shadow_vector | Leaffall

PG
IDW
Wing/Drift
fluff

Drift’s hands were confident on the controls of the grav sled. Something familiar here, after all, he thought.

Although, he was used to using the gravsled to shift heavy ordnance, not…dirt.

“Over here!” The red flashes on Wing’s forearms directed him toward a small tunnel. Drift directed the sled, with an old deftness, one-handed.

Wing’s smile shone in the low light. “Feels good to help, doesn’t it?”

Drift shrugged, noncommittal. It did feel good to be doing something—being cooped up in Wing’s room had begun to feel like oppression. Not that this was any better, anything more than an illusion of freedom, of movement. All he needed to do was tilt his head up and he could see the brown stone ceiling above him, trapping them all. He powered the sled down by the mouth of the tunnel. “What now?”

“We spread the dirt,” Wing said, bending to scoop some of the dark, heavy loam out of the sled’s bin.

After a moment, Drift joined him, wordlessly thrusting his hands into the dirt. It yielded under his fingers, unfamiliar, unlike the hard resistance of metal, filtering into small gaps in his armor. He watched as Wing bent, spreading the soil in a smooth, even layer on the ground, kneeling by him awkwardly.

“This,” Wing said, explaining, gold optics warm and shining, “is required for the specimens to grow in.”

Drift sifted the soil between his fingers. “What’s it made of?”

“Organic material, broken down.”

Drift tilted his head, looking at the small pots of seedlings. “Things grow on the components of the dead.”

Wing gave a short, soft laugh. “I suppose you could think of it like that.” He reached for one of the seedlings, stroking the underside of a leaf. “At least it feeds something beautiful and alive.” His smile took on that sad, distant edge it sometimes had, the one that always managed to wring something along Drift’s spark.

Drift hesitated, flexing his hands to loosen the dirt from the joints. “More than we did,” he murmured.

Wing tilted his head, mutely questioning.

Drift shrugged. “Back in the gutters. We’d…offline and half the time, security sweeps didn’t even find us worth salvage.” His optics fluttered at a sudden, unexpected prickle of emotion. Long dead. Long gone. Why did it still bother him? “Not even useful when dead.” He rubbed his fingers against the pad of his thumb, frowning.

“I’m sorry,” Wing said, looking up from where he knelt, knee stabilizer blades sunk deeply into the soft dirt.

Drift shrugged. “Not your fault.” He paused, turned back to the bin to get more dirt.

“Not about fault. I am sorry that you are in pain.”

Drift’s mouth twisted. “I’m fine,” he snapped.

“Yes,” Wing whispered, “I can see that.”

Drift snapped around, but Wing had bent over the seedlings, scooping a hole in the dark soil. Drift watched, in silence, as Wing loosened one of the seedlings from its container, laying it gently in the hole. Building life, settling roots. He felt stupid, helpless, part of a symbol, tight with anger, hands full of rotted things.

A ripple of noise from behind him: another section of the Xenological Garden, another planet, another world, carefully recreated under the bland stone sky. Wing turned, the line of worry melting from his mouth. He reached for Drift’s hand, heedless of the soil he sent tumbling between them, dragging the other mech after him, toward the noise. “What?”

Wing murmured something that didn’t carry over his broad shoulders. Drift had no choice but to follow along, letting his gaze fix on the swinging soothing movement of the shoulder nacelle.

A crowd, around what looked like an ornate, intricate gnarl of ivory white, reaching up to a spreading canopy of gold. The thing shivered, as though alive, rapt in some ecstasy. A few of the coin-like shapes detached themselves, fluttering down like wishes. One landed, with a soft clink, on Wing’s audial flare, and Drift didn’t catch himself before reaching out to brush it off, his dirty fingers leaving a small smudge, as the mesh-made leaf trembled and fell to the ground.

Wing turned his head, his expression unreadably sweet, that seemed to pierce through Drift’s frame, before he turned back, drawing Drift’s other hand close to his chassis. “Isn’t it beautiful?” he asked.

“What is it?” Drift hovered closer, not wanting to free his hand, though aware of the dark dirt in the joints. The ivory trunk between them shivered again, loosing another flurry of round shapes.

“Pn’xarrian serpent tree,” Wing murmured, reverently. “Once every megacycle, it sheds its leaves.”

“So?”

Wing smiled, his fingers threading between Drift’s. “It’s said that if a leaf falls on you, you will know happiness in the coming megacycle.”

Drift’s optics dropped to the leaf on the ground between them, with a wry snort. Made sense.

Wing turned his gaze back up to the shivering trunk, the ivory limbs sliding along each other, as though it were made of restless, resettling serpents. “It’s strange, isn’t it?”

“What?”

Another shake of the tree, the gold leaves showering down upon them.

Wing laughed, softly. “We have eternity, and here we are, in silent, reverent awe in the face of change.” He held out a palm, letting gold leaves fill his hand like a blessing.

Drift looked up, the golden leaves falling with abandon now as though the low sky had turned into coins, spinning like a kaleidoscope of movement and shape, until the whole world seemed to throb and flash a warm, burnished gold, as gentle and accepting as Wing’s optics.

Drift snorted, tugging their joined hands, pulling Wing against him, his mouth finding the silver mouthplates somehow in the shimmering sea of gold.

Wing kissed him, his hand coming around, scattering the leaves down Drift’s back like phantom caresses. “And,” Wing whispered, “it’s said that lovers who kiss under the leaffall will never be parted.”

Superstition, Drift thought. Silly superstition from some alien civilization probably long dead. It meant nothing.

Still, he couldn’t stop himself from pulling the jet’s mouth against his, one more time.

Just in case.