Name: Stop All the Clocks
Author: Atsadi
'Verse: Movieverse-ish, G1-influenced
Characters: Sideswipe, Will Lennox, Prowl, Simmons, Sunstreaker, Prime, Annabelle Lennox... plenty others mentioned.
Rating: K+

Summary: The war is ended. But not without cost.
Warnings: angst, character death, violence, freaking sadness

I don't even know where this came from. Pretty sure I blame Tirya King though, and her absurdly sad Lambo-twins stories that have scarred me for the past five years or so. Also Tom Hiddleston, for doing a stunning reading of one of my favourite but oh-so-sad poems, which is featured and paraphrased throughout this fic. Information about it is at the end.

As far as continuity is concerned, I tend to acknowledge that RotF happened, but don't really take it as canon, and DotM... well, it happened but doesn't concern me much.

ONESHOT only. Ties in with my fic "Springtime", and is a companion to/alternate version of its upcoming sequel(s). We'll see...

Stop all the clocks

If there was one rule he'd give to surviving a war, it would be simply this:

Love not, lest ye lose.

In practice, this was a near-impossible feat. How can you live up to such a thing living every moment with the same people orn after orn, cycle after cycle, vorn following vorn until you couldn't remember the beginnings of any of your relationships beyond a vague impression of spotting them for the first time… and suddenly they had been in your life forever? The Humans would call such a person a 'robot' (though the Earthlings with close ties to the Autobot forces stationed on their planet had long since abandoned that particular piece of vernacular, and its cousins 'machine' and 'heartless').

Some fared better than others though, and by the time the war ended those surviving it with the fewest scars were those with the emptiest dorms and the emptiest sparks. Those who had never formed a collection of friends. Who bore no holos of shared joy, adored faces, fond memories. Who never lent a piece of their spark to another being in love.

The humans had a well-known saying: 'tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.

It was – to parry with another native phrase – a spectacular crock of shit.

Ask any of them.

Ask the mech standing like a statue to the side of a great podium, with his entire body forcefully locked to prevent it from trembling.

Ask him while staring straight into his unmoving face. His steely optics.

Ask him, if you can bring yourself to. You machine.

Silence the piano

There were three sounds ringing loudly through the city streets that day.

A drum. Solitary. Brittle. Pounding and yet muffled as it preceded a procession towards what used to be called Washington Circle Park. Weaving through its stoic beats was a trumpet calling mournfully to the skies. Its notes were filled with tears, breaking off and trembling over the heads of the assembled crowds which filled the streets, as though the lungs that powered it were barely holding together against their own pain.

A drum. A trumpet.

And the ache of silence.

He was my north. My south. My east and west.

The mech locked down beside the podium shuddered once as the procession made it finally to where he stood, before a great circle cleared of Humans. There were Cybertronians lining the street along with the planet's natives, though the giant creatures stood with military poise in laser-like lines framing the flimsy stage's scaffolding, alongside the American military might on display in their own regimented lines.

Carved out of the space formerly known as Washington Circle Park and New Hampshire Avenue was an enormous crater, telling of a devastating detonation of some kind. It was deep but not too wide, not stretching far beyond the confines of the greenery.

The stoic mech faced resolutely away from it, and the five cloth-covered shapes standing in a chevron formation in front of it.

My working week, and my Sunday rest.
My noon, my midnight: my talk, my song.

He barely listened to the speeches given by two leaders: the somber president of the United States of America, and the solemn prime of the formerly united Citystates of Cybertron.

He was barely capable of listening by this point. His audials picked up the sounds… but somewhere between the input mechanisms atop his helm and his spinning processor the words were getting lost. Or distorted. Everything was being distorted. Twisted. His entire world was…

… A touch on his pede. So soft, and yet somehow that tactile information thrummed from the armour at the furthest point of his body straight to his processors without a problem, and amplified until his entire consciousness narrowed to that one small point. The oval shapes of three Human fingertips pressing against the anterior shield of his left pede – retracting, then touching again on the strut protecting his shin.

I thought that love would last forever…

His every sensor zeroed in on Colonel Lennox's biosigns; feeling the pounding of his tiny organic heart, the electric race of his neurones and nervous structure, the give and pull of his arteries and capillaries, the roughness of his breaths, the coolness to his skin. This was not a creature in control. This was a creature in agony. The mech choked through his next ventilation; his systems falling suddenly out of synch and his vents snapping closed when he expected them to be open.

"Shh," Lennox murmured, placing his entire hand flat on his aching friend's shin. "Shh, it's alright, Sides; you're alright."

They both knew that wasn't true… but because Sideswipe knew that Lennox was fully aware of how ridiculous his words were, he was able to take them at face value. They were calming Human words, words of comfort to a being who was past the point of comfort. No amount of love from his Human friend could bring him back from this. No amount of love from him could bring his brother back.

At some point during Lennox's breaking of ranks to reach his friend, the monument's cover had been whipped away to reveal the four creatures sacrificed for the end of the War of Millennia. Two forms made up either side of their small arrow formation, with the four of them flanking a wide obelisk at the apex. On it were etched hundreds of names; men and mechs who over the vorns and years had been killed in military action against the Decepticons.

… I was wrong.

At the back of the wide monument – but no less visible or honoured – were the forms of Autobot Bluestreak and US Major Robert Epps, standing in memoriam at an equal height.

Epps, father of six, killed in action while leading a team sent to break up the Seekers' command trine. Epps… responsible for the death of the Decepticon terrorist Thundercracker and along with him the terrorist Skywarp and, eventually, Air Commander Starscream.

And Bluestreak… the young gunner who spent only five weeks on the planet called Earth before becoming a casualty of the final offensive in Washington DC. Bluestreak, who sniped right through the shoulder, chest, and spark chamber of the Decepticon terrorist Shockwave: and who was offlined just moments later in a building collapse in the final act of their very own Alekhine's Gun.

The stars are not wanted now.

Once, on a decidedly uninteresting Wednesday afternoon on Diego Garcia, Seymour Simmons got it in his peculiar head to teach Prowl how to play chess.

"Suits you," he huffed amicably as he set about fashioning a set out of white chalk lines on the floor outside the hangar, and various spare parts sourced (read: shamelessly pilfered) from Ratchet's Lair, all under the calm but curious gaze of the head of Autobot tactical operations.

Prowl had been on Earth for a grand total of six days at this point, and therefore seemed to spend most of his time regarding the Humans with that sort of calm curiosity. When the Humans were not around, he was a perfect picture of calm grief; having learned about Jazz's death within his first hour after planetfall.

Simmons didn't bother to explain the game before playing Prowl, having spent long enough around the Cybertronians to know that Google was always at their metaphorical fingertips. And Prowl learned that chess was a game of challenge to even his mind – playing another being was something quite different from memorizing the functions of the pieces and the names of the game's various attacks and manoeuvres from the Wikipedia page. The pair of them entered a bizarre truce that all – Cybertronian and Human alike – regarded with bemusement and a sort of nebulous suspicion.

Two weeks after these games began, Prowl decided to implement a move he'd learned from what Sideswipe insisted on calling 'the internetz': a 'beginning of the end' type lineup involving his two rooks fronting his queen. He blazed through Simmons's defense and won his game in record time.

Earnest to retaliate, Simmons wielded his own knowledge of Wikipedia and zapped Prowl with a Boden's mate in their very next match.

They were both struck with the idea at the same time (or so Simmons would later argue).

Either way, their flash of brilliance was momentarily interrupted by the aggravated honking of a severely pissed-off Ratchet, who had just discovered their thievery.

Put out every one.

Chess and war are very much the same… and yet very different.

They played their moves with perfection. It was a beautiful game of logic: the cleanest chess moves ever made. But in war it is possible to lose in victory.

With desperation clawing at their intakes, the Decepticons had decided that rather than attacking Earth's power stations and natural resources piecemeal in efforts to glean the fuel necessary to get the Nemesis spacebound from its lunar exile, they would collect leverage. Never ones to do it by halves, they immediately set after the American president. Two attempts made using intelligence and subterfuge were thwarted by the Secret Service with the smallest of prods from the technological standpoint of the Autobots, and their third attempt did away with subtlety entirely.

As the 'Cons did their very best to raze a two-minute path from their rapidly commandeered base on Theodore Roosevelt Island to the White House itself, the Autobots set their plan into motion.

If quite literally nothing else had been gained from their centuries of war, and thousands of deaths whether civilian, military or Human, there was the understanding that Optimus Prime and Prowl had of how Megatron processed.

The Decepticons, for all their trickery and treachery and craftiness, had become predictable in their desperation.

The Autobots were waiting in formation around the White House along with what certainly appeared to be half the American military. A gamble. Skyfire the C-5 Galaxy shot down into the South Lawn, scooped up the president, his family and essential staff to join the complement of soldiers already on board, and took off for the stratosphere surrounded by Silverbolt and the other Aerialbots.

Below them, the ground troops engaged.

Predictably, Starscream took off after Skyfire with the command, secondary and tertiary trines, where they were more than matched by Robert Epps and the Aerialbots, not to mention the US Air Force. A final desperate null-ray shot to Skydive sent the flier hurtling into the ocean where he was immediately rescued by his brothers – their beloved friend Epps was comatose in his cockpit, not to be woken again.

Pack up the moon…

In front of Epps and Bluestreak carved in stone silence were two more of the puzzle pieces used in their final attack.

Ironhide – much to his consternation designated the Queen of Prowl's Alekhine's Gun. Bluestreak and Perceptor took the less controversial roles of rooks. One shot from Bluestreak disabled Shockwave while Perceptor's took down Soundwave. Ironhide then burst from his concealed alt. mode and his cannons made fine dust of Shockwave, a monster who had modified himself not to require a spark to keep functioning. A monster who thus got off a shot with his ray gun of a chassis before offlining, which sapped every flicker of energy from Ironhide's frame before it even hit the concrete. And then Shockwave fell, a great monster who went down with a spectacular lack of grace and took out four nearby buildings with his body, plus one nearby Bluestreak with the feedback from his twisted, sputtering spark. By the time Blue's frame had been dug from the rubble his own sweet spark had long-since guttered.

And Sunstreaker – a bishop with Sideswipe in Simmons's Boden's mate. An imperfect move in execution. Pinned and weakened by the twin gladiators, Megatron was not fully prepared for the late entry of a fresh and furious Prime. Prepared enough though to fire a fusion blast for the Prime's chest half-way through their 3-vs-1 face-off. Predictable enough that the golden twin had time to leap in the way. Megatron and his head fell separately on either side of the frontliner's downed frame, while Prime stood over the younger mech in paralysis and listened to Sideswipe's screams.

And dismantle the sun.

Soundwave was critically injured but surrendered quickly upon waking. Having rather played their hand that day, the Decepticons had taken their great risk and come out at the bottom. If even that. Their air commander and SIC crippled by the deaths of his two trine-mates, to offline later in the week, the third in command surrendered and on system-support, Shockwave's monstrous frame quite cold and thrown hastily into a specialized smelter to be melted down for Ratchet's cybertronium stores.

Megatron was dead. After a decapitation and a sparkcase severance and the crushing of his processor beneath Prime's pede, Optimus had finally deemed him sufficiently dispatched and had been able to fall to his knees and check in with the rest of his faction.

Barren of appropriate leadership, the entire Earth contingent of Decepticons surrendered or were killed before the end of the week. Those on Cybertron did not hold on much longer.

There was an unexpected stillness. As if time itself could not believe the change two simple breems had brought. 16.6 minutes. 996 seconds. And the war was over.

Pour away the oceans.

Sideswipe did not die straight away. To Ratchet's shock, and Sideswipe's agony.

Instead, his frame only slowly began to realize that it was not going to survive his twin's death. His spark began to flutter and expand like a little supernova in his chest. His rich red nanites began to die once more, so that his frame slowly became a mottled brown, and then finally faded to protoform silver like it had been years ago upon his arrival on Earth.

Without the stabilization of a whole spark, albeit one divided between two frames, Sideswipe's processors began to confuse. Data became lost, warped or swapped amongst itself, and he was soon all but impossible to talk to. Words switched with each other in his vocalizer though seeming perfectly fine in his mind, and three months after Sunstreaker's death, a couple of weeks after the memorial service, Sideswipe lost English.

He enjoyed Will Lennox's company for a further two weeks before losing his identity too. Annabelle Lennox, now a sprightly seven-year-old whom Sideswipe had loved like his own creation, held on the longest – he lost her five months after his half-death, give or take a few days. Annabelle had cried for Sunstreaker for weeks; losing Sideswipe like that sent her into silence.

She barely spoke at all until twenty-two weeks after the battle in DC, when one morning Sideswipe would simply not online at all, and Ratchet let him go.

Her first words were the last coherent thing Sideswipe had ever said to her.

… And sweep up the wood.

"There is nothing now."

For nothing now
Can ever come to any good.

~ Funeral Blues, by W.H. Auden