Halcyon pt 1

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG-13
IDW  with a ton of canontweaking
Wing, Drift, Perceptor, Dai Atlas, Topspin
first part of kinkmeme response for this

Prologue:

It took a long moment for his vision to clear, for images to run through their feeds, resolve themselves, for his cortex to begin labeling them: ceiling, light, hand, Dai Atlas.

Wing forced a wan smile, his facial plates feeling cold and unfamiliar. “Dai Atlas,” he managed, his voice thin and thready, but his. It sounded like his, vibrated in his chassis with a familiar hum, and for that Wing felt a surge of gratitude.

“Wing,” Dai Atlas inclined his head. “We almost lost you.” His large hand covered one of Wing's as he cycled a vent. “It took all our skill to bring you back.”

Wing felt his smile wither. He had been willing to die for his City, die for Drift. He wasn't sure he deserved this, though—if he could or should live. He had let them down. He had left the city, brought Drift back. His sacrifice had been an attempt at expiation as much as the ideals of the Circle’s code.“I'll try to live up to the honor,” he murmured, optics sliding off Dai Atlas's face.

“You will,” Dai Atlas said, quietly. His hand squeezed Wing's.

“And...Drift?” The hope burned in his optics, fierce and consuming.

“He is...,” Dai Atlas frowned. “He survived the battle. He did not stay with us.”

Wing tried to stifle the disappointment. But, truly, he would have expected nothing else. Drift still had a journey to finish. A long one. And it should be enough that you started him on this road, Wing. It should be enough. “Of course,” he said, unevenly, hoping his new repairs would cover the emotion in his voice, the hollow in his spark.

“And,” Dai Atlas said, with the air of someone wanting to get all the bad news out at once, hitting while the subject was still reeling numb from the last one, “I gave him your Great Sword.”

“Oh.” And Wing felt the lack, the gaping emptiness, so suddenly that he was appalled he hadn't felt it before. His hand brushed back over his head as if expecting, lying down, in medbay, to feel the familiar heft of the hilt. “He...had earned it,” Wing said, quietly.

Dai Atlas gave a strange sound. “We think it's the only reason you had a chance—that he used the Sword after you had activated it and....” He shrugged. “It's never quite happened before.”

“He earned it.” Wing smiled. A more valiant effort this time. “And he is...gone,” he guessed, trying to spare Dai Atlas the discomfort of drawing out these disclosures.

Dai Atlas nodded, his optics hooding, from some motive that Wing was...too tired, too spark-sick to probe for.

“I hope,” Wing said, a quiet defiance, as all of his were, “that he is happy where he is.”

Dai Atlas nodded. “That is, however, Wing, his choice.” He gave one last squeeze of Wing’s hand before releasing it. “And,” he murmured, “yours.”

 

[***]

Drift let loose an uncharacteristic oath, that told Perceptor more about what they were facing than a two-cycle long briefing. Topspin was a bit more forthcoming, his large hands punching through astrogation vectors. “Seems they’ve got us. Question’s how.”

“Question for another time,” Perceptor murmured. He hunched over the module he was supposed to deliver to Prowl, adding another level of encryption. If the worst happened, this data must not fall into the wrong hands.

“Squadron X all over again,” Topspin said, which was somehow his warning before he veered the ship hard to the right.

Drift stepped out with one foot, clamping his magnets down to keep his balance. He tilted his head, staring at the nav screen Topspin had pulled up. His optics went...strange, his body unusually still--still enough that Perceptor caught the lack of motion. “Drift?”

Drift shook his head. “Fine.” Reflexive, meaningless. Perceptor waited him out. “Looks...familiar.” Drift spread a hand over the astrogation display. “Can’t place from where, though.”

Perceptor nodded. Another question for another time.

The small craft rocked, bucking under them, the decking groaning under strain. The small space filled with black, sharp smoke and the hiss of seeping vacuum.

“Hit,” Topspin said, aware that his assessment was entirely redundant. “Pick a spot, ‘cause we’re going in.”

Drift tilted his head, pointed to the fourth planet from the sun. “That one.”

 

[***]

 

“Boundary marker,” Tracer said. “Two ships, incoming.” Another pause. “Cybertronian.”

The Circle gathered in the control room, the air thick with tension, studying the monitors.

“Again,” Dai Atlas muttered. “Again they’re here.”

“Brought their war with them, this time.” Blaze frowned.

Wing vibrated, staring intently at the display. His shoulder pinions were rigid, flared, as the chasing ship scored a violent hit against the smaller, frailer craft.

Tracer looked over at him. “It’s no matter, Wing. You’re safe.” He and Dai Atlas exchanged a glance. Yes, they’d keep Wing out of it. It had taken decicycles for the jet to recover from his injuries, and for the psychological toll? He was still...not recovered. He recharged alone--had refused lovers, though many had offered, giving his sweet, sad smile and saying simply, graciously, that he was honored but that he could not accept.

It had taken megacycles for Dai Atlas to convince him to link with a new Great Sword, nearly threatening him with exile from the Circle. And Wing had accepted, under that threat, the new blade, but had wept, bitterly, during the ceremony, sobbing so loudly during the vigil that Tracer had almost cut him down himself.

“I can’t be safe if my city is threatened,” Wing said and there was that adamantine core in his words, the core that had led him, all those megacycles ago, to defy the Circle’s tenets, to visit the surface, to bring back the one they’d known as Drift. He wasn’t weak, for all his softness. “It’s Drift,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

Dai Atlas cycled a sigh. “It’s an Autobot ship,” he said. “That doesn’t mean--”

“It’s Drift,” Wing repeated. “I know. I can feel it.”

“Wing...,” Dai Atlas began, then stopped.

“The Sword,” Wing murmured. “I know you don’t believe me. It’s the Sword. It’s near. I can feel it.”

Dai Atlas bit back his rebuttal--it was possible. Remotely possible, though the rebonding should have eliminated that Still.... “Please, Wing. Don’t get your hopes up.” He knew when he said it it was already too late.

 

[***]

 

Drift didn’t even have time to curse, spinning on one heel in the rocky soil, his twin blades cutting a circumference of flashing light, slicing into the first mech’s side. Perceptor fired over Drift’s head, at a second attacker, but not before the second mech burst a shot that slammed into Drift’s hip.

The place still seemed uncannily familiar, even the fine powder of the grit somehow calling to him. Sunlight blazed down upon them and the smoldering wreckage of their crashed ship. Even if the pursuit team had lost their tracker, the pillar of smoke gave their position away. And they’d come, in force. Whatever was in that data module? Was apparently worth a lot of lives.

Including, shortly, Drift’s.

“Too many,” Drift snarled, angry at himself as his body fell heavily to the ground. He jammed one sword into the ground, pushing up to one knee, his shattered leg sparking and gouting fluids. A teal arm appeared over his shoulder, the noise and flash of pulsefire.

“Topspin’s out,” Perceptor said, coolly.

Drift didn’t ask how ‘out’ Topspin was. If he wasn’t dead already, he would be in a handful of kliks, when they got overrun. “Module?”

“Safe.”

Drift grunted. “Perceptor,” he started. Stopped. He bent low, hauling the Great Sword from its sheath.

“Yes,” Perceptor said. Not a prompt, but an assent, as if understanding what Drift couldn’t manage to say.

"Thanks. For everything.” He leaned back, shoulder bumping against the chassis, a hard nudge that would have to pass, he knew, as their last contact.

 

[***]

“No!” The small force of the Circle of Light had left New Crystal City the moment the ship had hit atmosphere. They’d made as good time as they could, tracking the downed ship, driven by Wing’s insistence. Dust flared from the wakes of the ground modes, Wing’s and Blaze’s turbines humming through the air.

Wing jolted from the air, with a cry, blasting on his engines, racing ahead of the others.

“Wing!” Blaze called.

“Let him go,” Tracer said.

“But--?”

“We’ll catch up.” Tracer caught Blaze’s irritated sound. Yes, they had practiced formations. Yes, Wing had pretty much just...thrown that into chaos. “He needs to do this.”

Blaze grunted. He’d always felt Wing had gone undisciplined. “Dai Atlas would--”

“Let him go,” Dai Atlas’s voice was firm over the comm. “It would devour what little spark he has left to hold back.” And it was his choice. They were not free if they could not choose. Even this.

“And whatever might be fragile about him,” Tracer added, “it is not his skill. He can handle himself. And he needs to do this.” He said it with the weight and solemnity of destiny.

[***]

 

The four Decepticons were closing in. A final push.  Outnumbered, but...of course, Drift thought It was how he would have done it. What’s the point of superior firepower if not to decisively defeat one’s enemy? Pick them apart? Enjoy it?

Perceptor grunted, taking a hit from the right, rocking back from the impact before leaning forward, squeezing off another shot. One went down. One. Not enough.

Drift had crawled over, grabbing a gun from a fallen mech. Without his legs, his sword was useless: all they had to do was stay out of his limited range and he was no threat. It had taken them one or two shots before they’d figured it out--he’d known they would, it was a limited gambit anyway. But sometimes a shot or two is what makes the difference. And it was a vent to his despairing anger.

He was dying He knew it, could feel life slowly seep from his systems, the gritty, sticky patch of energon-stained sand growing beneath him. Only this time, he wasn’t alone. He wished he could risk a glance back at Perceptor. More than that, he wished his death could save the red mech again. Still, dying together? He couldn’t ask for much more. If he deserved to ask anything at all.

His audio filled with a roar--fading energon flow, he thought, rising error messages, pouring in so fast they made a rushing sound.

One of the attackers fell, a flash of white, some trick of sunlight, Drift thought, dazzling around him. No time to study that further: another mech, gloating smile spreading over his face, stepped close, leveling a pistol at Drift’s head. “Won’t Turmoil be pleased?” he said, his voice shattering like sound underwater. Drift was too low on energon, HUD clogged with errors and pain-signal shunts, to even manage a smirk.

Flashes of blue over the dark shoulders, and the smile went rigid, flat, and the optics blinked, puzzled.  Energon gushed from the Decepticon’s throat, the gun firing, but surprised, misaimed, sizzling the air by Drift’s audio, heat and pain and the bitter scorch of laser fire. Drift felt himself succumb to weakness, toppling sideways, as the mech fell to one side, his head tumbling to the other. Death, Drift thought. The world crumbling around him, sight and sound harsh and painful, smearing together. And the mech fell and behind him, spattered blue-purple, a dead mech’s face, grinning triumphantly down at Drift, as if welcoming him over the threshold of death.

“Wing,” he said, or tried to, before everything gave out and the world went from bright and blazing to empty and dark, his vision skimming down to that one flash of white, like a distant pole star.

 

 

Comments

[gatekat.livejournal.com]

I'm glad it's only pt 1 of this story. You broke it at a potent place.

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

I'm terrible with chapter endings, but I try! :D

[gwenithcoy.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, this is awesome! Love it, sooo glad to see Wing brought back :)

Really looking forward to reading more!

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

I hate dead mechs. They make me sad. Besides, canon's brought dead mechs back HOW many times now? I CAN TOO! :D

[ravynfyre.livejournal.com]

I am incredibly happy to see this. These three together is, I think, my new guilty pleasure.

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Yeah you have no idea how much my brain has been slobbering on the OT3ness. (Actually you probably have, having read the ending).

[ravynfyre.livejournal.com]

Oh good, then I'm not alooooone! (and you have no idea how badly I want to pitch OT3 prompts at you now!)

[ex-naggingf.livejournal.com]

I'm so very excited about this story!!! Your Drift/Wing fics are awesome, as are your Drift/Perceptor ones. Now all three of them together?!!

*drools*

[aughoti (from livejournal.com)]

This is gorgeous. And even better, there's more to come.

GLEE!

[femme4jack.livejournal.com]

HOMG, heading to OT3 nirvana. This is awesome!!!

[chibirisuchan.livejournal.com]

*gleees* \o/ it's a Wing-lives fixit fic! AWESOME! *runs off to the next segment*