Kindred Spirits

-/"You used to captivate me by your resonating light; now I'm bound by the life you left behind.  Your face, it haunts my once pleasant dreams... Your voice, it chased away all the sanity in me...  These wounds won't seem to heal, this pain is just too real.  There's just too much that time cannot erase.  When you cried, I'd wipe away all of your tears.  When you'd scream, I'd fight away all of your fears.  I held your hand through all of these years, but you still have... all of me." --Evanescence - My Immortal/-

-Kindred Spirits-

"What is your fragging problem today?"

No one was really paying much mind to the argument that passed in the lounge, because it was one they were all used to.

Sunstreaker and Sideswipe were hardly the type to really get angry at each other, but for some reason, on that day, Sideswipe had a particular fly up his tailpipe, and Sunstreaker was determined to find out why.  His brother was no coward, and it wasn't uncommon for just one of the pair to be sent out after Starscream... so why was he hesitating?

"I told you.  I just don't wanna go."

"Well, you don't have much of a choice, do you?  It's Starscream, for Primus' sake.  Why the hell are you so afraid of Starscream?"

Sideswipe growled, spinning on his brother with an angry snarl.  "I'm not afraid!  I told you that before!"

Grumbling to himself, he stormed towards the exit, tensing when he heard Sunstreaker hiss from behind him, "Hah, make sure you come back in one piece, Sides.  After all, Starscream is such a difficult target.  Seriously... what're you so afraid of, idiot?"

"You know what, Sunny?" Sideswipe forced out.  "Frag off.  I don't need your scrap today.  I told you, I just have a bad feeling."

"Stop being such a damned coward."

"Screw you!"

"Go jump in a smelter and boil in the Inferno!"

That tore it for Sideswipe.  His door panels swung back on his arms, and he gave his brother a look that bordered dangerously between hurt and fury.

Then, without so much as a final word, he spun and stormed out, leaving an uneasy silence hanging in the air.  Sunstreaker stared after where his brother had left, then growled lowly and tore off to his room.  No one bothered to stop him.

********************

Of course, no one was really prepared for what would follow.

Hound and Trailbreaker had gone sometime later that evening when Sideswipe's signal had suddenly disappeared.  What they found horrified them.

Pieces of red, silver, and black lay all around, and Trailbreaker nearly emptied the contents of his energy converter when they found barely recognizable sections of the red twin's helm and cranial.  They located one hand, still clutched tightly around something neither of them had known he owned.

It was one of Sunstreaker's guns.

Trailbreaker knelt slowly, lifting the all-but destroyed black hand, uncurling the tightly locked fingers as he pulled the gun from the death-grip.  The indentations of his fingers still marred its otherwise flawless handle.  "...he's dead..."

Slowly, Hound nodded.  "Oh, Primus... what're we gonna...?"

"I don't know.  Sunny isn't gonna take this well."

The two remained in silence for some time before Trailbreaker gently laid down the late warrior's hand, spacing Sunstreaker's gun before he transformed.  "Salvage what you can and put the parts we can save in my back," he murmured silently.  "Let's get back to the Ark."  With a heavy sigh, he let his video sensors watch Hound work in solemn silence.  "...this is gonna be the worst thing I've ever done..."

********************

Sideswipe was dead.

Sunstreaker sat in silence as he absorbed the information, the expression on his face as bewildered as that of a lost child.

It had involved Starscream and Devastator, according to what facts Ratchet could glean from the remaining circuitry of Sideswipe's processor.  There was very little left of him beyond that, save for the laser pistol Trailbreaker had found clenched in one of his disembodied hands... a gift from Sunstreaker.  For a moment, as Trailbreaker gently laid the shining white gun in the yellow warrior's hands, he had only stared at it.  Then, his shoulders began to shake, and he sobbed, the sound echoing in the silent lounge.

He sobbed again, slowly sinking to his knees, holding the weapon to his chest as if it would bring his twin back... as if its sheer presence could part the veil of death, and his brother would walk out, smiling as always.  "I g--... I gave this to him... for our sparking day..."  Another sob shook his frame as he began to slowly rock back and forth.  "He laughed... and said it was so much like me... he laughed and he smiled..."  He was sobbing so hard now that it was cutting into his speech, making it difficult to understand his words.  "...I told him to die before he left... I told him...!"  He slammed a fist into the ground.  "SLAGGIT!  He can't die!  He can't!  He never even knew that I'd meant to say good-bye!"  He sobbed hard again, curling in on himself, averting his face from those that looked at him.  "I never got to tell him I love him!"

Hound, Trailbreaker, and Ratchet could only watch in grief-stricken silence as the yellow twin cried, but that wasn't the worst of it.  At length, he shuddered and let out a horrible scream, somewhere in between a sob and a wordless cry for his brother.

No one moved until Sunstreaker was finally too spent to move, laying on his side there on the floor, heedless of the scratches and dents in his armor as his shoulders continued to shake with sorrow.  Trailbreaker had looked at his companions, then gently guided the yellow Lamborghini to his feet, leading him off to his room.

********************

However, after that there was nothing.  He holed himself up in the room he and his brother had once shared, spending most of his days sitting on his twin's bunk, running his fingers over the scratches and dents on the wall from his beloved twin's restless sleeping.

Ratchet checked on him daily, guilt raking at the back of his mind.  He always took extra energon down with him, hoping to try to get the yellow mech to get some sort of energy in his system, but Sunstreaker would have none of it.  He would look with hollow eyes towards Ratchet, then look back at the floor, curling up tighter where he sat.

He was a shell of his former self when he wandered the base.  His armor was scuffed and had lost its golden sheen.  Ratchet had sworn he had seen him down in the lounge alone late at night, cradling the pistol they had found... it had been his once, but he could not help but think that his brother had used it in his last few minutes in a futile effort to delay his own demise.

//"Hah, make sure you come back in one piece, Sides.  After all, Starscream is such a difficult target.  Seriously... What're you so afraid of, idiot?"//

He ran the final words he'd passed with his twin in his head.  Every time he heard them repeat, his pain doubled.

//"You know what, Sunny?  Frag off.  I don't need your scrap today.  I told you, I just have a bad feeling."//

//"Stop being such a damned coward."//

//"Screw you!"//

//"Go jump in a smelter and boil in the Inferno!"//

They had argued.  He hadn't told his brother he loved him, or even a simple goodbye.  No.  He had called him a coward.  How wrong he had been... he had been the true coward.  Had he but known those were the last few moments he would share of life with his twin, he would never have said those words.  A chance he would never have again.  His brother would never know, in those last fleeting moments he had spent, how much his brother loved him... how much he would miss him.

The pain was too much for Sunstreaker to bear.  He hadn't had a full recharge since he had gotten the news, and most nights he kept himself up crying.  He never remembered crying, not like this.  He hurt so much, and he wished he would just die so that the pain would all end and he could see his brother's face again.

That face...

Sideswipe's smiling face haunted his every thought... the way he laughed, the way he'd fidget when he had nothing to do, his stupid pranks...

He choked on a sob, head resting against his knees.  He couldn't take much more of this.  He hurt so bad... he wanted to see Sideswipe again.

He just wanted his brother back.

Ratchet stood in the doorway silently, holding a cup of energon in his hand, his optics fixed on the broken form of the once proud warrior.  Sunstreaker had once been the first into battle, but now, he ignored the alarms and chose to remain here, avoiding the contact of others.  Had Jazz been there, perhaps the pain would have been more bearable for the yellow mech, but there was no one there to comfort him now.  It just wasn't something Ratchet was good at.

Frowning, he strode silently across the threshold, lifting himself easily to sit beside the warrior, holding out the cup.  "Drink this."

But Sunstreaker only turned his head away.  Frowning, Ratchet reached back to cup the back of the warrior's helm, forcing his optics to focus on him.  "Stop it, Sunstreaker.  Would Sideswipe want you to be like this?  Please... just drink it."

The warrior pulled away with little effort, curling up with his back to the medic.  "Go away, Ratchet."

Ratchet, on the other hand, was not going to be turned away.  He frowned, reaching over to pull Sunstreaker to face him again, surprised at how little effort it actually took.  "Sunstreaker, listen to me.  Would your brother want you to act like this?  Would Sideswipe want to see you just let yourself go like this?"  Sunstreaker didn't respond.  This time, Ratchet was more insistant, lifting the cup to gently press the rim to the gold Lamborghini's lips.  "Just drink this... for Primus' sake, you need to get something in your body or you're just going to waste away."

Sunstreaker growled, and this time, his actions turned violent.  With strength Ratchet had nearly forgotten about, he shoved the medic back, knocking the cup to the ground below, the contents spilled with neither mech caring just then.  "I told you to go away!  I don't need your pity, and I don't want to talk about it!"  He glared at Ratchet almost viciously, his jaw clenched.  "My brother is dead!  The one person I loved, the one person I was supposed to protect!  I didn't protect him, and now he's dead!"  He shoved Ratchet hard again, and this time, the medic tumbled, managing to land less than gracefully on his feet on the floor below.  "Leave me alone!"

Silence decended, and at first, Ratchet turned to leave, sighing lowly... until he heard Sunstreaker sobbing behind him.  Ratchet shuttered his optics, trying to close out the sound, but he just couldn't.  In the end, his gentle nature won out over the taciturn facade he fought to maintain, and he climbed back onto the recharge berth next to the distraught youth.

For a moment, neither one said a word.  Sunstreaker simply hugged his knees to his chest, sobbing against his legs, trying to choke back everything that just wouldn't stay shoved inside.  Ratchet, at first, did nothing, just laying a hand on Sunstreaker's shoulder.  He was no Smokescreen, but...

Quietly, he scooted over a little, wrapping an arm around the big yellow mech's shoulder, resting their helms together.  "Just let it out, Sunstreaker... it's okay..."

"I couldn't protect him..." Sunstreaker managed to gasp out.  "I was supposed to protect him... when we died, it was supposed to be together..."  He swallowed hard, coughing as he continued.  "He died without ever knowing how much I love him... the last thing I said to him may as well have been "I hate you..."  I just want him back, Ratchet... why can't you bring him back...?"

That was a question Ratchet didn't have a real answer for, even though he wished he could make it better that easily.  "Sunstreaker, all I know is what they taught me at academy: there are certain rules about a war and rule number one is good mechs die.  Rule number two is doctors can't change rule number one."  He frowned as Sunstreaker sobbed again, harder this time.  "I couldn't be more sorry, Sunstreaker... honestly.  I wish I could bring him back for you... if I could give my own Spark to do that, don't think for a nanosecond that I wouldn't.  But... there's some things even I can't fix."

Slowly, he leaned forward, wrapping his arms around Sunstreaker in the only manner of comfort he could really provide.  Sunstreaker just continued to cry, so weak from all the tears that he couldn't hold himself up, now resting heavily against Ratchet.

The medic frowned gently and did not release Sunstreaker until the big yellow mech drifted into recharge.  Once he was certain the warrior was asleep, he gently laid him down and climbed down from Sideswipe's old berth, letting his optics drift over the room.  Anything that had belonged to Sideswipe had not been moved, kept almost meticulously in their places by a brother unwilling to let go.

Frowning again, he made his slow way out and back to medical.  He hated seeing Sunstreaker like this, and he almost wished there really was a way to bring his twin back from the dead.  For now, however, all he could do was be supportive... and hope that would be enough.

********************

Two nights later, Ratchet found himself aroused from a fitful recharge by a horrible feeling deep in his energy convertor.  He sat silently for a long moment before, without even thinking, he stood and grabbed his emergency kit, rushing out of medical in a blur of white and red.

/Don't let me be too late, please...!/ he thought as he ran, his legs pumping as hard as they could to carry him down to the crew quarters.  /Primus, please... please let me make it in time!/

A sudden, horrible fear had gripped him for Sunstreaker.  He could not explain it, nor could he dismiss it, and now, he only hoped he could get there before his horrible sense of dread became a terrible truth.

He all but skidded to a stop beside Sunstreaker's room, keying in the override code with trembling fingers.  The room was dreadfully silent... usually, he could hear the quiet purr of Sunstreaker's systems as he sat in recharge, or the muffled sound of his sobs as he continued to mourn his twin.

But now... nothing.

The door slid open to the scene he had been dreading, and with a choked word of despair, Ratchet dropped to his knees, staring at what awaited him inside.

Sunstreaker sat on his knees in the middle of the floor, an enlargement of a picture on the floor just in front of him, its bottom edge soaked with the energon that flowed down the blade of one of Sunstreaker's combat swords and dripped onto the floor.  The yellow warrior had his face tilted downward, hands limp at his sides, optics black as night.  The sword had been shoved into a seam in his polymer armor that he must've pulled loose himself, and Ratchet knew that Sunstreaker had enough knowledge of a transformer's inner workings not to have missed his mark.

His field diagnostic system gave him the answer he already knew... Sunstreaker was already dead.

The medic choked.  This was a situation he had never dealt with.  Never had he been faced with a mech so deep in sorrow that he had ended his own life.  But here in front of him was yet another that he could not save, and for some reason he didn't quite understand, he couldn't fight back the grief.

"Hound, Trailbreaker," he rasped over his comm, berating himself for not having forced back the shaking in his voice as he spoke.  "Get down to Sunstreaker's quarters..."  He paused, swallowing back his own sorrow and guilt.  "He killed himself."

********************

Sunstreaker sat alone in the dark and the quiet, nothing around him to tell him what was up or what was down.  Just... empty loneliness.

He hadn't quite known what death would be like... but he'd at least been sure it wouldn't be like this.  Shouldn't he have been burning in the fires of the Pit by now?

He tensed at the sound of someone approaching from behind and lifted his hand to shield his optics, hissing out, "Stop hiding, if you're here to drag me to damnation.  Let's just get it over with."

But no damnation came.  Instead, a hand - similar in size to his own - wrapped about the fingers that he had shielded his optics with. The other arm came around his shoulders, one hand resting against his chestplate as a soft, familiar voice whispered, "Sunny... no one's damning you.  I wouldn't let 'em anyway.  I was so scared..."

Startled, Sunstreaker spun, nearly knocking the mech behind him down.  What he saw terrified and relieved him.  A pair of bright, intense blue optics set in a face almost identical to his own, red from shoulder to shinguard. A lop-sided, if not sad, smile rested on the playful face, and immediately, Sunstreaker pulled the other into a fierce hug.  "Sideswipe...!  Oh, Primus... Sides... I missed you so much..."

The younger of the twins shuttered his optics as he rested against his brother, head gently laying against Sunstreaker's shoulder.  "I missed you too, Sunny..."  A moment of silence passed before Sideswipe sat up, putting his hands on the sides of his brother's face.  "I hated to see you blaming yourself... but I didn't want to see you like this.  Not like this.  I wanted you to go on, despite how scared I was here..."

"I told you that when we went, it would be together," Sunstreaker murmured, reaching up to cover his brother's trembling hands with his own.  "Why didn't you wait for me?"  He sighed, a choked sob racking his shoulders.  "...I never did tell you I loved you, did I?  Well, I do.  I didn't want anything to happen to you... and look what did... I hated myself for it."

Sideswipe shook his head, and then did something Sunstreaker did not expect.  He leaned forward, kissing him, before resting their foreheads together.  "You're my brother, Sunny... I knew you didn't hate me.  I love you too, and besides... we're twins.  How can we do anything else?"

The two stayed like that for a moment before Sideswipe stood, holding out his hand for his twin to take.  Sunstreaker watched him for a moment.  "Where are we going?"

As he stood, taking his twin's hand tightly in his own, the red twin smiled and shrugged.  "Dunno.  Haven't really left this place... I was waiting for you.  I didn't want to go anywhere unless we went together."

Sunstreaker smiled, leaning over to kiss his brother gently.  "Let's see what we've got waiting for us..."

Grinning, he started forward, and Sideswipe followed at a light trot.  At least they didn't have to go alone.

********************

The mood in the medbay the next morning was solemn, and even some of the minibots stood near the medtable, none of them able to really express what was weighing heavily on all of their minds.  Ratchet sat beside Sunstreaker's body, and while he had repaired the damage that had killed him, he could not bring back that spark of life.  They had crossed the big warrior's hands over his chestplate, one holding his brother's gun, the other holding the picture Ratchet had found him with.

It was a nice picture... Sunstreaker half-leaned over with a startled expression as Sideswipe had his arms around his neck and legs around his waist from behind, grinning like an idiot.  While he looked as if he wanted to be annoyed, Sunstreaker's face was marred by a fond smile, one hand resting on his one of his brother's arms.  Like a couple of big kids.

Ratchet shuddered, resting his hand over his optics.  He never had taken failure well.  He hated thinking that nothing he had done could have helped.

"Wherever they are," Hound murmured, "I'm sure they're together."

The medic shuttered his optics, trying to fight back his own guilt.

//"There are certain rules about a war and rule number one is good mechs die."//

Ratchet lifted his head, watching Sunstreaker's still form in silence.  "We'll cremate the body tonight.  Make sure to keep a log of this, so we can inform Prime, if they ever should return."

//"Rule number two is doctors can't change rule number one."//

Murmurs of pity, and words of respect never spoken.  Ratchet heard them all as one by one, the assembled mechs saluted the warrior who had, on countless occasions, risked his own life to save each one of theirs.  Each salute heralded that mech's departure until Ratchet was left alone... or so he thought.  Soon, a hand came down gently upon his shoulder.  "You gonna be okay there, Ratch...?" questioned the Autobots' chief engineer, the panels at the side of his face flashing a dull blue.  "You look a little shaky."

"Shaken is more like it," Ratchet sighed.  "But thank you for staying with me, Wheeljack.  I hate to do funeral preparations... I'm a medic, not a mortician."

Wheeljack's face panels glowed in a weary semblance of a smile.  "Always willing to lend a hand, Ratch.  Besides... Sunny wouldn't have wanted anyone else to do it."

That was logic Ratchet couldn't argue with and he stood, looking over Sunstreaker's scuffed armor and peaceful face.  "He always claimed to have a perfect face... you know, he was right."

Slowly, Wheeljack laughed.  "If he could hear you say that..."

"I'll miss those two.  By Primus, I'll miss them.  But they just couldn't stay alone... and I think even if it had been Sideswipe and not Sunstreaker, he would've done the same thing."  Smiling mournfully, the medic reached forward to gently pat Sunstreaker's shoulder.  "You rest now, son... I truly hope you found your brother... somewhere beyond the stars."

--End--