Sky and Ground

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
Bayverse Sky and Ground AU
Skywarp, Prowl
no warnings.

Skywarp glowered as he sat down on the chair across from the Autobot.  His two guards bore the scars and dents of his critique of their hospitality, and his own armor was charred from the shock rod.  Skywarp nearly sneered. A shock rod.  Against him.  Honestly. It’s as if they didn’t know who they were dealing with. 

“Skywarp,” the Autobot across the desk said. 

“Reverb,” Skywarp answered, coolly.

The Autobot blinked. “That’s not my designation.”

Skywarp feigned innocence. “Oh I’m sorry. I thought we were playing a game of ‘name the obscure Decepticon’.”

“Your name is not Skywarp?”

“What kind of operation are you running here, if you don’t even know the designations of your prisoners?”  Do not think about Barricade, he told himself. Do not even let your thoughts drift. He needs you not to break and spill information more than he needs you to fret about him right now. And he’s fine: the others will take care of him. 

The thought soothed him, steadied him. He did not love the thought, but the fact that Starscream, at least, would keep Barricade safe was more of a relief than he wanted to admit. Starscream seemed weak, at times, but he had his resources. 

The Autobot stared at him, trying to force his words into sense.  Good luck, Skywarp thought. The guards had…indicated in their own special way that they would not respond well to his physical acting out, but verbal?  Well. It was just a test, wasn’t it, of that much-vaunted Autobot virtue?

The mech frowned and started over. “My designation is Prowl.”

“Good for you.”  Skywarp rolled his bound wrists together, simply to have something to do to irritate the Autobot. 

A long pause. “You are required by the Prisoner Exchange and Captivity Accords to disclose your designation.”

“Accords are non-binding.”  Skywarp smirked.

Prowl sighed. “You need not make this difficult.”

“I need not make it easy, by the same token.” Oh, half a lifetime in IG taught him some tricks.

Prowl went silent for a long moment, then, slowly, “I fail to understand what benefit it is to you to be dishonest.”

“I’m not being dishonest,” Skywarp said. He was simply not playing nice.  Big difference.

“Recalcitrant,” Prowl corrected. 

“Ah, that.”  Skywarp flashed a condescending grin.  He said nothing more. 

“Designation?” Prowl asked, tiredly. 

“Skywarp,” Skywarp said. 

“Fine.”  Prowl looked down at the console, tapping in some information. Skywarp couldn’t see the screen, nor could he get a good visual on the keypad.  Frustrating. But more frustrating for Prowl, he hoped.  A less patient mech might have snapped something sarcastic at Skywarp—it told Skywarp something that Prowl merely moved to the next line of his form. “Incidence of capture?”

Skywarp waved his bound hands, breezily. “Oh, bunch of Autobots, lots of shooting. All quite routine, really, I’d imagine.”  They took you captive for a reason, Skywarp.  And not for your charming self. They most likely know who you are, and what you might know.  They took you, and not Thundercracker.

Prowl’s frown deepened into a scowl.  “Subject is uncooperative,” he recited, as he entered it into the field.

Yeah? Just get ready to enter that into a lot of your stupid form, Skywarp thought.   He shifted forward on the seat, intent. 

Prowl looked up. “I can order you back to your cell.”

One corner of Skywarp’s mouth curled.  A threat?  “Truly terrifying.  The grade of energon you serve down there is abysmal.”

A flicker behind one optic. “Is it inadequate?”  Required to ask, Skywarp knew, by the Accord. Who’s jerking who around here? 

Skywarp shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”  Destroying you with the truth, Autobot. 

“Hn.”  Not quite enough frustration in the grunt for Skywarp’s taste. “Mission?”

Skywarp laughed. “To kill Autobots. What else?”  It was not much of a stretch to play ‘brutal thug’.  Skywarp had spent half a lifetime being underestimated, until it became second nature. And then…its own tool. 

“You weren’t attempting to infiltrate the base?”

Skywarp laughed, gesturing at his own frame, cramped onto the chair. “Do I look like I can infiltrate anything?” The stealth finish on his armor notwithstanding, of course.  Because that was what he’d been doing—an intel run.  And when, if he got back to the Nemesis, he had a feeling he’d know who authorized the mission. And his name was Soundwave.

“Hn. So you just…stumbled upon that base and decided to attack.”  For all of Prowl’s stiff demeanor, there was cold sarcasm in his voice.

Skywarp leveled his optics. “I’m lucky like that.”  Thundercracker had gotten away.  It had taken a blaze of firepower to do it, but Skywarp had managed it. He hoped. As for himself:  Lucky like getting captured.  Frag.  He stifled the frustration at his own capture. Idiotic.  And…just like Thundercracker always said, he hadn’t thought things through.  He’d had his mission and gotten…distracted. That failure of control ate at him, and he was doing his best to turn it into fuel for his hostility toward the Autobot.

And he was doing his hardest not to think about Barricade.

When he got back to his cell, he’d try, slowly, when no one was around, to check through the bond.  Just to reassure himself. And maybe, maybe, just to have some contact with Barricade. He couldn’t risk comm, even on his private freq.  Not only because it would likely be intercepted but…he didn’t want to open the vulnerability.  The Autobots didn’t need to know that anyone missed him.

Or that he missed anyone.

But right now, he had to stay on the edge, in control, and not slip over.

Prowl was staring at him, trying to penetrated his façade—aware that it was a façade, which was something almost impressive in itself.  “Your luck appears to have broken.”

Skywarp shrugged. “It happens.” He let his optics trail over his damaged armor. “And despite your best efforts, that’s all that got broken.”  

“You’d prefer we were more violent?”  Prowl’s supra-orbital ridge quirked under his crest. 

“It would assuage my ego,” Skywarp said, evenly.  He allowed a visible preen. Let Prowl think he was so much of a narcissist.  Let him not realize Skywarp was channeling Thundercracker’s haughty arrogance, drawing on the memory of Thundercracker’s strength. Let Prowl think he had targeted one of Skywarp’s weaknesses. 

“I regret we will be…unable to accommodate your request.” 

“Of course,” Skywarp sneered. “You’re Autobots. I would expect nothing like competence from you.” Oh, he knew how circular the argument was. It didn’t matter. What mattered was keeping this Prowl running rings along the edge, so he didn’t even come close to the center.

Prowl looked away for a long moment, his mouth tight, before one hand moved to a controller on his desk.  “We’re done here,” he said.  “You want to keep things going to get more time out of your cell. I’ve seen your type before.”  He rose. “I’m afraid we can’t accommodate that request, either.” 

The door opened, the guards reappearing in the doorway, one brandishing his shock rod. 

Skywarp snarled at the guards, knowing his best angle now was to convince them all that the cell was where he least wanted to be, that isolation was what he most wanted to avoid. 

He felt the bond like a hot hard knot in his systems.  Soon, he told it.  As soon as it’s safe.  Let the Autobots think isolation would break him down.

“I hope,” he said, darkly, flexing his black claws, “you make the return trip as…interesting as coming here.” 

 

 

Comments

[anavidbookworm.livejournal.com]

Prowl is a strong bot for not just strangling Skywarp. I know I wanted to at times. :) The interplay between these two flowed wonderfully. The constant thinking on Skywarp's part that he shouldn't think about Barricade made me smile.

I only fear that Prowl was more perceptive then Skywarp gave him credit for and that will prove to be Skywarp's downfall.