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shadow_vector2012-01-27 09:49 pm
Day of Remembrance
IDW
Drift/Wing
no warnings
The klaxon seemed to shatter the air. Drift jumped, from where he had sprawled over Wing’s berth, staring idly at a datapad’s map of the City. He’d been trying to find a way out, calling up ventilation ducts, powerline access tunnels, anything that might get him to the surface, so his jump was more than tinged with guilt. He knew that sound, drilled into his memory over millenia: The sound of a starship’s alarm during a hull breach. His fuel lines pounded in alarm, even as he told himself, no, this was impossible, no threat. There was no hull to breach, no vacuum tearing at the city’s skin.
Wing pushed off the berth next to him, stroking a soothing hand over the deep spaulder as he rose to his feet, crossing to the balcony, chirping the code that cut the lights in his quarters.
Blackness seemed to plunge in on Drift. “What…?”
“Come here,” Wing murmured, gesturing with one hand.
Drift put down the datapad to move behind Wing, stumbling awkwardly in the sudden darkness, his optics flaring wide to catch as much of the light as possible. The city stretched around the balcony seemed to blink out, light after light, like dying stars. The lit tracks of the rails and the hover bus directionals dimmed, then faded, and the sounds of the city seemed to fold into themselves, wrapping the place in a thick, dark silence.
“It’s Remembrance,” Wing said, his voice hushed, as though compressed by the darkness. “Of all the ships we lost, all the friends we left behind. All those we couldn’t take with us. And,” his voice caught, “all those who have paid their lives to give us this happiness.” His fingers curled around the railing, as though trying to crush despair beneath them. Emotion seemed to shimmer off him, unsoftened by the city, whose silence seemed vast and huge.
It was like a ghost itself, no one stirring, not even one single light in the subterranean darkness. Absolute unity of purpose, of concentration. Absolute focus. And the thought reached Drift: what could he do with such devotion?
And then another thought: could he claim such earnest purpose himself?
Wing settled himself down, sitting on the edge of the balcony, facing the silent city, his gold optics dimming, shining with tears.
“How long does this last?” Drift whispered, settling himself down next to the jet, the hush almost contagious.
“Two cycles,” Wing said, the words barely carrying through the air. “I had forgotten it was today,” he added, optics dropping, abashed, as though it was a shameful thing to have forgotten.
“What do we do?” He hated to ask, but the pressure to know was pushing against him, the darkness too much like the darkness of the gutters, the sudden silence too much like death.
“We.” A flicker of a smile, grateful and kind. “Recall those whom you have lost.”
Drift didn’t want to, but Gasket’s name, his image, came uninvited to his cortex, the sound of Gasket’s voice, the slight wheeze in his intakes from a bad filter he never did get replaced. Gasket, who always thought things would get better, who always found the bright side in everything, who would listen to Drift’s tirades with an inexhaustible patience, who would make a raid into a game, who would always check on the mechs he knew, almost tirelessly, endlessly, asking what they needed, what they had, arranging trades, making deals. Gasket, who had died, a victim of violence and misunderstanding, a tragic accident that had touched fire to Drift’s resentment.
Would Gasket be proud of what Drift had become?
The question stalled him, sucking the air from his engines. And the city, blackness beyond blackness, inky depths that seemed at once empty and swimming with motion, gave no distraction. Even Wing was a silent sentinel, a barely-there gold smudge of his optics, his bright armor drabbed in shadows.
Drift found himself moving closer, shifting his seat until his thigh bumped the jet, just for some comfort, some awareness he was not alone, snared in the dismal, unsettling past.
A hand brushed his leg, finding his hand, and giving a gentle squeeze.
They sat in silence, only their hands touching, for longer than Drift could credit, time seeming to stretch around him, like light around a gravity well, and all he was aware of were the five digits in his, the texture and weight and heat, the subtle vibration of Wing’s engines through his fingertips, the sleek polish, smooth metal, well-tuned servomotors.
A chime sounded, unlike the alarm of before, a soft, spark buzzing pure tone of sound. And Wing moved again, optics brightening, turning almost automatically to plant a chaste, gentle kiss on Drift’s mouth. Around him, below him, the city began to sparkle with light.
“Now,” Wing said, breaking the kiss to pull Drift to his feet, “we go.”
“Where?”
A flash of a smile, side-lit from a glow from below. “To commemorate.”
Drift pursed his mouth in sullen silence, following the jet from his quarters, down the several levels that debouched, eventually, onto the street. Wing slowed his steps, so that Drift was alongside. “The day. It’s the anniversary of the day we left Cybertron. Many died, and we decided it would always be a hallowed day.” A wan smile. “Many of us wanted to turn back, wanted to die with them. It was not an easy decision to…run.” Wing’s mouth worked with emotion, his hands fluttering, unsettled. “We live. And we should not forget that.”
Drift didn’t know what to say in response: Wing’s emotion cut through any of his cynicism. And he looked around the city, still shrouded in darkness, and it seemed bittersweet, all the happiness tinged with gilt.
“Here,” Wing said, turning to a door—a small teahouse, glimmering with small crisis lights, flickering and intimate.
Drift trailed in after him, uncertain, as they joined a small circle of other mechs, Knights and civilians, clustered around the tables, small lanterns between them.
Cloudburst rose, pulling Wing into a hug, his arms protective, enveloping the smaller jet entirely. Envy flared in Drift, at the touch, at Cloudburst’s ability to read the need for the embrace. “It’s good to see you, Wing,” the blue jet said. His optics caught Drift’s gaze. He nodded. “Good to see you, as well, Drift.”
Drift muttered something, caught out, awkward, as the two broke the embrace, and Wing gestured him to a seat next to him. “Here,” Wing said, accepting a glass of energon handed to him, passing another to Drift with that easy grace of his, “we share stories.”
“Share.” Drift didn’t want to share anything. Stories, the energon tea, Wing’s attention, anything.
“Of Cybertron, of the world we knew.” Cloudburst patted Drift’s shoulder, settling down beside him so that he was between the two jets. “We privately have mourned our own friends: together we mourn the world we knew.”
“It’s dead,” Drift said, sourly, swirling his energon in its glass.
“Yes,” Wing said. “And that’s why we mourn it.”
Cloudburst nodded at a mech across the table. “Axe. You were speaking.”
The other mech gave a nod, letting his optics study Drift, questioning, probing. “Of Nyon, yes. What it was. And what it became.” His optics went distant at the memory, as though summoning it before him. “The plazas used to be beautiful, lit with glowing sculptures at night.” A faint smile. “I used to love the long nights of winter, when mechs would congregate in the plazas, singing, talking, dancing. It was a break, as though day was for labor and night was for…the something better we all wanted.”
Drift hunched, tracing his tea glass’s rim with one finger. Something better. He’d never had an open plaza. Mechs singing. Ridiculous. Axe was lying.
Or worse: Axe wasn’t lying, and it had happened, and been real, just over his head…just far enough out of his reach.
“I was so fortunate,” Wing spoke up, suddenly. “I saw so many cities. I saw Nyon like that. I saw Iacon.” He gave a shy shrug. “And Kaon. And Altihex. And all of them were so different but so beautiful, like jewels.”
“Jewels,” Drift snorted, his mouth twisting.
“They were,” Wing said, optics going solemn. “And then the war happened.”
Drift gave a sour grunt.
Cloudburst turned to him, placing a hand on Drift’s arm. “What do you remember, Drift?”
“Remember.” Drift frowned. He looked around at the assembled mechs. “This is morbid. This whole thing.” Talking about a dead city, a dead world. It was pointless. Needless stirring up of things better left undisturbed. “Jewels. Singing. You don’t know how it really was.”
“Tell us, Drift,” Wing said, softly. “Tell us the Cybertron you remember.”
Drift felt a snarl curl over his lips. “You don’t want to know.” It would shatter their pretty images. Grudging mercy: the best he could do.
“We do,” Cloudburst said. “We would not ask if we didn’t.”
Drift glowered into his tea, unable to meet anyone’s gaze, challenge twisting his mouthplates. “Way before the war, we suffered. Starving, insulted, humiliated. Had to steal to survive.” He took a fast sip of the tea, feeling the warm liquid slide over his glossa. “No friends. Couldn’t risk it. No safe place, except a bolthole between the walls. Couldn’t trust anyone. Couldn’t think of dancing. Or singing.” He nearly sneered. “Or races or holovids or…anything because you were too busy trying to scrounge parts, or dodge the harvesters or the Security Forces who thought you were a criminal just because you didn’t have a home, or find something to keep your systems fueled enough to make it through the next day.” The torrent of words finally ran out, trickling down to a strained silence, and he looked up, braced against the hostile looks he knew he’d face.
Cloudburst’s hand patted his wrist, Wing leaned over, twining one arm around his spaulder to nuzzle his face against Drift’s shoulder. Even the others, Axe and the civilians, didn’t look angry, or hostile or full of hate.
“Thank you,” Axe said, finally. “That is important, too, that we remember Cybertron as it was. Your history is ours as well, Drift.”
“We don’t want to misremember or romanticize it,” Cloudburst echoed. “But Drift. May I ask? Are you ever…homesick?”
Drift’s mouth curled into a snarl, which wavered, shifting uncertainly. “Yes,” he whispered. He couldn’t explain it, hoped they didn’t ask. He gave a snort, mocking himself. He missed the gutters, that he could navigate in the dark, the danger and the safety, the hot blaze of purpose, and how very, very much he cherished anything he had at that point: a scrounged datapad, a kind word, a shared mouthful of fuel were enormous moments, punctuating the darkness of the days, almost incandescent.
And he hated that he missed them, that those moments still blazed bright and vivid, even after years of fighting, millennia of combat, struggle, fighting to make the world better.
Or was it simply just to get revenge? As he’d had here, wanting to hurt them with his Cybertron, wanting to puncture their pretty visions, smear their memories. He studied the rim of his tea glass, thumbs circling the shape.
He stood, abruptly, the seat scraping on the floor as he moved, around it, heading, almost unsteadily, toward the door. He needed to get away from them, from their sympathy, from their kind glances, from their pity and understanding. He needed, above all, to get away from being seen. He was a creature of the gutters: always had been. Darkness was his home, where he really belonged. In darkness and alone.
Drift staggered outside, settling his shoulders against the teahouse’s wall, finding himself almost struggling to ventilate, having to concentrate on his cooling systems, forcing the air to cycle. The city around him was still swathed in shadow, here and there a glimmering light, like the teahouse behind him, a small mark where mechs gathered, small lights in the darkness. He grasped the symbolism of it all: mechs coming together, joining each other, no one alone, no one left out, rebuilding the community after mourning.
It just wasn’t for him.
He let himself slide down, his spinal struts rails he rode down the wall until he was sitting, curled like the guttermech he was, against the wall, the city huge and beautiful around him. He heard snatches of laughter, song, and here and there the ragged sound of weeping, and behind him a gentle murmur from the shop.
And then, a weight beside him, a presence, and a red arc of a stabilizer jutted into his view, and a hand, placing his glass of tea between his feet. Wing, who had torn himself away from this ritual, this celebration, to attend him. “Can go back inside,” Drift muttered. Where you belong, with your friends, your allies.
“I know. I can also stay out here with you.” His voice was gentle, careful, as though trying not to startle a wild creature.
Drift shrugged, metal scraping against the wall behind him. A sullen silence: the best he could do.
“Drift.” A hesitation. “We remember the past, but we do not let it bind us.”
Drift snorted. “Right. Like this. Like that in there.” He jerked his helm back at the teashop behind them. They lived in the past. Some fantasy notion of it, picked and chosen, building in the ashes of something that had likely never been.
“The difference is, Drift. We have forgiven each other, and ourselves, for the past.” A hand brushed the back of his. “Have you?”
“Never forgive those who lived, pretending not to notice us underneath them, suffering.” His voice was a desperate snarl. Drift turned, optics blazing blue against the darkness, only to catch the wide, honest sunlight gold of Wing’s. “Never going to let them get off easy.”
The hand curled over his, one leg moving over to bump against his upraised knee. “Forgiving isn’t easy, Drift. It’s not easy to let go of hatred and anger and loss, especially when you feel that those lines are the only things keeping you together, only things binding you whole.”
The optics shimmered in the darkness, and Drift had the sudden thought that Wing was speaking from experience. He couldn’t imagine it: Wing, wracked with emotion, angry, hateful. It didn’t seem possible.
Wing turned away, letting his gaze travel over the panorama of the city around them. He spoke so quietly that Drift caught himself leaning closer, straining to catch the words. “And the hardest, and the worst thing, is forgiving yourself.”
Drift flinched at the words, at the pain behind them, the anger squelching from his systems, as he and Wing almost fell together, faces buried against shoulders, arms circling bodies, pressing their pains against each other, like two dark sparks against the glowing stars in the underground city.
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And I like that you included Axe in this fic ^_^ *glomps Axe*
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Aw, Gasket - he sounds like such a neat character, looking out for everyone, and poor Drift, realizing he wasn't exactly honoring his friend's memory in the way Gasket would have wished. Surviving, forgiveness, being homesick for the gutters and the few bright-precious moments there...I just want to hug them all.