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shadow_vector2012-04-24 11:38 pm
Farewell
IDW
Perceptor, Verity
angst
for tf-rare-pairing Perceptor/Verity fragility
“Perceptor.” Verity’s voice, hoarse and wet sounding. Verity’s silhouette, tense, in the doorframe.
“Verity.” Perceptor sat up, optics online and glowing blue in the dimness.
“I’m leaving.” A shrug of one shadowy shoulder. “Just wanted to say goodbye.”
“Leaving.”
“Back to Earth.”
Perceptor swung his legs down to the floor, but part of him felt like it kept moving, lurching and dizzying. “Leaving all of us.”
“Yeah. The war. All of it.” An apologetic twitch.
He gave a sharp nod, trying to look understanding, calm, when inside everything was fluttering and frantic. First Drift, now Verity. Everyone he got close to left.
At least Verity was saying goodbye.
Come to think of it, she knew, and it was probably why she was saying goodbye. “Do what you must,” he said. It was flat and clumsy, but all he could think of to say. It was what he would like to have said to Drift, if he’d had the chance, if he could get beyond his own jealousy and fear.
“Yeah.” She wavered. “I just…I’m not cut out for this. I thought I was. I was wrong.” She cocked her head, and he could catch a ghost of her smile in the darkness, and how it wavered and crumbled.
“You survived. With the Wreckers.” She knew the odds of that alone. She’d survived what had killed half the Wreckers. She’d held her own. Most Autobots couldn’t say as much.
“It’s not the fighting,” she said. “Sounds dumb, but there you go. Not the fighting.” She turned, as though trying to turn her face away. The light from the hallway limned her profile, the trembling lips. Her mouth had always been so expressive and mobile: here it was fighting emotion.
“I understand.” He did. He felt it too: not the fighting, but the loss. It yawned around them, the ship ringing hollow and numb, every corner, every room crowded with memories, growing thick like cobwebs, pressing out, in their way, the few, meager living. He and Verity were like ghosts, wandering the corridors of memory.
The shoulders sagged. “Yeah. Hunter, you know. He was the first. But this…,” she shook her head. “It’s dirty, Perceptor. He died, to keep secrets.” He had known, and Perceptor had been complicit: Ironfist had merely been a vessel for Aequitas’s records, a vast gambit, a risk, to keep them out of the hands of Decepticons.
The mouth twisted again, and he heard the wet snuffle of her fighting tears. She always fought. Always. It must have been a hell of an inner war to lead her to this decision.
“It’s war. It’s all dirty.” He thought of Kup, of the cy-gars, his own gaze dropping to his hands. Filthy, too.
“Yeah.” She wavered, and then moved, stepping into the room. The door shut behind her, closing them in darkness. It seemed symbolic, even as he felt her touch on his greave: one hand, and then her arms, wrapping around the red armor, and then the wet heat of her tear-smeared cheek. “Just can’t stand to lose anyone else.”
“Verity….” He leaned forward, brushing one hand over her shoulder, fingers silky over her long hair. Dirty fingers, he reminded himself. She shouldn’t weep for the idea of losing him. Ironfist had at least been…pure.
“Yeah.” Her voice was muffled, against him. He could feel the heat of her body along his leg, her cheek on the upper jut of his knee. “I know. Not seeing it doesn’t mean it ain’t gonna happen. That’s why I’m a fucking coward. Because I can’t. I can’t watch.”
“I understand.” He did. The old, weak part of him he thought he had expunged when he’d rebuilt himself—the part that had been in blissful denial about the potency of Kimia’s inventions, the obviously malign and even the less obviously so—understood the strange comfort of a cocoon of ignorance. And in the longest, darkest hours of the night, he sometimes wished he could go back to that, himself. But his hands—his mind—was too unclean for that relief. Verity’s…were not. She still had a conscience, something pure and untouched.
“Find peace, Verity Carlo.” It was the most earnest wish he could give her, the only hope he could sustain.
“If I find it, I’ll send you a map.” She buried her face against his thigh for another long moment, and he felt her body wrack with sobs she refused to release. Then she stepped back, scrubbing a hand over her face. It was streaked with tears, the skin around her eyes red and aggrieved-looking, but her mouth quivered into a smile. “You too, okay?”
All he could do was nod, solemnly, making it into a promise.
And then she stepped back, turning one last time in the doorway as it opened before her, letting the hallway’s light let her capture the image of Perceptor, seated on the edge of his berth, hands helpless, his own face tight with emotion, aware at any moment, almost dreading, a word or movement that would shatter this glass-brittle fragility between them
He saw her, that final time, the light white-silver on her black hair, her eyes glossy and liquid, a tear spilling as she gave a final nod. He thought of Drift, leaving him, without a word, without an explanation, and he had to wonder, as the door cycled shut behind her, cutting between them with finality, if this hurt any less.
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very poignant and painful and eloquent. I ache for them both sp much.
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this was gorgeous. heartbreaking, but beautiful. i'll just... be over there, sobbing.
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