Seeking a Spark-Brother

[Azimuth]

Twins of any sort are a rare thing on Cybertron. During the War there were only one set of renown, identical twins where their single Spark split into two.



Post-War, then Lunarians were found. And among then were another historical first: Fraternal Twins. Two sparks found together in a hot spot, cuddled together almost, where all others had been found alone.



The first to be brought online was given the name Zenith, and the second, Azimuth. Their names respectively means roughly 'How high will you go' and 'How far will you go,' and from that moment of coming online they were nigh inseparable. When members of their cohort would put them to bed in separate rooms, only to find that at some point in the night they would've moved until both of them were in one room. Well into their older childhood they didn't like to be apart and showed an uncanny ability to just simply know where each other was and in general how the other was doing. A Spark-to-Spark connection between two Lunarians.



Azimuth grew up happy, and loved, and with her dreams and ambitions to becoming an astrologist and ship navigator, especially if she could stay with Zenith on their adventures. And thankfully due to their unique traits they were allowed to, discovering the universe together.



Until the eventful trip aboard Tellius....



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



Once more, the cohort was awoken late at night by panicked, tormented screams.



Azi was having another nightmare.



Ever since Zenith had been lost in the desperate accident aboard Tellius, flung to who knows where and unable to be found, Azimuth had been a pale reflection of herself. She'd struggled and screamed as the ship had leapt away in a panicked bid for safety and home with systems going haywire as if trying to lunge out and follow him, then had pushed herself for hours upon hours to the point of collapse when they'd gone searching for those who had jumped out to hopefully survive.



Zenith was never found, and when they finally turned back for home something in Azimuth... broke. She literally collapsed, and was insensate for the entire journey back.



For the next several weeks Azimuth merely lay in her berth, not speaking or even acknowledging anyone save for a slight movement of her eyes. She had to be carried into the sunlight for her solar converter to function, or even be given liquid energon. She lost all interest in the stars, and only seemed to find comfort in her cohort. Tears would stream from her eyes randomly. She had nightmares that would awaken her screaming or keening in emotional pain. And during her awakening hours she moved about as some humans might say 'like a zombie.'



In short, she was a shell of her former self. It was like her Spark had left her, following her twin, and left only the functional remnants behind.



In desperation Pierce, one of her parents, spoke with both medical and psychological experts and gathered advice from his fellow priests. After discussion, debate, and even arguments among some of the older members of the cohort it was decided that the best treatment might be the most straightforward:



They would let Azimuth go on one final search, letting her look for her lost brother until she accepts that he is gone, that he isn't out there somewhere waiting for them, for her. When she finally accepts that he's gone then maybe she can begin to grieve, and thus to heal.



When she was told this, Azimuth, with tears rolling down her cheeks, finally spoke two words:



"Thank you."



The closer they got to the location the more animated Azimuth became, finally darting from window to window and lining up things to the images of the stars that had been burned into her head. But before they got fully to the location she shouted at them to stop, then pointed out the front windows...at a distortion in the stars. It lacked all color, all visibility to the bare optic, and even to scans. But the warping and wavering revealed it much as black holes had to be seen by their effects on celestial bodies around them.



Before they could stop her, Azimuth rushed towards the door, calling that Zenith was there, she knew he was there! Pierce stopped her for a moment, long enough to take in the frantic expression on her face... then simply nodded and insisted she wait long enough to be given some supplies for her exploration and for them to get a little closer. Azimuth seemed about to hesitate, but then agreed.



So after a final, tight embrace and words of love and for good luck and a blessing of "Primus guide and guard you." From Pierce, and a laden bag of supplies, Azimuth leapt from the door much as Zenith had what felt like an eternity ago, propelled herself through space to a safe distance, then transformed and shot into the distortion with one determined thought.



I'm coming, brother!



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



The instant she hit the distortion, Azimuth's reality seemed to spin completely out of control. She was flipped and jostled, twisted about end over end and all her sensors were glitching, showing nothing but a haywire jumble of colors and lines. She shrieked, struggling to just try and maintain a straight bearing until she was blinded by a brilliant flash of light -



-and found herself rocketing far too fast through the atmosphere of an unknown planet, with a rocky peak approaching at a greater velocity than was entirely comfortable!



"Frag!" Azi had just enough time to transform back to her robot mode to kick out, effectively skipping against the stone and rather than crashing into it sending her yet into another tumble.



CRASH!



"Ow! Ow ow ow!"



And after an all-too short descent into several trees.



The final impact left her upside down against the trunk of an ancient tree. Azi groaned in pain and more fell over than tried to right herself. Instantly her displays were showing all kinds of injuries and malfunctions, and she offlined her optics as she waited for her regeneration, slow though it was, to do its job. It was about an hour before she was able to slowly, carefully pull herself to her feet and even then she was still in considerable pain. But she was mobile, and able to focus, and that made her able to look around and take stock of things.



She seemed to be standing in a thick forest (missing some canopy from her rather unruly entrance), unlike anything she seen before. Birds, quieted by her arrival, were slowly starting to sing again and she saw a small furry creature run across a branch to chatter at her musically in a scolding before going on its way.



"Where... am I?" She cringed and rubbed her head at a small stab of pain, then slowly sank back down to sit on the ground, leaning against the tree that had stopped her. "Ug, Zee would love this. All this unknown..." With the rush of her crash and the momentarily surge of hope fading Azimuth felt a weariness stealing over her again, and bowed her head wanting to rest.



Get up.



The voice, if you could call it that, brought her head back up in surprise.



"Who's there?"



No one answered her, save for birdsong. Thinking she'd imagined it Azimuth bowed her head again, offlining her optics once more.



Get up! This time, though she voice was more insistent, Azimuth just grunted and stayed where she was. Get up!



"Tired... hurting... just let me rest..."



Get up, Azimuth! Feeling very drained but at the same time starting to feel alarmed at it knowing her name the Lunarian pulled herself up and just started walking in a random direction. The voice, perhaps a glitch in her processors replaying some memory of home, was quieted.



She walked for perhaps another hour, during which her regeneration completed quite a bit of repairs but left her even more tired, then she settled down beneath some more trees this time beside a bush, laying down.



Get up!



"Please, leave me alone. I just want to rest." She didn't care that she sounded like she was pleading. She was so tired....



GET UP! This time the voice was about a shout and sent her scrambling to her feet.



"Okay, okay! I'll go!" By this point she was convinced she'd unintentionally trespassed on something's territory and it was best for her to go, and quickly, no matter how tired.



That was how it went for about another half an hour. Every time Azimuth tried to stop and rest, even just to lean against a tree, the voice pressed her to keep going, to get up, to move.



Finally the Lunarian stumbled out of the woodlands and onto some plains. It was early evening, and the sunlight was warm and comforting. A nicely-sized river ran not too far away, crystal clear and beautiful. Coming to the edge she sank to her knees, then lay on her side with her solar panel locations as exposed to the sunlight as she could.



"Just... a little rest...." she murmured to herself. "Maybe if I get some sun...just let me rest." The voice was quiet, and Azimuth slipped into slumber.



Perhaps the voice had some intention behind its insistence, as where Azimuth had finally been permitted to settle the light glimmering off of the river was a nice attention-getter, and anyone with any kind of keen eyes would note the metallic gleam of the large form nearby, clearly not a boulder.

[Zenith]

By and large Zenith was not in the habit of keeping secrets. In his experience trying to hide anything was akin to personally insulting fate’s mother. Living on Planet- a place apparently bent on dragging all things hidden kicking and screaming into the light- had merely reinforced his natural tendency towards honesty. PIF shenanigans aside, there were dozens of other minds joined to his own now, with more joining the collective every day. What point was there in trying to keep information from cohortmates bound to your very soul? Sooner or later a stray thought would tip them off. Then the scales fell away, feelings were hurt, questions were asked and, inevitably, news spread through the whole damned cohort at light speed.

The best way to keep a secret was to not bother ‘keeping’ it in the first place, a rule he’d more or less lived since he’d bonded Morpho all that time ago.

But Azimuth was... different. His twin was a topic more personal, more private, than any other could hope to be. She was his equal but opposite, the yin to his yang, and abandoning her aboard the Tellius had felt more than a bit like betraying himself. Admittedly circumstances hadn’t exactly been in their favor. Tellius’ engines had been glitched, every component aboard going haywire as quantum energy flux chained between systems like phasefire. In the chaos it had been every mech for themselves. Azi had made her decision to stay aboard, perhaps to try and rein in the runaway chain reaction, and Zee...

Well, he’d pulled copies of their databases and jettisoned from the ship. Then he’d hit the sameself patch of nonsense-space that had slagged the Tellius in the first place. From there events got blurry. There’d been light, and sound, and the strangest sensation of being plucked from the maelstrom, and then-

Fire. So much fire. Fire and pain and a forest ablaze, unfamiliar organic organisms fleeing for their lives. He hadn’t understood anything then: not where he’d landed, not how far he was from home, nor how impossible it would be to return.

But he’d understood, at a level deeper than base-coding, that something was wrong. The ‘what’ had made itself obvious by the time he regained consciousness. Azi was gone, still aboard the wounded Tellius, and her absence left a gaping hole in the very fabric of his being. They’d never been separated before, not on Cybertron nor aboard the various vessels they’d served on. No one had wanted to risk separating them. There was too much unknown about them, their sparks, the nature of their bond, and so much more.

All of that was background noise to Zee. He had precious little interest in the science behind his misery. The facts were simple: his twin was gone, so far removed he couldn’t feel even the slightest echo of her spark, and that made his own spark want to climb out of its casing. Their bond wasn’t severed- a small miracle, given the circumstances- but it was dampened as it never had been before. His systems couldn’t make heads or tails of the sudden and shocking absence. They interpreted it as pain, a steady dull ache just behind his spark.

That pain had stayed with him for months, a constant reminder of his own failings, and with it came error reports. A flock of the damned things became Zee’s constant companion. They greeted him every morning, dogged his every step through the day, fluttered down to roost when he bedded down at night.

So Zee had done something that would’ve made any medic hit the roof: he’d gone mucking about in his own coding. A few lines deleted here and inserted there did the trick, at least for the moment. All the sudden those nagging warning messages vanished, neatly ‘disappeared’ into a subfolder where he could more easily ignore them. They didn’t stop coming in, of course, and it took more hack-job tinkering to dull the perennial ache in his spark, but it made life immeasurably easier.

All of which explained why Zee did the unforgivable and slept through his sister’s arrival to Planet.

ZENITH. Haven wasn’t generally given to thundering. He preferred murmuring, trilling, singing, or any of a thousand other verbs less likely to scare the plates off someone. Small wonder Zee shot upright on his recharge slab, optics flickering as he came out of deep ‘sleep’.

“Ven? What the Pit-”

You need to get up. Right now. There was steel in the pegasus’ voice, an urgency Zee would’ve associated with Ironhide or Prowl long before his bondmate. What on Planet had Haven so bent out of shape?

“Okay, okay, I’m up! Now what the Pit’s got you all upset?”

If I told you you wouldn’t believe me. Zee felt his optics bug halfway out of his helm. Nope. He didn’t like this one bit- not Ven verbally running circles around him, not the disquiet clawing at his tank, and abso-fragging-lutely not the sudden wall of error reports trying to climb out of their designated folder.

What the actual frag is going on?

“I don’t get it.” That was Zee’s default state of being, of course, but that was immaterial. Haven had to be used to it by now. Indeed the dreamsicle of a pegasus made no comment, instead shouldering hard against his bondmate’s midsection. Was he trying to... herd him?

You know that clearing to the north, the one with the river and the wonderstone cairns? Zee reset his optics, an image of the place in question bubbling up in his mind’s eye. Something happened there that you need to see. It’s important. Really, really important.

A thousand questions clogged Zee’s vocoder. ‘What kind of important’, for a start, and ‘What are you even on about’, with a side of ‘Why are you being so roundabout’ for flavor. He swallowed all of them. If Ven was in this kind of a state, things must be truly dire out there. Perhaps Thread was falling again, or Aleoth’s mother had returned, or-

Those thoughts and more carried him out the door and into the springtime air outside. It was only when he soared past ten thousand feet that he finally took a deep in-vent and forced himself to settle. There were no storm clouds on the horizon, no incoming armies marching in from the unknown. If he didn’t know better- and he didn’t- he would dared have say the day seemed peaceful.

A fresh wave of diverted error reports made him growl. He almost dismissed them- in fact really fragging wanted to- but some prickle at the back of his processor made him open them instead.

What he saw damn near knocked him out of the sky.

Those weren’t error reports coming in. They were proximity alerts. Somehow, in defiance of all logic, Azimuth was on Planet.

Ven? I’m... I’m gonna need a minute. A candidate for understatement of the century, there. Haven didn’t comment on it. He was clearly busy back at home doing Primus only knew what.

I have the cohort. Take whatever time you need. Alexandrae will have your medical equipment ready and waiting when you need it.

Zee didn’t think to ask how Haven knew what awaited him. He was ever so slightly distracted by ripping his own hack-job coding patch apart. It fell away in chunks of binary, and what lay beneath gave him precisely what he needed: coordinates. Haven had been right on the money. His sister’s signal lay north and west, a guttering point of impossible light.

It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing he’d seen since Aleoth’s hatching.

What he found at the coordinates, however, was among the most disturbing.

“Azi!” The name came out jagged, packed full with more glyphs than Zee’s vocoder was meant to handle at any given time. Cohort led the charge, with missed-you/lost/thought-you-were-gone a layer beneath. Then came the fear, and the horror, and desperation the likes of which he hadn’t felt since the Tellius had been going down in flames beneath him. “Azi, it’s me!”

He touched down hard enough to make the ground shudder, bolted to the riverside fast enough to leave a trail of dust in his wake. Azi didn’t react. That more than anything drove the reality of the situation home. Azi had crash-landed every bit as hard as he had all those months ago. Worse yet, she didn’t have the luxury of ridiculous regeneration. She may not have been on death’s doorstep- anymore, at any rate- but there was a frightening amount of damage beneath that lapis lazuli plating.

By rights he shouldn’t have moved her. By rights he should’ve let time and autorepair do its work. Doing anything else was courting disaster. Zee knew all of that, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Instead he fell to his knees next to his twin, hauled her into his lap, and hugged her just as close as Cybertronian anatomy would allow.

“C’mon, Azi, don’t do this to me. You’ve gotta wake up! I’ve- I’ve got so much I wanna tell you, and so many things I gotta ask you, and-”

He trailed off into the binary clicks of sparkling chatter, utterly unaware of the tears trailing down his face.

Primus, if you’re out there and listening, please save my sister.

[Azimuth]

Though he couldn't have known it at the time, Azi had undergone much of a similar procedure to that which he'd done on himself only for her it had been fully-trained medics altering her code in a proper environment. Her alerts and warnings had been effectively made translucent in her fields, still there but easy to overlook and not wrecking havoc on her systems.

But even so since the Tellius Azi's life had been just going from the waking nightmare of life to fictional nightmares of recharge, with little fluctuation in between. So it might be understandable that when for the first time she felt comfort, felt peace, she was a bit reluctant to drag herself out of it even though that notion itself should have sent up huge flags in her mind.

Half-waking, she turned slightly as she was lifted, subconsciously seeking the warmth and comfort of...

Of what?

It wasn't a disembodied voice bellowing that finally brought her thoughts fully online as it had in the forest.

"...do this to me.... got so much....so many things...."

A clicking sound that she hadn't heard – or used! - since she was a little sparkling.

Moisture dripping onto her face.

Then abruptly, something she had been told about but hadn't expected occurred. When her coding had been altered to try and help her keep her sanity Pierce had told her that there was a safeguard, a single situation that would cause all the code alterations to fall away.

If a silent ping sent out from her Spark casing hit just the right resonating system:

Zenith!

The proximity alert was sending a repeated line of text across her systems, functions long out of whack lining up again and balancing back to normalcy.

Azi began fighting to awaken, desperately hopeful and at the same time terrified that it was just some cruel dream tricking her, as had happened so many times before. Optics flickered and lit, faded, then lit again and this time held.

"Zee...?" Azi's voice was shaky and uncertain and overlain with glyphs of Cohort/are you real/am I dreaming/have I lost my mind?, as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Then she moved (with a somewhat ominous creaking of several things that should not creak) to throw her arms around her twin's neck, sobbing into his shoulder.

"Zee! I knew I'd find you! I had to find you!...Wasn't going to leave you...never...kept my promise..."

Never abandon/never forget/never give up/I'm sorry/left you to go alone...

That might have been as far as she got before she started clicking too and unbidden her chest over her Spark chamber lit up from her Bright Spark ability, simply from the overload of emotions.

[Zenith]

There were benefits to growing up under the watchful optic of a medic. Fantastic medical care, for starters, doled out by someone with a vested interest in keeping their sparklings both functional and happy. Basic competency in emergency medicine was part of that baseline too; a thousand years spent watching someone patch their cohort up was bound to teach you a thing or two. Compassion rounded out the package deal, dinned into the bitlets’ heads alongside basic decency and a healthy respect for the sanctity of the med-bay.

But the last and perhaps most vital part of Pierce’s legacy had lain hidden until the twins had received their first posting. There, separated from their cohort and under stress the likes of which they’d never before experienced, they discovered just how well they handled multitasking. Other Lunarians floundered beneath the weight of split attention and the burden it placed on a processor. Zee and Azi? They took to it as naturally as they took to the sky. Their commanders shrugged and chalked it up to aerialist physiology- after all, staying airborne took a lot of simultaneous number-crunching- but the twins knew better. Their papa had taught them young how to tier off processor threads when the going got tough. It was a skill every medic knew. (...and most of them abused.) Compartmentalization of emotion and logic saved just as many lives as prompt medical treatment did.

All of which was a roundabout, and perhaps unnecessarily flattering, way of saying that ten percent of Zenith’s processor stayed stubbornly sane while the rest crashed and burned.

And thank Primus for that, because the other ninety percent of him really wanted to explode on the spot.

“‘Course it’s me,” Zee rasped, bonking his forehelm against Azi’s badly-dented one. Primus on a piston, it looked- and felt- like she’d gone headfirst into the ground. Which... wouldn’t be entirely off-brand for the twins, but usually it was Zee doing dumb slag. Azi was supposed to be smarter than that! “You really think I was gonna let you have all the fun? No way in the Pit, lil’ sis.”

There was so much more he wanted to say, so many more emotions tumbling around in his spark, but his vocoder was having none of it. It fritzed its way into static. Two reboots later it was still stubbornly silent. Perhaps that was for the best; rather than verbalizing it, Zee dumped everything into his electromagnetic field. Love was there, and hope, and joy, and something like a wordless apology, and beneath it all thrummed the two-part harmony that only resonant sparks could make.

It felt, he decided, like sinking into a hot oil bath, and washed just as many aches away.

But laying in a Primus-slotting river wasn’t going to do either of them a lick of good. Zee clicked a warning- sparkling binary for ::move now::- and carefully gathered Azi up. Any number of things creaked ominously, but none of them actually tried to finish what gravity had started. Good enough. Zee clambered to his pedes, ever so careful to not jostle his precious cargo, and staggered his way out of the riverbed.

Mud got everywhere, but that was a small price to pay.

::Stay still.:: Once they were well clear of the muck Zee sunk to a knee, gently depositing Azi on a blessedly flat stretch of sod. Letting go of her took more effort than he’d ever admit. He managed it, though, and promptly set about laying all of her mangled limbs out straight. Then and only then could he really get a proper look at the damage she’d sustained.

The sight about made his spark stop, but he managed to keep that little detail out of his field.

Ven? I don’t think I can move her safely. Can you-

Alexandrae is already on her way. A beat, and Zee got the strangest sense that Ven was taking a deep breath, then- How are you holding up, dear spark?

...I’m not sure yet. A prospect that shook him almost as badly as Azi’s injuries did. Don’t think I’ve got time to figure it out now. I’ve gotta... well. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.

Then do what you need to. I’ll be here when you need me.

Thanks, Ven. I owe you.

No, you don’t. But thank you for thinking of me.

Zee retreated from mental contact, quietly pleased he’d held it all together as well as he had. Then he took a deep in-vent, doused his hands in sanitizer, and set about the harrowing process of patching the worst of Azi's wounds.

And if he clicked ‘sorry, sorry, sorry’ the whole damn time, well, surely she would forgive him.

[Azimuth]

"Hah," was all that Azi could get out as their forehelms touched and Zee quipped at her. As her brother's electromagnetic field washed over her she relaxed utterly (well, as much as she could with her injuries), simply basking in the sensation. The silence didn't matter. Words didn't matter.

She gave a brief click in reply - okay - but for all her wanting to not reveal anything to Zee she couldn't help but cringe her damage body protested. As low on energy as she was her regeneration simply didn't have anything to work with, and so was progressing asst a snail's pace or so it felt. It had kept her alive but could do little more.

It would be up to Zenith to finish what it started.

As he carefully straightened her out she could only imagine how bad she looked. Dents everywhere, scrapes, probably some burns, she knew her left leg wouldn't lay as flat as her right so there was some joint damage there...

And probably the worst for her brother to notice: a length of wood was jammed under her chest place on the left side, just shy of under her arm. Thankfully it had entered in a seam rather than punching through which would've been worse.

As she saw him preparing - thank Primus for all of Pierce's training now! - she clicked a 'bag,' slightly turning her head towards the duffle she'd brought through with her. She knew some medical things had been included though she thought it was mostly basic first aid, which might not be useful here.

That she didn't want it forgotten in case the worst happened she kept as far from her field as she could.

And if Zee clicked apology with every flinch and muffled cry, she just replied with 'I'm okay' and a hand keeping some kind of contact with him as much as she could through the whole process.

[Zenith]

Keep it together, mech.

The words ran through Zenith’s processor on repeat, looping over and over again like some sort of demented mantra. Keep it together, because Azimuth’s life was quite literally in his hands. Keep it together, because breaking down now would spell disaster the likes of which he refused to comprehend. Keep it together, because he was better than this, needed to be better than this-

Keep it together, mech, and fall apart later.

So he did.

The unfortunate truth was he had precious little attention to spare for his own emotions anyway. Only chance and Primus’ own luck had saved Azi from fatal injury. Without prompt medical attention even that might not ensure her survival. This, of course, was Planet. It was decidedly lacking in proper Cybertronian medics. There would be no Pierce or Ratchet or Wheeljack coming to the rescue. Zee, Primus save them both, was her best bet- and wasn’t that the world’s most cheerful thought?

Nothing for it, then. Zee snagged the duffel Azi had indicated, clicked a ::thanks::, and got to work.

Priority number one was getting a hardline connection established. Zee flipped Azi’s arm over, groping blindly for the medical ports tucked away at her inner wrist. Where was it, where was it... there! A quick EMF pulse triggered a transformation sequence, plates shifting aside to give him free access. Zee unspooled a cord from his own wrist and jacked in. Firewalls, handshaking protocols, blah blah blah... all the usual slag meant to keep you safe. Normally it was a welcome part of linking up with another mech. Here and now the delay about had Zee climbing the walls. He growled, a machine sound full of poorly-stifled impatience, and occupied himself with setting out the supplies from Azi’s bag.

Finally!

Data swamped him, a wave of red that threatened to drown him. Zee had to offline his optics and tamp down the urge to purge his tanks. Nope. There would be no throwing up all over his sister. No time for that. The desire faded a sparkpulse later. Steadier now, Zee scrolled through the various readouts and took stock. Then he reset his vocoder- thank the powers that be, this time it behaved itself!- and explained his plan.

“Gonna take your neural net offline first,” He rasped hastily, “And then get a transfusion line going. It’s gonna feel like slag but there’s nothing I can do about it. If you wanna take yourself offline, do it. Or I can put you in stasis-lock until you’ve had some time to heal. Your call.”

He worked as he spoke, sifting through the many tiers of coding until he found precisely what he was looking for. A click sounded, then a hiss of strained systems, then- all at once Azi’s neural net went offline. (Assuming everything went as it was supposed to, at any rate!) Then and only then did he get to work hacking at the plates bent aside by the branch embedded in her chestplates. That... looked like a world of hurt, actually, and looked like a Pit of a bleed-out risk if he just yanked it out. Instead he took the long way around, clamping energon mains above and below the injury before attacking it directly.

It took a bit, and more bleeding than he was strictly comfortable with, but soon enough the offending branch was removed and tossed aside with significant prejudice.

“Still with me, starshine?”

[Azimuth]

Azimuth, by comparison to Zenith, relaxed as the hardline connection began its process. Though she was in pain and knew she was worrying her brother she had for so long believed she'd never witness this particular sequence of protocols again that she quite bluntly basked in it.

Perhaps Pierce had felt some insight concerning the twins, or it was basic common sense, but inside the duffle would be a very large, advanced Cybertronian medical kit with extra supplies for more severe injuries. There would also be a bundle wrapped in a thermal blanket holding snacks and treats that the twins had always favored and a dataslate with a solar-powered charger.

Clearly someone had thought to send a Care Package.

"No offline." Good, her voice was steady now, if laced with a trace of urgency in her tone. No, she most certainly didn't want to go offline, not for a second, even a microsecond, if it could at all be helped. Even if there was pain or she saw and heard things most wouldn't want to when they were in her same condition Azimuth was actually a little afraid of what might happen should she offline. What if something went wrong and she couldn't warn Zenith? Or if while he was working on her he didn't see some kind of outside danger.

What if she brought her optics back online and found she'd merely been dreaming again?

Despite her convictions Azi did offline he optics for a few seconds as her neural net went quiet Ann's for the first time in what felt like an eternity she felt no pain. Not physical, not mental, not emotional. Utter peace. The relief we almost enough to send her offline in totality, but she mentally shook it and opened her eyes again, watching alternately the sky and clouds, passing birds and insects, and Zenith as they caught he attention. So she saw the stick when it was removed and thrown aside.

Ah, well, that explained quite a bit about the pain and inability to bend properly on that side.

"Still here," she confirmed softly. "You're better aft this than I remembered." Had he changed so much? Had her memories? Azimuth badly wanted to know where they were and what had happened to her brother and how he'd survived, but right now didn't seem the time to ask. Better save it for when his Energon-covered hands weren't messing about with her systems.

[Zenith]

Under quite literally any other circumstances the sight of a package from home would’ve taken Zenith out at the knees. Here was physical, incontrovertible proof that the cohort he’d lost hadn’t forgotten about him. They were still out there, still thinking about him, still loving him as fiercely as they always had. Cybertronian high command might’ve written him off, but his loved ones hadn’t. They still believed, in him, in his sister, and in their nigh-mystical ability to spit in the face of probability.

Later, when all this was said and done, Zee would sit down and have a proper cry over all of that. He’d cry all over again the moment he found the rust sticks secreted away in a side pocket, too. For now he tossed the whole emotional mess churning in his spark behind six firewalls and tried to forget about it.

“Okay, okay, no stasis-lock.” He held one hand up, fingers folded in his best Boy Scout salute. “Promise. But let me know if you change your mind, okay? Helping out the engineers doesn’t make me a medic.”

The single biggest advantage of a hardline connection was that it eliminated the need to guess. Zee had Azi’s vitals quite literally at his fingertips. A single glance told him everything he might need to make an informed medical decision. Spark pulse frequency and power, line pressure, even the status of her autorepair systems- it was all right there waiting for the moment he needed it. Not only did it quiet the hysteria still clawing at his spark casing, it gave him something to focus on. With half an optic on that readout- proof positive that his sister was still alive, spark still spinning- he was able to let the rest of the world fall away. Just as when Thread had first fallen, there was simply no time for emotion. Now was a time for action, reaction, and determination the likes of which Planet had rarely seen before.

If it had worked against evil fungus from beyond the stars, it would damn well work here.

Thankfully for all parties involved, emergency surgery was significantly less stressful than Threadfall. (Yes, really.) With that blasted stick removed and all those ruptured lines sealed off, Azi’s systems were able to start purging the organic debris from her lines. That- plus a transfusion of medical-grade energon sourced from Pierce’s care package- had given her autorepair the jump-start it needed to kick into high gear. A few lines of solder, five minutes of welding, and a handful of curses later, Zee sat back on his heel thrusters with a weary sigh.

There’d be more work later- there always was, when medicine was involved- but for now Azi was stable. It was quite honestly more than he’d dared asked for, and he sure as slag wasn’t about to question their luck.

“That’s about all I can do for now,” He told her, toweling gelled energon and other, less identifiable... substances from his faintly-trembling servos. “Your autorepair was about ready to chuck me out on my aft anyway. Think you can sit up? I wanna get some more energon in you and it’s easier for everyone if you just drink it.”

You should have some as well. If Zee had been even one iota less exhausted he probably would’ve jumped halfway out of his plating. As it was he merely blinked at Alexandrae, who chose that moment to prowl in from the gathering dusk. Haven had been as good as his word: the bag slung over the gryphon’s shoulders bulged with all manner of unidentifiable, but undoubtedly useful, stuff. Haven says you are not to return until you have both rested and refueled.

“Thanks, mom.” ...Primus, but he really was tired. Why else would he sound petulant rather than sarcastic? “You gonna spoonfeed us too?”

Lex clicked her beak, a scolding motion that bridged the species gap just fine. If that is required, yes. Now drink.

Zee dug a cube out of Lex’s messenger bag, held it aloft in a brief toast, and drained the whole fragging thing in one long draw. It tasted terrible, of course, turned gritty by the addition of mineral supplements, but his tank didn’t give a single flying frag. He attacked a second cube with similar enthusiasm before turning back to help Azi with her own meal.

Then and only then did reality come home to roost. Azi had never seen a gryphon before. Indeed, to her they were creatures of myth and legend. Now one had strolled right on up and started scolding them like a pair of misbehaving sparklings. It... wasn’t terrible, as far as first meetings on Planet went, but it probably raised more questions than he was prepared to answer.

“...frag. We’re doin’ this now, aren’t we?” Lex laughed, an oddly human affectation for a quadrupedal bird-cat. “Um. Azi, this is Lex. She’s a friend of mine. Or- kind of cohort, I guess? It’s complicated. Everything is around here.”

It’s lovely to meet you, Azimuth. I simply wish it had been under better circumstances. Welcome to Planet.

[Azimuth]

Azimuth softly laughed at her brother's humor; though she knew he was right; with the branch removed and debris being cleared on top of the transfusion her systems were taking over quite well. With help she slowly sat up, taking the cube from Zenith and slowly sipping to get herself started.

She knew from personal experience that gulping Emergon right after trauma like she'd gone through tended to make her sick, no matter how much she wanted to otherwise.

Granted, perhaps it was a good thing she was only sipping as otherwise she might've choked as a brew voice suddenly came seemingly out of nowhere. Primus, was she that out of it that she missed such a creature approaching?

And...did her brother seem to know her?

Azi listened to the exchange and picked up on how tired Zenith really was. She knew that was mostly her fault, not in a sense of guilt but more responsibility. Trauma surgeries were exhausting on several fronts.

She paused to listen to their banter, smiling at her brother when he turned to help her. She could only manage to lift her arms so high with the lingering pain in her torso, so to finish it she had to rely on him to hold it for her. By this point she could drink it easily and polished the cube off quickly while listening to his introduction.

"Um, pleased to meet you too, Lex." It was a little weird talking to a creature that was communicating in her head, but she'd try to roll with it. "So this place is called Planet?" She glanced at Zenith. "Kinda on the nose isn't it?"

[Zenith]

Zenith had never really bothered trying to envision first meetings between his sparking-cohort and his adoptive cohort. Such flights of fancy had always felt like a waste of time. As far as Cybertron was concerned, he and everyone else aboard the Tellius were ‘missing in action’. They’d send out search parties, keep a weather optic out for wreckage or SOS signals, but space was a big fragging place. Chances were slim they’d ever find anything. It was better- or at least less painful- to banish the thought and go on as if he’d never see his sparking-cohort again.

Azimuth’s arrival to Planet had sent that line of thought through a blender, of course. But as far as impossible first meetings went... this one seemed to be going pretty well. Azi wasn’t screaming, or scrabbling for a weapon, or otherwise putting strain on her many fresh welds. In fact, the strongest emotion radiating off of her seemed to be curiosity. There was an excellent chance alarm would come later, especially when she met the rest of his Planet-side cohort, but for now she was holding steady under pressure.

Thank Primus for small mercies.

“If you think that’s weird, just wait.” Zee pinched the bridge of his nasal ridge, a familiar ache settling in just behind his optics. Yep. There was a good long recharge in his near future, whether he liked it or not. He’d pushed just a little too hard a little too long, and soon enough he’d have to pay the piper. “This entire planet is something out of a wondertale. Like- Azi, I’ve got a dragon. I can’t call him a pet, he’s a lot more than that, but I’ve got a fragging dragon hanging around the house. Plus a half-dozen mini-dragons, and some pegasi, and these weird birds made out of metal, and-”

I believe you will find Planet significantly different from Cybertron, Lex chipped in, and there was no disguising the smile in her voice. Less... damaged, for one, and considerably more diverse to boot.

“No one’s hurt here, Azi.” The note of almost childish wonder in his voice caught even Zee himself by surprise. “A few people have seen some slag, and some of them show it, but there’s no... wound here. We don’t have to try and fix anything. We can just... be.”

And what exactly did it say about Cybertron, that even a comically oblivious stripling had noticed the great gaping hole at its heart? The war was over, had been for centuries, but it still found ways to shape the next generation of Cybertronians. Their race would be recovering for millennia yet. Planet had no such baggage, made no such demands upon their time-

Though he’d never admit it, Zee was infinitely glad Azi had managed to escape that crushing weight too. Yes, it meant being separated from their sparking-cohort, but they could survive that. They’d put that particular fear to rest the moment they’d left Cybertron as trainees. They could live, maybe even thrive, without their loved ones.

So long as they had each other, anyway.

[Azimuth]

It was Zenith's presence, so long lost, that was keeping Azimuth from taking things badly.

Well, that and her recent physical trauma, the impromptu surgery, and how even after the Energon she felt like she could recharge on a rock.

"A dragon," she echoed, optics reflecting the effort to process that thought. "You have a...dragon? As in fire-breathing, scaly, winged lizard that knights tend to hate in all those Earth stories? And what do you mean it's not damaged? Is there really no war? No opposite sides hating each other for generations? Is that really...possible?" Is Zenith's tone was wondering, Azimuth's tone was borderline disbelieving. It just didn't process.

Much like how a dream never did.

Later she'd think that if they could know, somehow, their Cohort would probably be very happy for them.

But that was for later. Right now she chose to focus on Zenith and the signs she knew all too well.

"You need to go recharge," she commented. "You're getting pain behind your optics aren't you. I know you, Zee. You're stressed." She smiled. "Not that I'll argue about a good, long recharge. And though I'm sorry I caused your stress I'm glad the first person I saw here was you." She let her optics go offline and leaned her head against her brother's arm. "Now... I'll be okay."

[Zenith]

He’d missed this, Zenith realized with a pang, this easy back-and-forth he’d never quite mastered with anyone but Azimuth. He didn’t have to stop and explain anything to her, didn’t have to fumble through awkward translations of concepts he himself only halfway understood. She just... got it, all of it, without ever having to ask the awkward questions that had plagued him since he’d first learned to speak. She understood him on a level that ran deeper than coding and more integral than spark resonance. She always had. She always would. That was what being half of a paired set of sparks meant.

...okay, so the back-and-forth wasn’t the only thing he’d missed. Was anyone surprised at this point?

“A dragon,” Zenith confirmed, and pinged his twin with an image capture of the not-so-mythical beast in question. He’d taken thousands of stills of Aleoth over the course of their life together, but this one held a special place in his spark. Al had fallen asleep flat on his back in front of the firepit, all four paws straight up in the air, and then half the cohort had snuggled in alongside him. Zee had grinned like a fool then. He did much the same now, warmth and fondness and faintly-stunned love thick in his field. That flush of fondness faded a moment later, replaced by a grim and weary sort of certainty.

“No war. At least no Great War. There are folks who’ve come from other worlds who have seen war, some of which have been great and terrible, but none like ours. We’re the only two Cybertronians on Planet, Azi. Might be the only two who’ve ever come here, it’s almost impossible to say for sure. But as far as I can tell, we’re the only two here now. We get to decide what our lives here look like. And I want ‘em to be happy.”

Azi’s gentle admonition made Zee wrinkle his nasal ridge and stick his glossa out. Of course she’d call him on ignoring his own discomfort. She’d done it as long as either of them had been alive. Why wouldn’t she do it now? He just... wished she’d waited a little longer to do it. Now he’d have Lex and his twin nagging him when he wasn’t taking proper care of himself.

Perhaps that was for the best, he reflected with a snort. Lex nagging him all by her lonesome hadn’t accomplished a Primus-blessed thing.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which one of us is the one who just crash-landed and left a Primus-slotting crater in the ground?” Zee tried for ‘high and mighty’, pulled off a rather tired ‘can u not?’. “I’ll recharge when we get back to the house.”

No you won’t. Alexandrae was having just as much of Zee’s nonsense as Azi was- which is to say, none at all. Check the bag next to you. Haven packed your tent. Use it. Neither of you are in any shape to make the trip home tonight.

Zee reset his optics, a lump rising unbidden in his throat. Of course Haven had packed the hardlight tent he’d cobbled together not long after landing. It was precisely the sort of painfully thoughtful thing the pegasus would do. After all the trials of the day it was nearly enough to reduce Zee to tears. Instead he reset his vocoder, gave Azi an awkward pat on the shoulder, and set about the process of disentangling himself from his twin.

“Gimme a tick,” He muttered, rummaging through the gryphon-scale bags abandoned nearby. “Put this together when I got here, it was home until I found the redwood, let’s see if... C’mon, where’d he put it? Gotta be in here somewh- aha!”

Zee finally produced a flat, whitish metal disc the size of both hands pressed together. A hardlight generator, as it turned out, one that exploded outward to form a rounded dome of... well, it looked like metallomesh, that strange woven metal Cybertronians were so terribly fond of. Either way, it formed a quite serviceable tent, one easily large and sturdy enough to house a jet or two.

“Think you can get yourself in there while I get blankets and such sorted?”

[Azimuth]

The ping with an image sent to her was just about enough to make her optics leak some fluid. She'd missed that so much, sharing images and thoughts so simply! But she was able to compose herself due to the sheer adorable nature of the image itself. So that was a dragon! Not nearly as fearful as the stories she'd heard related by their Cohort. She felt an urge to cuddle it, actually.

Oh, the freedom to decide their fates sounded so sweet to her! Sometimes the history of the War was a heavy weight that Azimuth knew they both felt even though they had never participated in it. To have that burden lifted away was a freeing thought.

As her twin spoke she slowly brought her optics back online just in time to see him stick his glossa out at her and return the gesture. If she's been feeling better she might have swatted him for the tone but settled for just a snort in response and a nod in acceptance of his promise, though it proved to not be needed.

"I should remember to thank this Haven," Azimuth commented as Zee settled her down and searched through the bags. Her own vocoder hitched a bit, just a tiny skip really, as she addressed Alexandrae. "Thank all of you, really - for taking care of Zee when I couldn't." She might have said more except the activation of the generator caught her attention.

"I think I can, since you got that stick out of me." Azimuth pulled herself slowly and carefully upright and limping to the tent, giving it a cursory examination in the process. "This doesn't look like standard-issue metallomesh. Where'd you - ngh - get it?" Her grunt came as she settled back down inside, letting her entire body rest and her optics offline again though her occasional 'are-you-still-there-just-checking' ping would tell her twin she was definitely not recharging yet.

[Zenith]

“You can thank him yourself once we get back home.” Zenith poked his head back out of the tent, brow furrowed in thought. “...frag, I’m gonna need to do some remodeling. Remember how I mentioned a redwood tree? Me and the cohort are set up underneath an old-growth redwood a ways from here. I cleared out some of the old wood from the bole of the tree, dug down some, leveled things out. It’s primitive compared to home but it’s pretty cozy. Problem is it’s, uh. I was the only ‘bot living there. Gonna need to figure out how to fit a second recharge slab in there.”

That was a concern for tomorrow's Zee. For now he rose, stretched, ignored the angry popping of his spinal relays, and ambled over to where Alexandrae had stashed her bags. Sure enough there were plenty of heavy blankets tucked away in there, more than enough to make for a comfy nest for recovering flight frames. He gathered a few, dug deeper, frowned at the way his servos kept trembling-

Then shot his articulation locks when Lex turned a most disapproving stare on him. Right. Gryphon. Predator. Of course she was the master of the Disapproving Stare TM.

I can hear you worrying, Zenith. There was a kernel of annoyance in the gryphon’s voice, stern and motherly and worried all at once. What has your plates all tied in knots?

Azi nearly died, Lex. The realization hit Zee like a punch from a cityformer, dropping him to his knees in a movement just slightly too sudden to be intentional. We’re spark twins, right? That... that means a lot more for Cybertronians than it does for organics. Our sparks are linked on a quantum level. If she died, there’s a good chance I would too. Even if I’d survived, I wouldn’t have really been me anymore. I would've been someone, something else. Something a lot worse, probably. If I hadn’t gotten here when I did, or if our cohort hadn’t sent those medical supplies...

He trailed off, gritting his dentae against the spike of anxiety and raw anguish that tried to lance through his spark. Nope. None of that. The last thing Azi needed was to know just how badly her near-miss had affected her twin. She had some sort of inkling, of course- there was only so much you could keep away from your twinned spark- but that didn't mean she needed all the gory details.

But you did. Lex angled her head first to one side, then to the other, vernal-bright eyes pinning Zee where he knelt. And they did. And you were more than up to the task, even if you did not believe you would be. Fretting about near misses will get you nowhere, my dear, except stressed and unhappy.

That isn’t- There was that ache behind his optics again again, sharper and more insistent this time. Zee shuffled the blankets to one hand and pressed the other to his optics. Cognitively I know she’ll be okay. And I know we got really fragging lucky. But it's gonna take a bit for my spark to believe what my processor's telling it, y'know?

You should speak with Haven when we return. Lex clicked her beak again, then gestured towards the tent and Azi. You both should. He worries for you both.

Why does that not surprise me? Zee shook his head, amused in spite of himself. I’ll talk to him. I’ll get Azi to talk to him too, once she’s gotten a chance to rest up some. Not now, though. We’re both running on fumes.

Go rest. I will stand watch.

Grumbling, Zee swiped a servo over his inexplicably teary optics and rose. Right. Rest. They should both be doing that. He could worry, have existential crises, and sob on poor Haven’s shoulder later. Right now he needed to get set up, make sure Azi was comfortable, and saw a whole bunch of logs.

Primus, but he really was tired.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” He muttered, returning to the tent with arms full of bedding. “Got distracted for a sec. Lex felt the need to lecture me.”

I heard that!

“It’s true!” Grumbling yet again, Zee set about turning the tent floor into a comfortable nest, arranging pillows as wing-supports with the ease of long practice. Azi's question made him blink and frown all over again. “Oh, the tent? Cobbled it together after I crash-landed. I was able to barter for a couple of bits and pieces in the market in town, used them to tweak the programming for one of those porta-shelters Brightvigil always made us carry. I wanted something that was a little more comfortable and less... hm. Austere? It works well enough, but the redwood’s better by far.”

Nest assembled, Zee made a great show of flopping into it, groaning as the exertion of the day made its effects known.

“Oooh tomorrow’s gonna suck supermagnets. We’re gonna have to hit up the hot springs or sommat or we’re gonna be too sore to move. C’mon, get comfy, I’m gonna be torqued if I have to haul your aft to bed.”

((Somewhere That's Green, 'vernal', and How To Start A Word Game, 'teary'.))

[Azimuth]

"You've been living under a redwood tree?" Granted, she'd seen holos of the redwoods on Earth and heard stories of their size, so that wasn't entirely absurd but still it put images into her thoughts of Zee covered in dirt during the digging out process. Perhaps it was the Energon loss that caused her to have to push down a giggle.

Azimuth heard the sounds from outside, which included the moment that she heard the unmistakable sounds of metal hitting the ground. Pushing herself up to her elbows in alarm she almost called out for her twin but in the same instant she felt his anxiety and pain. It was very faint, like a back-of-the-mind thought, but she had a feeling that it was only a fraction of the truth. Just a hunch.

She knew her pain from when she thought him lost forever after all.

As the other Lunarian came back into the tent Azimuth looked his way and gave a smile, giggling at the back and forth between her brother and Lex.

"You made this from a porta-shelter? Wow!" Looking around again as he setup the blankets she just shook her head in amazement, then grinned. "You've gotten innovative since we were s-separated." Hey, only a tiny little hitch in the vocorder there!

Azimuth didn't need any further invitation to join her twin in the nest, cuddling right up against him without hesitation and taking comfort from feeling him next to her again just like when they were sparklings.

"Can't have you torqued, can we?" she teased. "Hot springs sound amazing, Zee. Are they far away from here?"

[Zenith]

“Remind me to tell you about Threadfall sometime.”

It was a mark of just how far Zenith had come- and how hilariously tired he really was- that he could speak of one of Planet’s most harrowing near-misses as casually as he might discuss the weather. While the weyrd and its occupants had escaped the Fall more or less in one piece, it had categorically not been a fun experience for anyone involved. Far too many dragons, firelizards, and watch-whers had come out the other side with quite literal battle scars. More than a few riders had Threadscore injuries to match. The weyrd as a whole was still on edge and likely would be for months yet. With all that in mind...

“...uh. Later. A lot later. Aleoth gets his tail in a twist any time I mention it. But yeah, I’ve had to get pretty creative. The engineers around here are good, but they aren’t Cybertronian, y’know? There’s no one around to just hand me stuff pre-made and ready to go. I’ve had to make most of what I’ve got and what I can beg, borrow, or steal.”

He onlined his optics just long enough to wink, field rippling with tired amusement. Yep. He’d missed that too. Same as he’d missed the comforting echo of Azi’s spark just across the room- okay, tent- from his own. It loosened the knot of tension he’d long ago grown accustomed to carrying tied tight around his spark. Now, at last, all of that old pain and fear and anxiety could be left by the wayside.

Small wonder Zee looked and sounded like he was struggling to stay conscious a single sparkpulse longer.

“Not too far,” He added, voice gone muzzy with the first stages of recharge. “‘Couple dozen kliks, maybe? Just a hop, skip, and a jump by air. And if you can’t fly yet, well, it’s a pretty nice walk too. You’ll love it, Azi, it’s all leafy and green and growing all year ‘round... just beautiful.”

There was more he wanted to say- so much more, about everything from his redwood home to Aleoth to what Azi could expect now that she’d landed on Planet- but Zee’s frame had other ideas. He reset his optics once, then twice, teal darkening with every second, before dropping his forehelm to his twin’s shoulder with an audible thunk. He fumbled for the last blanket, yanked it over the pair of them, and was out cold before it had settled.

((Somewhere That's Green, 'leafy'.))