Weight

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW
Red Alert, Perceptor
mentions of PTSD
for tf_rare_pairing  Red Alert/Perceptor 'showing scars'  
based on an actual event  :)

As Red Alert had claimed, he was fine in combat, his hyperkeyed instincts boosting his reaction time, giving him an almost eerie insight into where attacks would come from. It was after combat that was the problem, Perceptor realized, as the night stretched its long foggy wings across the sky, hampering visibility.  Fighting paused, both sides frustrated, wanting the battle over, one way or the other, but conditions grinding the war down on both sides. Even the Decepticon aerial assault cut short, not willing to fire blindly on their own mechs. 

Red Alert twitched his way through the first cycle, optics darting, head zipping from side to side, trying to track movement in the smothering ionic fog. He clutched a pulse rifle, standard issue, in his hands hard enough that the cables squeaked, where he squatted in the bottom of the shell crater, churned up dirt grey and smeary on his armor as he twitched slowly around.  Above the crater, tracer rounds zipped, stitching a wild embroidery through the darkness, just enough to make thoughts of escape insanity.

Perceptor rolled over from where he had been lying on his belly, reaching in his storage for a field ration, facing the enemy. He held one out to Red Alert, wordlessly.

“Not hungry,” Red Alert muttered. 

Perceptor thrust it against Red Alert’s chassis. “Hunger is irrelevant.”

Red Alert’s fingers closed over the ration pouch, if only to prevent himself from getting hit with it again.  His other hand tightened on his pulse rifle, as if afraid Perceptor would tear it from his grip. “Perceptor….”

Perceptor canted his head, saying nothing.  Red Alert could argue with words, he’d learned. He couldn’t argue with Perceptor.  Red Alert’s optics fixed on Perceptor, his hands fumbling with the ration pouch, until he managed to tear off a corner. His hands shook as he raised it to his mouth.  Perceptor gave a sharp nod.  “Sorry,” Red Alert said.  “Bad luck you got stuck with me.”

Perceptor shrugged. He didn’t believe in luck, good or bad.  He took another ration pouch, rolling it in his hand.  “We’ll get through this,” he murmured. 

Red Alert squeezed the pouch nervously, almost choking on the sudden rush of fuel into his mouth.  “We won’t,” he wheezed. “Best you can do is look out for yourself. Don’t let me drag you down.”

Perceptor tilted his head. “I said ‘we’.”  Just enough force in the tone to cut through Red Alert’s mood. Perceptor wasn’t one for leading or command—he knew all too well his own weaknesses.  But he also knew the weaknesses of others, and, he hoped, how to overcome them. Even if it meant pushing beyond himself.  “What do you need?”

Red Alert twitched.  “I…this damn war to be over.”  His mouth jerked down into a frown.

Perceptor crouched in front of him, his long legs folded, awkward.  His mismatched optics met Red Alert’s holding the gaze inexorably. “Would that help?”

Red Alert’s shoulders sagged. “No. I…I can’t function in that.” He wrung the cool metal of his rifle. “They all see it, even in garrison. What a wreck I am.” Red Alert was…nonfunctional on long stretches without fighting. He had to be cryostasised during long transits: Perceptor had seen the orders.  Red Alert frowned. “Maybe sleeping through a peace I can’t handle’s the best I can hope for.”

Deflection and self-pity.  Perceptor knew this terrain all too well.  “Now,” he reiterated. “What do you need now?”

Red Alert seemed baffled by the question. Perceptor retrenched. “What would make you feel safer?” 

“Out of here.” Red Alert’s gaze flicked to the yawning mouth of the crater, the bright red jags of tracer fire spitting fitful death above them.  His frown turned wry. “But that's not going to happen.” 

Perceptor suddenly splayed one hand over Red Alert’s red chassis, shoving him backwards.  Red Alert, he reminded himself, can argue with words. Not with actions.  And he counted on the surprise startling Red Alert, buying him a few microkliks of time.  Red Alert landed on his back in the dirt, knees jutting up awkwardly, rifle flailed out to one side.  Perceptor spun on his knee, dropping his own weight on Red Alert’s chassis,  backframe against the smaller mech.

“What--!” His cortex caught up: Red Alert squirmed wildly under the larger mech’s weight.

“Feel safer,” Perceptor said.  “Fewer angles of attack.”

“But--“

“Anyone coming over the lip will see me, not you.”  Perceptor lay his rifle over his chest, drawing one of his smaller pistols.  “Even if he shoots, the round won’t get to you through me." Inexorable, calm.

Red Alert struggled for a moment, logic warring with panic.  But of all of Red Alert’s fears, claustrophobia wasn’t one of them: he found the pressure…somehow soothing, as though the war torn ground were curling itself into a cradle around him, holding him safe. And Perceptor on top of him, the tank engines giving a comfortingly bass rumble, the EM field cool and calm, reminded him he was alive, here, head to toeplate.  That mattered more, in its way, than Perceptor’s cool logic.  Someone was here, and,  in his strange, quiet way, cared. Had given him fuel, hadn’t judged him. In a way…understood him. 

A shudder wracked Red Alert’s systems, and one thin whimper escaped his vocalizer.

“Hurting you?” Perceptor’s helm turned, minutely, raising his hips to let Red Alert shift underneath him.

“…no,” Red Alert breathed, and his hands squirmed out from under the larger mass, crumpled ration pouch limp in one hand as he wrapped his arms around Perceptor’s chassis, pulling the weight, the comforting, understanding, protecting weight, down on top of him. 

 

Comments

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

I know more than a few people who do have PTSD/paranoia and trust me, we know how screwed up we are. And Perceptor doesn't quite get it--his deal is different--but he understands the idea of trying to hide what one's really feeling.