shadow_vector | Mabaya ch 12 Losing Ground

PG-13
IDW Mabaya AU
Perceptor, Drift/Deadlock
the usual mindfucking

Only the Strong (Perceptor, Drift, Turmoil)
In Darkness (Turmoil, Drift/Deadlock)
Caught (Turmoil, Perceptor)
Coming to Light (Perceptor, Drift)
Disconsolate
Visit
Decompensating
Tangled
Already Lost
Errant
Rut

Perceptor pushed toward the cell’s barrier-lock as Deadlock crossed it, blue optics alight with concern. “Dri--,” he shook his head, struggling into the compromise. “Are you injured?” His optics scanned Deadlock’s frame, his hands itching to touch, regretting not having some tools. He was not a medic, but he could have done…something.

“No,” Deadlock said, his voice flat and dry and…hollow sounding. He pushed past Perceptor, turning to give one hard look at the guards. “You’re done. Go.”

They gave him one last hard look, but left. Deadlock stayed immobile, watching them go.

He slumped, lowering his head, heading stolidly toward the back wall. He turned, resting his back against the cool bulkhead, sliding slowly down the smooth surface, head tipping up, exhausted. His hand clutched the scabbard for something like comfort.

Perceptor knelt down in front of him. His optics focused on the smear of purple-blue energon on Drift’s hand (he refused to, could not, think of him as Deadlock). “What happened?” he asked, reaching for it.

“Nothing.”

Perceptor hesitated, but concern overcame all else. “What’s this, then?” He tapped at a stain.

Deadlock bent his head, slowly, looking down wearily, and then shrugging. “Turmoil’s.”

And…he let Drift live? Perceptor’s optics scanned. No, there had to be more damage. Turmoil had to have done something. Something. He reached forward, squinting, studying Drift’s battered frame through his spiderwebbed lenses.

Deadlock’s hand flew up, batting Perceptor’s hand away.

“Drif—“ the word slipped out, before Perceptor could stop it, and before he could even finish it, Deadlock had grabbed his wrist, twisting it around, Perceptor falling to the floor on his right side, following the pain in his arm.

“Drift is dead,” Deadlock hissed, gouging his thumb into a sensor cluster in Perceptor’s wrist, until the optics flared with pain.

“No,” Perceptor said, insistently. “Don’t let him win.”

“Shut up,” Deadlock said, and the tone of voice was so jarring, so…unlike Drift that for a long moment Perceptor just stared. “Don’t you get it?” Deadlock said, louder than necessary, the sound buzzing in Perceptor’s audio. “He’s dead. I’m doing my best to make sure you don’t end up that way, too.”

Deadlock leaned over, ventilations heaving something, some feral sound deeper than a snarl, his face twisted. Not in anger, Perceptor realized, but in torment, misery. Deadlock hated what he was doing.

But why? Perceptor forced himself to think, clung to that familiar coolness of logic, a thin thread, surrounded by a maelstrom of heat and pain and confusion and...he'd admit it...fear. Think. Why was he doing this if he didn't want to? Because Perceptor would never, could never, believe that this was Drift. Nor Deadlock, whom he'd never known but Drift had come from him and the one could not have birthed the other were he so steeped in brutality.

“Afraid of me?” Deadlock sneered, but under it, Perceptor could hear a plea.

“No,” he said, “Never.” It...wasn't entirely true. But Perceptor knew that if he let Drift slip, let Deadlock have his fear, Drift would drown, be gone forever. That was what he was most afraid of.

That's unacceptable, Perceptor thought. That's not what I came here to do. I came here to rescue Drift. If I have to die in the attempt, so be it. The debt will be paid. But it would all be for nothing if Drift was gone.

Deadlock reared up, catching Perceptor's wrist in his one hand to slam it down hard against the floor. “I'll teach you,” he said, a twisted grin on his face as the pain of the impact shocked through Perceptor's frame, “to be afraid.”

There's a mystery here, Perceptor thought. Something happened with Turmoil. Something that had taken Drift and done this. He looked into the baleful red optics—they did change the face, so much, but he knew, he had to believe that Drift was still behind the red lenses. “Tell me what happened,” he said, quietly.

“Tell you,” Deadlock's voice was harsh. “Better idea. I'll show you.” He leaned his chassis hard on Perceptor's shoulder, his hand raking down the red armor. Four slices of pain blazed across Perceptor's already-taxed sensor array. The hand tore down his chestplate, under its reinforced framing. It was a parody of a caress. Deadlock growled, and Perceptor felt the sharp bite against his shoulder armor, sinking in, solely to cause pain.

He couldn't stop himself—a whimper of pain escaped his vocalizer. Deadlock growled, a sneering smile growing over his face, but his optics were flat, distant.

“That hurts,” Perceptor reported, knowing that Deadlock had to know this. How was this a key? Had Turmoil done this? The thought of Turmoil’s hands on Drift’s frame sickened him. “Is that what you intend?”

“Don’t talk to me,” Deadlock snapped. He shoved his truncated arm on Perceptor’s chassis, using the forearm as a bar weight, pinning Perceptor’s back to the ground. His optics savaged down Perceptor’s frame, his cortex tangled in thoughts.

Perceptor brought up his other hand, resting, for the moment, on the white spaulder. Not pushing away, not fighting back…just yet. “We’re on the same side,” he said, quietly.

“No, we’re not,” Deadlock said, mouth curling. “You don’t accept me; none of you do.”

Perceptor’s hand gripped at the armor “We do.” No, he thought. That is…inaccurate. A seed that Turmoil had somehow planted—no. A seed that the Autobots themselves had planted: Kup, Springer. This was just…fertile soil for it to take root. “I do,” he said, letting the naked truth stand for fancy rhetoric.

The red optics softened, growing depths, depths that Perceptor’s words seemed to ripple through. He felt Deadlock shudder against him. Something was in there, fighting. Perceptor struggled upward, against the bar of Drift’s forearm. “You don’t want this.”

“I have to,” Deadlock said, weakly. “You don’t know what’s at stake.”

“Tell me,” Perceptor murmured. “Let me help.”

“I don’t need your help!” Deadlock reared back, striking Perceptor across the face. He froze, horror rippling over his mouth as shards of blue glass scattered from Perceptor’s shattered reticle.

Perceptor couldn’t stop the pain from flashing over his face, the involuntary wince as Deadlock moved. But he forced himself calm. Something was bigger than his pain. “What do you need?”

The mouth tightened in anger. “You’re not Wing.”

Perceptor blinked, the words making no sense to him. Wing? He filed that for later. No time for that now. Do not lose focus, Perceptor. Do not. Any slip could be fatal. “I know,” he said, simply. “I’m sorry.” He filed the hurt away for later, too.

Deadlock gave an animal sound of pain and rage, his hand raking down Perceptor’s side. “You,” he said, finally, a dangerous hiss, “have no right.”

There’s no right answer, Perceptor realized, suddenly. Nothing he could say, no amount of reason or placating could calm Drift down. And he knew enough about tactics to know he…didn’t know enough to outmaneuver Deadlock here. Except….

Perceptor squirmed his weight, causing Deadlock to have to adjust, throwing his arm out for balance, leaving the sheath where he kept his sword unprotected.

Deadlock read the move too late to block Perceptor’s hand from wrapping around the hilt, half drawing the blade. They struggled, neither having a leverage advantage, tugging at the hilt before Perceptor threw himself to the side, dislodging Deadlock’s weight enough that his resistance faltered. Perceptor drew the blade back, wielding it awkwardly in the small space between them.

Deadlock swung down at him, and Perceptor managed—barely—to block the blow with the sword. Deadlock snarled, rearing up, throwing his body hard on Perceptor’s, using his own mass and frame as a weapon. There was something wild—beyond wild—in his optics, something that would let him harm himself, break his own body, to damage Perceptor. Why? Why? Perceptor couldn’t think; not under these conditions. He needed time. And space. And no one trying to kill him.

Perceptor swung the blade awkwardly, his elbow banging on the ground, truncating the stroke.

Deadlock sneered. “What do you intend to do with that?”

“Get off me,” Perceptor said, throwing an unfamiliar note of command in his voice. “And we can discuss this like reasonable, civilized mechs.”

The optics narrowed, the blue never looking quite so malevolent as now. “I’m not,” Deadlock said, “either one.”

Perceptor realized his mistake: Drift had told him of his past, back on Cybertron. “You know what I meant,” he said, but he knew that was a losing gambit even as he said it. He braced the sword, boldly, pushing back with his legs, wriggling partway out from under Deadlock’s mass to gain more room.

Deadlock grabbed at Perceptor’s leg, hauling him back. Perceptor swung wildly with the blade; it clanked off the large shoulder fairing before glancing off the dirt-streaked white helm. “I will hurt you,” Perceptor said, a desperate warning against the flare of light in the optics.

“Will you?” Deadlock said. “Really.” And the voice didn’t seem like Drift’s, nor Deadlock’s, but almost…some thin parody of Turmoil’s.

But Perceptor had committed to it—he shoved back, harder, using every measure of his long legs and leverage, to brace distance between he and the white armor, walking his shoulders up the wall, clearing his arm’s range. “I will.” He gripped the sword better—he thought it was better—between both hands, holding it between them, the silver edge glinting a line to Deadlock’s chin.

A smile crossed Deadlock’s face—a parody of a smile, a twisted, stunted thing. He clambered forward on his knees, keeping his optics locked with Perceptor’s, until the point of the blade rested at his throat. He tilted up his chin, pushing forward. “Do it,” he said, his voice vibrating down the blade. It was a plea, a challenge.

He pushed closer, optics flaring bright and wild, and Perceptor felt the sickening push of the blade cut something, saw a blue-purple trail of energon slide down the blade. Deadlock’s grin was stiff, ossified.

Perceptor flung the blade away. It bounced, clattered, droplets spattering, spun in a noisy spiral on the floor somewhere beside them, the noise filling everything between them. Perceptor’s hands shook, his optics flickering with a surplus of emotion. He hated this; hated what it was doing to Drift, and he began to wonder, for the first time, as he watched Deadlock, after a moment, lunge after the blade, heavily, clumsily, if there was any trace of Drift left in there at all.

Mabaya ch 12 Losing Ground

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