Mabaya ch 19 Battlefield

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW Mabaya AU
Drift/Deadlock, Turmoil, Perceptor
Standard Turmoil mindf***ing warning.

Deadlock sat, numb, as the others eyed him.  This will be over soon, he thought, the dark looks, the judging sneers.  This would pass.  And better it pass while he couldn’t feel a thing. He had a vague…rustle of something like hope that he’d stay this numb forever, but he was learning better than to trust anything. He wanted to die: his body had wanted to live; he wanted to change: fate had brought him right back here, sitting around the command table at Turmoil’s right hand.  

He kept thinking of Perceptor—the sniper’s words seeming to echo from the depths of Deadlock’s hollowness, his cool vulnerable optics seeming to stare into Deadlock’s emptiness. Dead. It seemed impossible.  Another mech who believed in you, Deadlock, and paid for that belief with his life.  

His fault.  He was a fool to have believed.  Gave him enough warning. Gave him enough signs. 

The punishment for foolhardiness shouldn’t be death. And I tried to save him. I tried.  

See what your ‘trying’ accomplishes?  

What to do? What to do when your body insists on living, your cortex insists on functioning?  He wanted to lie in that room—though not even that really, his old quarters laden with memories to the point of scenting the air—he wanted to lie still, external feeds cut off. He wanted to throw himself in the acid pain of his loss.  He wanted to mourn: Wing, Gasket, Perceptor, himself.  

But his body had demanded fuel, and after a while, the weakness outweighed the pain of the hunger, and the distraction of the gnawing emptiness in his tanks had ceased to distract his cortex from the list of everything he’d done. Betrayer.  Traitor.  Coward.  There weren’t even words to describe what he was, no string of syllables strong enough to hold his self-loathing. And that road had somehow led…here. Nowhere and everywhere.  

“And Deadlock,” Turmoil said, the orange line of his optics warming on the white frame, “will cover the initial battle plan.  Which,” he added, with bright amusement, “he will be monitoring from here. So, best behave, mechs.”  

Deadlock let his optics shutter for a long moment, hoping the moment would crest and pass.   

It didn’t.  

[***]

 

The box dropped with a ringing rattle at Perceptor’s feet.  He looked up, dully.   

Turmoil gave a nod down at him.  “Go on,” he said, “I brought you…a compromise.”  

Perceptor hesitated, but his curiosity won.  That and the awareness that had been growing for cycles now, like some fast-replicating virus, that if he were to trap himself in his head, do nothing he would surely go insane. He needed to do…something. His problem, his failing, in the cell was that he had done so very little. Talk. All he’d done was talk. Useless. 

He pulled the box over: it was filled with broken parts: damaged circuit boards, melted wires, cracked servos, a hundred little parts, all useless. 

“You said you wouldn’t work on weapons. Surely, it’s not above you to repair mech components?”

He wanted to protest, to resist, to point out that these parts, repaired, might go into mechs that had killed, would kill, Autobots.  But…Drift. It seemed like a metaphor, repairing from the microlevel.  “I’ll need tools,” he said, aware that it was simply a dignified surrender. 

“You’ll have everything you need,” Turmoil said, his deep voice hinting there was more meaning in there, as though simple declarative was beneath him.

“I need to see Drift,” Perceptor countered. There was a strength, he was discovering, from having seen the worst of one’s fate.  When one’s back is against the wall, one has some leverage.

“That,” Turmoil gave an amused optic flicker, “can be arranged. If…you behave.”

Perceptor looked down at the box of parts, his will shredded between refusal and obedience.  He couldn’t bring himself to answer in words—they always failed him. 

He reached for the box.  Turmoil laughed.

[***]

The battle raged on in front of Deadlock, in the small blips on the tactical screen.  And inside him, as he watched the distant combat, watched red blips surge for and encircle blue blips, another battle.  Did he know those mechs, the blue ones?  Had he fought with them? For them? 

They weren’t Wreckers, he consoled himself. Wreckers would have done a more creditable job on the battlefield.  But still, the fight tore at him, as though it had grown thousands of claws in his processor, tearing its way through his last reserves of strength.

The doors to the command center whooshed open.  Deadlock didn’t look: he knew who it was without needing to see the huge brown-grey bulk, the orange-red optics, glowing in the backlight. 

“Miss it?”  Turmoil stepped closer, optics flitting from the command display to Deadlock. 

“No.” A lie.  Whatever side he fought on, whatever badge he wore, he couldn’t deny that he lived for combat: life and death separated by a line thinner than a razor’s edge, where everyone was equal, no one special, no one safe. Combat was the ultimate democracy. 

“You’re wasted up here,” Turmoil said. 

I know.  Deadlock said nothing, studying the display.

“Here,” Turmoil’s finger brushed the hologram, expanding a fragment of the battlefield.  “What would you do?”

Deadlock studied the scenario, calling up the topography:  the Autobots held the high ground, a sloped salient, firing down in a wide firefan.  He knew what he’d do—charge the damn thing himself, knowing that they were spread thin, knowing that he’d have a good chance of making it to the top to take them all out.  “Air support,” he said, dully. 

He felt Turmoil’s optics on him. “Is it possible you’re learning?”  Quiet mockery. 

“Possible.” 

Turmoil gave a moue, leaning over, his void-cool EM field rasping over Deadlock’s.  “I prefer it when you fight me, Deadlock.”

“I know.” 

A laugh. “So this?  This is your resistance?” 

Deadlock raised his head, meeting Turmoil’s gaze.  “Yes.” 

Turmoil shook his head. “I expected better from you.  These Autobots have weakened you, Deadlock.”

I know.

 

 

 

Comments

[d-lueth.livejournal.com]

*chomps on Turmoil*

Leave my mechs alone! D:

[anavidbookworm.livejournal.com]

The more you write in this verse the worse I feel for Drift/Deadlock and the more I want to kill Turmoil. Hopefully Drift/Deadlock will figure out that Perceptor is alive soon.

[kamiraptor.livejournal.com]

:-O

Don't give up, boys! Hang on!!!

*wibbles n flails in turns*