shadow_vector | Sky and Ground 17 Reciprocity

PG-13
Bayverse AU
Skywarp
Angst

“Yes,” Starscream said over comm to Skywarp. “I have already told you I shall do it.”

“And—I’m sorry. About the Skyfire—“

“He did not know. It was not deliberate. I certainly will not blame him for it. I am a bit more mature than you credit me.” A long pause. “You accepted it.” Not a question. Merely requesting confirmation of what he already knew.

“What could I do? Throw it in his face?”

“I did not suggest anything of the sort, Skywarp.”

Another long pause, this time on Skywarp’s side. “I—don’t think I can talk about it right now.” A semi-apology embedded in the words.

“I understand,” Starscream murmured. He did. In his way, Starscream knew more about not being able to speak about some things than was healthy. “I shall let you go. It is almost time for your next waypoint.” Trust Starscream to be running the flight calcs on his Trine mate’s flight.

“Right. Thank you, Starscream.”

“It is no trouble, Skywarp. I suspect that otherwise, I should be lonely as well.”

Starscream cut the comm link and Skywarp was left with his thoughts in the expanse of space. It wasn’t dark, not to him. Solar winds from various stars swept across the thin vacuum, carrying charged particles in almost hypnotic patterns as they swirled and eddied about each other in a whorl of colors. On top of those, his flight calculation overlays made a red-lined sense of it all, labeling stars and systems and known anomalies effortlessly on his HUD. It was a simple—tedious, really—flight now that he’d caught that gravity well that had rocketed him at a dizzying, rushing speed toward his objective.

He wished he could take Barricade for a parabolic vector run—the thrilling rush of the speed and teetering on the brink of control as the sudden acceleration momentarily kicked his frame above his sensors’ ability to read, sure death in the black hole singularity skating by one’s wingtips. But Barricade was afraid of flying. And his light frame would be crushed at the gravity well’s force perimeter.

Something he could not share with the small groundmech. Something coming between them. So much…so much already lay between them—unbridgeable gulfs of experience, and age, and knowledge. Too much? Starscream didn’t think so, but Starscream’s hopeless romanticism was always aimed at someone else’s relationships. His own were…devoid of anything like genuine connection. For the same reason Skywarp’s normally were:

Thundercracker.

And he’d definitely think any distance was too great to bridge. Groundframe. Young. Damaged. Non-warrior. The list of flaws Thundercracker would find in Barricade came all too easily to Skywarp’s processor. He hated that little colony of Thundercracker, living in his cortex, ready to spring into action with its judgments. He hated that he could already see and list them and recognize them as flaws. Objections.

He stood in his own way. And he hated it.

He felt, like a physical pulse, a throb against his spark chamber. It was probably nothing but his imagining, this sense of Barricade’s spark chamber cover atop his own, a vibrant, quivering, alive thing. What had it taken out of the smaller mech to do that? And for him?

Yes, a piece of metal. That’s all it was. Nothing but a multilaminate alloy, as common as anything. It wasn’t even very pretty—Skywarp had seen the burnishes where Barricade had obviously tried to rub away some old stain or picocorrosion, trying to remove the marks of damage and neglect, and replace them with a scratchy satin sheen. How many cycles had the smaller mech sat rubbing at the chamber cover, polishing it desperately? What had he been thinking as he did? That it was not good enough as it was? What hopes and dreams had he let run wild through his processor as his little talons worked away at trying to erase the marks of his life?

Nothing but a piece of metal. Tell that to Starscream, whose hand would steal toward his own spark chamber at the mere mention of Skyfire’s name.

A piece of metal like a promise or a wish made solid. Now an extra layer over his own spark chamber—too small to replace his own, but sitting atop it, a sweet singing weight, barely anything at all, but…so very heavy.

It awed, and terrified, Skywarp how Barricade could do that. After all that had happened to him, he could still, STILL, lay himself open so easily, so thoroughly—physically, metaphorically. Unlike Skywarp himself.

I am, he thought, miserably, at the same moment he would have clutched hungrily at the spark cover himself if he’d been in his robot mode, undeserving of this.

His astrogation bleeped at him. The next waypoint. He made a slight correction in his flight path. Every klik bringing him closer, of course, to Thundercracker.

It was inevitable, of course. Sooner or later, Thundercracker would find out. The longer it lasted, the worse it would get. For Skywarp and for Starscream. Who would doubtless be accused of shielding his Trine mate in his perversion as it was.

But Skywarp wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready for the fraught symbolism of what the spark cover represented; he wasn’t ready to face Thundercracker. It had grown from a mere lark, an amusement, toying with a naïve little mech. He was kidding himself if he told himself it had started as anything else. But it wasn’t that any longer. He didn’t know what it properly was, though. Didn’t know what box to put it in. What category or label it required. It felt like something too wild, too big for a label, and at the same time too fragile, too tender to bear any harshness.

He had heard Barricade’s last words as he leapt from the hangar into the freedom of the open air. He had heard, and…fled. This was the third time, really, he had ducked those words. The first time, Barricade had been overcharged. The second and third—the cover itself spoke, if mute, and the breathless words hanging in the cold of space—he had flown from. Sooner or later, he would have to give an answer. He would have to say something. Sooner or later he wouldn’t be able to joke his way out, or claim the mission or lack of time or that he himself had been overcharged or divert attention to sex. Sooner or later he’d have to stand on that plane and say…something.

Tell me you love me. Always, ALWAYS the unspoken demand in those admissions. I love you. Now you say it. I open myself to you; you do the same. Let us be open together. It was less a pledge than a demand for reciprocity.

Skywarp couldn’t do it. He shouldn’t have accepted the spark cover. Standing there, turning over the dented, scratched-up thing in his hands, his only thought had been awe at what it meant. He hadn’t thought of his own part. He’d thought only how it would hurt Barricade to have this…beautiful, sweet, HUGE gesture rejected.

It would have been a kindness, he thought, now. A little pain then—and he’d’ve been gone during the worst of it (Skywarp you fucking coward)—was better than the pain of dragging it out. Better than letting false hopes that neither of them could realize start shaping themselves. It would be worse for Barricade now, thinking he’d gone a step further.

I care enough to know that I can never love you. Not the way you need. Not the way you deserve. Oh, little spike. I wish I could.

Why me? Why did he have to pick me? Why not Starscream, whose icy walls would have melted at the first warmth? Starscream at least deserved it.

It wasn’t that Skywarp was blind to Starscream’s flaws. Yes, his Trine mate was…overemotional and narcissistic and devious and a little elitist. But he was also loyal and intelligent and tenacious. If he wanted something, nothing could swerve him from his course.

And here was Skywarp, Swerved off course by his own past. His own knowledge of what he was capable of. His own Trine mate’s judgment. No, he didn’t deserve anything like Barricade’s openness: and Barricade didn’t deserve the horrors he’d bought into. What Barricade had fallen in love with (oh, Skywarp couldn’t even think the phrase without a frisson of half-fear/half-aching longing)…was a lie.

He felt a wild, desperate wish for some catastrophe to befall him in space—a rogue asteroid or a random singularity. Something that would…end him and this pitiful indecision. Something, moreover, that would let him die…loved. Let it end before the inevitable happened, and Barricade was lost to him. And the ‘he’ that Barricade thought he was shattered beyond repair.

Tell me you love me…or let me go. Oh please, Barricade, he thought, desperately, don’t push me to that decision. Please. His armor over his spark chamber contracted, jealously, over its new mass. It’s a gift I don’t want to have to give back, though I know I should.

Around him the subatomic particles swirled and pulled him onward, inexorably, into the heart of isolation.

Next: Re-Berth