Sky and Ground 33 Awaken

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG-13
Bayverse AU
Skywarp, Barricade
angst

AWAKEN

Skywarp groaned.  His first conscious thought was that something was missing.  His second conscious thought was of coldness.

He shifted, his armor grating across the textured metal deckplates.  The vague feeling that something was missing swelled to an insistent soreness: something was wrong.  He onlined his optics.  He lay on his belly on the floor of the hangar bay—the coldness of space seeping through the metal, seeping through his own skin.  Long smears of sliver streaked the floor, great sweeping arcs that pointed right to Skywarp.  The originator, the source. 

Oh Skywarp, he thought to himself, what have you done?

It rushed back to him with a force that rocked him where he lay, half-propped on an elbow.  Oh no.  Barricade.  Oh Primus, what had he done?  All of his rage, which had previously boiled through his systems, seemed contracted, compacted into an icy knot.  His optics flew to his chest armor—purple flakes from the grease, new scrapes told a story he did not want to hear. 

He drew himself up into a tight ball, his head bowed between his fore-joints, long arms wrapped over his legs as if to hold himself from flying apart.  What had he been thinking?  No, he knew what he had been thinking; he just wasn’t willing to admit he could actually push Barricade to such lengths.

Well, he thought, it worked. You wanted him to hate you. To run away.  For his own safety. He’s not safe anymore, but he ran.  This is what you wanted. 

Only…it wasn’t. 

Well, what do you want?  What do you think you deserve?

Two different questions.  Entirely.  The first: he wanted…everything. Wanted that warm open emotion, that strange hurt sweetness, the harsh power of the smaller mech’s devotion.  He’d ruined that, but Skywarp would do anything to have that again.  He knew this made him weak.  Susceptible.  He knew it made him naïve.

What he deserved…this.  More than this. More than abandonment by his Trine, more than a silent farewell from Barricade. 

Well…what now? He had to do something. No matter how much he might will it otherwise, time crept forward, he still functioned.  He had to…find a way to keep this at this level, remind himself continually of the agony he deserved, of what he had done to the one mech who deserved it least. 

You thought you loved him.  You do not do that to things that you love. You do not betray them, abuse them, violate them. 

You are…there are no words vile enough to describe what you are. 

What do you want?  What would you give?

I want…Barricade.  Even to be hated by him. I owe him that much. I owe him the elevation of an apology, I owe him that power to reject me, to refuse forgiveness. I have taken power from him. This is the only way I can give him…some crumb of it back.

He struggled to his feet, a little surprised at the way he staggered, his limbs not wanting to obey.  No.  I owe this to him. It’s right that I suffer. 

He stumbled against the wall, managing the door only by scraping his hand along the wall’s surface.  His gyroscopic stabilizers were spinning, making it hard to balance.

He made his painstaking way down the hall, hand braced along the bulkhead.  Everything felt…wrong.  Maybe he should seek out the others?  No.  He…could not deal with Thundercracker muddled like this.  He wanted to shut down.  It was an effort to even move. Only his mind was restless—his frame seemed to resist movement, as though his servos had tightened on him, each motion having to force itself through impossibly high pressure.  His energon levels were depleted—the boost he had taken from the energon Barricade had given him had worn off, burned off by his mad cold flight. 

He could make it to Barricade’s recharge.  He could endure Barricade’s rage, his judgment, whatever punishment Barricade wanted to dole out. He could do that much. Had to do that much.  He forced himself to focus on that as he dragged himself down the corridor to the smaller mech recharge cubes. He sucked in a bracing vent of air before he coded the door—a little surprised when the door responded.  Barricade hadn’t changed the codes? 

The door opened into darkness.  “Barricade?” he said, his voice croaking in his vocalizer.  There was no answer. He knew he was silhouetted against the light of the corridor.  “Please?”

No response.  But no rejection.  He wobbled, catching himself on the doorframe. “Can I talk to you, please?”

Still no response.  Skywarp hesitated, but the low energon caused his vision to whirl wildly.  His talons dug into the frame, gouging it. He had to recharge.  Now.  “I just want….”  He fell into the room, landing hard enough to crack one of his patellar plates.  The pain lanced up his leg, black and sharp.  He looked up, his optics cycling down to only half power, everything blurring in front of him. The berth was impossibly far away.  And the blackness was swirling in on him like a whirlpool. 

**

Barricade couldn’t describe how he felt: he didn’t think the words existed, really.  An only partly digested mix of pain and confusion and…love. 

Memories of other violations (not the same, not the same! his processor protested, vehemently) fought within him, clashing with the memory of Skywarp’s pain and fear that had driven him to it, the trembling disbelief from the Seeker as he’d encountered no resistance from Barricade’s spark. 

He felt a bright kind of pride, a memory of the sensation of Skywarp leaning over him, sparks blazing together, feeling his own light wrapping, twining, caressing Skywarp’s own. It had felt better than his feeble imagination had suggested.  Magical. Sacred. Beautiful.  And he had felt Skywarp answer to him, got to feel as if Skywarp, long moments of doubled sensation where he was himself but he was also somehow Skywarp, looking down at him; the gold light and the purple; the love and the fear.  He had felt Skywarp’s fear push back against him.  He had not fought it.  In time, his spark had told him. In time.  He had felt, through it, all of Skywarp’s fear, self-loathing; and he had pushed at him, in turn, how HE saw the Seeker—powerful, gentle, breathtaking. And he knew what had driven the jet to attack him, what he was trying to do—it wasn’t out of hate, it was out of fear and a twisted kind of love.  Hurting Barricade to prevent him from hurting him worse. 

And at the same time…violation. Part of Barricade’s body, his core, felt numb. Switched off. As it had for those other times, against those more violent, more fought-against, intrusions.  He hadn’t wanted it to shut down.  Barricade felt an awful, tight regret.  He knew better, KNEW that Skywarp hadn’t meant it—not that way. Knew he didn’t need to switch himself off like that.  But…he couldn’t help it. Systems out of his control. What had previously saved him from despair was tearing at him—the fear that he could shut off, go numb, feel nothing. 

He could still feel the sparking like a glow around him, a wide warm glow, more powerful than the EM field.  It had hurt but it had been a beautiful pain. He trusted Skywarp so much, had wanted it so much. Skywarp was everything to him; he himself, nothing. He didn’t have very much worth anything and if anything he had or was or could give would make Skywarp happy, he would willingly give it. Pain? Compared to what he’d felt in Skywarp? Nothing.  Fear?  Nothing.  He could only lay himself open before it, not resist, be open and trusting, despite the cascade of bad memories.  His way of fighting for Skywarp, against Skywarp’s darkness.

He could take the pain, the nascent betrayal, because it was so much less than what Skywarp had suffered. He would do this.  He owed him this.

His shiftcycle ended—that soon? It seemed it had flown by, while he, half-distracted, sorted through his thoughts.  And he found himself, suddenly, exhausted.  He hadn’t realized how he had been using the constant mild distraction of his job to keep himself going.  All he wanted, he thought, as he walked back to his recharge berth, was to curl up on his berth and maybe figure things out within himself. He had…no idea what to do now.  No idea what he’d say to Skywarp—whether he wanted to hit him or cry or hold him or ask to be used again, any way Skywarp needed. Or…some incoherent conglomeration of all of them.  He needed stillness to recover, space to think about what would make Skywarp happy. And time to prepare himself. He hoped these were not selfish needs.

He coded open his door.

**

Skywarp felt the light fall across him, heard the sudden rushed intake of breath.  His optics cycled slowly online. “Barricade,” he whispered. His hand clutched slowly on the floor.  He saw Barricade look down at it, his expression unreadable.  Oh, what had he done with this hand to Barricade? He didn’t want to even try to remember. 

The shock of seeing Skywarp curled on the floor froze Barricade to the spot.  He wasn’t ready for this.  He couldn’t…even…make words. 

Skywarp struggled to push upright.  The fact that it was a struggle shook Barricade. He’d never seen Skywarp not strong.  Part of him wanted to rush over, throw his arms around the jet, help him up.  But part…was a little afraid.  Afraid of himself, more than Skywarp. Afraid the numbness would spread and the pure fierce hot joy he had felt would chill and grow hard. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked. He winced at the way the words sounded, cursing for the thousandth time the ugly grate of his vocalizer. 

“Wanted….” Skywarp shook his head.  He didn’t know what he’d wanted. This had been a mistake.  That much, he knew. When you don’t have a mission goal, you don’t know how to plan your attack.

Attack. 

Skywarp quailed back at his own metaphor.  Even in his own processor he could not escape it. 

“I should go.” Ridiculous statement: he could barely move. 

“No.” Barricade blocked the door.  “You…okay?”

Part of Skywarp wanted to rage, ‘do I look okay?’  Part of him wanted to howl at Barricade, push him away, thrust him aside, make a break for it.  Barricade couldn’t restrain him.  But another part wanted, so badly, to touch him.  “No,” he managed. “Not okay.” So not okay he couldn’t even find words.  Not even talking about his low-charge. 

“You need energon?”

Slag, yes, desperately. But he needed something more than that, something he couldn’t even bring himself to ask.  He nodded, dumbly. 

Barricade crossed the room, the door coding shut behind him.  “Not Seeker grade,” he said, apologetically, bringing the small pouch of mauve-grey energon to  Skywarp from where he’d dug it from his maintenance fac storage shelf. “Probably don’t want to drink it.” 

“Okay,” Skywarp said, humbly, poking at his refuel intake.  He hadn’t used it in so long he fumbled.  Barricade’s talons were sure and confident, unscrewing the cap, setting the panel in its catches.  “Barricade, I—“

“No talking,” Barricade said, crisply. “Not till you’ve gotten this.”  He lifted the pouch, letting gravity take it down the hose into Skywarp’s intake.  Skywarp lowered his head, obedient. His optics took in the smaller mech, standing within the circle of his body. How easily Skywarp could reach over, throw him down. Barricade must be thinking it, must be worried about it. Only…it didn’t show. Barricade kept his optics neutrally on the draining pouch.

Skywarp’s systems sighed at the influx of energon.  Yes, the grade was abysmal.  It burned in his catalyzer, but it rushed to his weakened servos and control nodes.  He felt…steadier. A little more in control.  He pushed up to a sitting position, almost optic-to-optic with Barricade.  One hand hovered around Barricade’s shoulder, begging for an invitation to touch.  Barricade didn’t give it.  Deliberate or not?  He tried not to get too upset. He didn’t deserve to touch him.  “Barricade,” he said, watching the smaller mech skillfully wrap the hose around his little talons, talons that Skywarp had felt…so many times along his body.  So much smaller, more delicate, than his own, huge, clumsy hands.  “I…,” he stopped, Barricade’s optics expectant on his face. Expecting what? “I don’t know what to say,” he said, lamely. “I want to apo-apologize,” his voice gave an unaccustomed crackle, “but…I know that doesn’t fix anything.”

Barricade’s face was unreadable.  “Don’t need to.”

“I know,” Skywarp sighed. “it’s useless. And you don’t have to forgive me. I’m not even asking for that.”

“What are you asking for?” No harshness or judgment.  A simple question. Everything from Barricade had no motive.  It scared Skywarp that still, still, Barricade could be so direct. So simple. He hadn’t learned the serpentine deceits of betrayal.  Skywarp hoped he never would.

Asking for? The impossible. To erase time.  To undo this, undo…himself.  Even if it would mean never having met Barricade in the first place, missing out on all of this…it would mean never having that on his conscience. “I just want to face what I’ve done.  Do what you want. Yell or scream or insult me. Anything…please. Anything to make you feel better. Even a little.” He bowed his head. 

“Anything?” Barricade asked. 

“Please.  I hurt you.  Hurt me back.” He tried to brace himself—for a blow, for an insult. For what he deserved. 

A strange, choking sound, and Skywarp felt the silver talons draw a gentle line across one folded wing.  Barricade shook his head, optics troubled.  “’Member, you said, once? That Starscream saw you and all he could see was that he’d hurt you?” Skywarp nodded. Yes, he remembered that. Another awful night. Another night he’d gone too far.  Barricade lifted his optics, all four wide and earnest upon Skywarp’s face. “Don’t do that to me.” 

Next: Intrusion

Comments

[skyure.livejournal.com]

Uhm... a little not so sure what you meant with that last part ...

Does Barricade not want, that Skywarp pities him, because of what Warp has done?
Or does Barricade not want to hurt Skywarp as punishment because Barricade don´t want to look at Warp and only see that Cade hurt Warp?
(is confused and probably makes absolutely no sense at all)

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Both, really. More the second than the first, though.

[skyure.livejournal.com]

I wouldn´t want to hurt my love, too.
Not even after he hurt me like that.

That´s just something you can´t forgive yourself.
I hope Warp honors that request, and don´t ask Cade again to do it.

[flamekaat.livejournal.com]

*Hugs Cons* Aww poor Warp and 'Cade. Anyway super awesome as usual!

[ultharkitty.livejournal.com]

Nicely done. I really like Barricade's voice (in dialogue and his internal monologue) - I might have said this before, sorry if I have.

[ithilgwath.livejournal.com]

oh Barricade... you are so strong.

That... that was a beautiful way to end the chapter. Amazing