He has a really interesting scream. I don't think of it very often, but I'm thinking of it lately, and it makes me shiver with an odd kind of pleasure, just at the small of my back. I feel the corners of my mouth twitching with a bare smile that will never reach my optics as I think, and think, and allow myself to shiver again, this time all the way to my shoulders as I feel a creeping sort of delight begin to slither through my circuits.

I have seen him hit by plasma fire. It is the best kind, for drawing out that scream. Other types of pain only cause him to jerk and grunt in a very disappointing show of self-control, but plasma fire . . . oh, plasma fire makes his entire body buck and twist, limbs wrenching spasmodically as he collapses, writhing, and begins his panicked shriek, shrilling to crescendo and making me shudder in appreciative glee. I love the sound of a good scream. But the sheer fact that it's him screaming simply gratifies me in ways I cannot begin to comprehend, much less explain.

I wonder if I should tell the Lord Prime. I wonder if I should tell him about the plasma, and how my brother hates it, and how it makes him scream. . . .

I followed him that day. No one else knows, not the Lord Prime, not even Prowl, and I shiver, thinking and thinking. And I catch myself smiling at the oddest times, as though I were at last coming awake from a vast, desolate land of the dead. They say that hell is populated, and I laugh and laugh, because I know from the long years that it is nothing but a bleak, lightless desert, where only the darkangels tread. They stalk you, in that land. They skim like fantastic ships over the scape of the deadworld, their black cloaks billowing in a windless night, while their pale blue optics rove and wander in search of you, so that they might eat away your soul, morsel by tiny morsel.

So I followed him. I followed because I could not go back to my quarters, could not look at the faces that awaited me there. Ever since those wretched things . . . those . . . Decepticons . . . tore my cloak away. . . .

I shake my head, shake it and back up until my back touches uneven rock and I blink and come to, realizing I'm on duty. I'm on sentry duty. I blink, and stare out from beneath the hood of my cloak, sucking air through my vents as though my systems were on the verge of thermal meltdown. Several times I blink and shake my head, rapidly, like some kind of Earthen creature, and I loose a fine mist of spray around me as I shake the droplets of rain from my cowl.

"S-Sunstreaker?" comes the timid voice of my watch partner, who backs swiftly away when I turn my optics toward him. I hate that name. I hate it almost as much as I hate being called the Black Sun, though no one calls me that to my face. I once loved my name. Thousands loved my name once, but no more. Staring, I advance, and watch with satisfaction as Trailbreaker inches away from me, frightened and probably regretting his choice to call himself to my attention.

I like it that they fear me.

But I let him go. I watch with mild interest as he hurries to post himself as far from me as he can possibly get, without leaving the parameters of our watch station. The rocky ledge does not permit him to go far, and several times he darts a glance my way, as though he itched between his shoulders. I stare, and let him know that I am aware of him.

He is horrifyingly repulsed. I can feel it coming off of him in waves, engulfing my olfactory sensors in a wash of fear. I can smell it. I don't know how, but I have come to learn that the chemistry of a transformer's body changes with certain moods, and I have learned in my exile how to sense things like euphoria and terror and loathing. I am nothing like Hound, but as I have starved over the years from never being touched or seen, I have found that the senses remaining to me have grown just that much stronger.

Not that I blame Trailbreaker's revulsion at my gaze. I myself cannot help but feel the same. It is why I cannot go to my quarters, and why I cannot look at the faces. I cannot bear to see the hundreds of images of me. I have looked at them for so long, and even pined after the visage of my younger self for so many years that I am shocked I did not see this until now. I did not see. Perhaps if I had seen, I would have been spared quite a lot of pain, as I never would have thrust myself into the social limelight, where the Audience could judge and execute me with their indifference. If I had not let them adore me, I would never have felt the keen slice of their rejection.

But let them I did, and now I have all these images, all these faces, that look at me when I try to sleep. They comforted me, once. But after what those Decepticons did to me, I can no longer look at those faces and feel anything but a growing kind of horror.

Because you see, those Decepticons - they did not seem surprised by what they saw. They tore my cloak away, and they did not scream, or even look marginally unsettled. They seemed to see what they had expected. Which means. . . .

I looked at the faces on my walls. I stared at them for days, coming out only when threatened by Prowl or the Lord Prime himself, and I considered what it meant. I looked at the posters of me, of the holographic displays of me, of the advertisements with my face plastered like some kind of obscene graffiti all over their glossy, brightly-colored formats, and I slowly began to cringe as I understood at last what it meant. I looked in the mirror, and looked at the faces, the dawn of recognition lighting my garish faceplate as at last I understood that it was possible that I was never admired for my beauty at all; in fact, it was possible that I had never even been admired. Because what I at last understood was that all along I had been a laughingstock. I had been a freak. I had been a gimmic. I had been hideous from the day of my creation, and the face that I had been trying for so many years to hide from view was the same face I had willingly and foolishly shouted from the tallest billboards and vidscreens of Iacon.

I . . . was . . . the same.

I sat. A long time, I sat, staring. I . . . I was the same. I leaned forward, peering from mirror to poster, from poster to mirror, watching as the image in the poster slowly shifted, twisting away from what my delusion had allowed me to see for so many years, and into what reality had always known. I had always been irreparably deformed. I watched my mouth open in the mirror, watched a silent scream form itself there, watched as my vocalizer shut itself down, and the optics fluids coursed down the contours of my monstrous face. I had been unclothed, and because of those Decepticons I had been forced to see what I wish I had never chanced to see. I wished to kill them. I wished to burn them slowly and watch as their faces melted and ran into monstrous shapes, as frighteningly repugnant as mine.

But I have not seen them since. I wanted to find them, but the Lord Prime wouldn't allow for such frivolous activities as personal vengeance, and since there were no convenient battles in which to engage them, I was left simply to stew in the juices of my own pain. To be laughed at - worse, to be laughed at when you think you're being adored - is too horrible, too unthinkably cruel to endure. Could I truly have been so witless as to think all those years that the Audience, my friends, even my brother had loved me? Could I truly have been so naïve?

Ah, naivete, the armor of youth. But no more.

So I followed him. I could not enter my own quarters and see those images of my own face, and neither could I bring myself to tear them down from where they had enthroned themselves on the walls. I followed him. I had nothing else with which to distract myself.

I do not know why I even picked him, other than for the sake of convenience. My duty shift had ended, I was suddenly faced with the frightening prospect of free time, and since my head was spinning at the thought of being stared at by all those images, I chose to follow as he made his way down the valley floor and away from the Ark.

He was not aware of me. He had no idea, as he pushed his way through the wet, clingy arms of the forest that I treaded silently in his wake, unobtrusive in my black cloak, all but shielded from view by the ghost-colored rain. My brother, as good as his instincts may be, is not that good. I am better. I always will be. At least until there is just one of us left, and then I will be the one and only.

Only. Sometimes I think about 'only', and I can never decide if it would kill me or set me free. It both frightens and lures me, and I know in my core that it's just a matter of who will outlive whom, and then the survivor will find out whether there is life or death in 'only'. Unless I move things along, and ensure that I will be the one who finds out. There is that. Though I would have to think long and hard about it, and when I finally decide to go through with my brother's death, I certainly couldn't be quick about it. So it will be a long time yet before I meet up with 'only'. But I can wait.

I have waited a long time already, and am not opposed to waiting longer, so long as I do not wait too long. I deserve to see him suffer; I've earned as much.

We walked a long time that day, my brother, the image of confidence walking, and me a cringing shadow, prowling silently along in his wake. It should have been the other way around, and once was. I remember a time when I had been the one with my head held high, a swagger in my step, a gleam in my optics as I strutted about the parties and premiers of upper society, making my appearance at each event as though I were gracing the very planet of Cybertron with my presence. And always just behind me was my brother, my best friend, my confidant. Oh, yes, that's what I thought of him, then. I thought he was the one I could trust, the one who, out of all the people around me, didn't have an ulterior motive. Of course they adored me, and there were even times when femmes would touch my arm and fall offline, faint with giddiness. But even those who loved me wanted some piece of me, be it my wealth, or to share in my status, or to snag a bit of the limelight, or even simply to earn the pleasure of my company. But not Sideswipe No, he was my stalwart companion, even my protector at times when the crush of the crowds got to be too much, and we would both push our way through, grinning and laughing once we got to the other side, his optics glittering with mirth as my manager frantically inspected me for scratches or blemishes.

I shared everything with him. I shared my wealth, a piece of my limelight, and even the constant flow of female company which I honestly couldn't have handled alone, and which he appreciated immeasurably. It never occurred to me not to share with him, since we had shared everything we'd ever had since before I can remember. It never occurred to me, either, that once the well dried up, and I had nothing more to share, he would stop sharing, too.

It was gradual, just as my rejection by the industry was gradual. As I lost more and more work, and as I became less popular, Sideswipe became more scarce. I admit that I was shocked and that, though I don't permit myself to feel such things any more, my own brother's dismissal of me hurt worse than the sum of every other sort of rejection I endured.

But hurt can be fatal if you let it, and I was not about to succumb so easily. He would have liked that, I assume. It probably would have been a relief to him to see my crumpled body, and headlines shouting to the world, "Washed-Up Film Star Jumps To His Death." How interesting it would have been for everybody to see such a spectacular end to a worn and fading star, and how my brother would have laughed as he raised his drink to me and used my publicized death to heighten his own notoriety. In his heart, my brother is as cruel as the public, as fickle as the masses, and I know now that he never loved me.

Love's opposite is not hate, but indifference. I wish I were indifferent. I wish I did not so deeply crave to be loved.

So, as I love my brother, I will make sure that he feels all the pain that I have felt, just before he dies. I will look into his optics, even as he screams for mercy, and I will feel a great release as he looks back and knows that it was me who tore his ghost from his body and sent it straight to the Pit. I will smile, and feel whole again, because for his one, final moment, my brother will belong to me again, and he will feel as I have felt, and he will understand through his own pain how much he has hurt me. He will be purged, and I will be set free from his indifference, and I will be the Only. I have never been Only. I do not know what it is to truly be alone, and it may kill me. But if it does, so be it; we were sparked together, and it would only be fitting if we were extinguished together, and sent back to the Matrix as one.

It's funny - I hadn't really thought of my brother in a long, long time, at least not consciously. So he might have escaped my notice for years to come if I had not followed him that day, and seen his treachery. Oh, the Lord Prime would be interested to know that his most prized and loyal bodyguard was fraternizing with the deserter. I tipped my head that day, rain sliding in rivulets into my cowl and across my face as I watched my brother offer the energy packs to the deserter.

"You would burn for this," I said to the rain, to no one, my voice too soft to be heard above the patter. "You would risk being burned for him." Like a hard knot of ice, my internals clenched inward upon themselves as the ages-old, bitter grip of pain awakened in my depths. I could hear the wet air grating in and out of my intakes as I watched, still as death, while my brother risked everything he had for his friend.

Shaking, a silent snarl pulling at my hidden face, I sank down on my heels as I tried to shake off my growing horror. All those years of sharing with him everything I had, and he deserts me when I fall from grace, and can no longer give him my riches. Yet here is this deserter, this small, weak coward, who has nothing to give, and my brother offers him such impossible loyalty as I have never seen before, and which should have been mine, and which I would have given in return.

Oh, the gods have despised me and left me for dead. 'Jacob have I loved . . .' the humans' Book says, '. . . Esau have I hated.'

Hated. Despised. Left to die alone in the mud far away from all that I knew. Yet what have I ever known but my twin, who has been within arm's reach from the moment of my creation? What did I do to deserve the fate of Esau?

I watched him that day and shook as I have not shaken in years and years. Something awful awakened in me, and has been stalking me ever since, threatening to ambush me with the violent memory of my own pain, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that in time, pain will catch up with me, and it will torment me until I offer up my agonized surrender, and fling myself at last from the heights of a mountain.

Unless I find release. Unless I kill before I am killed, and gaze into my brother's optics as his mouth wrenches open in a rictus of screams, and I say to him at last, "Jacob have I loved." And he will understand; he is my twin.

But first, first I have to hurt him. I cannot release and forgive him until I hurt him, and I know just how to do it. I lingered that day just long enough to see which way Bluestreak went, and I think I can track him from there. I only wonder if I should present my brother with the deserter's head, or if I should allow Sideswipe to watch while I press the blade of my knife to the deserter's throat, and spill his fuel across the ground.

Rain spatters up beneath my cloak, sending a repulsive spray of mud up my shinguards and even across the backs of my knees. I wonder if I will ever feel clean again, clean enough to take off this cloak and feel the sun on my face before I die. I wonder if I will die like this, already buried, unseen and untouched for years upon years. What does a touch even feel like? How does tenderness smell? I don't remember such things; perhaps I have never known them.

And Primus knows I never will.