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shadow_vector2011-11-10 06:58 am
Mabaya 26 Nadir
PG-13
IDW Mabaya AU
Perceptor, Deadlock/Drift, Turmoil
torture,
Perceptor entered the code to the door. The guard had told him simply, ‘cleanup’ but his very tightmouthed reticence was more than a clue of what Perceptor would find behind the door. It may have seemed that Turmoil had forgotten about him, but Perceptor knew better by now: destroying him was Turmoil’s hobby, his recreation. It was the opposite of vanity that assured him that Turmoil did not, would not, forget.
The door opened to a tableau of a nightmare: energon, spattered on the walls, pooling purple and dark on the floor. Plates of armor, springs and cogs, bits of wire, littered the floor near the table, dented and torn and battered. And the smell. Burnt ozone, the acrid black smell of melted wire insulation, metal heated past melting point, the tang of fluids and something mustier underneath, as if pain and fear and despair had a smell that stung at the optics.
This, his cortex told him, cool, logical, this is what could have been your fate. This could have been your end. For there was no doubt that the mech—the bulk of the body dragged aside, thrown to recycling and salvage, was dead. And Perceptor found himself hoping, in spite of the evidence that crunched and stuck under his footplates, that it was a quick death.
He dropped his sorting bins on the floor and got to work. Perceptor found himself hoping he hadn’t known the mech, as he picked up the scraps, sorting through the sticky metal for parts that could be salvaged.
Whoever had done this hadn’t had an optic toward salvage, merely brutality. He frowned, sorting bits of wire, using his insulation stripper to peel off damaged coating, testing the copper’s conductivity before spooling it around a finger and dropping it in a bin for re-extruding, duckwalking awkwardly around the table, reaching for another part.
A dull clank of metal, a small piece falling on the worn grating of the decking. Perceptor twitched—he’d thought he’d be here alone, but that sound came from…the corner. A thousand malignant possibilities raced through his cortex. Until his optics cycled into the darker levels of lowlight and….
…Drift.
The white armor was stained, smeared with energon, blackened with scorchmarks. The red optics glowed dully in the light, half-lidded, one hand prying up a handplate, worrying at the metal, twisting it back and forth, waiting for it to snap. As though that was some cue.
Perceptor froze. ‘What have they done to him?’ was his first question, but no. The real question was ‘what had he done to himself?’ Perceptor edged closer, wary of the feral glint in the optics as Drift caught sight of him, hand freezing in its work.
“Get out.” Drift’s voice was a scalded echo of what Perceptor remembered.
“Job to do,” Perceptor countered. He took heart in the glimmer of recognition, the way the optics focused on his face: knowing him.
“Not safe.”
“No place on this ship is.”
Drift gave a vague nod, the white finials slicing arcs in the darkness. Agreeing—no safety on this ship, for either of them. “I did that,” he said, distantly, lifting his damaged hand, gesturing toward the sticky mess on the floor. A warning. A cry for help.
“Yes.” It sickened Perceptor to think of—less the brutality than what it had obviously taken out of Drift. But Drift did not need his disgust right now. Drift stared at him, long and hard, the hand returning to his lap, the other hand closing over it, ready to re-begin the work of tearing at it.
Perceptor moved forward, laying a hand over Drift’s. “Don’t,” he whispered, “please.”
The courtesy seemed to hurt—Drift flinched, optics flicking shut. But the hands stopped under Perceptor’s and the optics, when they reopened, looked desolate and lost.
Perceptor rocked forward, awkwardly, onto one knee, pulling his arms around Drift’s shoulders, tugging him off the wall, feeling the sluggish resistance, and then, abruptly, the break, the yielding, the white arms coming around him with the force of something like a trap. No, not a trap, but a desperate mech clinging onto hope. The stained white frame shuddered against him reeking of sweet char, and something more: fear, despair. The hands trembled over his back, as though aware of what they had done, what they had enjoyed doing.
“Don’t know who I am anymore,” the voice said, broken, pitiful, the helm bumped awkwardly against Perceptor’s, as though unwilling—or afraid—to face him.
“Drift,” Perceptor murmured, letting the vibration travel through their contacted metal. He stroked the back of the white helm. He moved closer, knees crunching on broken bits of metal, shards of glass. Not heeding, not caring. “You’re Drift.”
[***]
Deadlock still felt numb. But it was a different numbness than before. Now it felt warm, mobile, life returning in hot jabbing prickles where before it had been cold and heavy and dead. Perceptor had murmured against him, for cycles it seemed, like a fall of rain, steady and patient, falling and falling until it could penetrate the cold, hard ground. He’d repeated Drift’s name until Deadlock had responded, his voice almost a whimper. And then he had whispered plans, like a promise: the crystal drive, an explosive charge, escape. And Deadlock had felt something stir within him, some hot serpent of revenge writhe to life, sink its dark fangs into Perceptor’s words. And the idea—blowing the ship, detonating the Mabaya, Turmoil, this whole wretched nest of bad memories, burning it up…had glowed like a pole star to Deadlock.
“Yes,” he’d murmured. He would help. He would help destroy this ship, and Turmoil. Entirely, completely, no half measures. Not this time. Burn out the ship, destroy all the malice and evil. Raze the world.
Destroy himself.
He hadn’t told Perceptor that part, of course. Private, personal, a truth too deep to express. But Deadlock knew he was stained, damaged, ruined. He knew there was…no redemption, no recovery for him. Only in death could he hope for some measure of recompense, some amount of peace.
“You look…disturbed.” Turmoil’s voice, rumbling against his side. Deadlock lifted a hand, dropping it on his own crest.
“Have reason to be,” he muttered. Like Turmoil cared. Like Turmoil wanted him any other way.
“You do,” Turmoil admitted. “And how is Perceptor?”
Deadlock felt the too-familiar smirk splay on his mouthplates. “How do you think he is?”Turmoil chuckled, letting one of his large hands trail down Deadlock’s side. “One hopes, miserable.”
Deadlock grunted. Yes. That would hardly be a lie to admit.
“And you, Deadlock? How are you?” The hand slid between Deadlock’s thighs, for the narrow gap in the armor. He shuddered, half-aroused, half-disturbed.
“Miserable,” he said, a bitter echo, turning his orange-red optics on the flat glare of the visor.
Turmoil laughed outright, and for a klik his bared throat was just…there, within reach, within range, as he threw his head back. And Deadlock…didn’t move. There, right there, a cable he could crush, a piston rod he could maul. And he lay there, hand limp on his brow, fingers barely even curling around the hatred in his palm, tangible as a stone.
And Turmoil pushed a knee between his thighs, his hand moving to the interface hatch tucked under the chassis, rumbling with contentment. “Good.”
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*squeaks!*
*bites nails*
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I wonder what that will mean for Turmoil.
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