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shadow_vector2011-12-13 12:37 pm
Mabaya 28 Gears in Motion
IDW Mabaya AU
Deadlock/Drift, Perceptor, Turmoil
dark
Turmoil ambled around Deadlock’s quarters, hands folded behind his back, ignoring—or feeding on—Deadlock’s glower.
“Search if you’re going to search,” Deadlock snapped, throwing himself back along the berth in a picture of insolence.
“And if I’m not?” Turmoil turned, optics glinting, taking in Deadlock’s pose with a sort of appreciative amusement.
“Then what are you here for?” Hard to keep the sneer out of his voice, but it was a good mask for his tension.
“Entertainment, of course.” Turmoil paused, staring at a blank spot in the wall. “Symbolic, I think, that these walls remain so bare.”
“Is it.” Deadlock steepled his fingers on his chassis, studiously ignoring Turmoil.
“I think so, yes.” Turmoil moved over, dropping one hip on the berth. “Blank slate.”
“Blank.”
“Always, Deadlock.” Turmoil canted his head. “Finally wiped clean again.”
“You might be surprised.”
“Or I might not.” Turmoil laughed. “You’re so easy to goad. Can you really say I haven’t controlled everything—everything—since you returned?”
Deadlock thought of Perceptor, murmuring to him in the messy, spattered interrogation room: the plan, the revenge, details, timelines. Beautifully set, with all the scientific precision he’d come to know from Perceptor. A comforting thoroughness, control. He’d clung to it as a kind of stability, a world around which he could try to reform himself.
It didn’t have to hold. It didn’t have to last long. Just long enough to get Perceptor free. Just long enough to blow the ship.
And then Drift would be free.
Maybe…I’ll see Wing again.
“No,” he said, slowly, finally. Turmoil never lied. Deadlock would allow himself one. “You’ve always been in control.”
Turmoil purred. “And yet you keep fighting me.” He reached forward, running one hand up Deadlock’s leg. He leaned closer. “Don’t ever stop fighting me, Deadlock,” he whispered, his voice soft, importuning, like a lover’s.
One lie and only the one. Absolute truth: “I won’t.”
[***]
Perceptor placed the oscillator in position, backplates scraping the ground as he tucked it under the harmonic resonator. Once he cleared the room, the proximity fuse would fire and then he’d have less than half a cycle to make it to the escape pods. He remembered the codes—Deadlock had murmured them like an intimacy, the alphanumeric string a bond between them. He would get there, wait for Deadlock. They’d leave, be done with this horrid place. Put it all behind them.
I will keep your secrets, Drift, he thought. I will tell no one.
And then begin the long painful work of putting themselves back together. The physical changes would only be the obvious, the easiest. Perceptor never wanted to see Drift’s optics red again. He wanted to scour that white armor, obliterating every trace of Turmoil’s touch, Turmoil’s influence. Replace that hand, yes. Even the hand was too much of a reminder, too symbolic.
He found something like a smile, bitter, blasted, pushing against his mouth. Wait. Patience, Perceptor. Do not rush, do not fling yourself headlong into the future, so blind that you trip over the present.
He pushed to his feet, long legs unfolding. The crystal chamber was still sour with bad harmonics, his balance gyros whirling a little off kilter, despite the protective nodes. Cross the threshold and the fuse would fire. Cross the threshold and it would all begin.
The end.
Perceptor tapped the code, the door whisking open, a blast of icy air slamming down on him, an old technique to dampen the harmonic leakage. He stepped through.
[***]
He sent a quick burst on the Autobot channel as he stepped past the cold sonic barrier. A risk, a tiny one the one way to get Drift to know it was time to move.
And walked straight into the guard.
Red optics glared, suddenly suspicious, the hand shifting over the gun in his hand. “Communication.” He looked…disappointed.
Perceptor’s spark guttered, as though he could feel the oscillator begin its slow build behind him. “Glitch,” he said, quietly. “From the sonic barrier.”
“It’s never happened before.”
“Different design. Half-done repairs.” Perceptor was willing to cook up a thousand excuses. He knew better than to move, standing there, patiently, hands raised. “During my capture.”
The guard grunted, but some of the wariness faded from his gaze.“Besides. Who would I comm?” A legitimate question. Deadlock was lost to him. Only that small ember of Drift was real, mattered.
The guard nodded, shoulders loosening. “All right.” Perceptor felt an ironic twinge at being written off as so helpless, so tame…so easily. “Let’s get the nodes off,” the mech said, reaching forward to detach one from Perceptor’s shoulder. “Then take you back.” There was pity in his voice—he knew the radiation would ravage Perceptor, and regretted it.
No. Not an escort. Perceptor didn’t have time for this.
It was an instant’s thought, and even less in motion, to snatch the gun from the slack fingers, bring the butt of it up under the mech’s chin, hard enough that the mech’s cortical feed was disrupted. He collapsed in a loud clatter.
Perceptor stood for a moment, hand curling around the pistol’s grip. Something almost familiar. He strode to the door. Froze. He looked back at the limp form of the guard. He’d be…the first to die. Perhaps he’d feel it. Perhaps come to, just as the sonic overload began tearing apart the ship. He’d die in agony.
Did he deserve that?
Perceptor felt an oath, unfamiliar, long buried, bubble up over his vocalizer. How much light is worth saving, Perceptor? How much dark do you embrace? Who wins, if you leave this spark of kindness here to die?
He moved, stooping, hauling up the limp form, bracing one of the other mech’s arms over his shoulders, tilting the weight onto his hip as he coded the door open.
Mabaya, he thought, grimly, even as he struggled under the awkward weight of the unconscious mech, whose only mistake, only blessing, had been trusting Perceptor, whose only weakness was being less brutal than he could have been, Mabaya will not win.
[***]
Deadlock stiffened at the sharp burst of static over the Autobot channel. He sat up, reaching automatically for the Great Sword on the berth beside him. Was he ready?
Did it matter?
He was ready to get it over with, to lay down the burden of his past, the weight of his failures, at the feet of one final redemption. To give his life for something, someone, much better than he. He held the Great Sword for one long moment, his red optics searching in the depths of the blue jewel as if hoping to scry an answer. Not for himself, but that it would be all right. That Perceptor would survive, that he’d make it, and that this would all be over. If he saved one life, it would be worth his.
One life was worth more than the string of failures that made up Drift’s life: starving, stealing, numbly following anything that looked like light, no matter how dark it became, convincing himself that the fault was the growing darkness and not the light, itself, fading.
He sighed, after along moment; one last prayer—a symbol of his idolatry—floating over his cortex. Simple, too simple.
Wing. Please.
Everything in those two words—admission of his own weakness, insecurity, the child of the gutters, face and hands upturned, empty, begging. Back at the beginning. As if he’d never left.
You never have. They can smell it on you.
Wing couldn’t. Wing didn’t.
And Wing died. From your betrayal.
And no one else will. No one else will die for me, Deadlock thought, levering off the berth, driving the Great Sword home into its attachments between his shoulders. It all ends here. Soon.
All of it.
[***]
Perceptor raced—as fast as he could burdened by the unconscious guard—toward the bank of escape pods. Something like luck, something so close to it that for a moment he briefly considered having some faith in some deity, kept his path clear. The late hour, he thought. Or perhaps that these were generally unused corridors. He didn’t question; he just accepted, with a sense of gratitude that clung at anything that didn’t hurt.
Still, he could feel time ticking away, as though it were hammering at the soles of his feet. The harmonic radiation was beginning, already, to wear on him: blurring the edges of movement, making his limbs heavy, leaden. He was going to be late. Still within the window, but pushing the edges of safety. Drift would get there before him. He’d be safe. And that was more than enough.
[***]
The chrono was racing down the numbers as Deadlock moved through the corridors. He didn’t dare run: that would attract instant attention. He kept his customary, head-down glower, striding down the corridors, hands hovering over his short swords, daring anyone to stop him.
Ironic how hostility read as ‘nothing to hide’ here.
Ironic how easily you’ve adapted to it. You really think you can go back?
No. Not going back.
He rounded the last corner, the blast doors leading to the escape pods at the end of the long corridor. He slowed his steps, letting his optics travel over the walls, the decking, the ceiling. Partly to check range, sweep, how much clearance he’d have. But partly because…this was where he’d die. His last stand. His second chance—his wasted second chance—ended here. He would burn himself up, one last immolation that would hopefully blaze bright enough to burn away all the darkness, all the failure, all the missteps, all the wrong he’d ever done, ever been.
It was a good place to die.
And he thought, briefly, madly, of Wing, who had died, surrounded, mourned by friends.
No one would mourn him. No one would even notice he was gone. By now Perceptor had probably made it to the pods, blasted off, escaped. He was free, clear. Deadlock could hope for a moment of remembrance.
Then again, he didn’t deserve that. He deserved to be forgotten, not mourned. He’d caused Perceptor enough pain—physical, emotional—alive. He didn’t want to cause any more in death.
Deadlock turned, his back to the escape pods, pulling the Great Sword from his back. The gem glittered blue, the color of life, of hope. Wing’s sword, which he’d had no right to take, no right to tear it from the City and all it stood for. His hands were…filthy. Unworthy to even hold it. Unworthy to wrench it from its home, squandering it to be lost so far from home.
So far from home.
Home. You never had one.
The glyphs down the blade ignited, burning in the darkness, lambent as hope. He cycled a vent, feeling the hot air blast down his legs as he spread his stance.
//Turmoil. Let’s finish this.// His voice grated, harsh, the voice Turmoil would remember. Defiant, arrogant.
Deadlock tightened his hands on the hilt. He could feel it—the strange, pulling, drawing sensation from his spark, flaming along the blade, his intent, his will, everything he was and could be, made visible, made light, made into a weapon.
Wing. Please. Just once. One last time. Forgive me.
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Idiot! >:(
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I love the descriptions of what is happening to Perceptor, to Drift/Deadlock, the tension...it's fantastic.
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oh Drift.. you idiot..
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I keep seeing it Turmoil and Driftlock are fighting, in comes Perceptor.... and woe falls upon everybody.
Also, I have to second just about everyone above: Drift, you dolt!