Monkey, Three of Five
Nope, still no Lambo icon. I suppose I need to make one. *sigh*
Title: Monkey
Status: In progress
Rating: T/PG-13
Warnings: Darkness. A bit of psychological horror of a sort. Decidedly NON-FANON Lambo twins. These are my "twins," and if you are in love with the stupid, pranking, fanon Twins, you will likely hate what I've done with them. Just sayin'.
Main Characters: Sideswipe and Sunstreaker...and a touch of Optimus Prime in this part.
Genre: Darkness. Angstness.
Summary: Without him, I am nothing. Without me, he is a monster.
Chapter Links: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
The two of them were still in the medbay when I arrived there for the second time this very early morning, dawn just breaking outside. They looked at me as I walked in, both gazes immediately crystallizing on me, and they regarded me each with different expressions as they took in my attempt to appear anything other than panicked and half-crazed. To appear calm and sane was a difficult endeavor; Sunstreaker was still laughing and gloating and taunting away in my head. I could do nothing about it, about him, other than doing my level best to ignore him.
Meanwhile, both of them of were regarding me with, amongst other things, a strange combination of sympathetic pity and pained, uncomprehending accusation. I was fairly certain that neither of them had understood my insistence upon seeing Sunstreaker immediately, once I had observed his handiwork, felt his handiwork. I imagined that they had expected me to be as horrified as they were by what my "twin" had done, perhaps even more so because of the "relationship" that they thought existed between Sunstreaker and me. And I was horrified, but for reasons that they could not even begin to suspect. Not yet. Not until I told them.
For his part, Optimus Prime's head was slightly canted to one side as he stared at me, as if I were some perplexing puzzle that he was trying to solve. His expression was always hard to read; his convenient mask concealed everything save his eyes. But I didn't need to see his face. I could read him easily, regardless, always. Optimus Prime hid nothing, likely because he believed that he didn't need to hide anything. The mask was there, his faithful and ever-present shield, and he was entirely unaware that I, at least, could absorb whatever he projected. Usually, he radiated an unimaginable but tightly-contained and controlled power that was tempered with quiet self-confidence and compassion, even with empathy to the extent that being in charge allowed empathy. Empathy unlaced with sadism could be crippling, as I knew all too well, and too much of it was a distinct liability in a leader. It prevented him from making the hard, sometimes brutal decisions that leadership required. But now Optimus Prime was radiating a simple, bleeding confusion more strongly than anything else, and I wasn't quite sure why that would be so.
Our leader certainly knew of Sunstreaker's recent past. It was all in his records, those unfortunate occasions when he'd lost control - Which in reality were the occasions when I'd lost control, when I'd lost track of him - and then something untoward had happened to some unfortunate being, usually the first to cross his path who regarded him in a manner of which he didn't approve. It was all in his records, our records, how we'd been passed around Cybertron as a result of Sunstreaker's actions just before ultimately joining what became an unplanned and unforeseen exodus to Earth. His actions had always been excused because on the one hand he was a master at cultivating undeserved forgiveness but on the other hand because he was, quite simply, a brilliant warrior. He was strong and fearless and supremely capable…and utterly pitiless. He was the best fighter that the Autobots had and the best that most had ever seen or ever would see. So in the war situation in which we were ensnared, Sunstreaker's usefulness always managed to outweigh his "indiscretions." So it shouldn't have been surprising to Prime that Sunstreaker had lost control again. Perhaps it was the utter randomness of the attack that was perturbing him, coupled with the sheer brutality of it; whether or not Bluestreak would survive was very much a matter open to question.
Bluestreak wasn't there in the main ward anymore, and for that I was glad. Neither was Ratchet present, so I assumed that Ratchet was off doing what Ratchet did best: saving lives when they could be saved and sometimes managing to do so even when by all rights success shouldn't have been at all possible. In Bluestreak's case it was likely the latter that was needed. Either way, I had no desire to look upon Bluestreak again as he had been, no desire to see again the shattered wreckage that was ultimately, as ever, my fault.
He'd been battered and terribly broken, bathing and drowning in his own vital fluids, this individual whom I called a friend and whom Sunstreaker had appeared to genuinely tolerate, at least for the most part, which was the very most that could be expected of him. Of all of the damage that had been inflicted upon him, the worst of it to me - because after talking to Sunstreaker I understood why he had done it - was that the components that gave Bluestreak his voice had been torn brutally out of him. Bluestreak's voice was to Sunstreaker the dangerous thing, the one weapon that he believed had the power to derail his carefully-wrought plans. It was the only weapon in Bluestreak's considerable arsenal that Sunstreaker had any reason to fear. It would take time to reconstruct those components, if Bluestreak survived, and time was exactly what Sunstreaker needed. It was the only thing he needed.
And yet somehow, through all of this, Bluestreak had been still conscious when I had last seen him, much less still alive. He'd been in worlds of pain, deep and fathomless oceans of pain. It was the sort of pain that no one should have to suffer and that I had once enjoyed inflicting upon others. Of this, I was brutally reminded as I had gazed upon Bluestreak earlier, as helpless and silent screams that he had no hope of controlling had ripped themselves out of him over and over again. The pain that drove his silent wailing exploded from him and tore at me like a storm of finely-whetted and wind-driven knife blades, each of them lacerating me with guilt. I did not want to face that again, for all that I deserved to face it.
But for all that he was young and vulnerable, Bluestreak was also a contradiction. He was very much a survivor, as strong and as stubbornly determined as they came. An entire city had collapsed on him, not all that long ago if one didn't count the millions of years of stasis, and yet he, in all of his youth and vulnerability, had done what no one else in the city had been able to do: He had survived. He had clung doggedly to life until he had been found. Until Prowl had found him.
But he hadn't survived completely intact. I knew this. Bluestreak's damage hovered about him like a black, festering cloud that was almost tangible to me. He sought to dissipate it with bright spirits, happy smiles, and unrelenting and sometimes meaningless chatter, but he could not dispel it completely. It settled over him, enveloping him like a shroud when he was alone, and nightmares were his near-nightly companions. Bluestreak's quarters were close to mine, to ours, and sometimes, if the nightmare was bad enough, strong enough, I could feel its backwash through the distance that separated us. His terror and anguish would batter their way through my fragile defenses, and I could feel full-force the panic that jerked him yelping and sometimes screaming from slumber. His weakness and his brokenness and his desperation and his deep fear of being alone and helpless again were all laid bare before me, almost as if I could reach out and touch them.
All of it ate relentlessly at him and washed over me…and I knew that, at one time, if he had been alive and if I had known him before I was split, I would have savored it all. I would have basked in it as a reptile basks in sunlight, drawing strength from it. And I would have done my best to deepen Bluestreak's brokenness, to magnify and strengthen his fears, slowly and oh so carefully, all without him knowing that I was doing so. I had honed that skill to the level of fine art. It was an art at which I had become a master. It sickened me now.
Yes, I knew why Sunstreaker had chosen Bluestreak, and I knew that it wasn't only because of his strong influence with Prowl. Sunstreaker couldn't feel things in other people as I did anymore - and if anything, the ability was stronger in me now than it had ever been, now that it was wholly unfettered from darkness - but still he knew of Bluestreak's weakness, his vulnerability, his damage, and it attracted him, called siren-like to the darkness that was the whole of his being. He knew of these things because I knew of these things, because I hadn't been able to keep anything from him, not as he had learned to keep things from me. It was one more straw of guilt to heap on the camel's already-straining back, and it enraged me that he had done this to me, that I had handed him the opportunity to do so, all shiny and gift-wrapped. Again.
My fury almost equaled Prowl's, in fact. He was standing, leaning back against a wall in a way that would seem casual to any observer other than me. I could sense the undercurrents in him that likely no one else - except, regrettably, Sunstreaker - could imagine existing within him. Gleaming, meticulously-polished black and white doorwings flared against orange wall, his arms were folded neatly beneath his protruding chest, and his expression, as ever, was cool and collected, the façade firmly in place, hiding deep and turbulent depths behind it.
Oh yes, Prowl would be easy, so very easy to twist, if just the right pressure at just the right time was applied to him, oh so carefully. It was easy for me to see why Sunstreaker was drawn to him as if he was an overcharged electromagnet. That I hadn't seen this coming, that I had been so busy protecting Prowl directly that it hadn't even occurred to me that Sunstreaker might try a more oblique approach to him…it tore viciously at me. An utter innocent had suffered horribly for my lack of foresight, for my lack of knowing myself.
Sunstreaker's plan was just the sort of plan that I would have concocted, all those years ago, if a more direct approach had been somehow thwarted. He, of course, had memories of this as well, and even though he might no longer have the capacity to plan for himself like this, he certainly had the ability to mimic the sorts of things that we had done in the past, particularly those things that had been successful. When we had targeted someone for more long-term…amusement, the very first step had always been to isolate the target from friends and family, from anything familiar. This was exactly what Sunstreaker was endeavoring to do to Prowl, now. And he would succeed, I knew, if left unchecked.
And Sunstreaker was right in that Bluestreak was almost like a son to Prowl, that Bluestreak adored Prowl, idolized him, followed him wherever he went, and felt that he owed him his life. And perhaps he did. He had told me once, friend to friend, that Prowl had pulled him from the wreckage, cleaned him up, supported and comforted and guided him, and had eventually given him a purpose in life, one that had turned him away from a path that could so easily have hardened him with hatred and soured him with bitterness. He had learned, under Prowl's tutelage, how to channel his burning, outraged desire for revenge into the very qualities that made him the extremely effective sniper that he was. And the kid was deadly, no doubt about it, with any weapon and at practically any distance. He could kill without a second thought, if he had to, and it was often his duty to do so. But apart from that, Bluestreak was still in many ways an innocent, somehow managing to retain a genuine and almost childlike air about himself. He was…gentle. Supremely likeable.
All of this was to Prowl's credit. Prowl who lived next door to him, now, and deliberately so. Prowl who would come in and comfort him, who would sit with him and talk to him and sometimes even hold him when the nightmares plagued him, when he woke from them screaming for someone, anyone, his the raw, bleeding anguish of an abandoned and terrified child. I knew when Prowl did that, knew the exact moment when he walked into Bluestreak's quarters. The harsh, naked terror that battered at me when the nightmare was particularly bad would mellow the instant that Prowl arrived, and eventually, surprisingly quickly, it would entirely calm, disappear, and usually he was able to sleep again, dreamlessly and painlessly. It was a surprising ability that Prowl harbored, mostly secretly; I doubted that anyone else - other than Sunstreaker, unfortunately - knew about this compassionate and protective side of the stoic tactician.
But Prowl hadn't been able to protect Bluestreak from Sunstreaker, just as I hadn't been able to protect Prowl, not really, and this, perhaps even more than the actual atrocities committed against Bluestreak, infuriated Prowl. And lurking under the fury, intensifying it, was tenacious, clawing guilt that gnawed relentlessly at him. I felt it, the sensations familiar because this was something that he and I had in common, a similar burden that we shared, and I desperately wanted, needed, to tell Prowl that. But not yet, not quite yet. First, I had to talk to Optimus Prime, and before I could do that…I had to find the courage to do so.
Good luck with that, you coward, the omnipresent voice in mind taunted. The tone was snickering; he'd been listening, of course, to my thoughts, and they were greatly amusing him. Let me know how it goes, huh? I had to fight not to snort aloud at that.
Steeling myself, I tore my gaze away from Prowl's penetrating one, and turned toward Optimus Prime's imposing and impressive figure. He was still watching me, just as Prowl was but for different reasons, his gaze still cool and appraising. I approached him slowly, warily, until his shadow fell fully across me, and then I looked up at him nervously.
"May I speak with you, sir?" I asked. Quietly. Deferentially. "Privately," I amended.
He nodded once, silently, and after glancing around himself in search of a suitable location, decided upon Ratchet's office, toward which he then headed decisively. I followed silently in his wake, and I secured the door behind us as I entered the small, cluttered, and, to anyone who wasn't Ratchet, utterly disorganized space.
There wasn't anywhere to sit, so we both stood, the dim lighting positioned and angled such that Prime's shadow still fell across me. I shivered, feeling small. Insignificant.
Because you are, his voice taunted merrily, but I ignored him.
Optimus Prime was staring at me expectantly, his minimal visible expression still such that it was obvious that he wasn't sure what to make of me. I pulled in a deep breath, let it out, then pulled in another one. It didn't do much to ease me, and I had no idea what to say, now that the moment to say something had arrived.
Not surprising, the voice scathingly said. Idiot. I got all the brains.
I scowled, only barely managing not to answer the voice aloud, and then I determinedly told myself not to listen to him. Instead, I lifted my gaze to focus on Prime, who if anything appeared more confused. It wasn't surprising, given that I was acting strangely.
"There's something I need to tell you," I said without thinking about it, the words falling out of my mouth before I'd even really thought about what to say. "About me," I amended. "And Sunstreaker."
Prime's posture relaxed a little, and he folded his arms calmly over his chest.
"Yes?" he prompted after a few moments.
"We aren't twins," I blurted.
Ooooh, nice and subtle, he crooned.
Optimus Prime, meanwhile, was giving me a deeply quizzical look, or at least his posture shifted so that it conveyed puzzlement. And suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to leave the room. I was even backing, inch by uncertain, frightened inch, toward the door behind me. But something stayed me. Maybe it was Sunstreaker's amusement, his scathing amusement at his pathetic weaker half that was still coursing through me, encouraging me to quit while I was still marginally ahead. Perhaps it was his very encouragement to quit, to leave, to run away in shamed terror, that ultimately and perversely convinced me to stay, convinced me to stand my ground to the likely bitter end. Whatever it was, words suddenly came to me in a flood that vomited itself out of me before I could think about it, as if the words needed to leave me or else I would otherwise sicken and wither away into nothing. Less than nothing.
"I know…" I said quietly, hesitantly, to the floor, for I couldn't meet Optimus Prime's gaze, couldn't bring myself to do so. "I know that's what our records say, but it…it isn't the truth. It's…it's all a lie that Sunstreaker made up, long ago. The only thing…the only thing that's true about anything in our records is…is that we are a split spark. But it… It didn't happen when we were created. It was…done to us. To me, and then I became an 'us.'"
The stream of mostly-stupid words abruptly halted when Sunstreaker laughed at me, when he made some biting, stinging comment that was lost to me because I was of a sudden concentrating solely on forcing myself to look up - way up - into Optimus Prime's face. His imposing and daunting shadow still fell across me, and confusion was still radiating from him, but it was a different sort of confusion now, focused on me and prompted by what I had been saying.
My gaze locked with Prime's, and I said, "For most of my life, our life, he and I were one being, and the split, it… It happened much later and…and the procedure was flawed. He, or rather the part that became him…it wasn't supposed to survive, but it did, he did, and then-"
Words died in my throat as Prime took an ominous, reverberating step toward me, and then loomed over me.
"What kind of 'procedure' takes a perfectly good spark and splits it in two?" he demanded to know, his voice low, rumbling in the way that it always rumbled when he was morally outraged about something. As if he was outraged on my behalf. As if I deserved pity or defense or anything other than…than death. But he still didn't know what I had done, suddenly thought me an innocent victim of….something. And he was leaning down toward me now, our gazes still locked, and of a sudden my nervousness vanished, replaced by resigned resolve. There was no going back now, and I would do well, I thought, to simply be done. With everything. As quickly as possible.
"The kind," I said softly but determinedly, "that's meant to 'rehabilitate' the worst kind of criminal that you can possibly imagine."
He recoiled from me, stared at me, and even his limited expression was stunned. I felt his surprise, too, felt it mutate into shock as my meaning occurred to him. Sunstreaker was quiet - too quiet, ominously quiet - but I couldn't spare a thought for him. The words were flowing again. I told Optimus Prime everything. I told him about the forty-four people that we - I - had killed. I told him their names, for I remembered them all, took great pains to remember them. I told him of our methods, our reprehensible methods and the twisted, relentless reasoning that drove them. I told him of our capture, the trial…the sentence. I told him of the last-minute alternative that I now wished, fervently wished, that I had declined, and I told him what had happened as a result of it. I told him the truth, all of it in all its brutal glory, about who and what Sunstreaker and I were then…and what we were now. I told him of my long efforts to control him, and of the fact that, now, that was beyond my abilities.
When I was finished, when there were no more words, I was spent both mentally and physically. I found myself leaning against the wall behind me, shaking uncontrollably. The wall was quite literally holding me up, and I sank down against it, gratefully and pitifully, until I was sitting on the floor, hunched against it, cowering against it. I was still staring up at Optimus Prime, and he was still staring down at me, trying to absorb and to comprehend all that I had said.
"So…Bluestreak…" he managed to say, but he got no farther than that.
"He's trying to go back to what we were before we were split," I said wearily, my voice roughened with a combination of use, violent trembling, and emotion. "Since he's rather…severed himself from me, he really knows no other way to exist, so in a way he can't help it. But like me, he is…incomplete. More incomplete than I am. He needs someone to take over the role that I used to play, someone to replace the qualities that I have now. He needs someone who can plan. Calculate. Strategize. Someone who has the ability to look at people and situations with nothing but ruthless, emotionless logic."
Optimus Prime stared at me, absorbing what I'd said. It didn't take him long to realize my meaning, and when he did he turned wordlessly away from me and paced around Ratchet's desk to activate its embedded comm panel. Dimly, I heard him summon Prowl to Ratchet's office and, seconds later, Prowl stalked into the room, all perfect posture, gleaming armor, flaring doorwings, and barely-suppressed rage that battered at my weakened defenses. Even more dimly, I heard Optimus Prime quickly tell Prowl everything that I had just told him in a hushed voice, as if he was telling some secret that I didn't know.
"If he thinks that doing…doing that…to Bluestreak is going to endear me to him-" Prowl started to say, quietly outraged, as he turned toward me. He was closer to outwardly showing rage than I had ever seen him. The emotion pouring from him galvanized me.
"Not 'endear, Prowl," I interrupted quietly, but my words cut across the space between Prowl and me. I pushed myself up to my feet again and continued, "He's trying to remove from you anything and anyone who is familiar, anyone or anything that you care about or who cares about you. Once he's done that, once he's isolated you, he will…twist you, mold you into the individual that he wants you to be, so that he can use you. It's…what we always used to do."
Prowl frowned deeply at me, his brow furrowing uncertainly as he wrestled with what I'd said.
"I don't see how that would-"
"Of course you don't," I interrupted again, knowing what Prowl was about to say, "because it makes no logical sense…unless you're a sociopath. Until you're a sociopath. So…You just have to trust me. Please, Prowl. Don't give him the opportunity to do this to you."
At that, Optimus Prime snorted. It was a sound rarely heard from him, and so whenever he did decide to make such a noise, all attention immediately settled on him, even when the audience was only two strong.
"Given what you've just told us, Sideswipe," Optimus Prime said quietly, devastatingly quietly, talking over whatever Prowl might have said to me, "why should we believe a word you say? About any of this? You've been lying to us for a very long time; that much at least is quite clear. So how do we know that you're not controlling Sunstreaker so that he'll take the fall for something that you're planning, for something that you're in control of?"
Told you so! Sunstreaker announced, the tone of his "voice" almost sing-song as it smirked and bubbled through my being, as I gaped up at Optimus Prime, stunned beyond words. And then my "brother" faded into silence again.
"Perhaps we need to hear Sunstreaker's side of this story," Optimus Prime said when he saw that I, stupidly gaping at him in mute disbelief, was going to say nothing. And then he was calling Ironhide, calmly telling him to bring Sunstreaker to a nearby conference room.
A few moments passed then, moments that I spent trying to figure how in the universe I was going to prove that I was telling the truth, especially when my competition was a compulsive and extremely talented liar, an extremely convincing actor. And then Ironhide's puzzled, hesitant voice floated over the comm.
"Uh…Prime?" he said.
"Go ahead," Prime answered levelly.
"We've got a slight problem here," Ironhide answered.
Optimus Prime glanced at me, as if he thought that I knew what the problem was. I could only shrug helplessly. For millions of years now, I had wanted nothing more than to be separate from Sunstreaker, to be freed from the burden of him. I had fervently prayed that we would one day be able to go our separate ways, safely. Now, I wanted nothing more than to be able to know exactly what Sunstreaker was up to. The irony was not lost on me.
"What is it?" Prime was asking of Ironhide, once he pulled his searching, questioning gaze away from me.
Cold dread gripped me like a vise as Ironhide's perplexed answer came over the comm and then dropped onto me like many kilotons of bricks dropped from a very great height.
"Sunstreaker ain't here, Prime," Ironhide reported. "He's…gone."
Title: Monkey
Status: In progress
Rating: T/PG-13
Warnings: Darkness. A bit of psychological horror of a sort. Decidedly NON-FANON Lambo twins. These are my "twins," and if you are in love with the stupid, pranking, fanon Twins, you will likely hate what I've done with them. Just sayin'.
Main Characters: Sideswipe and Sunstreaker...and a touch of Optimus Prime in this part.
Genre: Darkness. Angstness.
Summary: Without him, I am nothing. Without me, he is a monster.
Chapter Links: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
The two of them were still in the medbay when I arrived there for the second time this very early morning, dawn just breaking outside. They looked at me as I walked in, both gazes immediately crystallizing on me, and they regarded me each with different expressions as they took in my attempt to appear anything other than panicked and half-crazed. To appear calm and sane was a difficult endeavor; Sunstreaker was still laughing and gloating and taunting away in my head. I could do nothing about it, about him, other than doing my level best to ignore him.
Meanwhile, both of them of were regarding me with, amongst other things, a strange combination of sympathetic pity and pained, uncomprehending accusation. I was fairly certain that neither of them had understood my insistence upon seeing Sunstreaker immediately, once I had observed his handiwork, felt his handiwork. I imagined that they had expected me to be as horrified as they were by what my "twin" had done, perhaps even more so because of the "relationship" that they thought existed between Sunstreaker and me. And I was horrified, but for reasons that they could not even begin to suspect. Not yet. Not until I told them.
For his part, Optimus Prime's head was slightly canted to one side as he stared at me, as if I were some perplexing puzzle that he was trying to solve. His expression was always hard to read; his convenient mask concealed everything save his eyes. But I didn't need to see his face. I could read him easily, regardless, always. Optimus Prime hid nothing, likely because he believed that he didn't need to hide anything. The mask was there, his faithful and ever-present shield, and he was entirely unaware that I, at least, could absorb whatever he projected. Usually, he radiated an unimaginable but tightly-contained and controlled power that was tempered with quiet self-confidence and compassion, even with empathy to the extent that being in charge allowed empathy. Empathy unlaced with sadism could be crippling, as I knew all too well, and too much of it was a distinct liability in a leader. It prevented him from making the hard, sometimes brutal decisions that leadership required. But now Optimus Prime was radiating a simple, bleeding confusion more strongly than anything else, and I wasn't quite sure why that would be so.
Our leader certainly knew of Sunstreaker's recent past. It was all in his records, those unfortunate occasions when he'd lost control - Which in reality were the occasions when I'd lost control, when I'd lost track of him - and then something untoward had happened to some unfortunate being, usually the first to cross his path who regarded him in a manner of which he didn't approve. It was all in his records, our records, how we'd been passed around Cybertron as a result of Sunstreaker's actions just before ultimately joining what became an unplanned and unforeseen exodus to Earth. His actions had always been excused because on the one hand he was a master at cultivating undeserved forgiveness but on the other hand because he was, quite simply, a brilliant warrior. He was strong and fearless and supremely capable…and utterly pitiless. He was the best fighter that the Autobots had and the best that most had ever seen or ever would see. So in the war situation in which we were ensnared, Sunstreaker's usefulness always managed to outweigh his "indiscretions." So it shouldn't have been surprising to Prime that Sunstreaker had lost control again. Perhaps it was the utter randomness of the attack that was perturbing him, coupled with the sheer brutality of it; whether or not Bluestreak would survive was very much a matter open to question.
Bluestreak wasn't there in the main ward anymore, and for that I was glad. Neither was Ratchet present, so I assumed that Ratchet was off doing what Ratchet did best: saving lives when they could be saved and sometimes managing to do so even when by all rights success shouldn't have been at all possible. In Bluestreak's case it was likely the latter that was needed. Either way, I had no desire to look upon Bluestreak again as he had been, no desire to see again the shattered wreckage that was ultimately, as ever, my fault.
He'd been battered and terribly broken, bathing and drowning in his own vital fluids, this individual whom I called a friend and whom Sunstreaker had appeared to genuinely tolerate, at least for the most part, which was the very most that could be expected of him. Of all of the damage that had been inflicted upon him, the worst of it to me - because after talking to Sunstreaker I understood why he had done it - was that the components that gave Bluestreak his voice had been torn brutally out of him. Bluestreak's voice was to Sunstreaker the dangerous thing, the one weapon that he believed had the power to derail his carefully-wrought plans. It was the only weapon in Bluestreak's considerable arsenal that Sunstreaker had any reason to fear. It would take time to reconstruct those components, if Bluestreak survived, and time was exactly what Sunstreaker needed. It was the only thing he needed.
And yet somehow, through all of this, Bluestreak had been still conscious when I had last seen him, much less still alive. He'd been in worlds of pain, deep and fathomless oceans of pain. It was the sort of pain that no one should have to suffer and that I had once enjoyed inflicting upon others. Of this, I was brutally reminded as I had gazed upon Bluestreak earlier, as helpless and silent screams that he had no hope of controlling had ripped themselves out of him over and over again. The pain that drove his silent wailing exploded from him and tore at me like a storm of finely-whetted and wind-driven knife blades, each of them lacerating me with guilt. I did not want to face that again, for all that I deserved to face it.
But for all that he was young and vulnerable, Bluestreak was also a contradiction. He was very much a survivor, as strong and as stubbornly determined as they came. An entire city had collapsed on him, not all that long ago if one didn't count the millions of years of stasis, and yet he, in all of his youth and vulnerability, had done what no one else in the city had been able to do: He had survived. He had clung doggedly to life until he had been found. Until Prowl had found him.
But he hadn't survived completely intact. I knew this. Bluestreak's damage hovered about him like a black, festering cloud that was almost tangible to me. He sought to dissipate it with bright spirits, happy smiles, and unrelenting and sometimes meaningless chatter, but he could not dispel it completely. It settled over him, enveloping him like a shroud when he was alone, and nightmares were his near-nightly companions. Bluestreak's quarters were close to mine, to ours, and sometimes, if the nightmare was bad enough, strong enough, I could feel its backwash through the distance that separated us. His terror and anguish would batter their way through my fragile defenses, and I could feel full-force the panic that jerked him yelping and sometimes screaming from slumber. His weakness and his brokenness and his desperation and his deep fear of being alone and helpless again were all laid bare before me, almost as if I could reach out and touch them.
All of it ate relentlessly at him and washed over me…and I knew that, at one time, if he had been alive and if I had known him before I was split, I would have savored it all. I would have basked in it as a reptile basks in sunlight, drawing strength from it. And I would have done my best to deepen Bluestreak's brokenness, to magnify and strengthen his fears, slowly and oh so carefully, all without him knowing that I was doing so. I had honed that skill to the level of fine art. It was an art at which I had become a master. It sickened me now.
Yes, I knew why Sunstreaker had chosen Bluestreak, and I knew that it wasn't only because of his strong influence with Prowl. Sunstreaker couldn't feel things in other people as I did anymore - and if anything, the ability was stronger in me now than it had ever been, now that it was wholly unfettered from darkness - but still he knew of Bluestreak's weakness, his vulnerability, his damage, and it attracted him, called siren-like to the darkness that was the whole of his being. He knew of these things because I knew of these things, because I hadn't been able to keep anything from him, not as he had learned to keep things from me. It was one more straw of guilt to heap on the camel's already-straining back, and it enraged me that he had done this to me, that I had handed him the opportunity to do so, all shiny and gift-wrapped. Again.
My fury almost equaled Prowl's, in fact. He was standing, leaning back against a wall in a way that would seem casual to any observer other than me. I could sense the undercurrents in him that likely no one else - except, regrettably, Sunstreaker - could imagine existing within him. Gleaming, meticulously-polished black and white doorwings flared against orange wall, his arms were folded neatly beneath his protruding chest, and his expression, as ever, was cool and collected, the façade firmly in place, hiding deep and turbulent depths behind it.
Oh yes, Prowl would be easy, so very easy to twist, if just the right pressure at just the right time was applied to him, oh so carefully. It was easy for me to see why Sunstreaker was drawn to him as if he was an overcharged electromagnet. That I hadn't seen this coming, that I had been so busy protecting Prowl directly that it hadn't even occurred to me that Sunstreaker might try a more oblique approach to him…it tore viciously at me. An utter innocent had suffered horribly for my lack of foresight, for my lack of knowing myself.
Sunstreaker's plan was just the sort of plan that I would have concocted, all those years ago, if a more direct approach had been somehow thwarted. He, of course, had memories of this as well, and even though he might no longer have the capacity to plan for himself like this, he certainly had the ability to mimic the sorts of things that we had done in the past, particularly those things that had been successful. When we had targeted someone for more long-term…amusement, the very first step had always been to isolate the target from friends and family, from anything familiar. This was exactly what Sunstreaker was endeavoring to do to Prowl, now. And he would succeed, I knew, if left unchecked.
And Sunstreaker was right in that Bluestreak was almost like a son to Prowl, that Bluestreak adored Prowl, idolized him, followed him wherever he went, and felt that he owed him his life. And perhaps he did. He had told me once, friend to friend, that Prowl had pulled him from the wreckage, cleaned him up, supported and comforted and guided him, and had eventually given him a purpose in life, one that had turned him away from a path that could so easily have hardened him with hatred and soured him with bitterness. He had learned, under Prowl's tutelage, how to channel his burning, outraged desire for revenge into the very qualities that made him the extremely effective sniper that he was. And the kid was deadly, no doubt about it, with any weapon and at practically any distance. He could kill without a second thought, if he had to, and it was often his duty to do so. But apart from that, Bluestreak was still in many ways an innocent, somehow managing to retain a genuine and almost childlike air about himself. He was…gentle. Supremely likeable.
All of this was to Prowl's credit. Prowl who lived next door to him, now, and deliberately so. Prowl who would come in and comfort him, who would sit with him and talk to him and sometimes even hold him when the nightmares plagued him, when he woke from them screaming for someone, anyone, his the raw, bleeding anguish of an abandoned and terrified child. I knew when Prowl did that, knew the exact moment when he walked into Bluestreak's quarters. The harsh, naked terror that battered at me when the nightmare was particularly bad would mellow the instant that Prowl arrived, and eventually, surprisingly quickly, it would entirely calm, disappear, and usually he was able to sleep again, dreamlessly and painlessly. It was a surprising ability that Prowl harbored, mostly secretly; I doubted that anyone else - other than Sunstreaker, unfortunately - knew about this compassionate and protective side of the stoic tactician.
But Prowl hadn't been able to protect Bluestreak from Sunstreaker, just as I hadn't been able to protect Prowl, not really, and this, perhaps even more than the actual atrocities committed against Bluestreak, infuriated Prowl. And lurking under the fury, intensifying it, was tenacious, clawing guilt that gnawed relentlessly at him. I felt it, the sensations familiar because this was something that he and I had in common, a similar burden that we shared, and I desperately wanted, needed, to tell Prowl that. But not yet, not quite yet. First, I had to talk to Optimus Prime, and before I could do that…I had to find the courage to do so.
Good luck with that, you coward, the omnipresent voice in mind taunted. The tone was snickering; he'd been listening, of course, to my thoughts, and they were greatly amusing him. Let me know how it goes, huh? I had to fight not to snort aloud at that.
Steeling myself, I tore my gaze away from Prowl's penetrating one, and turned toward Optimus Prime's imposing and impressive figure. He was still watching me, just as Prowl was but for different reasons, his gaze still cool and appraising. I approached him slowly, warily, until his shadow fell fully across me, and then I looked up at him nervously.
"May I speak with you, sir?" I asked. Quietly. Deferentially. "Privately," I amended.
He nodded once, silently, and after glancing around himself in search of a suitable location, decided upon Ratchet's office, toward which he then headed decisively. I followed silently in his wake, and I secured the door behind us as I entered the small, cluttered, and, to anyone who wasn't Ratchet, utterly disorganized space.
There wasn't anywhere to sit, so we both stood, the dim lighting positioned and angled such that Prime's shadow still fell across me. I shivered, feeling small. Insignificant.
Because you are, his voice taunted merrily, but I ignored him.
Optimus Prime was staring at me expectantly, his minimal visible expression still such that it was obvious that he wasn't sure what to make of me. I pulled in a deep breath, let it out, then pulled in another one. It didn't do much to ease me, and I had no idea what to say, now that the moment to say something had arrived.
Not surprising, the voice scathingly said. Idiot. I got all the brains.
I scowled, only barely managing not to answer the voice aloud, and then I determinedly told myself not to listen to him. Instead, I lifted my gaze to focus on Prime, who if anything appeared more confused. It wasn't surprising, given that I was acting strangely.
"There's something I need to tell you," I said without thinking about it, the words falling out of my mouth before I'd even really thought about what to say. "About me," I amended. "And Sunstreaker."
Prime's posture relaxed a little, and he folded his arms calmly over his chest.
"Yes?" he prompted after a few moments.
"We aren't twins," I blurted.
Ooooh, nice and subtle, he crooned.
Optimus Prime, meanwhile, was giving me a deeply quizzical look, or at least his posture shifted so that it conveyed puzzlement. And suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to leave the room. I was even backing, inch by uncertain, frightened inch, toward the door behind me. But something stayed me. Maybe it was Sunstreaker's amusement, his scathing amusement at his pathetic weaker half that was still coursing through me, encouraging me to quit while I was still marginally ahead. Perhaps it was his very encouragement to quit, to leave, to run away in shamed terror, that ultimately and perversely convinced me to stay, convinced me to stand my ground to the likely bitter end. Whatever it was, words suddenly came to me in a flood that vomited itself out of me before I could think about it, as if the words needed to leave me or else I would otherwise sicken and wither away into nothing. Less than nothing.
"I know…" I said quietly, hesitantly, to the floor, for I couldn't meet Optimus Prime's gaze, couldn't bring myself to do so. "I know that's what our records say, but it…it isn't the truth. It's…it's all a lie that Sunstreaker made up, long ago. The only thing…the only thing that's true about anything in our records is…is that we are a split spark. But it… It didn't happen when we were created. It was…done to us. To me, and then I became an 'us.'"
The stream of mostly-stupid words abruptly halted when Sunstreaker laughed at me, when he made some biting, stinging comment that was lost to me because I was of a sudden concentrating solely on forcing myself to look up - way up - into Optimus Prime's face. His imposing and daunting shadow still fell across me, and confusion was still radiating from him, but it was a different sort of confusion now, focused on me and prompted by what I had been saying.
My gaze locked with Prime's, and I said, "For most of my life, our life, he and I were one being, and the split, it… It happened much later and…and the procedure was flawed. He, or rather the part that became him…it wasn't supposed to survive, but it did, he did, and then-"
Words died in my throat as Prime took an ominous, reverberating step toward me, and then loomed over me.
"What kind of 'procedure' takes a perfectly good spark and splits it in two?" he demanded to know, his voice low, rumbling in the way that it always rumbled when he was morally outraged about something. As if he was outraged on my behalf. As if I deserved pity or defense or anything other than…than death. But he still didn't know what I had done, suddenly thought me an innocent victim of….something. And he was leaning down toward me now, our gazes still locked, and of a sudden my nervousness vanished, replaced by resigned resolve. There was no going back now, and I would do well, I thought, to simply be done. With everything. As quickly as possible.
"The kind," I said softly but determinedly, "that's meant to 'rehabilitate' the worst kind of criminal that you can possibly imagine."
He recoiled from me, stared at me, and even his limited expression was stunned. I felt his surprise, too, felt it mutate into shock as my meaning occurred to him. Sunstreaker was quiet - too quiet, ominously quiet - but I couldn't spare a thought for him. The words were flowing again. I told Optimus Prime everything. I told him about the forty-four people that we - I - had killed. I told him their names, for I remembered them all, took great pains to remember them. I told him of our methods, our reprehensible methods and the twisted, relentless reasoning that drove them. I told him of our capture, the trial…the sentence. I told him of the last-minute alternative that I now wished, fervently wished, that I had declined, and I told him what had happened as a result of it. I told him the truth, all of it in all its brutal glory, about who and what Sunstreaker and I were then…and what we were now. I told him of my long efforts to control him, and of the fact that, now, that was beyond my abilities.
When I was finished, when there were no more words, I was spent both mentally and physically. I found myself leaning against the wall behind me, shaking uncontrollably. The wall was quite literally holding me up, and I sank down against it, gratefully and pitifully, until I was sitting on the floor, hunched against it, cowering against it. I was still staring up at Optimus Prime, and he was still staring down at me, trying to absorb and to comprehend all that I had said.
"So…Bluestreak…" he managed to say, but he got no farther than that.
"He's trying to go back to what we were before we were split," I said wearily, my voice roughened with a combination of use, violent trembling, and emotion. "Since he's rather…severed himself from me, he really knows no other way to exist, so in a way he can't help it. But like me, he is…incomplete. More incomplete than I am. He needs someone to take over the role that I used to play, someone to replace the qualities that I have now. He needs someone who can plan. Calculate. Strategize. Someone who has the ability to look at people and situations with nothing but ruthless, emotionless logic."
Optimus Prime stared at me, absorbing what I'd said. It didn't take him long to realize my meaning, and when he did he turned wordlessly away from me and paced around Ratchet's desk to activate its embedded comm panel. Dimly, I heard him summon Prowl to Ratchet's office and, seconds later, Prowl stalked into the room, all perfect posture, gleaming armor, flaring doorwings, and barely-suppressed rage that battered at my weakened defenses. Even more dimly, I heard Optimus Prime quickly tell Prowl everything that I had just told him in a hushed voice, as if he was telling some secret that I didn't know.
"If he thinks that doing…doing that…to Bluestreak is going to endear me to him-" Prowl started to say, quietly outraged, as he turned toward me. He was closer to outwardly showing rage than I had ever seen him. The emotion pouring from him galvanized me.
"Not 'endear, Prowl," I interrupted quietly, but my words cut across the space between Prowl and me. I pushed myself up to my feet again and continued, "He's trying to remove from you anything and anyone who is familiar, anyone or anything that you care about or who cares about you. Once he's done that, once he's isolated you, he will…twist you, mold you into the individual that he wants you to be, so that he can use you. It's…what we always used to do."
Prowl frowned deeply at me, his brow furrowing uncertainly as he wrestled with what I'd said.
"I don't see how that would-"
"Of course you don't," I interrupted again, knowing what Prowl was about to say, "because it makes no logical sense…unless you're a sociopath. Until you're a sociopath. So…You just have to trust me. Please, Prowl. Don't give him the opportunity to do this to you."
At that, Optimus Prime snorted. It was a sound rarely heard from him, and so whenever he did decide to make such a noise, all attention immediately settled on him, even when the audience was only two strong.
"Given what you've just told us, Sideswipe," Optimus Prime said quietly, devastatingly quietly, talking over whatever Prowl might have said to me, "why should we believe a word you say? About any of this? You've been lying to us for a very long time; that much at least is quite clear. So how do we know that you're not controlling Sunstreaker so that he'll take the fall for something that you're planning, for something that you're in control of?"
Told you so! Sunstreaker announced, the tone of his "voice" almost sing-song as it smirked and bubbled through my being, as I gaped up at Optimus Prime, stunned beyond words. And then my "brother" faded into silence again.
"Perhaps we need to hear Sunstreaker's side of this story," Optimus Prime said when he saw that I, stupidly gaping at him in mute disbelief, was going to say nothing. And then he was calling Ironhide, calmly telling him to bring Sunstreaker to a nearby conference room.
A few moments passed then, moments that I spent trying to figure how in the universe I was going to prove that I was telling the truth, especially when my competition was a compulsive and extremely talented liar, an extremely convincing actor. And then Ironhide's puzzled, hesitant voice floated over the comm.
"Uh…Prime?" he said.
"Go ahead," Prime answered levelly.
"We've got a slight problem here," Ironhide answered.
Optimus Prime glanced at me, as if he thought that I knew what the problem was. I could only shrug helplessly. For millions of years now, I had wanted nothing more than to be separate from Sunstreaker, to be freed from the burden of him. I had fervently prayed that we would one day be able to go our separate ways, safely. Now, I wanted nothing more than to be able to know exactly what Sunstreaker was up to. The irony was not lost on me.
"What is it?" Prime was asking of Ironhide, once he pulled his searching, questioning gaze away from me.
Cold dread gripped me like a vise as Ironhide's perplexed answer came over the comm and then dropped onto me like many kilotons of bricks dropped from a very great height.
"Sunstreaker ain't here, Prime," Ironhide reported. "He's…gone."