Now this is a side story associated with Lives After the End. This is pretty much Helios' story told in the perspective of his biological Carrier. I know a lot of you are waiting for the next upload, but I regret to inform that my older laptop shut down permanently and took all of my work with it. This includes the works of The Brotherhood. So I am literally starting from scratch and trying to remember all that I put.

I also want to inform that this story will be a compilation of different side stories aligned with Lives After the End and they will not be in chronological order.

This story contains OCs, three of which are mine, one belongs to Optronix Prime.

Warnings: Mentions of rape in this chapter. NO EXPLICIT SCENES, I ASSURE YOU! Mentions of drinking and prostitution. Mild language.

Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers. Prowl and Bumblebee are hinted if you have read Lives After the End.

Please, do enjoy!

Mourning Another Day

I honestly do not know where it all went wrong. I thought I was being a good lover, a good mate, but where did I go wrong? What happened to the love that had once ignited us? Where did my once-loving mate go? Who took the affectionate mate and replaced him with a vicious mech who glares at me with piercing optics? Where he once said "I love you", he says "I hate you". I cried to Primus, asking him why and how he came to be like this? All I said was "We're having a sparkling" and he turns into a beast. What I thought were acts of love were now sessions of his satisfaction; I began to feel dissatisfied with our interfaces and when I became too heavy to be fragged, he was angry.

It was then he began to leave the house, come back drunk, frag me against my will.

I was cowardly enough to let him violate me. I never told anyone he would do that sort of crime. I was afraid he would do worse to me.

When my sparkling was born, he wasn't there. I was alone in the birthing room, screaming my spark out and crying until I hadn't any coolant left to leak. An entire solar cycle was spent in agony as I pushed my little mech into the world and when I held my sparkling, I found myself crying again. How could my mate miss this? How could he forsaken me when I needed him most? Where was my mate?

Oh, I'll tell you where he was.

I returned home, baby in arms, and the bastard I had come to hate was taking another femme in the very berth my son was made. In the same berth my mate and I had made sweet love. In the same berth he raped me time and time again. I watched as my spark fell apart once more, unable to hide my cry. They had stopped and the femme- she saw the sparkling in my arms. She had left in mere astroseconds, muttering an apology. I wished I could have left as easily as she did. My mate had given me a dirty look for interrupting- he didn't have the decency to look ashamed. The bastard didn't even look at our son…

I had gotten orders from the doctor that I was strictly not allowed to interface as my birthing was long and my valve was sore. I found myself limping to the hospital later that cycle.

I lied to the doctor. I was afraid he would find out about my mate's abuse and I slapped a fake smile. Despite that I wasn't an all too great actress and the doctor didn't buy my smile, he let me leave.

I should have told him…

For the first few vorns of my sparkling's life, he and I were happy. I bathed him, fed him, gave him all of my love because he deserved all the love he could get from his Carrier since his Sire was out drunk and fragging femmes or submissive mechs. I was there for my little Helios.

Then, his Sire wanted a legal separation.

That fateful cycle changed me. I cried. More than I had ever. I had been a fool to ever shed a tear to that beast. But I thought I loved him.

The cycle he left was the first time I had ever finished a bottle of high grade on my own. My processor was splitting the next morning and I continued to cry. My little sparkling had climbed into my berth without me knowing and he said into my audio, "Carry… don't cry."

I sobbed harder. I felt like such a failure.

Slowly, I had lost my reason. I began to drink and be fragged by other mechs out of pure jealousy. I had hoped that maybe, just maybe, my mate could see and be jealous. For two vorns, I kept that up. I abandoned my own child, locked him inside the house. I remembered to feed him every once in a while. I never forgot his creation day, the only day where I pampered my son. When he looked at me on his seventh creation day, he gazed into my optics and said, "Carrier, I love you."

He brought warmth back to my spark.

Unfortunately, the meaning behind his words reached me too late.

It wasn't until I was thrown behind bars did I realize how horribly I had ruined myself. I was a whore, a drunk, and I had no shame. I became the monster my mate had turned into. The animal I had hated, I had become. I cried again in my cell, hitting my helm into the wall with the hope that it would wiggle just the right thing out of place and kill me.

What had I done?

I was in a cold cell of the femme prison, serving vorns of sentence for prostitution, child neglect and abuse while my son had been taken, and placed in a home where he could be loved. The doctor and her mate weren't supposed to watch over my baby! It was supposed to be me!

The first chance I got, I cursed at the femme. I called her many obscenities unfit for the mouth of a femme. She listened to every single one of my curses until I was running on fumes. We were silent, then she said to me, "Helios is growing healthy with every passing cycle. He's happy with us, calls me his Carrier-"

I called her an ungrateful bitch and I swore at the femme again, my spark burning with Pit-worthy anger. Before I could finish, she interrupted me.

"Helios misses you, Stratas. I can assure you of that. It's a shame that the first call you get is directed towards me with anger and hate. I wasn't the one who left her child. Had I been you, instead of yelling and screaming at the femme who adopted my son, I would ask how he is. I would ask what he did, how school is going, how are his recoveries, how he's coping with his biological creators in prison. You should be ashamed of yourself."

Her words bit my spark because I knew she was right.

"Stratas."

"What?"

I heard her sigh. "Helios told me he still loves you. He misses you."

I had started to cry. Why did I screw up, Primus?

"I told him that he can visit you whenever he wants."

It took me a moment to speak again, but I managed to tell the other femme, "Watch over my little mech. Tell him I'm sorry… and-and tell him-"

The Enforcer urged me to hurry, that my time was almost up.

"T-tell him that I-I love him…"

She promised she would.

I cried for the remainder of the night, wishing my little sparkling was with me back home in my berth. I wished that when I awoke, we would be together like it was before my mate left me, all curled up in his berth.

Unfortunately… that never happened… I awoke in the cell the next morning. Then, the next morning. And the morning following that. It seemed endless until I was called to the visitor's gallery.

Never before did I feel so happy.

I saw my little sparkling, hiding behind the leg of the doctor and her mate from the other femme inmates. His optics that were once barren and void were bright and full of life; they found me and Helios came bounding forward, entangling himself into my arms that were cuffed to the table. I held him as closely as I could, sobbing in joy and remorse. My sparkling was crying too. I kissed his helm, assuring him that it was going to be alright.

My son and I talk for what seemed like many hours when in reality was only one.

He told me of the cute little femme he likes, eyeing the Enforcer behind me with a bashful gaze in his optics. How she had the "most adorable accent in the world" and how her wings fluttered like an insect from Earth called a butterfly. Helios showed me what it looked like and I told him that if he did indeed like her, to become her friend. To be there when she needed it most.

We continued; we laughed, cried, hugged, kissed.

It hurt to see him leave when the hour was over. I held him tightly, so tightly. I refused to let him go. Helios left as I was taken back to my cell, but I never took my optics off him until I couldn't see him anymore. I cried once more.

A few more vorns passed, maybe one or two. I had gotten visits from my Helios who wasn't so little anymore. I hadn't seen my son in about a groon when there was a prison break. Little did I know, my mate in the mech-only prison had managed to slip into the femme-only side while the guards were holding back the prison break. He found me in my cell and I could see in his optics he had become far colder than I once knew. Energon dripped from his frame, wounds decorated his armor and protoform, and the blaster in his servo was venting from overheating. He was intent on killing me.

I tried to reason with him, that we could both die. He refused to see my side of the argument, then promised that after he was through with me, he was going to find our son and kill him. However, it seemed that Primus pitied my spark and sent my salvation. The prison guard in my ward I came to recognize as Beta had my mate at point blank. I ran at that chance, not even bothering to watch the two mechs brawl behind me. In moments, I collapsed and I clutched my chest as my spark felt like it was mangled and squeezed. It tightened in my chest before it felt like it was literally tearing itself apart inside of me. My ties to my mate were severed in an instant and I felt as though I couldn't suck in any air to push through my vents. I gasped, struggling on the floor. Beta's figure made its way to my vision and I felt myself being carried. I heard him say, "Hold on."

"You-You… killed him…"

My audios managed to capture, "...firing on an unarmed inmate…"

I felt myself slipping in and out, gasping with every vent of air so desperate to stay online. I grasped at the guard as I choked my son's name, his faceplate coming into my fading vision. No… I couldn't leave my baby… my sparkling…