Illusion

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW
Drift, Wing
For tformers100 table: talent prompt: illusion

 

Wing whimpered in his recharge, wingflap twitching against Drift’s chassis. Drift snapped awake, optics onlining, searching for threat.  Nothing.  The city outside Wing’s quarters hummed in its peaceful little bubble.  Not a sound out of place. 

Wing twitched again, one ankle, tangled with Drift’s, kicking gently, then more frantically.  The jet went rigid, gasping, bursting awake, arms flailing.

Drift reacted on some instinct—probably wrong. He clutched the jet, arms around the chassis, pulling the trembling wings against him.  “What’s wrong?”

Wing forced himself limp in Drift’s arms—Drift could feel the effort of releasing the tension, as if activating each servo one by one.  “Nothing,” Wing murmured.

Drift frowned. “Not nothing.”

A shrug against him, the spires above the wingstruts bumping his cheek armor.  “A bad memory purge, that’s all.”

Drift gave a noncommittal grunt. “Of what?”

A shudder, which told Drift as much as Wing’s reluctant, “It’s nothing.”

Drift sighed. He was no good at this.  He had no skill, none, in pulling confidences willingly from mechs.  He wanted to threaten, to demand.  But he knew that…wouldn’t work. He let go of the jet, pushing backward to have Wing roll onto his back, facing Drift.  “All I know,” Drift said, letting his optics move to the far wall, “is that if it was nothing, wouldn’t be a big deal to tell someone.”

The gold optics dimmed for a klik, the mouth working. “Yes. You’re right.”  The gaze dropped to Drift’s chassis, and Drift could almost feel his carefully-reconstructed Decepticon logo almost burn on his white armor.  Drift frowned, having a feeling he knew what this was about.  He sat up, abruptly, turning his chassis from Wing’s view.  He hung for a long moment, awkwardly, before he let his optic fall on the elegant sweep of the stabilizers and shin armor.  He hooked his hand under the beam, hauling the leg up and depositing it across his thighs.  “Don’t have to tell me,” he said, clumsily, feeling the tension of the moment between them—Wing’s hesitance, his own inability—yawning large between.  He let his hand slide up the shin armor, letting his fingers explore the white shape, imagining the way the sleek lines sliced through air, the exquisite clean cut of the stabilizer.  Behind him, Wing seemed to soften, and Drift felt fingertips brush the back of one of his spaulders.

“It was Altihex,” Wing whispered.  “I don’t know if you remember.”

Drift’s optics closed briefly. Yes, he remembered.  The orbital torus, sabotaged out of the skies.  It had burned for days, its descent like some blazing omen of the coming war. Cloudburst had told him…enough. His hands tightened over the stabilizer.  He merely nodded. It was all he could do. He  couldn’t apologize—at the time he had been as eager as the rest, rejoicing in the downfall—so literally— of the corrupt plutocrats.  He hadn’t thought, back then, of anything like innocents being lost or damaged or trapped there.  Because they’d never, he’d rationalized, thought of him, starving, in danger, alone, in the gutters.  The blaze of Altihex’s holocaust was…only justice to him then. 

Now…?

He ached for who he had been, how he had exulted in the display. He burned for his own ignorance, blindness, willingly clinging to his own hurt, as a reason to refuse to see hurt in others.   

“A wall collapsed—or blown out. I don’t know.  It changes when I try to remember. My legs were…crushed.  A beam…through my anterior chassis.  Energon…everywhere. I remember bits.  In and out of functionality. Failed rebooting.” He managed a wan laugh. “Ages ago, though.”  As though that mattered. As though time made the past irrelevant.

Drift wished it did but he knew better.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice gravelly, raw, the words so new to him they cut his throat like shards of glass. He knew it wasn’t enough. He could never apologize for it, for himself, for what it had done to Wing. He forced himself to turn, to see the damage he’d exulted in, writ across Wing’s face. His left hand still clung, helplessly, to the stabilizer, like a talisman.

“It doesn’t matter,” Wing murmured, stroking a hand down Drift’s. “I wake up, and I’m here and nothing bad is here.” He attempted a smile. “It makes me appreciate what we have.” 

“Shouldn’t have to suffer to know something’s better,” Drift said. He hated the taut pain on Wing’s face, the fading echoes of it in the jet’s gentle voice.  Hated his part in it more. 

“No,” Wing said, and the smile kindled, tugging at Drift’s elbow, pulling him back down alongside him, where he fit like a gear slipping into place. Wing’s body hummed beneath him, buzzing with life and an infinite sweetness, against which Drift felt blackened and small. “You shouldn’t.”

 

Comments

[playswithworms.livejournal.com]

Another lovely installment of Wing/Drift <3

...willingly clinging to his own hurt, as a reason to refuse to see hurt in others.
One of the harder life wisdoms to learn, right there *nods* And yeah, with the suffering and all it can teach us, but dangit, there's got to be a better way to learn! Because the suffering really sucks sometimes.

[neverminetohold.livejournal.com]

Loved this one. Sadly enough, though, I think that you appreciate the good things you have more after you had to suffer... Aside from big things, that's even the case when you have a cold - aren't we all thinking "man, I never realized how good life is without a sore throat?" and stuff?
And the more you suffer... well... Anyway, liked this one pretty much. Beautiful in it's tragic simplicity, - love that about your writing style, saying much in few words!