramp and moved toward Sideswipe, dropping on her knees as she covered her eyes, her hand stretching to meet the tip of Sideswipe's immobile digit. And then she sobbed, loudly, violently, her tiny frame shaking from the strength of her distress.
Sunstreaker's spark responded and his digits twitched with agitation and an overwhelming compulsion to touch her. His digit stretched and dropped on the female's back. Sunny was fascinated by her trembling, the feel of her body and that pleasurable pull that had his digit caressing the sharp curve of her spine, the softness of her hip and thigh.
Her body stilled, muscles stiffening. Sunstreaker didn't pull back, didn't step away. An explosive, consuming arousal made his own frame tremble, his spark pound violently. His focus narrowed on the way her body felt, the tantalizing magnification of her energy signature that held a twinge of his brother's presence, the connection between them that throbbed and pulsed.
He picked her up and carried her to the back of the room, let her down and touched her again, this time with a purpose. Alexis wouldn't dare deny him. He wouldn't allow it. He wouldn't stand for it.
Her watery eyes widened but instead of pulling away, she wrapped her hand around his digit and pressed closer. His systems registered an unknown malfunction and he let go. Energy wrapped around them both. Pleasure rippled and spread, a release unlike any other having him forgetting everything except the bliss as his systems locked and crashed, blanketing over his thoughts and grief.
The first thing he knew after his systems rebooted was how repulsed he was by his own actions. A regret, a feeling that he wasn't accustomed to recognizing except for his own brother's experiences and thoughts.
To have such relations with the female and in front of his dead brother, he felt disgusted by his impulses. But the Autobot couldn't blame himself. Didn't feel guilt. He was sure that it was Sideswipe's memories and residual presence that made him inclined toward such useless guilt.
It was the female's fault. She had enticed him and seduced him long before that moment. The strain that she engendered in him creating a necessity for full realization. The claiming that followed proved that he wasn't as abhorred of the female as much as he tried to be. And how truly remorseless he was that his brother took the female as theirs, no, as his.
Intimacy for him had never been like that before. Like death and life, like pure joy, like chaos and losing control, like an epiphany beyond himself. He no longer doubted what he had been told by those boastful, rare few who had spoken of taking a mate. A subject he had never given much heed to. Not with the sharing that was involved, not with the compromises that had to take place, the reformatting, the problems that could occur when separated.
And while the twins could want the same femme, keeping her, adding her to what was a highly intimate and complex arrangement between the two had never suited either. There had been a femme or two that had lasted beyond a few encounters, none had really been considered. Perhaps because the two never allowed it to get personal, and rarely moved beyond the physical. Permanence with a femme was a novelty, an unwanted state that would surely lead to conflict, violence and even more dangerous, boredom. There was also the fact that both were entitled with an egocentricity that allowed no room for others and repelled everyone around them soon enough.
Having his brother had always been sufficient. Everyone else could go to the pit. An ideology that did not furnish the twins with many friends.
He'd never seen Alexis so still before, nor had he ever witnessed her being so silent. Her eyes were still shut tight, her arms wrapped around her body as she curled her legs inward toward her belly. She appeared so peaceful, an oddity since he felt anything but.
A startling pang raced through his spark chamber as he stared at her. Exhausted, spiteful, filled with blame and that plaguing regret, he forced himself to get up and away from her, embarrassed when his joints shook from the sudden shift of weight.
Alexis sat up, her bright green eyes hovering on his own, questions in them that he didn't want her to ask. She didn't. Sunstreaker reached for her. Alexis pulled back.
Even after what they did she was still sensitive about being touched. She had initiated contact with him just an hour previous, something that he realized now was an astounding rarity. She felt sorry for him, he spitefully realized, terrible pity. And now, with her focus back on him as her expression turned toward bewilderment, the Autobot felt a defensive cruelty cause his mouth to curl into a snarl.
Even as Sideswipe bonded to the female, she never accepted his brother as her mate. And he had been no different. It wasn't until that very moment that those unexpectedly hurtful thoughts raced through.
The rejection was intolerable, but more manageable when he realized it was just a manner of biological compatibility. The female just needed to adapt to his needs and energy output. Something he found that he really didn't have patience for. His brother had felt patience toward her, his brother had also put up with a lot more than he ever would have. The atypical things Sides said to and tried to promise the female... the future he wanted with her.
Once more bitter as he thought of his twin, the resentment returned in a thunderous wave. Clutching at the medical exam table that the miniscule female sat on, he bent down and loomed over her.
"My brother loved you," he lashed out at her with a stifling affront, the loss of Sideswipe still raw and unfathomable, the human word his brother thought of when thinking of Alexis, incomprehensible. There was also the agony that Alexis produced in him and his brother, a slight at how much she had gotten through what was once untouched.
"But you are a curse," he continued, delighted by his own cruelty. "Everyone that cares for you dies or is killed."
Her mouth dropped open, her far too luminescent eyes opened with pooling liquid green. He internally floundered, recognizing the suffering. He didn't stop though. The pleasure that came from her own pain, from her reaction to his words, was an enjoyment that he couldn't deny.
"But you are mine now. Or do you expect me to pay for you as that Vildan did?"
The more he talked though, the more she seemed to gather strength and divert the intentional jabs. Alexis stared at him with the emotional orbs that had plagued him during recharge cycles. Mouth set firmly, eyes blinking back the pain, she slowly stood to her feet.
"No one owns me, most certainly not you," she said with a heat of words that seemed to patter along his paneling, making him shiver with thoughts he should have been rid of now that he had felt his energy wash over and through her.
At those ridiculous words he broke out into a vengeful roar of laughter. Gathering himself, he abandoned the female on the exam table, knowing she was watching as he did so, exactly as he needed.
Alexis was a strange female. Even after everything he had said, she remained vigil with him as he finished the necessary preparations of Sideswipe's body. He tingled at her nearness, ached for her in ways that befuddled him, yet he ignored her.
His brother contained and protected in a stasis chamber, he left the ship several times, always returning more bitter and hollow than when he had left.
Sunstreaker refused to stop though. No one would get away from what they did to his brother. The May female was the first to witness his vengeance, the first human he had ever directly killed.
Killing a human had proved far too simple, far too messy. A personal glimmer into how breakable the creatures were. Yet that didn't stop him from killing the two males that had been with the female, nor did the irony that they were brothers. He did them a favor, one that had not been given to him, by ending them together.
Killing the responsible humans, he directed his rage toward a neighboring Decepticon outpost, and then one of their scout ships that had the misfortune of going through his ship's sensory web.
"I don't think Sideswipe would want that," Alexis boldly spoke to him upon his recent return.
She avoided confrontations when possible, hardly spoke unless necessary. He frightened her. Sunstreaker knew that. If it didn't make certain very delicate systems clench, he would have been amused.
Swiping his hands down over his chassis that was marred with patches of dried Energon, he glared down at the tiny creature. He hadn't seen her in over a week. And it wasn't until that moment that he knew he had been avoiding her too. An oddity that confounded the Autobot. Avoidance was not a tactic he was prone to employing.
So Alexis was aware of his reprisals. He couldn't help but preen under her attention, his door panels rising rigidly against his backpanel.
"You didn't know my brother." He paused for effect, his optics sliding down her slender form. Alexis was wearing something visually pleasing, almost a dress, but not quite, a gossamer cloak hanging on each shoulder point, attractively floating behind her. Her hair had been tied back into a messy ponytail, shorter follicles falling loose and caressing her jawline. Her feet were bare, and by the scent that wafted off her pliable body, he knew she had just been in the cleaning racks.
The Autobot's engines revved, desire misfiring into his weapon's systems, a malfunction that hadn't occurred since his first attempt at interfacing with a femme. He barely stopped the compartment from folding his blaster out and causing further mortification. Discomforted with his sudden lack of control, he diverted and erased the experience.
"And this isn't for him. It is for me."
She frowned. Her eyes narrowed. Alexis opened her mouth but nothing came out. Shutting it tightly, she folded her hands defensively against her chest, watching him itch at the tenderness that was the rim of his weapon's compartment.
"This isn't the way," she finally spoke, far too quietly, way too cautiously, a plea in her words. "I know. This won't heal you."
He chuckled soundly at that. He was lost. He was broken. And nothing, not anyone would heal him. Without Sideswipe he was nothing, all his safety guards had dissolved, his already questionable restraint nonexistent. The female had no idea who he was, nor what he was becoming without his balancing half.
"Who said I wanted to be healed?" he finally responded, a purposeful step taken closer to the female. "Or do you want to try? The broken female that still mourns for a Vildan that would still be alive if he never met you. And my brother, what you did to him, I will never..."
"Be quiet!" Alexis screamed out, loud and fierce, a growl enunciating the statement as she picked up her foot and slammed it down. "You don't know anything." Her words warbled with tangible emotion.
The female's chest was rising and falling with a pronounced repetition, her pointed gaze seared upon his optics. The anger she held was thick and enticing. She waited with perverted eagerness for him to speak, prepared for whatever he slammed back at her.
"You are... beautiful."
It wasn't until he heard the words leaving his mouth that he knew it to be true. Conventionally, she was nothing special. But she was vibrant, infectious, her shows of tenderness uncommon, her guileless tendencies vile but not nearly as repelling as they should have been. And while her physical traits were not unpleasing, it was more the software of what defined who she was than her outward appearance that had him enthralled.
Her cheeks reddened and her scowl increased. She released a long breath of air, confusion making her brows bunch and her eyes narrow. Suddenly self-conscious, overwhelmed completely, Alexis struggled with what he had said.
"You lie," she finally said to him. Those eyes that had left him returned with a force that stirred.
"And what benefit would there be in lying about such a thing?"
"I am not one of your impressionable admirers," she replied tersely.
"This I know."
"And I have never been one to hold much weight in what I look like."
"I wasn't just speaking of your physical attributes."
A hardness overtook her, dropping her hands, she twisted them in front of her.
"You are trying to deflect me. As if what you said would make me forget. I understand this need for revenge, believe me, but I refuse to stay here with you while you go on a murdering spree." Her mouth pressed into a heavy frown. "Why have you brought me here? Why haven't you taken me home yet, Sunstreaker? Why do you keep me here when I am obviously in the way and deeply opposed to your actions?" she asked the questions, her frustration growing with each new inquiry, her hands lightly quivering from the unwanted confrontation.
"Home? What home?" he scoffed, disturbed by her necessity to get away from him. "I will not give you up. You are my only chance."
"Chance for what?" Alexis wanted to know, now desperate for answers.
"Escape."
Alexis blinked at that, shook her head firmly, ready to argue even though she didn't fully comprehend. "I am not..."
Sunny bent to his knees, his hands planted firmly beside her. Energy released through his digits, thick and needy and pulsing, drawing lines of light along the fleshy curves of her body. Did the female even know what this did to him? Did she know what it meant? Those fleeting thoughts were forgotten as quickly as they came, a deflection incorporated to escape the unnecessary truths. Nothing would stop him from having her, nor keep him from the ferocity of intimacy that he sought.
Alexis was the last tie to his brother, the last thing that bound him to a galaxy that he despised utterly. The last thing that made any sense.
She was his escape. A profound diversion given to him by his dying brother. Home?
He was her home.
And Alexis, she was misfortune and relief. She was etched on his spark. She was the only human that mattered.
And the very last choice that his spark twin would ever make.