Mabaya ch 21 Meeting of Shadows

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG-13
IDW
Drift/Deadlock, Turmoil, Perceptor
mindfucking, dark

Perceptor had slumped in that black room until they came for him. He’d hoped for a guard, hoped for an anonymous no one. Which meant he got…Turmoil.  “Deadlock looks well, don’t you think?” Turmoil had purred conversationally, his optics glowing, sated, behind the visor. 

“You told me he was damaged. From the radiation.” A flare of righteous outrage. He had been lied to. He threw the lie in Turmoil’s face.

“He got better.  We spared no effort for a mech as valuable as Deadlock.” A hint of a smirk in the voice. 

Perceptor wilted back against the wall. “What have you done to him?” His voice was soft, halfway between an accusation and a question. 

“Done? Nothing.  Merely reminded him who he is.”  The uncanny flash of movement—the dark, heavy shape dropping to one knee in front of Perceptor.

“Why did you show me this?” if he were not so…in pain, not so broken, he would never have been so weak as to ask the question aloud, give Turmoil the satisfaction of his humiliation.

“He’s not dead,” Turmoil said, calmly, “But as far as you’re concerned, he’s gone.” 

Perceptor nodded. Yes. 

 

[***]

Numb routine.  Perceptor’s body refused to die, though he wanted to. He wanted to. There was simply…nothing to live for.  Thoughts of escape? Futile. Even, imagining (which was an act of imagination far too vast for his current abilities) he could manage, singlehandedly, to escape from the bowels of the ship, gain his freedom…what was the point?  The Autobots didn’t need him. He was worthless, at worst, at best, he had run off, broken their trust, and they’d have no reason nor  will to want to take him back. 

He hated that the only solace he had was burying himself in those never-ending boxes of parts. Fixing, repairing—it was no longer a hopeful metaphor. Now, it was just something that kept his hands busy, some part of his cortex off of himself. 

He reached in, blindly, for the next part.  His hands patted over the flat surface for a handful of kliks before it struck him: the box was empty. He looked over at the neat stacks he had made—flat racks of motherboards, servomotors arranged by size and power rating, capacitors ranged by voltage.  Neat, orderly. If only anything else in his world was. 

He sighed.  He’d been here long enough that they no longer noticed him, really, idly guarding him, knowing he was ‘tame’, non-defiant.  Knowing he didn’t need more than a cursory eye. A disgrace as a Wrecker.  Perceptor flung the accusation at himself,  almost enjoying the bitter slash of pain.

 Perceptor stood up, taking the empty box.  Another. He’d get another from their medbay.  There was always another, sometimes the parts so new and fresh that they still reeked of char, still sticky with energon and coolant fluids. 

The ‘guard’ nodded at the door. You’re no threat, Perceptor.  Without a gun, you’re nothing but a machine to repair small parts.  He realized that should have stung, and it was even a further sign of his degradation that…it didn’t. 

Perceptor stepped into the corridor, turning up toward the repair bay, box in hand. He heard voices, and turned, ducking into a small alcove behind a set of emergency blast doors.  He was still an Autobot, his insignia fresh and bright on his chestplate.  And Turmoil’s ‘protection’?  Probably as trustworthy as the Decepticon commander himself.

“What I want to know is,” one voice said, “Does it bother you to be killing your former Autobot buddies?”

A snort. “Right. You think it bothered him to be killing us when he was one of them?”

Perceptor stiffened, clutching the box in front of him.  They could only be talking about, talking to, one mech.

Drift’s voice, but flat, harsh, the way he spoke the few times he’d gotten truly, truly angry.  “Did it bother me to shoot Clutch in the head?”

A flash of white. Perceptor restrained himself from looking. Oh, Drift. He tilted his head back, optics shuttering, as if trying to shut out the evidence of how far Drift had fallen. Or, if Turmoil told it correctly, who Drift was really revealed to be.

A bitter laugh. “Yeah, kind of ironic, don’t you think? You shooting someone for disloyalty?”

The other mech chimed in. “You flip sides so many times, Deadlock, I’ve lost count.”

A dangerous, feral growl.  That, Perceptor knew.  The familiarity was spark-wrenching.

“Don’t know why Turmoil wants you back.” The voice was brittle with disdain. 

A tense silence.  Then, Drift’s voice. “He wants me because I’m good at killing.” 

The first mech laughed. “Just…don’t really care who you kill, do you?”

“No. I don’t.”  Open threat in the words. Tension sang through the air.  Perceptor could picture it, the low crouch Drift would take, one hand on the hilt of one sword, optics wide and wary. The silence built, crested, and then erupted into a dark sound.

“Whatever.” Footsteps, walking away.

Perceptor pushed himself from the wall.  The guard would be waiting, wondering where he was.  And he desperately didn’t want to play and replay the scene over in his cortex.  He stepped around the flat plane of the bulkhead…

…and came face to face with Drift. 

They stood, frozen.  Staring at each other, optics wide with something like fear, standing, broken, bare before each other.  Drift’s hand was still on his sword—just as Perceptor had imagined and the fact that he had pictured it so clearly in his mind made it all the more poignant—the arm over his chassis twitching, as though blocking his spark.  Perceptor found himself clutching the empty box between them like a barrier or shield, something hard and hollow, some talisman against his own weak emptiness.

“Drift,” Perceptor said, the word falling, unbidden, unwanted, from his vocalizer.

“No,” Deadlock said, but there was something moving, an injured serpent thrashing behind the red burn of his optics as he turned away, staring through Perceptor like a ghost.

Perceptor lingered for a moment, staring at the white and black frame, so familiar, so strange, storming into the shadows of the corridor, as if being swallowed by Mabaya’s darkness.

Comments

[kamiraptor.livejournal.com]

Aaahhhhh *flails*

I... I... D:

But they....!!!!


*is speechless*

I want to just smush them together and force them to be happy lol. I think your way here is much better. ^_^