[TFP] Event Horizon - Chapter Eleven
May. 19th, 2012 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dracoqueen22a/n: Now beta'ed by the wonderful ryagelle! Much thanks!
Continuity: Transformers: Prime, post Season One
Pairings so far: Ratchet/Sunstreaker, Jazz/Bluestreak, Sideswipe/First Aid, past Megatron/Orion Pax, past Perceptor/Starscream, implied Bumblebee/Blaster
Rating: M
Warning: mechslash, language, possible violence, tactile smut, past spark play/merging, SPOILERS FOR SEASON ONE
Chapters: (01) (02) (03) (04) (05) (06) (07) (08) (09) (10) (11) (12) (Epi)
-----------------------------------
Event Horizon
Chapter Eleven ----------------------------------
“It seems to me we have two choices,” Jazz announces as he paces back and forth in the limited space of Ratchet's “medbay.”
Sunstreaker snorts, arms folded across his chestplate. “No choice about it. The Decepticons are not getting my youngling back!”
“It's not that simple, Sunstreaker,” Ratchet says, feeling as though fatigue has taken over his struts. “He doesn't want to stay with us.”
His partner whirled toward him, blue optics burning bright with anger. “Letting him return is not an option.”
“Neither is imprisoning him indefinitely,” Jazz points out logically. “It's not feasible and it's borderline cruel.”
“He's not a Decepticon!” Sunstreaker snarls as he slashes a hand through the air, plating vibrating with the force of his emotion. Ratchet hears the distinct whine of battle systems surging to life.
This could go very badly.
“He is,” Ratchet says, knowing the truth isn't easy but it must be dealt with, as little as he wants to admit it himself. “It's the choice he made and we have to face that.”
Sunstreaker's fingers curl into fists, blades peeking from their sheaths. “He should be with us, not those monsters!”
Ratchet straightens, looking his partner in the optic. “Are you suggesting we trap him here? Reprogram him if necessary?”
“He knows too much to let him wander free,” Jazz says, from somewhere in the background. He's stopped his incessant pacing, at least, and now appears to be paying the bickering partners close attention.
Ratchet shakes his head. “Knock Out doesn't know anything Megatron won't realize on his own soon enough. And Knock Out has a vested interest in not revealing his relationship to us. Megatron will see it as either a weakness or a betrayal and neither bodes well for Knock Out's continued functioning.”
“You'd let him go?” Jazz asks softly.
“It's not a matter of letting,” Ratchet replies, though it feels like betraying his very spark to say so. “I don't see where we have any other choice.”
“I do,” Sunstreaker insists, trying to push himself between the medic and their commanding officer. “We can't send him back.”
“We can't keep him either!” Ratchet hisses, grabbing Sunstreaker and forcing his partner to face him, keeping him there by clamping both hands down on massive, well-armored shoulders. “He's no longer ours!”
He can feel the trembling beneath his hands, see the war in Sunstreaker's optics. That is their youngling, a member of their family, what remains of their family after this scrapping war and the uninhabitable nature of Cybertron. Ratchet understands, he truly does. This is a fragged up situation and there's no clear answer for either of them.
He wants Knock Out back more than anything. He wants some semblance of their former life to be true again. But Ratchet knows that his desires are only a pipe dream. Knock Out has made his choice, and they cannot change his decision for him. It would be wrong, it would make them no better than Decepticons, and it hurts.
By Primus does it hurt!
But what other choice do they have?
The sound of the medbay door whooshing open and shut attracts Ratchet's attention, distracting him from the turbulent silence prevalent in the close quarters. He glances at the door, but no one has entered, which means Jazz has gone.
--Jazz?--
The saboteur responds to the tightly beamed comm. --You two figure things out first. Then we'll talk,-- he says, and cuts off the comm before Ratchet can form a response either way.
Sunstreaker slumps under Ratchet's hands. “Frag you both,” he mutters, to Ratchet's surprise.
“Jazz--”
“Not him,” Sunstreaker interrupts without any preamble. “Sideswipe. He agrees with you. The slagger.”
“Oh.” It does him little good to hide his surprise. That Sideswipe is listening is no great shock, but that he agrees with Ratchet is.
Sunstreaker vibrates with the weight of his sorrow, though the edge of violence that he'd been carrying earlier had all but vanished. “Both of you are traitors.”
“That's not fair, Sunstreaker.”
“Nothing about this is, Ratchet,” he retorts and reaches up, curling his fingers around Ratchet's wrists, gently detaching his hold on yellow armor. “But I guess I should have seen this coming.”
Confusion – and a heady dose of trepidation – makes Ratchet's spark quiver. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that several millennia is a long time. Even for we Cybertronians,” Sunstreaker replies darkly, and lets go of his hold on Ratchet's wrist, taking a distancing step away. His optics are dim, energy field tightly contained.
Ratchet's hands fall limply to his side; he can't seem to find the wherewithal to lift them again. “I don't—”
“We change, Ratchet. Mechs change,” Sunstreaker replies, cutting him off before he can so much as vocalize his protests. He turns as though to leave, one hand on the door panel, before glancing over his shoulder, optics meeting Ratchet's own. “And sometimes, they don't.”
The door opens and closes with a defining shunt, with Sunstreaker on the other side and Ratchet once again standing alone in his med bay.
What... what just happened here?
Did Sunstreaker just end things? After all these millennia, after everything they've been through, all the choices they've made? Did he just walk out the door?
Ratchet reaches behind him, glad that there's a berth to provide some sort of stable ground, his optics locked on the closed door. A light sensor sweep beyond the thick metal indicates Sunstreaker's signature getting further away, no doubt heading to either the quarters he shares with Sideswipe, or perhaps even further, back to the common room or patrol. Maybe he's gone downstairs to talk more with their errant youngling.
Either way, he's not here. He's not attempting to talk with Ratchet, figure out what they – as partners – should do next.
Ratchet will admit that he's old. Not quite as ancient and creaky as Ironhide or, Primus forbid, Kup, but he's not a young mech. Even by the time he met Sunstreaker, he could no longer be considered a young mech. In his lifetime, he's had relationships, most of them meaningless and easily forgotten. He played the game in his youth and has had his share of break ups – as the humans would call them – most of them involving a lot of yelling, thrown items, and hurt sparks.
But none of those mechs or femmes had gotten to him half as much as Sunstreaker had. None of them ever had Ratchet thinking permanent thoughts. None of them made his spark twist with as much pain as it did pleasure.
This is... strange. So strange that Ratchet doesn't know what to feel. A bit numb, a bit bitter. Dull, like he can't focus, just staring at the closed door. Confused, processor caught in some kind of figure-eight shaped loop.
This is all his fault. He has only himself to blame. What has he given Sunstreaker to cling to? What promises has he offered?
Nothing. In his cowardice, he hadn't given the comfort of words or actions, merely letting them exist in some half-committed relationship where he was willing to do everything except bond. They broke Cybertronian law to create a sparkling together and Ratchet still couldn't give Sunstreaker the bond he wanted.
Because he's a coward.
It's too late. Maybe it was too late before they went their separate ways all those vorns ago, back on Cybertron when Ratchet joined the Prime's mission and Sunstreaker went with Jazz's team. Maybe it was too late when the time they had spent searching for their lost youngling had produced no results. Maybe that was a wedge no amount of affection can remove.
The door slides open with a definitive sound and Ratchet's head jerks up, gaze focusing on it with too much hope. But it isn't the twin he hoped he would see.
“Why won't you bond with him?” Sideswipe asks, leaning against the frame and folding his arms over his chestplate. He doesn't bother with preamble. He doesn't have to. His bond with Sunstreaker ensures that he knows scrap near everything.
Ratchet straightens, a scowl twisting his mouth. “Knock next time,” he demands, trying for a composure he doesn't have.
Sideswipe, however, locks his backstrut and meets Ratchet's scowl as though he hasn't a fear in Cybertron. “You didn't answer my question.” This time, it seems, he is choosing to access his infernal persistence.
Bristling, Ratchet twists away from Sideswipe, hunting the floor for the laser cutter he'd carelessly tossed there earlier. “He never asked.”
“That's a load of slag.” Sideswipe manages an impressive approximation of a snort. “You've been partners longer than this war, Ratchet. And I know that he's asked. So why?”
Finding the laser cutter half-tucked under a berth, Ratchet kneels to drag it out and then stands back up. He eyes the tool in his hand as though it holds all the answers he's ever needed.
“You wouldn't understand.” How pathetic is he, that he's fallen onto such trite arguments? This is how low Ratchet has fallen indeed.
Sideswipe tilts his helm. “Thus the asking.”
Ratchet doesn't answer. To be honest, he doesn't know if he can properly verbalize all of the justifications he's ever given to himself. In the end it all boils down to one explanation: his own cowardice. Like the Pit he's going to admit that to Sideswipe.
Besides, even if he did, it wouldn't make a difference. If there is anyone left alive amongst the Cybertronians who is more stubborn than Ratchet, it is Sunstreaker. Once he has come to a decision, nothing will make him change it.
His shoulders slump, vents stuttering in their usual rhythm. The strange sensation of numbness sweeps over him again.
No, he supposes, it wouldn't make a difference at all. This is the end.
A metallic clank signifies Sideswipe switching positions, straightening from his lean against the door frame and turning back toward the door. His energy field is straining outward, thin tendrils of disappointment, fatigue, and sadness.
“Never mind,” Sideswipe says, shaking his helm. “Sunny doesn't need to bond with someone like you anyway. He deserves better.”
Anger bubbles up within Ratchet, lancing through his energy field. He slams down the laser cutter with an audial-wincing crumple of delicate metal. “What in the Pit is that supposed to mean?” he asks the wall, refusing to turn and look and Sideswipe.
The red twin doesn't leave. “You know exactly what I meant, Ratch. I don't know when ya got like this. Honestly, between you and Sunny, I can't tell who's more broken. It's like Primus made you for each other.”
Ratchet snorts, something inside him quivering at Sideswipe's words. “It's not us. It's this never-ending war.”
“You two had problems before the war and you know it.” Sideswipe ventilates noisily, approximating a huff of aggravation. “You hid it well, but Sunny never was as good at blocking me as I could block him.”
Without knowing how to respond to that, Ratchet opts for silence. Unfortunately, Sideswipe seems to think this permission to continue on his own. He moves off the door frame, the sound of his footsteps easily identifying his location, along with his presence on Ratchet's ever-active proximity sensors.
Before Ratchet can think of escaping or formulating some kind of plan or wondering why he's having this conversation with Sideswipe, the red twin is there, standing right in front of him, a mulish set to his square jaw.
“Look, Ratch,” he says, a tone of voice that all but demands the medic to listen to him and Ratchet feels strangely compelled to offer Sideswipe his full attention. “Sunny's my other half and I love him more than anything in the universe. But I'm not blind. He's arrogant and snide and just this side of psychotic.”
Ratchet feels his supra-orbital plating rise at this frank assessment of Sideswipe's own twin's behavior. Is it supposed to be an encouragement?
“But,” Sideswipe adds, and as his tone gentles, something in his faceplates also softening. His energy field flutters with affection. “He also feels more than any mech I've ever met. Even as soft-sparked as First Aid is. So when I say Sunny loves you, I don't think you could ever grasp half the depth of what I mean.”
Love. Love, he says.
What kind of impossible romantic notion is that?
Ratchet's spark gives a clenching feeling within his chestplate, as though his frame is two sizes too small. “And yet, he's the one who walked away.”
“You might as well have!” Sideswipe's argument echoes in the half-empty medbay and he pulls back, as though drawing on a well of patience, dialing his vocalizer back down. “How many vorns and you never asked? And how many times does Sunny have to hear other mechs say you wouldn't bond a half-sparked mech like him anyway before he starts to believe it?”
“That's not true and you know it!”
“I do,” Sideswipe concedes. “But I'm not the one who needs convincing.”
If silence carried a weight, Ratchet can feel it now on his shoulders. The weight of Sideswipe's stare, the debilitating press of Ratchet's own guilt, pushing him downward, trying to drag him through the concrete floor and into Earth's Unicron-infected core.
Sideswipe sighs, a noise of resignation, and holds up his hands, backing away. “Look. If you'd be happier like this, then by all means, ignore me. But if you love him like I think you do, then do what's right.”
“I think we're beyond that now,” Ratchet replies quietly.
“You're wrong.”
Sideswipe leaves, his parting words seeming to echo all around Ratchet. He slumps back against one of the med berths, feeling the eons in his joints and limbs. Feeling it in the heaviness of his spark.
He's too old for this.
He's too old for thoughts of forever. He's too battle-scarred to think of ridiculous notions like love. The mechs he's known as family are gone. Most of the mechs and femmes he fought beside over the millennia are dead. Cybertron's gone, little more than a dead husk. All Ratchet has left is this rag tag group of Autobots and whoever manages to find them on this mudball planet in this backwater galaxy here on the distant edge of space.
What's it matter now?
They're all fighting for the sake of fighting, really. Fighting for energun. Over old and half-forgotten grievances. Desperate to return to a planet that's lifeless, never to be restored at this rate. Population dwindling with each passing vorn.
His youngling's a Decepticon! That's what Ratchet's world has come to. And now, the only mech he ever dared consider a bond with has decided he's no longer worth the trouble.
Ratchet can't blame him.
This war makes uncertainty of everything. No wonder Sunstreaker wants a little something to cling to, something that's indisputable.
Ratchet must admit wanting the same thing for himself. It would be a lie if he said he didn't miss Sunstreaker. He's spent every free second of the last several millennia thinking about his partner. Thinking about his family. Sideswipe and First Aid. His apprentice's brothers. Jazz and Bluestreak and Prowl. His missing youngling.
By Primus! Every moment he wasn't locked in some life-or-death battle or struggling to keep another one of the Autobots from deactivating, Ratchet had wished for nothing more than Sunstreaker at his side. And he didn't even have the comfort of the bond to offer him any consolation that his partner wasn't deactivated or disabled.
Sunstreaker is here now. Here within touching distance, except nothing is the same anymore. Ratchet's different. Sunstreaker's different. Maybe too different. Their youngling has become a Decepticon and nothing's right in Ratchet's world.
Nothing's been right since fragging Megatron bombed Uraya.
Sighing, Ratchet shakes his helm and glares mutely at the floor. Just what in the Pit is he supposed to do?
****
a/n: We're rapidly approaching the end, folks. Worry not, a sequel is already in progress. Event Horizon was a bit narrow in that it was completely Ratchet's POV but the sequel Critical Mass expands the POVs so we'll hear from others. Sunstreaker. Jazz. Knock Out. Fun times ahead!
Let me know if you liked it!
Continuity: Transformers: Prime, post Season One
Pairings so far: Ratchet/Sunstreaker, Jazz/Bluestreak, Sideswipe/First Aid, past Megatron/Orion Pax, past Perceptor/Starscream, implied Bumblebee/Blaster
Rating: M
Warning: mechslash, language, possible violence, tactile smut, past spark play/merging, SPOILERS FOR SEASON ONE
Chapters: (01) (02) (03) (04) (05) (06) (07) (08) (09) (10) (11) (12) (Epi)
Event Horizon
“It seems to me we have two choices,” Jazz announces as he paces back and forth in the limited space of Ratchet's “medbay.”
Sunstreaker snorts, arms folded across his chestplate. “No choice about it. The Decepticons are not getting my youngling back!”
“It's not that simple, Sunstreaker,” Ratchet says, feeling as though fatigue has taken over his struts. “He doesn't want to stay with us.”
His partner whirled toward him, blue optics burning bright with anger. “Letting him return is not an option.”
“Neither is imprisoning him indefinitely,” Jazz points out logically. “It's not feasible and it's borderline cruel.”
“He's not a Decepticon!” Sunstreaker snarls as he slashes a hand through the air, plating vibrating with the force of his emotion. Ratchet hears the distinct whine of battle systems surging to life.
This could go very badly.
“He is,” Ratchet says, knowing the truth isn't easy but it must be dealt with, as little as he wants to admit it himself. “It's the choice he made and we have to face that.”
Sunstreaker's fingers curl into fists, blades peeking from their sheaths. “He should be with us, not those monsters!”
Ratchet straightens, looking his partner in the optic. “Are you suggesting we trap him here? Reprogram him if necessary?”
“He knows too much to let him wander free,” Jazz says, from somewhere in the background. He's stopped his incessant pacing, at least, and now appears to be paying the bickering partners close attention.
Ratchet shakes his head. “Knock Out doesn't know anything Megatron won't realize on his own soon enough. And Knock Out has a vested interest in not revealing his relationship to us. Megatron will see it as either a weakness or a betrayal and neither bodes well for Knock Out's continued functioning.”
“You'd let him go?” Jazz asks softly.
“It's not a matter of letting,” Ratchet replies, though it feels like betraying his very spark to say so. “I don't see where we have any other choice.”
“I do,” Sunstreaker insists, trying to push himself between the medic and their commanding officer. “We can't send him back.”
“We can't keep him either!” Ratchet hisses, grabbing Sunstreaker and forcing his partner to face him, keeping him there by clamping both hands down on massive, well-armored shoulders. “He's no longer ours!”
He can feel the trembling beneath his hands, see the war in Sunstreaker's optics. That is their youngling, a member of their family, what remains of their family after this scrapping war and the uninhabitable nature of Cybertron. Ratchet understands, he truly does. This is a fragged up situation and there's no clear answer for either of them.
He wants Knock Out back more than anything. He wants some semblance of their former life to be true again. But Ratchet knows that his desires are only a pipe dream. Knock Out has made his choice, and they cannot change his decision for him. It would be wrong, it would make them no better than Decepticons, and it hurts.
By Primus does it hurt!
But what other choice do they have?
The sound of the medbay door whooshing open and shut attracts Ratchet's attention, distracting him from the turbulent silence prevalent in the close quarters. He glances at the door, but no one has entered, which means Jazz has gone.
--Jazz?--
The saboteur responds to the tightly beamed comm. --You two figure things out first. Then we'll talk,-- he says, and cuts off the comm before Ratchet can form a response either way.
Sunstreaker slumps under Ratchet's hands. “Frag you both,” he mutters, to Ratchet's surprise.
“Jazz--”
“Not him,” Sunstreaker interrupts without any preamble. “Sideswipe. He agrees with you. The slagger.”
“Oh.” It does him little good to hide his surprise. That Sideswipe is listening is no great shock, but that he agrees with Ratchet is.
Sunstreaker vibrates with the weight of his sorrow, though the edge of violence that he'd been carrying earlier had all but vanished. “Both of you are traitors.”
“That's not fair, Sunstreaker.”
“Nothing about this is, Ratchet,” he retorts and reaches up, curling his fingers around Ratchet's wrists, gently detaching his hold on yellow armor. “But I guess I should have seen this coming.”
Confusion – and a heady dose of trepidation – makes Ratchet's spark quiver. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that several millennia is a long time. Even for we Cybertronians,” Sunstreaker replies darkly, and lets go of his hold on Ratchet's wrist, taking a distancing step away. His optics are dim, energy field tightly contained.
Ratchet's hands fall limply to his side; he can't seem to find the wherewithal to lift them again. “I don't—”
“We change, Ratchet. Mechs change,” Sunstreaker replies, cutting him off before he can so much as vocalize his protests. He turns as though to leave, one hand on the door panel, before glancing over his shoulder, optics meeting Ratchet's own. “And sometimes, they don't.”
The door opens and closes with a defining shunt, with Sunstreaker on the other side and Ratchet once again standing alone in his med bay.
What... what just happened here?
Did Sunstreaker just end things? After all these millennia, after everything they've been through, all the choices they've made? Did he just walk out the door?
Ratchet reaches behind him, glad that there's a berth to provide some sort of stable ground, his optics locked on the closed door. A light sensor sweep beyond the thick metal indicates Sunstreaker's signature getting further away, no doubt heading to either the quarters he shares with Sideswipe, or perhaps even further, back to the common room or patrol. Maybe he's gone downstairs to talk more with their errant youngling.
Either way, he's not here. He's not attempting to talk with Ratchet, figure out what they – as partners – should do next.
Ratchet will admit that he's old. Not quite as ancient and creaky as Ironhide or, Primus forbid, Kup, but he's not a young mech. Even by the time he met Sunstreaker, he could no longer be considered a young mech. In his lifetime, he's had relationships, most of them meaningless and easily forgotten. He played the game in his youth and has had his share of break ups – as the humans would call them – most of them involving a lot of yelling, thrown items, and hurt sparks.
But none of those mechs or femmes had gotten to him half as much as Sunstreaker had. None of them ever had Ratchet thinking permanent thoughts. None of them made his spark twist with as much pain as it did pleasure.
This is... strange. So strange that Ratchet doesn't know what to feel. A bit numb, a bit bitter. Dull, like he can't focus, just staring at the closed door. Confused, processor caught in some kind of figure-eight shaped loop.
This is all his fault. He has only himself to blame. What has he given Sunstreaker to cling to? What promises has he offered?
Nothing. In his cowardice, he hadn't given the comfort of words or actions, merely letting them exist in some half-committed relationship where he was willing to do everything except bond. They broke Cybertronian law to create a sparkling together and Ratchet still couldn't give Sunstreaker the bond he wanted.
Because he's a coward.
It's too late. Maybe it was too late before they went their separate ways all those vorns ago, back on Cybertron when Ratchet joined the Prime's mission and Sunstreaker went with Jazz's team. Maybe it was too late when the time they had spent searching for their lost youngling had produced no results. Maybe that was a wedge no amount of affection can remove.
The door slides open with a definitive sound and Ratchet's head jerks up, gaze focusing on it with too much hope. But it isn't the twin he hoped he would see.
“Why won't you bond with him?” Sideswipe asks, leaning against the frame and folding his arms over his chestplate. He doesn't bother with preamble. He doesn't have to. His bond with Sunstreaker ensures that he knows scrap near everything.
Ratchet straightens, a scowl twisting his mouth. “Knock next time,” he demands, trying for a composure he doesn't have.
Sideswipe, however, locks his backstrut and meets Ratchet's scowl as though he hasn't a fear in Cybertron. “You didn't answer my question.” This time, it seems, he is choosing to access his infernal persistence.
Bristling, Ratchet twists away from Sideswipe, hunting the floor for the laser cutter he'd carelessly tossed there earlier. “He never asked.”
“That's a load of slag.” Sideswipe manages an impressive approximation of a snort. “You've been partners longer than this war, Ratchet. And I know that he's asked. So why?”
Finding the laser cutter half-tucked under a berth, Ratchet kneels to drag it out and then stands back up. He eyes the tool in his hand as though it holds all the answers he's ever needed.
“You wouldn't understand.” How pathetic is he, that he's fallen onto such trite arguments? This is how low Ratchet has fallen indeed.
Sideswipe tilts his helm. “Thus the asking.”
Ratchet doesn't answer. To be honest, he doesn't know if he can properly verbalize all of the justifications he's ever given to himself. In the end it all boils down to one explanation: his own cowardice. Like the Pit he's going to admit that to Sideswipe.
Besides, even if he did, it wouldn't make a difference. If there is anyone left alive amongst the Cybertronians who is more stubborn than Ratchet, it is Sunstreaker. Once he has come to a decision, nothing will make him change it.
His shoulders slump, vents stuttering in their usual rhythm. The strange sensation of numbness sweeps over him again.
No, he supposes, it wouldn't make a difference at all. This is the end.
A metallic clank signifies Sideswipe switching positions, straightening from his lean against the door frame and turning back toward the door. His energy field is straining outward, thin tendrils of disappointment, fatigue, and sadness.
“Never mind,” Sideswipe says, shaking his helm. “Sunny doesn't need to bond with someone like you anyway. He deserves better.”
Anger bubbles up within Ratchet, lancing through his energy field. He slams down the laser cutter with an audial-wincing crumple of delicate metal. “What in the Pit is that supposed to mean?” he asks the wall, refusing to turn and look and Sideswipe.
The red twin doesn't leave. “You know exactly what I meant, Ratch. I don't know when ya got like this. Honestly, between you and Sunny, I can't tell who's more broken. It's like Primus made you for each other.”
Ratchet snorts, something inside him quivering at Sideswipe's words. “It's not us. It's this never-ending war.”
“You two had problems before the war and you know it.” Sideswipe ventilates noisily, approximating a huff of aggravation. “You hid it well, but Sunny never was as good at blocking me as I could block him.”
Without knowing how to respond to that, Ratchet opts for silence. Unfortunately, Sideswipe seems to think this permission to continue on his own. He moves off the door frame, the sound of his footsteps easily identifying his location, along with his presence on Ratchet's ever-active proximity sensors.
Before Ratchet can think of escaping or formulating some kind of plan or wondering why he's having this conversation with Sideswipe, the red twin is there, standing right in front of him, a mulish set to his square jaw.
“Look, Ratch,” he says, a tone of voice that all but demands the medic to listen to him and Ratchet feels strangely compelled to offer Sideswipe his full attention. “Sunny's my other half and I love him more than anything in the universe. But I'm not blind. He's arrogant and snide and just this side of psychotic.”
Ratchet feels his supra-orbital plating rise at this frank assessment of Sideswipe's own twin's behavior. Is it supposed to be an encouragement?
“But,” Sideswipe adds, and as his tone gentles, something in his faceplates also softening. His energy field flutters with affection. “He also feels more than any mech I've ever met. Even as soft-sparked as First Aid is. So when I say Sunny loves you, I don't think you could ever grasp half the depth of what I mean.”
Love. Love, he says.
What kind of impossible romantic notion is that?
Ratchet's spark gives a clenching feeling within his chestplate, as though his frame is two sizes too small. “And yet, he's the one who walked away.”
“You might as well have!” Sideswipe's argument echoes in the half-empty medbay and he pulls back, as though drawing on a well of patience, dialing his vocalizer back down. “How many vorns and you never asked? And how many times does Sunny have to hear other mechs say you wouldn't bond a half-sparked mech like him anyway before he starts to believe it?”
“That's not true and you know it!”
“I do,” Sideswipe concedes. “But I'm not the one who needs convincing.”
If silence carried a weight, Ratchet can feel it now on his shoulders. The weight of Sideswipe's stare, the debilitating press of Ratchet's own guilt, pushing him downward, trying to drag him through the concrete floor and into Earth's Unicron-infected core.
Sideswipe sighs, a noise of resignation, and holds up his hands, backing away. “Look. If you'd be happier like this, then by all means, ignore me. But if you love him like I think you do, then do what's right.”
“I think we're beyond that now,” Ratchet replies quietly.
“You're wrong.”
Sideswipe leaves, his parting words seeming to echo all around Ratchet. He slumps back against one of the med berths, feeling the eons in his joints and limbs. Feeling it in the heaviness of his spark.
He's too old for this.
He's too old for thoughts of forever. He's too battle-scarred to think of ridiculous notions like love. The mechs he's known as family are gone. Most of the mechs and femmes he fought beside over the millennia are dead. Cybertron's gone, little more than a dead husk. All Ratchet has left is this rag tag group of Autobots and whoever manages to find them on this mudball planet in this backwater galaxy here on the distant edge of space.
What's it matter now?
They're all fighting for the sake of fighting, really. Fighting for energun. Over old and half-forgotten grievances. Desperate to return to a planet that's lifeless, never to be restored at this rate. Population dwindling with each passing vorn.
His youngling's a Decepticon! That's what Ratchet's world has come to. And now, the only mech he ever dared consider a bond with has decided he's no longer worth the trouble.
Ratchet can't blame him.
This war makes uncertainty of everything. No wonder Sunstreaker wants a little something to cling to, something that's indisputable.
Ratchet must admit wanting the same thing for himself. It would be a lie if he said he didn't miss Sunstreaker. He's spent every free second of the last several millennia thinking about his partner. Thinking about his family. Sideswipe and First Aid. His apprentice's brothers. Jazz and Bluestreak and Prowl. His missing youngling.
By Primus! Every moment he wasn't locked in some life-or-death battle or struggling to keep another one of the Autobots from deactivating, Ratchet had wished for nothing more than Sunstreaker at his side. And he didn't even have the comfort of the bond to offer him any consolation that his partner wasn't deactivated or disabled.
Sunstreaker is here now. Here within touching distance, except nothing is the same anymore. Ratchet's different. Sunstreaker's different. Maybe too different. Their youngling has become a Decepticon and nothing's right in Ratchet's world.
Nothing's been right since fragging Megatron bombed Uraya.
Sighing, Ratchet shakes his helm and glares mutely at the floor. Just what in the Pit is he supposed to do?
a/n: We're rapidly approaching the end, folks. Worry not, a sequel is already in progress. Event Horizon was a bit narrow in that it was completely Ratchet's POV but the sequel Critical Mass expands the POVs so we'll hear from others. Sunstreaker. Jazz. Knock Out. Fun times ahead!
Let me know if you liked it!
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Date: 2012-05-20 01:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-20 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-20 12:42 pm (UTC)Eagerly looking forward for more...
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Date: 2012-05-20 03:53 pm (UTC)Thank you for your review! It put a smile on my face this morning.