Banshee

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG-13
IDWBayverse, post Reign of Starscream
Arcee, Elita-1, Flatline
alleged scariness that probably isn't that scary.

It was like losing her all over again. She remembered all too clearly the shot she’d had to take, back on Cybertron, Elita chained to the cube.  A hollow pain, under her spark, like a wound that wouldn’t heal.

I could have gotten her free. I could have, at least, killed her quickly.

I let her die, in agony, taking the shot. I did the right thing, for the combat, the wrong thing, for my sister.

War had taken her, and she had given herself to war, like a lover in the first throes of passion, wanting to be taken, drowned, consumed by it. Willing to die, only willing to live to kill, trying to do anything as long as it kept her moving.

Because when she stopped….

“Arcee.”  The voice tendriled through her audio, like a cold worm, slithering through her cortex.  And the face, the smooth contours of cheeks, the gentle blue optics glowing from the darkness.

“Elita.” There was no sense denying it, denying her.

“I’m lonely,” Elita said, or the voice said, plaintive, sad.  A flash and Arcee could almost see the glyphs of the false AllSpark behind her.

“You’re not real.” Flat denial. She knew this: had seen Elita blown apart herself, the cube destroyed as the megalomaniacal folly it was. 

Elita’s face, the optics tilted down, almost weeping sorrow, tears of lubricant almost glowing in the dimness, like pearls. This was a place without space, dimension, without form. Just the beloved face and yawning emptiness—the emptiness of her spark.  “Arcee? I hurt.”

“I’m sorry.” The image flashed over her cortex—Elita bound to the cube, the shock of the generator draining her spark, the way the body had wracked and twisted. .  “I’m sorry it hurt.”  It hurt right now, seeing Elita, or the ghost of her, or some glitch in her guilt-splayed processor. Real or not, phantasm or not, there was no way it didn’t hurt, like something tearing out her spark.

The face frowned, leaning in. “Don’t cry, Arcee. Please.”  A brush against her cheek. It felt so real—warm, even the resonance of Elita’s EM field. 

Memory, she thought. Memory is a wonderful, terrible thing.

“I want to,” she said, quietly. “But I can’t.” Not even in her dreams, and that was the worst of it—lurching on the brink of mourning, the abyss looming before her, and she wanted, so badly, to tumble into it, to lose herself, evaporate, obliterate her being in wracking sobs, in shaking grief.

And it struck her, a dark, oily, evil thought, that Elita wanted her here, sliding on the razor’s edge of suffering, denied, forever, any relief. And Arcee found she deserved it.

“Don’t cry,” Elita repeated, only this time it sounded sharp, like an order, malevolent and slimy.

“Forgive me,” Arcee said, the words like slow pumice in her chassis, grating their way out her vocalizer.

“For what?” The voice, singsongy, the angles of the face growing sharp, acute, almost hyperfocused, and the question had the air of a catechism.

“For choosing victory over you.” She was surprised that the answer came so quickly, so cleanly.  It must have been growing, like a seed, in her subcortical array, fed on the dark soil of her memories.

“Victory.” The word shook into a laugh, the face rippling like a reflection on water, turning the word into mockery.

Victory, she thought. Some victory. Just dragging the war on longer, just feeding more lives into the maw of the war’s insatiable appetite. Pitching them ahead of her, as though trying to sate it before it could devour her, holding herself on another ledge, dancing on a knife blade.  “I know.” She felt herself withdraw, curling into the shadows, trying compress herself, smaller and smaller against the sudden gouging pain.

“Victory,” Elita repeated, this time, her mouth stretching open, tearing, and the sound rising into a shriek, the sound itself piercing and shrill. Light tore at her optics, harsh and white, shredding the darkness.

And a pressure, sudden, heavy, driving down against her shoulder, then the other, red hot lances of pain scattering sparks over her vision, and the lights were beating down upon her, around the sudden sharp silhouette of a red-opticed face, titanium teeth leering from his mouth.

“So glad you’re finally awake, Arcee,” Flatline leered. And her cortex flooded with memories, a hurricane of images assaulting her—the attack, the blue and gold frame of Thundercracker, the wreckage of the other bodies, floating limply in space, fluids drifting like frozen gems.  “Now, we can begin.”

And behind her optics, Elita echoed the words in a laugh of night-dark satin.

Comments

[eerian_sadow]

i can't vouch for scary, cause my threshold for that is in a really weird place, but Flatline was fucking creepy there at the end. you have this really otherworldly, ghost encounter that's sorrowful and heartbreaking and then the transition to the real world and *bam* creepy Flatline.

it's brilliant.

[silaphet.livejournal.com]

wow! still reveling in the twist ... rereading adds delicious new dimensions to ghoulish enjoyment.

[wicked3659.livejournal.com]

*shudders* I have chills, banshee's are pretty scary by themselves but throwing creepy as fuck Flatline in there is horror genius! I love it!! :D