Grey Areas

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW/AHM after AHM 7
Mirage, Drift
spoilers for canon? bleh
written for tf_rare_pairing  prompt: Mirage/Drift "I can still see you" I hesitate to post this because someone's already written this prompt.

Everything here was grey, Mirage thought, slumping on the balcony, staring moodily at the swirling, restless mass of the sky.  Everything sapped of the clean colors that must have once been here, the plascrete, scraped, scratched, damaged. He could still, if he looked hard enough, see small flakes of color—red and yellow, green and blue, in the war-pitted, acid-rain-etched walls.  The whole Citadel, slowly melting its once bright beauty into chips and dirt.

Damage.

He looked down at his chassis, the long broad scores from Ironhide’s hand gouging his chestplate, mangling the crisp red lines of his Autobot insignia into a twisted scar.  

Resentment stabbed through him, taking root in those gouges.   The accusation was so unfair that it was…ludicrous, really! Except that it was so very, very serious. 

A flash of white to his right—a leg, kicking over the railing, and then another, and then Drift, the newcomer, was perching on the railing next to him, studying the louring sky, and the hazy menace of the city below.  Another sharp movement, and a cleansing rag bumped into Mirage’s hand. “Should get that looked at,” Drift said, without looking over. 

Mirage stared at the rag, searching for some second level of meaning, his fingers closing over it numbly.

“It’ll be fine,” he answered stiffly.

The head canted to one side. “That’s the kind that festers.”  A small flash of a glance, a lopsided smile. “Seen a lot like it.” 

Mirage pushed the hand, and its rag, away. “What business is it of yours?”

“We’re on the same side?”  

Mirage couldn’t help the twitch of anger on his face. “You don’t seem certain of that.”

Drift turned, facing him fully for the first time. The smile had faded from his mouth. “You don’t seem certain of it,” he repeated. 

“How…dare you?”  The hurt, physical, emotional, burned itself into a fiery rage.

“How dare I what? Ask you the question you’ve been asking yourself?” The blue optics hardened over the smile. 

“I have no doubts.”

A tilt of the head, nothing more.

“What?” Mirage demanded. 

Drift shrugged, the large white spaulder tracing a large movement in the darkness. “If you say so.” He pushed the cleansing rag into Mirage’s hand. 

Mirage snatched at the rag.  “What do you say?”

“Me? You need to ask yourself a better question.”  The hands folded between the dark thighs, black fingers interlacing, entirely serene. It was…maddening.

“And what’s a ‘better question’?”  He began swabbing himself with the rag.  Ironhide had been…thorough:  energon spattered over his chassis, arms, hands. 

“Do I know why I’m fighting?” Another shrug. “Only question worth asking.”

Mirage’s frame twitched, optics sharp on the white helm.  “And what’s the right answer?” He felt some of the flames of his anger ebb, banked by curiosity. 

“Whatever the answer is is the right one,” Drift said. “What matters is that there is an answer.”  Drift’s legs shifted, the ankles crossing over each other, dangling over the balcony’s wide ledge.

Mirage didn’t want to think about that: maybe there was no answer. He fought, he was an Autobot, because that’s what he did.  He didn’t like it, but it was better than the alternative. He summoned a hard laugh to push the thought away from him. “Really.”  Drift shrugged.  Mirage tried to clutch the remains of his anger around him. “Tell me, Drift.  Do you think I’m the traitor?”

 “No,” he said, immediately.

“And what makes you so certain?”

The white helm turned, the cat-like finials tracing arcs in the air as the mech studied Mirage, hunting for motive. “The traitor would have fought back,” he said, jerking his chin at the mangled insignia. “And a traitor would be working to keep his cover right now instead of sulking.”

The sense of the words fell past Mirage, though he couldn’t refute their logic.  “Sulking. Is that what you think I’m doing?”

Drift’s mouth flattened, unhappy. “It’s what I think we’re all doing.”

Mirage couldn’t stop the abrupt laugh that burst, like pressure, from his chassis.  “I can see it in you,” he said, squeezing the cleansing rag.  “I hadn’t before, but I can now.” 

“What?”  Drift blinked, optics flaring.

“Your past.”  The cold battlefield logic, the flatness in his gaze when engaged, braced for hostility.

Drift stiffened, the hands clutching together. His mouth pinched to a tight, hard line, like armor.  “Don’t try to hide it.”  His voice was soft, but the words managed to slice through the night like a knife. 

“No,” Mirage admitted.  He cocked his head, folding the stained rag, just as something to occupy his hands.  “How do you stand it? The distrust, the…rejection?”

The mouth relaxed. “Doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t believe that,” Mirage said, optics keen, curious. 

Drift studied his crossed thumbs for a long moment, before looking up. “I know what I’m here to do. Nothing,” his optics flared with an ember of anger, “will stop me from doing it.”  He forced his shoulders back, trying to feign calm.

“It’s not that simple.”

Drift shrugged. “It is.  I decide who’s an enemy and who isn’t.  Not them. Not anyone.” His hands clenched together, as though grabbing for something slipping through his fingers.  His mouth quirked, as he jerked his chin out over the city. “Enough enemies out there.”

“Ironhide—“

Drift cut him off with a shake of his head. “Just because he’s decided doesn’t mean you have to go along with it.” A soft snort. “I don’t.”  And there, right there, a strength Mirage knew he’d never have. And he wondered where it came from, this stark assurance Drift had, despite his past, despite his long legacy of violence.

Perhaps not ‘despite’. Perhaps those experiences had tempered him, like steel. 

“I can’t do that,” Mirage said, barely aware that what he was saying might not make any sense.  He handed the stained rag back, like a symbol, blind to the irony of giving back a rag filthy with his own energon until Drift’s fingers closed over the purple stain.

“Do what you can do,” Drift said. “Don’t be pushed, don’t be pulled, by anyone else.” His mouth quirked into a sour smile, as if tasting irony. “Trust me.”

Mirage felt a smile, genuine, if weak, on his mouth plates.  His hand closed over the rag, fingers brushing against Drift’s.  “Thank you,” he murmured, and the anger was gone from his voice, cooled from his chassis. And he looked out over the city and it was still grey, and the world was still grey, nothing black, nothing white and…he was all right with it.

 

Comments

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Oh you know that and I know that but basically it's the same idea and yours was much better. :)

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

I'd actually half-written one that was set in the WTF universe of Spotlight: Mirage but I figured if people didn't know it, the whole thing would seem AGONIZINGLY OOC.

[sister-dear.livejournal.com]

I love your descriptions of Drift's movements, like the way his shoulder armor would turn something as simple as a shrug into this big exaggerated movement, and the way he's perched on the balcony edge. And black fingers laced between dark thighs, rawr. There's just something sexy about that little sentence. <3

Itsy-bitsy concrit, if that's okay? I think this line of Drift's - “Don’t try to hide it,” - is one that would benefit from having an "I" at the beginning of the sentence. For a moment I thought he was telling Mirage to not try to hide anything.

Drift saying that he thinks they're all sulking makes me laugh a bit, because yes, I can totally see that. XD

[gatekat.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you posted. For all it's a similar theme, it's a very different story, a very different feel to it.

[synaltern.livejournal.com]

See, see? Told you I adored your thought processes. <3

Lovely. No contradictions allowed. At all. So don't even think it. :)

[ladyofdragons.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed this. It's beautiful to see Drift reach out past his own pain to help Mirage. At face value, he seems like the least appropriate person to validate Mirage in this moment, but that also makes him the perfect choice. Beautifully done.