Rebirth

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW
Drift, Wing
canon character death
for tf_rare_pairing  'Drift/Wing Devastation and Reform' which I, multitasking like a BOSS, combined with tformers100  prompt 'rebirth' like things in a blender. and here's what came out.

 

Drift had refused to leave Wing’s body, refused to let them move it, guarding it like a feral dog.  Something in his face, hard, alien, hurt, reached even Dai Atlas, who had laid a large hand he’d thought was comforting on Drift’s spaulder and said, quietly, “We’ll give you until morning.” 

And they had left.  And left Drift alone with Wing’s body, the silence of the barren desert broken only by the softest whisper of breeze-pushed sand, and the pings from Drift’s own cooling armor.

Wing’s sword lay between them. Wing had always spoken a language half of symbols and this seemed but another one—Wing’s sword between them as a sign of what joined them and a sign of how apart they were. One line dividing living and dead. Weak and strong. Impure and pure. A barrier between what Drift was…and what Wing believed Drift could become. 

Drift brushed some sand from the blade, the metal cool but somehow not inert, pushing up toward his hand, inviting him to take it. He was not tempted. He had done too much based on mere impulse, and though Dai Atlas had given him the sword?  …it wasn’t really Dai Atlas’s sword to give.  

Wing was beautiful, even in death, his armor white and pure, the lines clean.  Except….

Drift forced himself to look, to study, feeling ever curl and tear of metal from the hideous puncture.  Braid’s weapon had punched in, but then Wing’s spark had exploded, and the wreckage of his chassis revealed the conflicting damages, metal twisted in a mute agony.

He remembered pain like that from his own abjectly failed attempt to steal the alien ship.  He remembered the shock and hardness of cold tungsten cutting through him.

But Wing had been there to save him. And he?  He had not been there for Wing, too caught up, tangled in his own past, fighting Lockdown. Too caught up.  Wing had dropped his own plan to save Drift; Drift had failed to reciprocate. 

He hated how this felt: helplessness. A new feeling, with a host of followers like carrion birds: Blame, guilt, doubt. 

Drift rose to his knees, reaching over the sword as though it were a fence, not violating the boundary so much as bridging it, laying one hand on an undamaged part of Wing’s battered chassis.  The cold of the metal, the stillness of it, was a shock to him, though he knew it shouldn’t be. Death was like this.

But he was still so used to Wing…alive.  Wing’s armor warm, the enamel sleek and well-maintained, moving into Drift’s touch. Never cold, never still.

He leaned further over, bowing down, pressing his face, his still-unfamiliar helm, against the cold frame, with some stupid, childish wish that he could transfer some of his energy, use his spark to kindle Wing’s somehow.  Wing deserved to live. Drift was…not so sure about himself.  

“Take me,” he murmured, into the maw of the night. “Instead or with.”  It didn’t matter.  One would bring Wing back, the other…he wouldn’t be alone.  Wouldn’t be here, lost, directionless. He wasn’t a Decepticon, not anymore, but he couldn’t see a flat betrayal like joining the Autobots. He was a nobody, factionless, and in the eyes of the war, he did not exist. 

And he didn’t want to exist without direction, without something to fight. No, that wasn’t true any longer. He no longer wanted merely to fight: he wanted something to fight for.  Something that he could feel the rightness of, like a warm star.  Something that gave him the same fierce intensity that had always lit Wing’s optics, steadied his hand.

Those optics were dark now, almost black in the heavy weight of night.  The armor was cold and unyielding under him, and he grew aware of how ludicrous he must look, bending over a sword, face pressed to the body of another. Stupid.  The sand seemed to whisper, the night itself.  Either that or some echo of his own systems in the gaping hole that had once been Wing’s chassis. And suddenly,  he would swear he felt the brush of an EM field against him .  But, no, he told himself—merely the wind,  blowing the fine powder of the desert against him, scouring him with gentleness when all he wanted was to be rubbed raw, scraped to the point of annihilation.

And it struck him, the thought appearing in his mind abruptly, as though planted by someone else, something that felt warm and gentle like Wing, that he didn’t know how to grieve, had never properly grieved anyone. Not Gasket, not any of the other deaths he’d seen, and once he’d started causing them, grief seemed somehow hypocritical.  

He sat back on his heels, hands covering his face, feeling the still-too-new contours of his new helm. “Wing,” he said, and his voice cracked with remorse. All the deaths he’d caused for no purpose. All the time he’d wasted, how he’d let his ideals be twisted, let the end justify any means, and then lost track of those ends entirely. Just wanting more.  Mistaking killing for victory.

Killing wasn’t victory. He rocked forward to touch Wing’s numb, stiff hand. His knee bumped against the sword and this time, without thinking, his hand wrapped around the blade’s hilt. An electric contact shocked through his palm, the jewel in the hilt flaring blue in the indigo of the night. 

Grieve. 

I can’t.

You can.

No. Because once I start….

You feel you’ll break open.

Yes.

Then break open. And the breeze kicked up a dust devil that flickered scintillants in the night around him dancing in a spiral over his frame. 

His hand tightened around the hilt, the nervous clutch of someone seeking comfort, the way he’d first snatched that gun when Gasket had been killed. Seeking comfort in violence then. This time…?

His optics closed, a pain seeming endless welling from around his spark, cold and heavy and liquid.  His ventilation caught.  I killed you, he thought.  As surely as if I wielded the weapon myself. I betrayed you—twice—and still you fought for me. 

I don’t understand, Wing. I don’t….

Release the need to understand.

Drift forced his ventilations deeper, trying to sink into the pain the way Wing had taught him. So many things he knew now were from Wing that it…hurt. 

He felt his mouth stretch into something halfway to a scream, but no sound came out.

And he sat wracked like this for hours, fighting the need to fight the sudden hollow, devouring  pain that seemed endless, bursting, pressing up against him from the inside, like a pressure building, probing for weaknesses. 

And somehow, somewhen, it ebbed.  And when Drift came to himself again, the sword laid across his thighs, the morning sun was limning the sky colors he had never seen before: pinks and oranges, violets and greens, all in a luminescent gouache.  The growing light seemed to dim the darkness within him.  And when it fell across Wing’s body, suddenly, it was just a husk, an empty frame, flatly reflecting the living beauty of the sky. And the blade surged in his hand like a live thing as he stood, the colors dancing down the glyphs like joy and life.

He had all that he needed.

 

Comments

[anavidbookworm.livejournal.com]

I think you need to use the blender more often. :) This was sad and beautiful. You captured the feeling of grief but ended it with hope. I must say that this is one of the most uplifting death fics I've read.

[gatekat.livejournal.com]

You do such an incredible job of capturing Drift, especially this transition from Deadlock to Drift. I think Wing would be proud of what he accomplished in him, even if Drift doesn't grasp it.

[sasuke-emosauce.livejournal.com]

So many things he knew now were from Wing that it…hurt. ;_; I agree with gatekat, Wing would have been proud of how he had changed. The ending was beautiful (you have a gift for that!).


ETA: just noticed I had one of those those icons I borrowed from you mislabeled *total facepalm* I am lame

[chibirisuchan.livejournal.com]

;__________________;

*needs to hug all three of them, including the sword except for the whole problem with edges and stuff*

[femme4jack.livejournal.com]

Ok, now I'm crying. That was perhaps the loveliest deathfic I've read, and ended on such a note of hope despite the grief feeling physically painful to me.

My favorite part (just read it again and it made me cry again)
Grieve.

I can’t.

You can.

No. Because once I start….

You feel you’ll break open.

Yes.

Then break open.