Skydancing the Edge of Day

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG-13
IDW
Wing, Dai Atlas
prose so purple it's been reported to the DJD
for ladyofdragons 's birthday, or it would be if the fic didn't suck :( So, uh, it's the thought that counts? .__. I'm so glad I got to meet you through fandom.

It was one of the prices to be paid for safety, he thought. And he didn’t begrudge paying it…much. The Cybertron they had fled had become something beyond a nightmare, the air scorched and toxic, the atmosphere a sheet of flame above a landscape of jagged ruin. It had been worse than a horror to look upon—it wrung the spark, the magnitude of destruction. How anyone could view the gutted, seared wreck of what had once been a magnificent planet and not feel himself nearly stagger under the weight of despair was a mystery Wing had no desire to solve.

Not when they had things to do, movement forward. It had been flight, perhaps, it had been surrender to circumstance. It was not, however, cowardice, though he knew it had been seen that way by some.  But how could it be cowardice to realize that to remain was nothing but death, throwing one’s life under the juggernaut of others’ pride and arrogance?  How could it be cowardice to want to decide one’s own destiny, tear oneself free from the barbed net of the demagogues whose plans for a ‘better Cybertron’ left the planet choking, surfeited with death?

The planet that unspooled itself below Wing, as he flew, was not Cybertron. It lacked the gleaming metal streets, the impossibly delicate silicate spires, the fine network of comm arrays blooming like flowers on rooftops.  The sky was empty of orbital torii and dense with a sort of organic soundlessness—no plasma thrusters singing through the pale air, no heavier ‘thup’ of repulsor lifts, the steady plush lifepulse of the cities below. 

But it had a sun, warm and gentle, just beginning to crest over a placid horizon, and the air was clean and sweet, like gossamer silk over his wings as he flew. The updrafts and shears from the surface below were mild, almost playful little buffets against his armor.  There were no cities here, simply long rolling waves of dusk-blue sand dotted with small clusters of red-foliaged trees, their leaves tossing and dancing in the waking air, as though from the sheer joy of living, of another day’s start.

It was a joy they desperately needed, Wing thought, letting his frame roll in a slow, almost lazy spiral, just to feel the sun’s growing warmth kindle over his frame.  They’d fled Cybertron with as much as they could, but…it wasn’t much. Necessities for surviving, and building—energon, fabricators and raw steel—the Circle of Light had seen to that. But merely surviving was not living, however much an improvement it was from the war none of them wanted.

Others were on the ground, he knew, spilling out of the Hope’s Star’s drop shuttle, feeling natural gravity on their limbs, real sunlight on their armor and most of all—the openness, the broadness of a planet’s surface, the rising sun revealing splendor spread before them. 

Dai Atlas didn’t begrudge anyone this: the drop shuttle would work tirelessly, so that anyone who wanted to see could see. He was a hard mech, bittered from his own wars, but he was not without kindness or mercy.  It was his leadership that had gotten them this far, his marshaling of resources that had saved all of them.

And there he was, suddenly, as though summoned by Wing’s thoughts, the white and red of his foreswept wings slicing through a thin ribbon of cloud to Wing’s right. He seemed to hold the some kernel of the night’s darkness in his blue armor, carrying it forward into the dawn like a reminder of what they had left, the darkness that holds light like a jewel on velvet.

Wing rolled his frame, turning towards Dai Atlas, letting the roll shed some of his speed, to cut across Dai Atlas’s contrail.

There was a hesitant buzz on his comm, falling silent, as Wing executed another roll, sharp and neat, swooping underneath the blue frame. He was smaller than Dai Atlas, faster and more agile, zipping around the other, giddy with flight and freedom.

Dai Atlas turned, sharply, a fast, hard, wingtip maneuver that he must have learned in some ancient war, heading back toward the fading night.  Wing hesitated, feeling a sudden skirl of regret: perhaps Dai Atlas had come to be alone with his thoughts, to fly free of the burden of leadership, at least for a while.  Perhaps he had wanted solitude. And Wing had had no right to intrude.

But Dai Atlas turned again when Wing didn’t follow, a sleek scissor across the sky, and as he pushed ahead of Wing, Wing saw one of the ailerons waggle at him. 

The tease was so unexpected, Wing nearly stalled, losing thrust for a klik, startled. But then Dai Atlas pushed his nose up, aiming heavenward in a powerful thrust, until gravity forced him to yield, and he let himself tumble from the stall, tracing a sweeping arc downward before kicking on his thrusters, pulling out of the stall’s fall, nose pointed directly at Wing.  Even in stall, Dai Atlas never lost control.

Wing felt his hesitance evaporate, scrambling away, zigzagging across the flightplane, Dai Atlas almost inexorable in his pursuit. He pulled his nose up, changing levels: Dai Atlas followed, less nimbly, but doggedly, as the day dawned around them, the sun gilding their chase like a blessing.  It was unexpected, but then…why?  Dai Atlas was not immune to life and its pleasures. 

Dai Atlas pushed forward in a burst of speed, and for a moment he was alongside Wing, no longer fighting Wing’s wake, slicing through the warming air almost in spite of his size, the flat, unaerodynamic planes of his profile. Wing could feel the heavier throb of his engines, as Dai Atlas pulled ahead, feel  the nubbly chop of air from his wake, like a bid for supremacy, and then Dai Atlas rolled, shedding speed and altitude, dropping below Wing, showing the blue and gold pattern of his belly in open invitation. 

It had been…a long time since Wing had been courted, since another airframe had danced over the sky with him. No one danced in the plasma-burning skies of Cybertron.

But this was a new place, one that shimmered with life and promise and hope and beauty. 

Wing spiraled to one side, and Dai Atlas followed the movements faultlessly, so that the two seemed to fly as one, helixing across the sky, their contrails spinning together like long ribbons of energy.   The skydance was a courtship, a test, a flirtation.  It was something he’d never thought to have again, something given up, an irrecoverable casualty of war one tried not to think about, because the pain of loss would be too great.

As he swept through the air, the golden light caught on their armor as they raced across the dawning sky, as though igniting joy.

He flicked his wingtips; Dai Atlas’s tips wiggled back, as though he’d shed his seriousness somewhere back in the shredding shadows of dawn. This was something he’d wanted, too, perhaps something Dai Atlas had thought he’d lost forever, buried under wars and worries. 

And…himself. It was something like a revelation to Wing, that underneath Dai Atlas’s stern demeanor, there was still a part aching and alive and vulnerable.  Dai Atlas had to have hope, to have poured so much of himself into engineering their escape.  And that hope had a wellspring somewhere, something he tried to keep hidden under his commanding frown, something that only revealed itself now, flitting between shyness and boldness, flirtation and flight.

Something he was sharing, revealing, with Wing.

They rolled over the sky in a lazy, twined helix, Dai Atlas dropping speed, and Wing knew that this was Dai Atlas offering him an escape: he could accelerate away, that he could keep it here, as a flirtation, as a small, shared sliver of happiness, a mouthful of the sweetness of freedom. He could leave, or he could stay, continue the skydance and risk all that it entailed--the intimacy of the link, the vulnerability, the exposure, the trust, and all the thousand tiny ripples they would spread into the future.

He stayed, slowing his pace, skimming the distance between them till their armor touched, a gentle kiss of their belly armor, playful and promising. Happiness was too rare to let any slip through one's hands. His only regret was that they had had to lose so much to unbury that simple, brutal, beautiful truth.

Comments

[mmouse15.livejournal.com]

The descriptions of them dancing in the sky, flirting with the edge of night and dawn, is really beautiful.