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shadow_vector2011-04-07 06:17 am
Echoes of loss
IDW post LSOTW
Perceptor, Verity
for tf_rare_pairing prompt Perceptor/Verity, "It's always been more than just lust"
warnings; ref to canon character death, angst, implied xeno
It had been three rotational cycles since Ironfist had offlined, and Verity had not, Perceptor had noted, left her quarters once. This seemed...unusual. She was normally everywhere, and in the ringing emptiness of the ship, her silence seemed to echo.
He chimed on her door. No response.
“Verity,” he said to the blank face of the closed door, feeling foolish. A hard, strong silence.
He paused. She might want privacy—he had wanted nothing more when Drift had left him. But even then, even he, had realized there was a limit.
He was the ranking mech of the Wreckers—Springer was still in medbay. He had the override codes for the ship. Three days, he thought. Without fuel. She might...not be operational. She might be injured. Or...she was simply recharging.
In which case, there was surely no harm in looking.
He tapped the override code. The door pushed aside on a cushion of silence. Rank, sour air and darkness like a wall.. He stepped across the threshold. “Verity,” he said, softly, his optics cycling to lowlight.
There. A lump on the floor, next to the berth. He dropped to one knee, measuring respiration, any sort of metric he might use to gauge her status and condition. “Verity,” he repeated.
“Go 'way,” the voice floated up from the ball of limbs.
“Status,” he said. He wouldn't leave until he was reassured of her condition. And by the smell, it wasn't good. “Have you been refueling?”
“Get stuffed.”
He cycled another vent. “Verity.” He prodded her shoulder, gently, with one finger. Her skin felt gritty and dry, and her hair, when she turned her head, was lank and dull. Improper maintenance, he thought. He recognized this all too well: he had sat for cycles after Drift left, staring at microcorrosion in his lines as the only passage of time, welcoming it as if he was literally falling apart from abandonment, collapsing into rust. Wanting it to happen faster, as if he could will himself to rot.
Verity, he remembered, had come for him then. Poking him with his duty, and little tasks that needed fixing, things to do with his hands, with his mind, that didn't require thinking or feeling. Things that got him going again: fix the fabricator, re-enamel part of her power suit, batch up some nutrients. Simple, mindless tasks. He'd resented them at the time, resented having to move, pull himself from the torpor of his own remembrance. But he'd done it, crawling, in a way, step by step from the pit of his grief.
He could do this much for her.
He scooped her up, ignoring her protests, her small bare feet useless as they kicked against him. He carried her over to the small washrack. He hit the taps before dropping her unceremoniously on the tiled floor. “Wash,” he said.
Water rained down on her head, her body, her clothes smudged and wrinkled growing dark and damp, clinging to her skin. She glared balefully up at him from under a matted mop of hair, the skin around her eyes swollen and red, the eyes themselves looking raw.
Perceptor blocked the opening of the washrack with his body. “Wash. Or stay wet.” He stared her down, face implacable.
Verity swore, shucking her clothes. She flung her sopping shirt at Perceptor, warm water lashing up across his face from where it had splatted on his chestplate, resorting to impotent anger. He understood. He pinched it off his armor, dropping it to one side as she began scrubbing some sort of cleanser through her hair, fingers raking with a kind of fury at the dark mats. White foam sluiced down her body, the pale skin of her legs.
Perceptor found himself watching her, studying the way her flesh moved—the even slide of muscle under skin, the more fluid bounce of her breasts. Exotic and alien. So different yet the emotions...the same.
She scrubbed herself clean, scouring her skin with such force that the white flesh turned almost pink, before she slapped off the tap. She flung the scrubbing rag down. “There,” she said, defiantly, water glossing her body, dripping down her face, the flatness of her wet hair, runneling between the swells of her breasts. “Washed.” Her mouth twisted. “Doesn't help a damn thing.”
“I know,” Perceptor said, softly. Something in his voice shook her out of herself, her brown eyes clearing for a moment, as though they could for the first time see something outside herself and the limits of her mourning. He looked away, half in some belated modesty, half to avoid this moment of vulnerability. “Should eat something.”
She swore at him, a flat, unoriginal obscenity, but with more energy than she'd shown before. Progress. Of sorts. She pushed past him, wet feet splatting against the decking.
“Verity,” he said, stepping back.
“Leave me alone.”
“No.”
“Why not?” She stopped, hands on the swells of her hips, turning to glare at him.
“You didn't.” She'd been inexorable, getting Perceptor moving again, doing again. And--eventually--caring again.
“It's not the same!” she snapped. “He's dead!”
“It's worse: He's alive,” Perceptor retorted, his entire chassis aching, “and...gone.” He whipped his head to look away. Drift's leaving had torn something in him. At least Ironfist was dead, involuntary. Drift had packed up, suddenly, hopped a transport for Earth. No explanation. No word. Just...gone.
Silence stretched between them, stunned by the enormity of the wounds between them, threatening to devour them.
Perceptor turned to the door. “I'll leave you alone,” he murmured.
“No. Please? Please don't. Look, we...don't have to talk, or do anything. Just...,” Verity's eyes were glistening, overfull from a different kind of tears. Water dripped from the long tendrils of her black hair, making wet coins on the decking.
Perceptor turned, aching, fuel pump burning as if trying to sear off the emotion, dropping to one knee. “What do you want from me?” A charge and a question, pulling toward and pushing away.
“You,” she said, quietly.
“Nothing left,” Perceptor said, spreading his palms. He was empty, hollowed out of feeling. It was the only way he could function. Verity was the one who was filled with life. Even now, crushed by loss, life coruscated in her, as if a restless sun just under her skin. And he? He was a husk, rolling through routine because he could not allow himself the cowardice of suicide.
“Just...whatever's left. Something real.” Verity's mouth twisted, as if trying on a smile or fighting tears before just pressing together as she reached up, wrapping one arm around his neck to rest her cheek on the edge of his chest plate. He could smell the slightly-sweet scent of her wet hair, feel the warmth radiating from her bare skin. His hands came around her, pulling her against him, the warm softness of her body yielding against his own hardness, her cool flesh warming with contact.
“Yes,” he said, softly, standing up, feeling her other arm twine around his neck, her face buried against his chassis, as he carried her gently over to the berth. She was tired of crying: he could feel the hollow exhaustion as though touching her very bones. He settled down onto the berth, holding her carefully against him.
“Not sleepy,” she said, but the gentle idle of his engines soothed her, pulling her under into sleep, real and almost restful, compared to that haunted parody of sleep that grief gave one.
Perceptor lay listening to her respirations, feeling the press of her skin against his metal, water slowly evaporating off her. He shouldn't be here. He couldn't be what she wanted, what she needed. He would let her down. Eventually.
Drift. He still didn't know what he'd done to drive the white mech away. Only one day, he'd awoken to Drift, packing a small box of belongings, giving Perceptor a gruff nod. “Leaving?” Perceptor had managed, disbelieving what he was seeing.
“Earth,” Drift had said. “They need me.”
Perceptor had choked down the painful, pleading admission, “I need you, too.” Not fair, selfish. The war needed Drift more, deserved Drift more. He had lost him...and he didn't know how.
And now...this. Perceptor shuttered his optics, locking himself into that pain, fighting not to leave, to run away.
[***]
When he woke up, Verity was already dressed, her hair pulled into its usual bouncy ponytail. “Morning,” she said. It was a shadow of her usual perkiness, but the effort was palpable. Effort Perceptor didn't deserve.
He pushed up to his elbow, studying her. She looked better...marginally. The skin around her eyes was still red and swollen, but they eyes themselves had lost the tearful gleam. “Verity.” He reached one hand, one finger tracing the contour over her shoulder, down her back, out the flare of her hip. He couldn't give much, but he could give this. He ran another line down, this time along her arm, ending with her hand. He tugged her forward, his other hand wrapping around her waist. He didn't know how to move beyond this, to offer the only thing he could offer. “Verity,” he repeated, his voice vibrating through his armor, against her body as he pressed her against him. “Yes?”
It was as close as he could come. And it felt like tearing himself free from a betrayal, wanting her hands on him. He'd sent her away, sent her to Ironfist before. Did he even have the right?
“It's too soon,” Verity said, “Really. I...can't.”
He withdrew. “I understand.” He hated how much the rejection hurt. He shouldn't feel. He didn't deserve to desire anything. He wasn't worth it.
“No,” Verity said, suddenly. Her mouth quirked into that determined line he'd seen before battle. “Fuck it. Can't mourn forever.” She reached for his hand.
“No,” he said. “You can't. And that...feels wrong, too..”
She nodded. “Part of me wants to, I don't know, get all Civil War widow like forever. But another knows I can't do that.” She looked down at his chest plate. “Like seeing the future, you know? That I'm going to fail. Doomed or something.”
Perceptor nodded. He didn't want to let go of Drift. And in a way, he couldn't. And how could he think it a betrayal when Drift had so clearly, so cleanly turned his back on him? If you were rejected, could you betray? “We don't have to. It's just...all I can offer.”
“Not all you can offer.” Verity's dark brown eyes tilted up into his blue ones. “The fact you bothered to offer anything...,” she murmured, leaning in, her arms around his throat, nuzzling her cheek against his.
“Doesn't have to be me,” he said. “I just...you deserve to be happy, Verity. And I bear some blame in this.” Pushing her to Ironfist, knowing he was dying. He bore more than a little blame—something like guilt lapped around his spark, a sickly fire miscoloring everything it fell upon.
“Not your fault, Perceptor. Not everything that goes wrong is your fault. Or your problem.” A faint flush of a smile over her face, so close to his he could feel the warmth of her body, the pushes of air from her speech. “And I want it to be you.”
He felt his systems fire on, his EM field giving a tremulous flare against her that caught blue sparks in the ends of her glossy hair. And Verity smiled at him, her fingers circling the collar armor. And it was a real smile, honest and daring, if weakly, to be happy. In spite of their losses, their fear of falling apart, they managed to cling together, no promises, nothing more than themselves, wounded and weak, but still, after all of that, reaching out.
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That was... sad, yes, but somehow very much emotionally satisfying. Like standing on the edge of the cliff but knowing you can step backwards, away from the edge.
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Lovely.
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*hugs 'em all*