#transformers ricochet

Being organic, Jazz's hacking skills were wasted on his restraints. But this was far from the first time Jazz had been tied up. Instead he tried to release the knives stored in the under armour of his knuckles. When they didn't pop out. He tried the ones in his wrist. But they were empty too.

"Naughty as always." Blackout's voice scolded from behind him. "You'd have thought you'd have learnt your lesson by now."

"Cut the shit." Jazz spat. "I know who you are."

A figure stepped into the corner of his vision. The shadows on Blackout's dark figure shivered and shifted until Jazz was staring at what could've been a mirror, if it wasn't for that golden visor.

Despite already having priced together who the shapeshifter was, Jazz's spark stills topped at the sight of his brother.

"Ta-dah!" Ricochet spun around, posturing as though he was showing off a new look. "You like it? Stole it from a mech name's Makeshift. After I killed them of obviously. Did you steal your mod from a dead mech too?"

For once Jazz kept his mouth shut. As always, Ricochet couldn't, still skipping around, unable to stay still.

"You know, I had wondered if you'd told Blackout that little detail of our sparkling hood. Shockwave let me ask her himself during my internship with the Decepticons." Rico perched on a counter protruding from the wall, sharpening the worn down array of saws like he used to do with knives at their kitchen table. "I could tell you that she refused to spill. Buuut..." Rico took a long screaming scrape from one of the saws. "I think I'll just leave you wondering if your mentor once again betrayed you." He kicked his legs back and forth. "I know how much you respected the method acting of those movie stars you looked up to as replacement mentors. So I made sure to play close attention to her little mannerisms during Shockwave's experiments. Well up until they killed her anyway."

It hurt to hear that Blackout really had been on the Nemesis. That Jazz really could have saved her. Jazz's thoughts on his old mentor figure had been so shredded over the past week that he couldn't even begin right then to piece together how he felt on the fact she may or may not have betrayed them. At this point, all Jazz felt was a relief that after whatever horrors Shockwave had subjected her too, she was at least at peace.

Having finally put down the saws, Ricochet clapping his servos snapped Jazz out of his spiral.

"All that's to say that I'm an actor now!" Rico shook his servos in a jazz hand. "Aren't you proud?"

"You know why I'm not." Jazz spat.

"Urgghhh!" Ricochet slid of the counter, groaning like he used to when Jazz told him to help clean their cubes. "You can't seriously still be mad about that."

"You killed them."

"They would have sold us out."

"You killed them."

"You stabbed me in the back!"

"THEY WERE SPARKLINGS AND YOU KILLED THEM!"

Jazz would never forget that day. The two of them, ducking off the main road, packing a tonne of syk between them. It should've been a routine drop off. They'd done the same since they were sparklings. That was until they'd been ambushed by a pair of sparklings themselves. They were younger even than the twins been when they'd first spent the nights on the streets. Siblings too if the identical crests on the bits helms were any indication.

They were as stupid as he and his brother had been back then too.

But Rico hadn't hesitated, with one slash he had severed both their central arteries. The bits had been grey before they'd even had time to cry.

Jazz hadn't hesitated either, snatching the knife from his brother's servos to stab him in the back.

It was only then, that his spark processed what he'd done.

He dropped the syk, ripped the knife from his brother's back, glad Rico was sprawled on his front so he wouldn't have to see the betrayal on his face, running so that wouldn't have to see him turn grey.

He hadn't stopped running since. He ran all the way to Iacon, crashed into Orion, gate-crashed the Autobots, somehow stumbled his way into Spec Ops where he hide himself as a spy till he didn't know who he was anymore.

As though that could somehow hide the fact that he'd killed his brother.

At least that was what he had believed he'd done. He'd never gone back to Praxus. Not until it had been destroyed. At which point, any record on whether or not Ricochet had survived had been destroyed with it.

He'd only told three people about his past; Orion, Mirage and Blackout.

But he'd never told any of them about the playground.

Mirage had only found out by accident.

It was how Jazz knew that the trap could only have been set by the only other person who had been abandoned there with him.

Even if, despite his brother standing in front of him, he could barely believe it, seeing him with his own optics

"Urgghhh!" Rico threw his hands up in the air. "There you go again! Judging me for what you've done yourself!"

"I've never killed a sparking!" Jazz wouldn't have let himself still be here if he had.

"I was there!" Ricochet screamed, I watched as that sparkling you claim to care for was taken by Megatron. Later I learned how it was your decision to send him there. If he had died, that sparklings death would've been on your hands. You can't hate ne when you too send a sparkling to their death!"

"He didn't die!"

"Not yet, but one day that bug or those twins or the creation of that cop you care so much about, will. And when they do, their spilled energon will stain your servos red."

In his spark, Jazz knew his brother was right. His servos were already swimming in the energon of Autobots he had sent to their deaths. And their army was only getting more desperate. He knew that eventually, he would be responsive for the bits deaths too. It was one of Jazz's main drives for winning this war, so that it would end before he'd have to.

"And when you do then you won't be able to hate me for it anymore. And if you don't hate me, maybe you will love me again?"

"I do love you." Even though Jazz wished he didn't. Primus it would be easier if he didn't.

"Then why can't you forgive me?" Ricochet screamed, swiping the saws from the counter to clatter the floor. "I wanted to kill you! If you think Shockwave's lab is a shithole, then you should try being an outsider in a Praxus prison! I spent all that time dreaming of stabbing you in the back just like you had to me!" Suddenly Rico fell to his knees, reaching up to the slab to clutch at Jazz's restrained servo. "But then the bombs fell. The whole prison was destroyed except my cell. And I realised that all I wanted was to be with my brother again."

Rico's hand was heavy in Jazz's own. Held so tight, it was hard to tell where the black of Jazz's hand ended and Rico's identical one begun.

Jazz wanted to hold him back, like he had on their first few vorns on the street, where their only shelter was to hug the warmth of the other's spark. He could still feel that shiver from the cold of that winter night that had sunk into his spark. He didn't think he would ever feel truly warm ever again.

But as much as Jazz wanted to take his brother's hand, to absorb some of the warm from the other half of his split spark, he knew he couldn't.

He had to let go.

When he did, Ricochet snatched his own hand back, folding it over his chest.

"Why do you still pretend that your a good person?"

"I'm not." Jazz snorted. He knew that when this war ended and it was all over that he would end up in the pits. Then he sighed. "But I am an Autobot so I have to keep trying to be."

Rico rolled his eyes.

"Why do you even care about the Autobots? They don't care about you. Certainly not enough to rescue you. Sure they might care about their spy not spilling all their precious Autobot secrets. But do you seriously think any of them care about you? Our own Creators couldn't. What makes you think a Prime will? Especially if he knew where his little pet was letting the Deceptions stick their filthy big-"

"SHUT UP!" Jazz shouted like they were still sat at their kitchen table. But as always, Rico ignored him.

"Are you that desperate for love you'll seek it from the ones you think of as beneath you? If you let the ones you see as dirt under pedes inside you, how bad do you think the build up of rot inside you really is?

He'd always hated it when Rico was right. He was rotten. His Creators had seen that since they'd been sparked. So he couldn't blame them for throwing him away like the forgotten filth that he was.

In fact he was even worse than dirt because he was nothing. His body was just an empty tool to be used to keep up moral or steal secrets or to make other people happy. He could never be loved because he was just a thing. A thing that was designed to be thrown away.

Why did he even bother trying to hide it? Not when Optimus, Bumblebee, Prowl and everyone else he cared about would abandon him the second they saw the waste of space that he was.

Jazz hadn't realised he'd been crying till Rico cradled his cheek.

"I am the only one who loves you. The only one who ever has, who never stopped and never will. Let's leave this planet that abandoned us. Steal Lockdown's ship to see the stars, like we always dreamed that never stopped shining down."

His brother brushed away those tears with those same claws that killed those sparklings.

For a second, Jazz confused his coolant with the weight of their energon

He jerked his head away.

Because even if he would never pass Primus' test for being a good being, or even a living one, he still had a line. One that his brother crossed and one that Jazz could never forgive because he couldn't cross that line himself.

Rico must've finally realised that too, as the shapeshifter huffed with that same unimpressed pout his Creator wore when she thought he was being a petulant child.

"Fine, guess I'll just have to do the job I was paid for."

Rico pulled out the knife that, for a lifetime, Jazz had carried the weight of.

"Now are you going to give me your mod or do I have to take it from you."

"If you really loved me, you'd let me go too." It was his last plea to the mech that he called brother.

As always Rico ignored him.

"You'd think after all those times our Creators made us drink one cube between two, that you would've finally learnt to share."

Ricochet sliced open the seams to Jazz's spark.

"So go on then Jazz, share those screams with me."

There was a dull abstract sensation like a critter in his circuits as Ricochet scraped his insides apart for the mod. Jazz tried to force himself free, yanking and thrashing as he tried to contort himself so that his own claws could slit his restraints free. That was until Ricochet's claws closed around a small sphere, stuck to his spark.

Rico grinned, giving it a tug.

It came free.