The Vault of the Sky of Memories

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

G
IDW
Wing/Drift
for tformers100 table space prompt star

Drift flopped onto his back, his spaulders fanning up over his head.  The ground was soft beneath him, some purple velvety moss, that gave off a sweet, woody scent as he shifted on it.  He would never figure out why this City had all these strange places: gardens and parks filled with sculptures and flowers and...things. They were so far removed from what he knew: the gutters, the barracks, warships, all this beauty for beauty's own sake.

It felt like waste. It felt...different.

Wing dropped down next to him, with a great deal more grace, his knees folding smoothly before stretching out on the soft moss, shoulder to shoulder with Drift.  “I really look forward to these nights,” Wing said, settling his own shoulders into the yielding moss. 

“Why?”

“You’ll see.” 

Drift could practically feel the jet’s smile. He envied how open Wing was about his happiness. Like it should be something kept secret. Why? Because in the gutters, anything you liked could be taken away from you. Sometimes just for spite.

Wing was also different. Sometimes Drift couldn't believe he'd come from the same Cybertron.

A strange hush fell over them—the pair and the others assembled in the park, all settled, looking up, stretched out, comfortable, giving no sound beyond soft sighs of contentment and anticipation.

And then, lights, on the vaulted dome of the vast cave in which Crystal City stood, hollowed smooth by hundreds of hands.  The lights glimmered, twinkling against the darkness, cast from dozens of projectors.  Hundreds, thousands of lights, big and small, white and blue and yellow.

Stars.  Or the imitations of stars, Drift realized. Stars… “Over Cybertron.”

“Yes.”  He felt a hand in his, squeezing.  “These are the stars over Iacon. Do you remember?”

Drift did: a glimpse of distant, unfamiliar constellations between bursts of gunfire, blackened, windowless buildings.  “Didn’t see them for more than half my life,” he said. He tried to shrug, as though it didn’t matter, his spaulder digging into the moss. 

"I saw them all the time," Wing said. "In Altihex, sometimes it felt like they were all around us--distant but close. I used to watch the skies, and imagine they were the engines of other mechs, off on great, bright adventures, or coming home." The hand softened in his, only one finger stroking the top of Drift's.

“The first time….” He remembered. He and Gasket had snuck to the upper levels, on a dare, each trying to get as high as he could go without getting caught.  And he remembered, on one midlevel landing just…stopping, mouth agape, staring at the deep indigo of the night sky, jeweled with stars and the lights of the city’s distant spires blending into a spangled zone of light, where city and heaven became one. 

And the Security mechs had caught him there and jostled him down to the lower zones, tearing his optics from the sight with a brutal pleasure. 

“The first time,” Wing prompted, softly.

Drift shrugged again, the moss thick and rich underneath him, as though cradling the movement.  “I don’t think they realized. I mean, it was above them, all the time, and it’s like….they didn’t notice.”

“But you did.”  Wing rolled over, till his chassis rested against Drift’s rib struts, the broad flare of his audials blocking part of the glittering false-sky.

“For all the good it did me.” He felt his mouth harden. “Why we fought. So everyone could have that. Appreciate what they had.” His hands curled into fists, suppressed rage boiling through him. He’d hated them, the Security mechs, everyone who had stopped and stared and muttered darkly as he was bustled past, about the ‘criminal element’ or ‘that creature’.  He hated them: he still did.  And it had been one of the greatest pleasures he’d known to tear those smug looks from those luxury-softened faces.  He frowned. “Stupid. And this is pointless. Why a stupid lightshow? You’re never going back. There’s not a Cybertron worth going back to.”

“So,” Wing said, his optics glowing in the darkness, “we don’t forget. So we appreciate what we do have. And mourn for those who no longer do.”

“A hiding city. A bunch of cowards.”  What did they know about forgetting. What did they know about mourning? Everyone here was lost to time, their future severed from Cybertron's, and the past was just this...artificial thing. Just lights  Just lights on the rock under which they hid.

"A safe city," Wing said, starting on the old argument, before pausing, frowning. He tipped his helm back, looking up at the display again: whatever trick they used, the stars twinkled, dancing with light above them. "I wonder what those stars look down on now, the real ones." 

A trick question. A goad. Drift knew all too well: an uninhabitable planet, choked with pollution, savaged by war.  He felt his mouth tighten, his hand shake free of Wing's, balling into a fist.

Wing turned his head back to look at Drift, giving that lopsided smile Drift already knew too well. "Perhaps," he murmured, "we show these stars so that one day we will find our way back home."

Home. The word struck Drift, like a blow to the chassis.  He let his head fall back, optics scanning the display of stars.  He had no good memories of the stars, just those battle-caught glimpses, normally staring down at a burning city.  He had no home. It was what he was fighting for, but...what would the stars look down on there?

Wing curled his hands around Drift's fist. “Drift.  The problem with fighting all the time,” he squeezed the tight knot of Drift’s fist, and then slipped his fingers inside, flattening it out, turning it over like a cup, “is that we don’t have a hand to accept what is offered.“

He bowed his head, placing a kiss against Drift’s palm.

Drift quivered at the touch, the center of his palm tingling at the contact, like a star, a promise, a fire of hope.

Comments

[wind-on-wave.livejournal.com]

Oh, Drift. You're still the same mistrustful...(
And last two lines of the fic... they are awesome. Awesome at all *o*

[ladyofdragons.livejournal.com]

^___^ Can I say first that this piece is just excellent from a tactile perspective? I mean I know the view of the sky was a narrative focus, but I love how it's balanced with the ground, like I could almost feel the moss and smell the loam beneath it.

And maybe it's just my weird overactive brain making connections that aren't there, but I like how the stars as an element connect with Wing whereas the ground as an element connects with Drift. And then you tell a story of how they connect and hold each other.

I've just really been thinking about them a lot lately. In that I feel like they're meant to be in each other lives because they balance each other. Like Drift grounds Wing's wild enthusiasm and desire to reach, while Wing stabilizes the volatile parts of Drift and lifts him out of the dark recesses he's prone to.

Does that even make sense? It's late and I'm babbling. XD *flails*