Meridian Prologue and Chapter One

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

R
IDW AU
Wing, Deadlock, Lockdown
violence For series: sticky, noncon, dubcon, mindfucking, angst
The whole premise of this AU: that Deadlock really had betrayed the Circle and set up the final battle to sell them out to the Slavers and go back to the Decepticons. 

The battle was over, the cyberdrenaline beginning to ebb, too quickly, from Deadlock’s systems. He’d needed the battle, like some sort of drug, needed the violence, the hard rush of life crashing into death. The swords had only been…more addictive, more personal, a refinement he decided he liked, as he stroked one thumb down a blade, through the gummy lines of energon and alien fluid. Close, intimate. Personal.

He wiped the blade across the bevel on his forearm before sliding it into the scabbard. “Secure him,” he said, feeling the note of command, hard as steel, rasp in his voice, matching the slide of the sword. It felt…good. In control, again. Finally.

Lockdown frowned, nasal plating crinkling in something like distaste.  Deadlock flicked an optic at him. Complain all he might, he was hired to do a job:  to retrieve Deadlock.  Deadlock had considerable leeway, then, to set terms. Even Lockdown knew that if it came down toe-to-toe, Deadlock could win, fight his way from the hunter’s pursuit.

But why not play along?  It was what Deadlock had wanted all along, after all—to get back to the war, back to fighting.  If he could get that—and a little bonus for his time and trouble—why not?

It was, after all, the Decepticon way.

Deadlock couldn’t keep the swagger from his walk, crossing the littered battlefield. The slave traders were gathering the rest of the Knights, bodily tossing some of them onto a gravsled.   But Wing…Wing knelt, an inhibitor clamp around his frame, pinning his wings to his body.  He was battered from the battle, dented, stained with energon, and would have died, had Deadlock not jerked the blaster off a dead slaver, shooting Braid in the arm to deflect a fatal blow. 

“You,” Deadlock said, the smirk coloring his voice, “owe me your life.” Irony, sweet and sharp.

“Drift,” Wing said, gold optics still glazed, uncomprehending.  The arrogant jet—he’d been so certain of everything: his rightness, his superiority.  He had earned this comedown.

And it would get worse, if Deadlock had any say in it.   “Deadlock,” he answered. 

The sensuous mouth twitched.  “So…it’s been a lie.”

Deadlock felt his own mouth curl into a smirk. “Everything.” 

“I…can’t believe that.”

A glitter of the blue optics Deadlock couldn’t wait to change. “You will.” 

[***]

Wing’s foot scraped loudly in the small room.  His optics cycled low in the darkness, the gold a dim amber glow. A row of energon cubes lay nearby, full. Why fuel? There was no purpose, no point.  He didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be alive. He’d been wrong—tragically, monumentally wrong. And others had died, while he…had lived. 

Five days he’d been here, the vibration of a ship’s drive under him, something he only distantly remembered from their long-ago, headlong flight from a burning Cybertron. A ship, again. Hurling him towards a once-again unknown future. He hadn’t realized howmuch he’d counted on stability, familiarity, until it was torn from him.  The City.

And Drift.  Or…whoever Drift was. 

The images flashed bright in the darkness, no matter how tightly Wing shuttered his optics: Cloudburst falling, his deep battlecry cut abruptly short; sharp screams of pain; clashes of metal on metal; the dull buzz-burst of blaster discharge, bolts of energy, pellets of pure color and light.  Too much action, too much stimuli colliding all at once, shattering the beautiful image of the peace of Crystal City into bright, noisy shards.

Wing could have wept, were he not numb, as though tears were solace he did not deserve.

A footfall, outside and then the whine of the old cell door rolling aside. Wing didn’t even look up: what was the point? Why gift whoever it was with his curiosity? 

“Wing.” A wry amusement in the voice. Deadlock. 

“Yes.”  Giving nothing more: Wing had so very little to give. Even the word seemed an effort.

A movement, Deadlock dropping into a low squat.  His face was curved into that hard smirk that set something trembling with unease near Wing’s spark. “At least you’re alive,” he said, voice thick with some rich amusement….

…that curdled in Wing’s audio.  “I’d rather be with the others.”

A twitch of one optic shutter, the smile ruffling before resettling.  “How much attention did you pay for what I’d rather do?” 

“I was trying to help you! I rescued you!”

“I didn’t need rescue.” The mouth twitched, denying reality. The slavers would have killed him that first night.  He knew it, Wing thought. He had to.  But he was deliberately shoving that aside, clinging to some hard resentment.

“Drift--.”

Deadlock shook his head, optics flicking in semi-amused tolerance. “Not quick to catch on,” he said, mildly. “That’s your problem.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’re Drift. Deny it all you want.” A flash of the gold optics.

Deadlock shook his head. “I’ll win this one, Wing.”

Wing folded his hands on his upraised thighs. “What do you want with me?”

A dark laugh, and a hand brushing the framing of his shin. “You.”

“Some petty revenge,” Wing said.  He straightened, his wings grating against the wall behind him. 

Deadlock snorted, shaking his head again. “You never understood me, Wing.” His head tilted to the opposite wall. “Revenge.  Simplistic.”  He sounded insulted.

“Well then, what is this all about?”

“Proving the same point to you you were trying to prove to me.”  Deadlock leaned forward, the crest of his helm catching Wing’s. He tilted up, drawing the jet’s face up with it, optics blue as ice in the gold wash, mouthplates hard against Wing’s. 

“What point is that?” Wing asked, trying to draw his head back, caught between Deadlock’s voracious smile and the unforgiving wall.

“Superiority, Wing,” Deadlock said, burying his rough laughter in a hard kiss.

Wing’s hands came up, against the white spaulders—so familiar, the designs of Crystal City—yet seemingly over something alien and ugly and hard. Everything Dai Atlas had warned him of. Everything he’d refused to believe.  He pushed against the armor, trying to make space, tear his mouth free.  “Force,” he managed. “Ownership.”

Deadlock caught one of Wing’s mouthplates, biting down. “And what,” he asked, around the bite, optics blue, coy sparks, “would you call what you did to me?”

Comments

[velvet-infinity.livejournal.com]

D:

Oh noes! My Wing!!! TT^TT

Drift, Y u be so mean!?

Does Perceptor make an appearance in this?

[eerian_sadow]

*shivers* oh this is brilliant! cannot wait to see more!

[birdiebot.livejournal.com]

Dark fic *squees* This made my terrible day a little less terrible. :D

[not-your-gun.livejournal.com]

Oh, this excites me. I particularly love the turn-around that Deadlock pulls on Wing--that yes, technically Wing was 'holding him for his own good,' and now he'd get to see what it was like.

I cannot wait to see more.

[aughoti (from livejournal.com)]

Oh, this is intriguingly dark... makes a chilling kind of sense.

[swift117.livejournal.com]

It is so you... to discover EVERY aspects, every possibility of a plot. Such a play, all in reverse! Good bye, gentle confused Drift. Im already crying for Wing.