Chapter Text
Waking up after a night of drinking without much recollection of the previous night's activities was a pretty common thing for Whirl, especially when he was at the bottom of one of his spirals. This one had been particularly deep, particularly sharp, the curve more wicked than he was used to, but he hadn't given it a lot of thought.
That's what the drinks had been for.
Sure, his head was pounding a lot more than normal, but the quality of the engex had been spectacularly shitty at the hole in the wall he'd dragged himself (and a handful of others who had deigned to grace him with their presence last night) to, so that, too, wasn't a surprise.
He wasn't even shocked to be laying on the floor of what appeared to be a jail cell when he finally booted fully, since that had happened to him so many times in his long lifespan he had stopped trying to keep count. Just another day in the storied life of Whirl.
The first surprise was the fact he wasn't alone in the cell, and it wasn't aboard the Lost Light. He didn't recognize it at all, in fact. The floor was made of dirt, his olfactory sensors were being assaulted with smells he didn't have names for, and there were at least two other bodies in the room with him, one whose vents were labored in a way that would have made a bot who gave a shit nervous.
The second surprise was the clamp fit around the base of his rotors, keeping him from accessing his weapons and his t-cog.
"Fantastic start to the day," Whirl muttered to himself, flailing his way upright and regretting it instantly when his head throbbed that much harder.
So. He'd maybe been drugged. Very likely been kidnapped. Him and a few others. If they survived this, no doubt he was going to be blamed for the inconvenience since it had been his idea to stop here in the first place.
"Anyone else alive?" Whirl asked the other figures in the darkness.
"For now," a sour voice replied. That voice was accompanied by a familiar and very prickly EMF, helping Whirl realize the voice belonged to Sunstreaker.
"Who else did they grab? Whoever they are," Whirl asked, clutching both claws around his helm.
"Fizzle. He must have resisted, cause they tossed him in here in rough shape," Sunstreaker said. He shifted somewhere to Whirl's right, his optics illuminating his faceplates in the dark.
"Were you out when they grabbed you?"
"Yeah. Didn't even make it back to the hotel," Sunstreaker said in a low voice.
Which meant that he probably didn't have too many answers about where they were or who had them. Whirl looked around, but there wasn't much he could see outside his immediate surroundings. He got to his feet (definitely a bit of a mistake, but he was used to making those,) moved as far to his left as he could and began exploring the wall when he reached it.
Metal, well worn and dented by previous tenants. There were panels but they were securely bolted into place, and even with enough time, he wasn't sure his claws would be up to the task of prying them loose.
"Hey. Pretty bot," Whirl said, snapping his claw to get Sunstreaker's attention, "I could use your headlights over here."
"Wouldn't that just attract attention?" Sunstreaker asked in irritation.
"Maybe. Don't come over, then. Just sit there and shine 'em my way," Whirl said.
Sunstreaker was silent, but after a moment of shuffling across the dirt, his headlights came on and filled the cell with brilliance that lanced through Whirl's head.
"Great. Thanks," Whirl said as he turned his head sharply away, powering off his optic. He gave himself a second to recover before he brought it back online and took a quick look around.
No windows. The walls looked thick. His comms didn't seem to be working, no doubt a byproduct of the clamp, so even if he could get a message out, there might not be a lot of hope of it reaching anyone. The odds of rescue were diminishing quickly.
"Okay, off," Whirl said, Sunstreaker shutting his lights off and darkness descending again. He sat down heavily against the wall, letting out a slow ex-vent. "Doesn't look good."
"You've been in plenty of cages before," Sunstreaker pointed out, "so I guess you'd be the expert here."
Once their captors showed their faces, Whirl might have a better idea. If they were Decepticons, that wouldn't be so bad. At least 'Cons could be bargained with, if Captain Rodimus Prime would be even remotely interested in bargaining for the lives sitting in this dingy little cell.
If they were some outlying faction, or pirates, or organics (ugh, gods forbid) then things would be a lot more difficult to determine the outcome of. And if their captors weren't familiar with Cybertronians, and no one bothered coming for them, or didn't reach them in time…
Whirl didn't like the idea of starving to death slowly in this hole.
As they sat in silence, Fizzle drew in a rattling breath and coughed out a bunch of congealed energon, Sunstreaker freezing in place at the sound. Whirl waited a few seconds, then got up to kick the other mech onto his side so he didn't breathe it back down his intake.
If they were going to be stuck in here together, might as well play nice. Besides, if they could arrange for a medic to come in here and take a look at the poor sod, maybe he and Sunny could overpower them.
They were waiting a lot longer than Whirl expected before a light turned on in what might have been a stairwell down the far end of the room, heavy footsteps preceding one of their captors down. He had been right on multiple fronts, it turned out. Pirates, but organic ones.
Big, heavily muscled, the organic stopped in front of the bars, one of their four hands clutching what looked like a shock prod. It tilted its head to the side and reached between them to poke Fizzle with the butt end of the prod, then looked at the other two Cybertronians with multiple pairs of eyes.
"Poor sport," it said in a guttural voice, grinning with multiple rows of teeth.
"Sorry to disappoint. You wanna come in here and try again? I promise it's way more fun when we're not fendered," Whirl said as he drew himself up to his full height.
"Be patient," it replied, then produced a strange jug from under the torn garment it wore and held it through the bars.
Sunstreaker looked from the jug to Whirl, who shook his helm.
"You don't seriously think we're stupid enough to fall for that, do you?" Sunstreaker asked, the organic letting out a snuffling laugh before it dropped the jug to the floor.
As the jug fell to its side and rolled, a sickly green liquid escaped from the top and spilled into the dirt. The organic stepped back, watching them for a long moment before it turned and headed back up the stairs, leaving them in darkness once more.
Whirl waited for its footsteps to vanish completely before he approached the jug and picked it up, squinting at the liquid inside. He dipped the tip of his claw into it and stuck it into his intake, which he immediately regretted, because it tasted like licking the bottom of a bottle of Nightmare Fuel.
"What the frag is it? Poison?" Sunstreaker asked in disgust.
"It's not poison. But it's certainly not high grade. I'm pretty sure it's some kinda energon," Whirl said, setting the jug back down in the dirt and returning to his spot against the wall.
"But not very good energon." Sunstreaker shuffled in the dirt, the light from his optics dipping lower as he, too, made himself comfortable on the floor.
"Guess we'll find out how edible it is when we get hungry enough," Whirl said.
The next day, they were left mostly to their own devices. Sunstreaker wasn't much for conversation, so Whirl took it upon himself to fill the silence.
"Hey, you been in prison before?"
The baleful look he was given wasn't much of an answer, but Whirl could decipher it well enough.
"Not even with the 'Cons?"
"Yeah," Sunstreaker said with a shrug, "a few times."
"They ever rough you up outside the battlefield?" Whirl asked.
"Of course, what do you think?" Sunstreaker scowled, the light of his optics changing the lines of his pretty face.
"Not surprising. Every warden is the same. This place is no different than any other prison I've been in. Except maybe the ship we live on now, that is," Whirl said, shrugging his shoulders, "they've treated me pretty well every time they put me in the brig. Even put my name on the door for me."
A non-committal grunt, and there was no missing the roll of cyan optics.
"I wonder what they're planning on doing with us, considering how hard they've been trying to keep us alive," Whirl said.
"This is trying hard?" Sunstreaker asked, again with disgust.
"Trying harder than a lot of wardens I've served under." Whirl squinted his optic in a smirk. "They've at least tried to feed us."
"They'll stop caring if the two of us take enough damage, like Fizzle did," Sunstreaker pointed out, wiping the smirk away.
"Do you know what happened to him?" Whirl asked after a few minutes of awkward silence.
"I wasn't with him. I don't really know the guy. I just figured he wasn't as unconscious as they thought and tried fighting back," Sunstreaker said with distinct discomfort in both his field and his voice.
"If they don't expect us to fight back, they sure picked the wrong guys to kidnap," Whirl snorted.
Sunstreaker didn't immediately respond, lowering his gaze to stare at the floor. Whirl head his jaw creak, then he ex-vented through his nose. "Yeah. Sure did," he muttered.
A few hours later, according to Whirl's chronometer, the lights overhead were turned on, bathing the cell in shitty, over saturated light and showing them just how grimy it was. The voices of their captors preceded them down the staircase at the end of the hall. Whirl immediately got to his feet.
Two of the guards that showed up had the shock prods, but another was carrying a different weapon, some sort of heavy mallet. Sunstreaker got up too, stepping back so he and Whirl were closer together, both bots facing their captors, frames coiled like springs in a practiced way that only came from years and years of being at war.
They opened the cell and came in, another of the organics shifted to the front of the group and lifted a device with a blinking red light at the front… a camera. A ransom tape? Whirl bit back the urge to laugh.
Right, like the three of them would be worth anything. Two of the universe's most hated Autobots and a guy like Fizzle, a notorious drunken loudmouth, being ransomed off and for what? There was no price low enough.
"You," the unarmed organic with the camera said, gesturing to Whirl, "take it," it gestured down to Fizzle.
"Go frag yourself," Whirl said automatically.
A shock prod charged up, the guard holding it stepping forward with a deep growl. The one with the camera raised its third hand without taking all of its eyes off of Whirl, mouth turning up in a smug grin.
"You pick it up," it said, once again pointing to Fizzle.
"And if I don't?" Whirl asked.
"We already start to kill it. You see we are serious," the lead organic said with a self assurance that should have given Whirl pause.
Too bad the rotary was too much of an arrogant bastard to back off.
"Pick him up yourself," Whirl said, optic narrowed.
The second prod charged up, but instead of turning either one of them on Whirl, both guards advanced on Sunstreaker. The first one missed as the frontliner twisted easily out of the way, but this left him open on his right side, and the mallet smashed first into his knee, then his face when he dropped with a sharp cry of pain.
He went down with a heavy crash, the low groan of pain turned into a high shriek when the prod didn't miss the second time. Sunstreaker tried to push himself onto all fours once the charge stopped, only for the second prod to deploy right between his shoulder blades, flattening to the floor again, his vox spitting static.
Whirl wasn't the type to stand around and let a fight happen without him. But Sunstreaker was right, he'd been in a lot of cages, so he knew how this sort of thing worked. If he interfered now, neither one of them would survive the experience.
He had no choice but to stand back and let it happen.
"You see we are serious," the lead organic repeated. It revealed rows of teeth in a vicious smile bared in Whirl's direction, a taunt that normally would have earned it a face full of automatic weapon spray. "You deliver payment, we give your people back. You refuse, we reduce them to pieces."
The other guards fell back, leaving Sunstreaker twitching in the dirt next to Fizzle. The lead organic switched the camera off, giving all three of them long, calculating looks before they left the cage, retreating back up the stairs.
Whirl waited until he was sure they were gone before he moved, grateful they had left the lights on so he could see just how bad the damage to Sunstreaker's frame was.
"I've got bad news," he said as he came and squatted down next to the bot, keeping his claws to himself.
Lifting his head with difficulty, Sunstreaker looked up at him, one cheek partially crushed and the glass of his optic cracked. Energon leaked from one side of his mouth, optics pale and flickering, his field awash with pain.
"You're gonna live," Whirl said, Sunstreaker's face screwing up in agony as he lay back down in the dirt.
Whirl was the first one to consume the energon from the jug. Sunstreaker was propped up against the wall opposite from him, not quite as deep in recharge as Whirl had thought. His optics opened when he heard Whirl shuffling around and widened when he saw what he was doing.
"What?" Whirl asked, frowning in his direction. "You act like you've never seen a mech use his secondary intake before."
"That's because I haven't," Sunstreaker said with mild difficulty, one servo pressed to his cheek. He worked his jaw a bit, his internal repair still working to fix some of the damage to his face.
"Well, I don't see any straws around here, and I'd really rather not find out if this stuff tastes as bad as it looks, so this will be the easiest way to consume it," Whirl said, closing the intake on his arm after emptying half the jug into it. "I suggest you do the same when you get hungry."
"Not a bad idea," Sunstreaker said, leaning his helm back against the wall and powering off his optics again.
"Just one of the many handy tricks I've learned while doing time," Whirl said, making himself as comfortable as he could. He listened to Sunstreaker's systems running on high for a few moments in silence, then shifted. "How are you doing?"
"Can't sleep," Sunstreaker said, optics still dark.
"Internal repair is a bitch. At least it's still working."
"For now."
"Y'know, for a guy named Sunny, you sure are a walking storm cloud. Anyone ever tell you that?" whirl asked.
Optics lighting, Sunstreaker glared across the room at him, Whirl not even bothering to hide his amusement.
"Don't call me that." The threat in his voice wasn't even subtle.
"But I give everyone nicknames. And since we're going to be spending so much time together, I'm just trying to figure out a good one for you. If that doesn't work for you, what would you prefer?" Whirl asked.
"For you to shut the frag up for once," Sunstreaker said, scowling, his lip curling before he winced in pain.
"I'll keep workshopping it. By the time we've either been rescued or shuffled off our mortal coil, I'll have figured it out," Whirl said, rotors wiggling and calling his attention to the clamp.
Making a sound of disgust, Sunstreaker closed his optics again and shifted to try and get comfortable, muttering under his breath. Whirl sat and stared at him, listening as his vents evened out and he finally fell into recharge.
Now he could focus on his own systems. The energon was… edible. But it wasn't good. His filters were working overtime, and while his tank wasn't exactly churning, it was far from settled. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't been putting it on top of cheap drinks from a few nights ago.
He looked across at Sunstreaker again, wondering exactly how a high performance engine was going to react to the swill. He ex-vented shortly and leaned his helm back against the wall, digging at the dirt beneath him with his claws.
"Guess we'll see," he muttered beneath his breath.
Fizzle woke up in the middle of the night. There was no screaming, just quiet muttering as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. He was feverish and sick. Neither Whirl nor Sunstreaker knew enough to help him nor cared enough to comfort him.
"Should we feed him?" Sunstreaker asked.
"Dunno. It might hurt more than it helps," Whirl said, watching Fizzle's listless optics track him from across the cell.
"Came out of nowhere," Fizzle said weakly, his whole frame shuddering, "I tried to run."
"At least you had a chance to. Neither of us saw anything." Sunstreaker frowned, his shoulders hunching when the shuddering turned into seizing and Fizzle began to make a sound like a wounded mechanimal.
"Shut him up," Whirl said sharply.
"How about you try for some compassion?" Sunstreaker said with an edge of fury.
"They're going to hear this, shut him up!" Whirl said, shoving himself upright and moving to Fizzle's side to kneel on him and hold him down.
Looking towards the front of the cell, Sunstreaker crawled to Fizzle and clapped a servo over his mouth, trying to stifle the noise he was making. Fizzle's back arched, a gurgle escaping him as energon shot between Sunstreaker's fingers, a horrible, rattling growl now replacing the sounds he had been making before.
"I think he bit through his glossa. We need to roll him over," Sunstreaker said. Whirl cursed as they both shifted to try and push Fizzle onto his side.
"I don't think that's gonna cut it this time," Whirl said.
"It's coming out of his vents."
"I know, I can see that."
Fizzle had stopped seizing but was now jerking strangely, his optics half lit and unfocused. Energon stained his sides where it had leaked from his vents, streamed down his front where it dripped steadily from his mouth. Sunstreaker's hands and arms were covered in it, his own vents quick and his field throbbing in panic.
The lights came on overhead, both of them looking up before exchanging a glance with one another.
"What do we do?" Sunstreaker asked.
"What can we do?" Whirl asked in return, getting to his feet.
The sound of one of their captors coming down the stairs drew Sunstreaker to his feet as well, and he fell back a few steps to stand near Whirl. They watched as one of the guards moved to the end of the hall and stopped outside the cage, looking between the two bots standing before turning its eyes to Fizzle. It tilted its head to the side, let out as snuffling sound that might have been disgust but could just have easily been laughter, then turned away.
It went back up the stairs, then returned after a few moments with two other guards, these ones armed, and the organic with the camera.
"No no no," Sunstreaker muttered under his breath.
Whirl simply let his EMF seethe as he stepped to the front of the bars.
"Back up," the organic who had come down first said, gesturing with two of its arms.
"Get lost. You and your camera. You don't need to film this, no one needs to see this," Whirl said.
"Away from the bars," the organic said without emotion, now pointing to the far wall.
"You're going to have to make me," Whirl said, narrowing his optic.
On cue, one of the guards fired up a shock prod and moved closer.
"You step back." The organic spoke sharply, mouth twisting to expose its sharp teeth.
"Like I said, you're going to have to—" Whirl began, the second guard reaching out one long arm and grabbing hold of Sunstreaker, dragging him towards the bars with a shout. It was enough of a distraction that the first was able to find a seam between two plates and jam the shock prod in so that it connected with Whirl's protoform, deploying the charge against the most sensitive and conductive parts of him.
It hurt as much if not more than he'd expected it to, though he managed to keep his feet under him. He was forced back a few steps, enough for the unarmed organic to open the cage and the others to step in. When Whirl lunged for the guard, he was shocked a second time, then kicked in the gut so that he tripped backwards, his foot catching on Fizzle. He fell on his aft in the mud forming as Fizzle's energon mixed with the dirt on the floor, frame twitching involuntarily from the aftershocks of the prod.
Looking up, Whirl saw the organic with the camera leering down at him, teeth bared in a grin. "Up," it said with a snuffling laugh, then pointed to Fizzle, "and bring it with you."
The sounds Fizzle made as Whirl hauled him upright and held him there were the kind that only mechs completely fragged up on circuit boosters or those who had been blown to scrap but didn't have the decency to die on the battlefield made. Dumb, too loud, too wet. Sounds that made his trigger finger itch even though it was still clamped.
Their captors ignored the sounds, the one with the camera once again having only eyes for Whirl, staring at him unerringly with that smile while it delivered their ransom demands.
And once again, as soon as the demands were given, the guards turned their prods on Sunstreaker, Whirl unable to do a fragging thing to stop it. The way Sunstreaker tried to back away, seeing it coming, the way he grit his teeth and clenched his fists and tried to fight, but what could either one of them do? These fraggers weren't afraid of them, and they were outnumbered and handicapped. Even without the mace, the guards were still able to damage Sunstreaker, beating him with the ends of the prods that weren't live once he had collapsed onto the ground, one of them kicking him in the face.
"You see we are serious," the organic with the camera said, looking down at some of the energon that Fizzle had coughed onto one of its many hands and rubbing it between its fingers almost idly.
Then they left, locking the door behind them. Whirl didn't wait for them to get to the stairs before the heaved Fizzle to the corner and dropped him as gently as he could, rolling him so he faced the wall. Right now, there was still blue in his frame, but it probably wouldn't be long until that changed. At least this way, they wouldn't have to watch the light go out in his optics.
"You still alive, Goldie?" Whirl called out without turning.
Sunstreaker was making strange noises too, Whirl glancing over his shoulder. He saw the other mech fishing around in his mouth with two fingers, watched him pull out a tooth from near the back of it and felt the pain that swept through his field before he could pull it back against his frame.
Spitting energon on the floor, Sunstreaker leaned his head back against the wall where he'd pulled himself into a seated position. "For now," he said with difficulty.
"That makes two of us, at least," Whirl muttered, making his way to his spot opposite to Sunstreaker and sinking onto the floor.
"Why did you do that? Goad them into shocking you?" Sunstreaker asked.
"I needed to know if that's what killed Fizzle," Whirl said.
Sunstreaker was quiet for a long time, the only sound in the cell their collective cooling fans and the faint gurgling coming from Fizzle's corner.
"He's still alive though, isn't he?" Sunstreaker asked quietly.
"No. There's no coming back from that, Sunny. Fizzle was dead the second he started shaking," Whirl said.