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shadow_vectorBayverse; Sky and Ground AU
Thundercracker, Barricade
no warnings except you've probably totally lost the plot. :)
“So,” Barricade said, “Tell me you have a plan.” He ran through the last checks of his pro-pack. They were nearing the Autobot base and Barricade didn’t want to have Thundercracker complain about being held back by him. Thundercracker had indicated the base was a deca’s travel from the asteroid behind which they were drifting. They’d gone undetected, somehow, both of them running every sensor scan they could. Not even a ripple. They were safe, for now. And they needed a plan.
“Of course I have a plan, grounder,” Thundercracker snapped, then added, “It’s just…not a very good one.” His red optics flashed at Barricade, daring him to make a comment.
Barricade wasn’t in any mood to be pleasant to Thundercracker. Not after what the jet had done. Oh, he understood why, and probably would agree that it wouldn’t have worked any other way, but that didn’t mean he was willing to let it go. “No comment,” he snapped, toggling his thruster controls. “Gonna hear you coming,” he added.
Thundercracker growled. “I know that, grounder.”
“Could use you as a distraction…,” Barricade mused.
Thundercracker bridled. “I am not the distraction,” he said, one of his chain guns bursting from its housing, barrels spinning. Not in threat, but a reminder. Even Barricade knew the blue jet wouldn’t bring him so far, through so much, to kill him now. Not when his death would hurt the Quaterne. Not when, at any rate, his death might serve Skywarp’s freedom.
“Okay, so, better plan,” Barricade countered. “Open to ideas.”
Thundercracker glowered, but tapped his talons together, thoughtful. “We need to get Skywarp.”
“Know that!” Barricade snapped, throwing the blue jet’s words back at him. “Whole fraggin’ point, right?”
“I meant,” Thundercracker said, optics narrowing, “We need to get him on board, on the plan, let him know we’re here.”
Oh. Right. Barricade’s mouth twisted, refusing to apologize. “How we gonna do that? You wouldn’t let me comm him before and if they pick up the signal now….”
“I know,” Thundercracker said, but with less hostility than Barricade expected. “And the bond is still closed.”
“Why’s he doing that?” Barricade hated that he didn’t know. Didn’t know enough about this bond, didn’t know enough about Skywarp to know his motivations.
“To protect us,” Thundercracker said, putting enough tartness in his voice to make it sound like he was doing a favor dispelling Barricade’s ignorance. “If he keeps it shut down, we’d have a chance to survive the physical death if he died.”
The…physical death. Barricade didn’t want to know what the rest meant. Right. Bad. “S-so we can’t reach him at all?”
“Not…normally.” Thundercracker’s optics turned to Barricade, studying him. “We can force the bond, two of us, though.”
“Force?” That sounded painful.
Thundercracker read his discomfort across the bond. “He deserves a little hurt for doing this to us, to himself,” he said, coldly. “And we need his help or all we’re doing is getting all three of us offlined.”
Thundercracker had settled on the idea, Barricade could tell, and nothing and no one was going to shift him. “So how do we do this, then. Since, apparently, we’re going to do this,” Barricade griped.
“Oh it’s a real thrill for me,” Thundercracker muttered. He pulled Barricade close, grinding his mouthplates, as his chest armor retracted.
“OH frag no,” Barricade wriggled. “Not interfacing with you a deca away from the slaggin’ enemy!”
Thundercracker’s optics glinted. “You were a lot closer with Skywarp on that assault,” he said, blandly. “Besides. This isn’t interfacing. Just spark contact.”
“Just spark contact,” Barricade muttered. Right. Was that all. But he had no choice—necessity and the pressure of the open spark calling to his systems, and Thundercracker’s insistent presence over the bond. His front fender collapsed, folding back out of the way. “Make it quick.”
“I’ll do what we need to do,” Thundercracker pulled him closer, but the insistence edged softer, blurrier around the edges, tinting purple. Yes, Barricade thought. About Skywarp.
He let upper set of optics drift closed, opening to the spark contact. Thundercracker felt different this time, open and blue. Still prickly, still resisting, but with a certain regal presence and confidence that hadn’t been there when they’d bonded. Gold and blue light danced together, unwilling, clumsy partners, but determined.
Thundercracker took control, enveloping Barricade’s presence with his own, directing it toward the violet threads that seemed to float, drift untethered around them. Skywarp’s presence, fading tendrils. They reached together, gathering as many of the purple strands as they could, bundling them, working together. Thundercracker gave a pulse of acknowledgment, the closest he would come to praise or gratitude, and then pushed them both along the purple strands, spinning them together with their own colors, drawing Barricade’s gold like a thin fiber, weaving a bridge, reaching back along the purple. It was miserable work, slow and tedious, the purple threads beginning to writhe and try to detach, and Barricade found himself on back-duty, snatching at the recalcitrant threads, holding them down with formless, massless hands, trying to send pulses of reassurance along them.
Then, suddenly, it felt as if a chasm opened underneath them, and Barricade felt his talons clatter over Thundercracker’s armor in a body that seemed somehow very, very far away. And they lurched into a mass of purple, dark, swirling and faintly malevolent, lurching in, seeping with pain.
//No comm,// Thundercracker reminded him.
Barricade gave a pulse of acknowledgement himself. He remembered. Instead the two seemed to float together, blue and gold, in the turbulent sea of purple.
Something, some shadowy presence approached, moving through, under the darkness, slithering like a serpent, circling them like some feral presence, sensing them, measuring them.
Skywarp, Barricade thought, urgently, longingly. Where was he? Had that thing gotten him? Were they too late, after all? Please, please be okay, Skywarp. I…need you.
His desperate thoughts poured like hot amber light in the darkness, like a vat of molten metal spilling over.
And the darkness seemed to blossom, and the slithering thing seemed to twist and change and brighten and glow, and then the two of them were surrounded in a living, trembling sheathe of purple and joy. Skywarp.
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Date: 2011-12-07 03:11 am (UTC)So happy to see more of this!!!
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Date: 2011-12-07 03:54 am (UTC)Kind Regards,
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Date: 2011-12-07 04:04 am (UTC)This is still one of my very favourite fics, and I'm always so happy to see an update!
I loved that last line, all I can picture is a Skywarp shaped puppy that stops growling when it realises who's just come home. ;3;
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Date: 2011-12-07 04:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-07 08:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-07 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-07 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-07 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-07 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-08 11:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-08 11:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-09 09:31 pm (UTC)Then I read it and just gigglemelted for TC and Barricade. :3 And finally Skywarp!!!
*so happy*
Hooray!
Date: 2011-12-11 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-20 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 02:35 am (UTC)