Name: Thread
Author: Astsadi
'Verse: non-specific, pre-Earth
Characters: Sunstreaker/Prowl, mentions of Sideswipe
Rating: K

Summary: We can't always have what we want. Sunstreaker and Prowl say goodbye.

This pairing bit me in the derriere a while ago and refuses to let go... this is one of various scenes rolling around in my brain for them. My love for this pairing has been encouraged first by Lune Nightingale's "Light of the Sun", and then by my beloved best friend Hearts of Eternity, who shamelessly scribbles stories about the two of them for my amusement :)

I've slipped in a small reference to a frame concept that as far as I know belongs to Okami-chan. If I do anything more extensive with this I'll ask her permission, but for now her ideas have wormed their way firmly into my head canon and remain there happily. Anyway, I'd love for you to review with your thoughts on this little scraplette :)

Enjoy!

"Sunstreaker."

The warrior stopped as though someone had grabbed him by the dorsal plating. After a moment, he half-turned to look behind him, where the owner of that calmly desperate voice was standing with a datapad clutched to his chest. His face was inscrutable, but his raised and twitching doorwings displayed everything he was trying to hide. To Sunstreaker, who knew, the mech may as well have written his dismay and fear on his faceplates like so many others in the room. The fact that he didn't was what kept the ex-gladiator locked in place.

"Prowl," he answered, scrutinizing the other mech like a turbohawk. "What do you want?"

"We have been assigned to different units," Prowl offered, without a trace of weakness in his voice this time.

Sunstreaker nodded. "I know. Ironhide told us."

A battle seemed to war within the tactician in that following moment, and the only sign of it was the faintest quivering and shifting of his doorwings – to Sunstreaker, it was like watching the mech outright debate with himself, like a Bluestreak gagged by decorum.

"There is a 24.5% chance of both of us returning online," came the cold, hard voice.

The Decepticons had put an enormous amount of effort this time into a diversion, as well as their main attack, and the Autobots – against tactical wisdom – had no choice but to be divided between the two emergencies. Prowl never suggested a fight on two fronts if he could help it, but the Decepticons appeared to have finally learned the principles of 'two glitches with one code' and 'divide and conquer'. Sunstreaker meant to savagely knock the end of that clause from their smarmy lip-plates, but in the meantime the Autobots were flurrying around Iacon's cavernous hangar being ordered and divided into two response teams. The short supply of heavy-hitters to the main attack, and a more plentiful force of mid-rank soldiers at the pantomime of a decoy, with the processing forces split between the two.

Sideswipe pinged Sunstreaker across their bond with more urgency than the last time, and the golden-black twin hunched his wide shoulders in the direction of their transport. "I'm leaving, Prowl. What do you want?"

"I have been calculating your best chances in this battle based upon my observations of your sparring sessions, and I believe you would be best served by removing your doubles."

The taller mech narrowed his optics, his excess armour shifting and rippling along his frame. It was common amongst gladiators to don extra plating for the rings, as it simply offered them more protection. In Kaon in particular, the rings became no less dangerous outside of actual scheduled matches, and the gladiators wore their doubles at all times. It was also customary – even necessary – for the Kaon gladiators to select armour that contributed to their psychological warfare against their opponents and their efforts to win the adoration of the crowds by appearing more fearsome, more mythical, more dangerous and deadly than anyone else. Sunstreaker's doubles were extensive, but they had been fitted with his escapes to be with his brother outside of the rings in mind; they were linked to a special subspace compartment he had originally purchased for a completely different storage idea. But Prowl couldn't have known that.

"You want me to stop right now and take off all my doubles?" he scowled. "You'd better have a slagging good reason."

"Your agility will increase substantially, your speed and your energy efficiency will also be boosted; and you have previously stated that much of your armour was for display rather than protection, which implies that your natural plating can handle the damage you are likely to incur while in battle." There was something else hidden within Prowl's body language, and Sunstreaker stared at him, waiting for the rest of it.

Prowl realized the reason for the warrior's cold gaze, and his optics flicked down to the floor. He battled within himself once more as the hustling and bustling around the pair intensified. The klaxons were announcing immediate departure. "And... if this is the last time I see you," the smaller bot finally let out, with an air of pushing through his own numerous misgivings. "I would like to see what you really look like."

Sunstreaker's optics shuttered closed, and he ignored an even prissier ping from Sideswipe to get his aft moving. There was no surge of emotion in his spark, but a surge of something in his processor. Regret. He'd never bothered to regret before, but as he opened his optics and looked at the prim tactician standing just a few paces in front of him, staring doggedly at the floor and unmistakably not at Sunstreaker, he felt a pang of something he was forever going to miss out on.

"I wish I'd known you before," he said, with that feeling of regret leaving the faintest stain on his words.

Prowl glanced quickly up, his plain face revealing a typically Praxian expression – blandness stretched thinly over curiosity. His doorwings twitched as though inviting the warrior to continue. "Before you joined the Autobots? Before you were a gladiator?" He offered the second after Sunstreaker lightly shook his helm.

"Before everything," the golden twin let escape from his vocalizer.

Silence tore through the distance between them, even as shuttles began to lift around them and the hangar only bustled more with the inflow of mechs arriving at their summons to battle. A cold wind burst into the enormous hangar as the five doors swept open in quick succession, letting out the shuttles.

But the two mechs standing before the gangplank of the shuttle Aeiron IV didn't move. Something heavy and aching moved between their sparks.

Prowl's voice was very soft when he spoke again. Sunstreaker couldn't hear it, could only read those lips forming the word, "Why?"

With a quick shake of his head and a trill of annoyance at the vicious ping and shove through their bond from Sideswipe, Sunstreaker initiated the protocol that swept all his double plating into its specially allocated subspace. With a rush of magnetism and clicking gears, the clunky plating vanished from sight – revealing the trim, sleek form of a golden Toughline standing there arrogantly with one Seeker-like pede on the gangplank behind him.

Prowl's chest visibly constricted when he saw the mech standing before him, for the first time without his gladiatorial mods and without his battle mask. His frame, his face, were unlike anything Prowl had ever seen before. On nobody else in his life had the tactician ever seen such perfect, icy beauty. A beautiful mech, but radiating violence and contempt.

The twin could barely look at the other bot, and he began to turn towards the shuttle firing up its engines behind him.

"Why?" Prowl repeated, loud enough to hear this time.

Sunstreaker didn't look back. "I would have loved you."

Unspoken but shouting out from the frontliner's spark to the tactician's was a parting blade, severing whatever thread had been woven between them, and Prowl also turned and quickly made his way to his awaiting shuttle while Sunstreaker was dragged into his leaving transportation.

I would have loved you. I'm sorry I can't.