[FoF] Scars of Yesterday 2/???

[dracoqueen22]

Scars of Yesterday
Chapter Two

Noise was a constant, here in their cell.

The banging of metal bars. The weeping of the new and temporary arrivals. The growling of fierce rutting from whoever their owners had thrown into a cell together. The clank and rattle of chains. Conversation in a language Sunstreaker and Sideswipe only partially knew. The rumble of the humans’ machinery.

The sounds were familiar. Sunstreaker couldn't remember a time he hadn't fallen asleep or woken to those sounds. They were as familiar to him as the beat of Sideswipe's core, as the rhythms of his breathing, and the hum of his voice.

He didn't know what time it was when his eyes fluttered open, his ears picking up an unfamiliar noise in the middle of a familiar song.

Sideswipe was still asleep beneath him, tucked in a curve and pressed against the wall of their cell, in the nest of blanket and pillow bits they'd saved. He was exhausted. He’d fought yesterday, and his opponent had been a big harpy almost twice his size.

He’d won. Of course he’d won. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe didn’t lose. But it took a lot out of them.

He was still wounded. Sunstreaker had tended the slashes and cuts as best he could, licking them clean and rinsing them with their drinking water. It wasn’t much, but it was better than telling their owners Sideswipe needed care. The doctor was horrible, made them hurt worse, and always separated them.

Sunstreaker didn’t like how Sideswipe behaved when he came back after seeing the doctor. Sunstreaker fought too much, they always sedated him, but Sideswipe tended to behave. He tried to be friendly and playful, to gain favor for them.

They still weren’t sure if it worked or not. Their owners were too unpredictable.

Sunstreaker brushed a kiss over Sideswipe’s forehead and curled in closer to his twin, forming a protective barrier. He didn’t know what had woken him, but he listened intently, hoping to catch it again.

jingle-clink

Keys.

That didn’t make any sense. It was too late for another match and too early for morning feeding.

Sunstreaker shifted to conceal Sideswipe, and stared toward the bars. There was a dim flicker of approaching light. A dark shape, frontlit by a small lantern, came into view. It paused in front of their cell and the lantern lifted, casting more light into the interior.

Sunstreaker pretended to be asleep.

Keys jangled. The door swung open so slowly, Sunstreaker didn’t hear it creak. There was another whisper of sound, almost familiar, like fabric swishing, but not.

A voice rose in the dark. It murmured something, a name maybe, in a language Sunstreaker didn’t know. It wasn’t what the humans spoke, he could figure out that much.

Sunstreaker tensed.

Through slitted eyes, he caught a glint in the lantern light, of something that wasn’t human clothing. There was a rustle, like feathers. Another harpy? A big one. Bigger than Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, but darker. Dark enough to blend into the unlit corners of the cell.

The stranger moved closer, lifting the lantern to shine it down on Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, and in the echo of it, Sunstreaker saw talons, feathers, fangs.

There was only one reason for another harpy to enter their cell in the dark of the night. It didn’t matter that the humans weren’t here to shove him inside. Harpies didn’t wander freely around the compound. Harpies weren’t free. Harpies were meant to be kept.

No.

Not this time.

Not tonight.

Rage boiled inside of Sunstreaker. He jerked away from Sideswipe and leapt to his feet, slashing out at the intruder with a snarl.

The harpy ducked back with a startled shout, lantern swinging, and scrambled back against the bars of the cell. “Stop, stop, stop!” The words were human, but the voice unfamiliar, not one Sunstreaker was accustomed to obeying.

He lunged again, and the harpy skittered off to the side, out of reach. Sunstreaker halted, keeping himself between Sideswipe and the other harpy.

“Stop!”

“You stop!” Sunstreaker hissed, his lips peeled back over his teeth. “Don’t touch!”

The bars rattled as the harpy pressed himself against them, out of Sunstreaker’s reach, making no attempt to get closer.

Sideswipe stirred behind him, making a confused sound. Sunstreaker didn’t spare him a glance. Not yet. His twin would figure it out soon enough. Until then, Sunstreaker didn’t take his eyes off the stranger.

The swinging lantern revealed a harpy, his feathers dark and glossy, though Sunstreaker couldn’t make out the highlights of color. He had one hand out, a defensive gesture Sunstreaker recognized, while the other clutched the lantern closer.

“Stop,” the harpy repeated, and his voice was slower this time, more careful, like he was picking out his words one by one. “Don’t want you. Want Rodimus.”

Sunstreaker cocked his head. He didn’t recognize the name. He assumed it was one of the new arrivals. They’d brought in two yesterday. Brightly colored. A small one and a bigger one, both of them bloodied, one of them unconscious, the little one angry and biting and hissing until one of the humans backhanded him into submission.

He’d learn to obey. They all learned to obey eventually.

Maybe Rodimus was one of the new arrivals. Maybe not. Sunstreaker didn’t particularly care about others.

He growled again. “Out!” He stepped toward the encroaching harpy, other hand spread wide to try and hide Sideswipe. “Out!”

The stranger spat something in a language Sunstreaker didn’t recognize, but he obeyed, slipping back through the open cell door. He paused on the other side of the bars, looking through them at Sunstreaker.

“Others?” It sounded like a question, though Sunstreaker only picked out the one word. The harpy spoke like a human, but used words Sunstreaker didn’t know.

Sunstreaker backed up a step, and immediately collided with Sideswipe, who had risen to stand at his back, tense and quiet. His brother’s hand landed on his shoulder, warm and comforting, a wordless sign of solidarity.

“Not. Here.” Sideswipe growled over Sunstreaker’s shoulder. He always did understand language better than Sunstreaker. What he learned, he taught to Sunstreaker, and together, they cobbled an understanding of their world.

The harpy spat a word. Sideswipe tensed. But then their nocturnal visitor was gone, taking with him the light of the lantern, and leaving spots dancing in Sunstreaker’s eyes.

“What was that about?” Sideswipe asked, his hand still on Sunstreaker’s shoulder, and so Sunstreaker sank back into his embrace, feeling wrung out, shaking.

“I don’t know.” Sunstreaker wrapped his arms around his brother, breathing a sigh of relief.

He would have fought tooth and talon to protect Sideswipe. He had, in fact, done so before. He already planned to offer himself when their owners came, if they wanted Sideswipe to fight again.

Sideswipe needed to rest and heal, not fight.

Sideswipe nuzzled him, still smelling of blood and dirt, and underneath it, the worrisome sickly sweet of potential infection. “He left the door open.”

“You remember what happened last time we tried.” Sunstreaker gripped tighter, fear nestling in his core.

They’d escaped. They’d killed a human in the process. They’d made it as far as they could before they were caught and summarily punished.

They’d been separated for a week.

Nothing had ever hurt so bad as not being with Sideswipe, not knowing where he was, and having only the company of a strange harpy in his cell. A bigger, meaner, hungrier one who hissed at Sunstreaker in a language he didn’t know, and held Sunstreaker down with teeth and talon.

He’d fought because that was what Sunstreaker did. He fought because it was all he knew. But fighting hadn’t been enough. The other harpy had been bigger and stronger and fighting had only excited him. The big harpy had won that day and claimed his victory. Over and over again.

Sunstreaker never wanted to be separated from Sideswipe if he could help it.

“We need to keep trying. I don’t want to stay,” Sideswipe said. “Something is going on. I can smell it.”

“Is it worth it?”

Sideswipe cupped his cheek, tilting him up to look into his eyes. “Freedom with you is worth any risk.”

Sunstreaker swallowed over a lump of fear in his throat. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Sideswipe kissed him, his lips brushing over Sunstreaker’s, the only tenderness they ever allowed each other, in the dark of their cell, with no one watching. Sunstreaker let himself give into it, the weakness and the softness of it, before he pulled away.

“Grab what you can,” Sideswipe said.

“The only thing I want that’s here is you,” Sunstreaker grumbled, but he dug through their nest of blankets and pillows anyway, pulling out the small bag of food they’d managed to squirrel away by being frugal and smart.

Sometimes, withholding food was a punishment. Extra food was a reward. They’d learned to work with both.

“Are you sure?” Sunstreaker asked as Sideswipe limped to the cell door and pushed it slowly, slowly open. It didn’t creak.

“Very.” Sideswipe’s eyes glinted in the dark, catching the smallest echo of a blaring light further down the row of cells. “Here. Let me carry that.”

Sunstreaker clutched it tighter. “You’re injured.”

“Yeah. And you’re not. So you take the lead, and I’ll carry the bag.”

“Fine.”

Sunstreaker thrust the bag at Sideswipe and moved ahead of him, creeping out of the cell door and peering up and down the wide corridor. It was oddly deserted. The usual patrol was nowhere to be found.

A few of the cell doors were open, like Sunstreaker and Sideswipe’s had been, but not all of them. Across the way, it was a bit too dim to see into the cell interiors. They weren’t all full. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe were a constant in this place, but their fellow captives seemed to come and go.

He knew there were new arrivals, but that was a constant, too. Sunstreaker learned early on not to get attached to anyone who wasn’t Sideswipe. At some point, they’d either be dead, or they’d be an opponent, or they’d be someone trying to hurt Sideswipe or himself.

It wasn’t worth it.

“What about the others?” Sideswipe asked, and Sunstreaker didn’t have to look to know his brother had pointed some misguided sympathy toward the other locked cells and their inhabitants.

“Forget them,” Sunstreaker hissed. “We can only worry about us.”

“Tex might want to come,” Sideswipe said, and he lingered, looking back toward Vortex’s cell, the only harpy who hadn’t come and gone like the others. He was their owner’s absolute favorite.

Sunstreaker frowned. “He’s no friend of ours.”

“That wasn’t his fault, Sunny.” Sideswipe nibbled on his bottom lip, eyes downcast, bleeding core that he was. “He had to do what he had to do just like us.”

Sunstreaker swept back and grabbed Sideswipe’s free hand, tugging him away from Vortex’s cell and toward the closest exit door. “We can’t worry about him if you want to get out of here. It’ll be easier if it’s just the two of us.”

“But--”

“He would’ve left us, too.”

Sideswipe squeezed his hand. “Fine. Let’s go.”

Bleeding core to the end. Sunstreaker loved him for his compassion. It was a good thing he had it. Sunstreaker was fine being the cold core. It didn’t bother him because it meant he could keep his twin alive.

They moved forward, creeping past cells, as quickly as they could. Sunstreaker peered into each, but they were locked and empty, and had been for awhile. Other than the two yesterday, their owners hadn’t brought in new company. He couldn’t remember the last time he and Sideswipe had neighbors.

The strange, dark harpy from earlier had completely vanished. Quietly, too.

Sunstreaker smelled the blood before he saw it, a dark sheen of slick on the ground, pooling just in front of the hall to the exit.

Sunstreaker crouched, sweeping his finger through the wet. It was very slick, warm to the touch. Still fresh. He peered around the corner, into the corridor. A dark shape slumped in the corner, barely visible in the moonlight peeking through the gaps in the wood door.

“What is it?” Sideswipe whispered, over his shoulder.

Sunstreaker ignored him and crept into the hall. The shape didn’t move. The smell of blood, however, grew thicker, along with the stench of something else. Urine? He got close enough to smell human before the slumped shape became a slumped body, curled in on itself. The moonlight revealed the familiar face of one of their captors.

This one had liked to stick a prod through the bars, shocking whatever or whoever was within reach. It could poke the back of the cell, so there was no escaping the pain of it. Sunstreaker had spent as much time shielding Sideswipe as Sideswipe had spent shielding him.

“It’s a human. He’s dead.”

“You sure?”

Sunstreaker got a fistful of hair and pulled up the head. A gaping wound trickled a few last spurts of blood. His throat had been slit.

“Pretty sure.” He dropped the head. “Someone’s been busy.”

Probably the weird harpy. He was looking for someone. To be walking around with a lantern, he had to be able to defend himself.

“We need to hurry,” Sideswipe said.

Sunstreaker agreed.

He stepped over the corpse and pushed gently on the door. It creaked as it opened – not locked. He didn’t know if that was a good or bad sign.

Sunstreaker peered into a cloudless, moonlit night. The nearest building was another large structure about twenty feet across open ground -- the so-called medical building and processing center. At night, it looked even more terrifying.

The facing door was slightly ajar. Light spilled out in a thin slant across the ground.

Sunstreaker had no intention of going there. He knew, vaguely, that there was a dense forest to the south. He and Sideswipe had tried to escape that way once. They might have made it, if Sideswipe hadn’t stumbled into that metal trap. They would have flown, if Sunstreaker hadn’t been crippled by a bruised wing.

Sideswipe peered over his shoulder. “What’re you thinking, bro?”

“The forest is still our best bet.”

It wasn’t like they had any clue where they could find safe harbor. They didn’t have any other home. They didn’t know how close the nearest humans were, or other harpies for that matter.

Not that other harpies were any safer than the humans. Other harpies had been equally guilty of taking whatever they pleased.

“Anywhere is better than here.” Sideswipe tapped his left shoulder. “Let’s go around the back. Away from the road. Less open space to cross.”

“But closer to the house.” Sunstreaker gnawed on his bottom lip, anxiety swirling into a tight knot in his belly, making his knees tremble. Closer to the house meant closer to potentially alert humans and their guns.

“Then we better be quiet.”

They slipped out, Sideswipe carefully closing the door behind him. Sunstreaker didn’t know if it would make a difference, but it couldn’t hurt either.

It was deserted outside. Eerily silent, too. Usually there were humans around, patrols, cars in the distance even. Sunstreaker didn’t like it.

He kept the lead. He pressed his back to the wall and followed it toward the edge of the building, keeping a close eye for anyone who might be paying them too much attention. A shadow flew overhead, and Sunstreaker glanced up, peering at a fast, flitting shape. It was too dark to identify. A bat maybe?

Whatever.

He got to the edge of the building and paused, listening intently. His feathers prickled, rising above his skin, and he caught a weird smell on the wind. It didn’t fit in with the usual odors Sunstreaker associated with his captivity.

“Sunny, what--”

“Shh.” He held up a hand, ears twitching.

Footsteps. Fast footsteps. Running footsteps. Heavy footsteps.

Boots, Sunstreaker worried. Boots meant humans, meant humans with weapons, humans who would put them back in their cage, punish them again. Separate them. Trap them with other harpies, big and strong, eager and hungry.

No. Not without a fight.

Sunstreaker snarled and whipped around the corner, talons extended. He got only a glimpse of a large, lithe harpy before he attacked, raking at them with his dominant hand.

“Stay back!” Sunstreaker snarled, baring his fangs at the other, taller harpy. His feathers fluffed around his body, making himself appear larger.

The other harpy sprang back. He was different than the one Sunstreaker had seen before. A bit taller, and he wore something on his face that hid his eyes and mouth from view. He also had a very, very small something on his shoulder, like a fledgeling or maybe another bird.

He was the weirdest harpy Sunstreaker had ever seen.

Sunstreaker bristled. “Back!” he snapped again and lunged.

The other harpy ducked out of the way, but didn’t lift a hand to fight back.

“Stop!” he snapped, and then spoke again, this time in a language Sunstreaker didn’t recognize. It was more of that harpy language, that melodic series of trills and chirps and singing he and Sideswipe had never been taught.

“Leave us alone!” Sunstreaker shouted and sprang forward, nearly catching feathers before the harpy swirled out of the way, leaving him stumbling in the dirt.

“Sunny, stop, we don’t have time for this!”

Sunstreaker shouted over his shoulder. “Stay back! I’ll handle this.”

Wham!

Something slammed into his shoulder, knocking him off balance. Sunstreaker staggered and reeled, whipping around with a backhand, only to collide with thin air. The tall harpy was still a few feet away, not nearly close enough to have been the one to touch him.

What…?

Whack!

Stars danced in Sunstreaker’s eyes. He gasped, the breath slammed out of him as a fist slammed into his chest, into his ribs. It took the air out of his lungs, and his world went hazy.

“Sunny!”

Sunstreaker’s head spun. He tried to straighten when another blow hit the back of his neck, sent black and white spots bouncing at the back of his eyes.

“Leave us alone!” Sideswipe shouted through the haze.

“Sideswipe, go!” Sunstreaker gasped out as he stumbled and spun around, getting a brief glimpse of another harpy, this one smaller, his feathers some shade of blue and white in the light of the moon, but he moved quickly. Eerily quick.

“I’m not leaving you!”

Sunstreaker swung, lashing out at the harpy attacking him, but he dove easily out of the way, and ducked out of view. Spots kept dancing in Sunstreaker’s eyes, and it was harder to concentrate through the pounding in his head.

He spun, trying to see Sideswipe, and got a glimpse of red feathers before a kick hit the back of his knees, and he hit the ground. Sunstreaker’s belly churned, nausea curdling inside of him. The sound of Sideswipe’s pained grunt hit his ears, and a moment of panic flashed through him before his world went abruptly dark.

***