Tempering

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

R
Bayverse AU
Skywarp, OCs. 
violence, sparksex


Written for crimson_optics  youth challenge.  Set back in a probably stupid AU I'm writing set before the Trine had officially bonded, after Skyfire's death (obviously this is all in my head-canon so feel free to ignore)  This is a rough of a chapter I'm actually not 'up to' quite yet.  And yes. OCs.  *sigh*.  

Windshear knew better than to ask if he was ready.  They never were.  Sometimes the show of bravado did them good, but, looking at Skywarp, he didn’t think so.  Don’t make them admit their fear if they are afraid. Training cycle after training cycle had told him that. 

“You know the retraction commands.” He defaulted to completely neutral, despite the bad fit with the intimacy of what they were about to do.

“Yes, Cadet Trainer,” Skywarp said.  He seemed on the brink of saying more before he pulled back.  “Now?”

Windshear nodded, watching as Skywarp retracted the armor over his spark chamber.  The dodecahedron of the spark chamber itself lay bare to the air, its central cover smooth and undented.  New, or new enough.  Windshear hated this part. It felt like a violation.  No, it was a violation, no matter how willingly the armor was opened. But it had to be done.  This had to be tested if the Trine was going to succeed.  He retracted his own, the armor sliding easily in its worn oiled grooves.  Done this…how many times?  The bond from a spark link faded after a few cycles, all of them shredded to vague memories: other flightframes, standing in front of him, nervous, trembling, trying to suppress their terror.  So many. 

Skywarp had—as so many before him—backed up against the wall.  Because, yes, Windshear thought dryly, that made it much less intimidating.  He braced his hands on either side of the smaller flightframe’s head, leaning in.  He wished for the thousandth time he could think of something comforting to say. Something that wasn’t clumsy, awkward, a lie.  His vocalizer came up dry. He could only hope his broad face said something comforting to the narrow-shouldered flightframe as he irised open his spark chamber, the proximity releasing Skywarp’s in a sympathetic reaction.  Nothing made this NOT a violation.  Statements of volition were false—the cadet had no real idea what he was agreeing to.  And Windshear could feel, could always feel, the fear and panic and worry in the spark as he hit the outer firewalls with his own. 

This must be done. Seekers who could not bear pain, could not control the bond, were no good.  Not to their Trine, not to their people.  They were warriors. They needed this. 

Skywarp’s sparklight skittered away from his own, like a purple shadow chased by his orangey light.  Trying to escape, to flee.  He chased it mercilessly.  Oh, he thought, pushing it through his spark’s light, I do you no favors being kind to you now, little one.  I cannot protect you any other way than by being this hard on you.  He pushed the orange light at the spark chamber, insistently, trapping the purple light at its source.  He heard Skywarp keen, in pain, in violation, in fear, and then felt the echo of each race through him, the light flaring white between them. 

A brief ecstasy.  All too brief.  Solely to create the short-lived bond, to see if the cadet could control it through what was to come. 

He did not ask, but Skywarp answered anyway, his voice small. “I’m not ready.” Windshear could feel the pain of the admission along the spark bond, sapping away any remote, residual pleasure.

No one ever is.

***

Skywarp nodded nervously as he entered the Tempering Room.  They had heard stories about this place, stories he had half-believed were lies. Until he crossed the threshold. He was more than a little grateful that Windshear had entered before him—his initial juddering reaction to the room was blocked from view by the large bomber’s bulk.  And he felt along the spark bond, Windshear’s patient assurance.  Wordless, but a soft solidity.  Almost a neutral confidence.  It could be done.  It could be survived.  Not as encouraging as a personal assurance, but…he looked at Windshear, his Cadet Trainer, and Cutdraft and Commandant Turbine.  They had all been through this.  They had all survived. Yes.  It could be done. 

Still, the floor’s grating was almost grouted with dilute energon.  Even while Skywarp watched, a small groundframe hosed the floor, pushing a flood of colored fluids towards a drain.  Oh. Panic blazed in his tanks, like an acid fire. He already felt a thin admonishment along the bond.  He could not do this. 

He had to.  He thought of Thundercracker and Starscream, and all they had been through just to get here. He thought of Windshear, and what he must be thinking.  He had to.  It was pain. It was only pain.  He could do this. 

Commandant Turbine droned through a speech which was pretty much lost on the small, grey flightframe. Most of which he knew: if he succeeded, if they all succeeded, they could officially Bond as a Trine. They would be warriors.  They would belong and be together.  He couldn’t think of anything else. 

Turbine paused, and Skywarp realized he had been asked a question.  Thundercracker had always said he had a problem focusing.  Well, here it was again.  Frag. He froze, his optics pinpointing.

“You have the option,” Windshear said. Obviously covering for him.  Skywarp winced. “You can cut your voc or not.” That was all the freedom he’d have.

“No,” Skywarp said, unsteadily, already off balance. 

“It will not be held against you if you scream,” Cutdraft said.  Strangely, it was probably the nicest thing Cutdraft had ever said to him. 

“I-I understand.”   The goal of course, the product of hundreds of cadet boasts, was to go through the Tempering without a sound. Skywarp had made those boasts, too.  But any belief he could carry them out seemed to drain right from his footplates and into the cleanser-wet floor. 

Turbine nodded, brusquely, and drew back to the edge of the room.  Cutdraft turned to a low shelf.

“We begin with the shockrod.”  Cutdraft’s voice was harsh.  Skywarp nodded, even though he knew that it wasn’t exactly anything he needed to respond to.  He watched as Cutdraft eyed him, assessing something.  He tried to brace himself, even knowing it would do no good. 

Cutdraft swept in, the shockrod square against Skywarp’s wingstrut.  And Skywarp’s resolution to hold his silence was shattered in an instant.  He shrieked, his talons clawing at the air in front of him, his body seized, rigid, by the current from the shockrod.  His systems lit up red with alarms, circuits teetering on overheat or overcharge. 

Cutdraft withdrew the rod.  The removal of current unlocked Skywarp’s joints—he collapsed to his knees, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of signals to reroute.  Before he could regroup, Cutdraft darted in again, shockrod against his leg.  The limb went rigid, shooting out straight underneath him. He convulsed.  Cutdraft stepped back again.  Skywarp sucked in huge gulps of air, trying to force-cool his heated alarm systems.  Again and again Cutdraft danced in with the rod, laying it against his bare metal frame.  Again and again he screamed, howled, begged, until Cutdraft stepped away, Skywarp sobbing facefirst into the grating. 

Windshear knelt over him. “First part. You passed. You need to control the bond more.”  Skywarp was dimly aware of the fast hum of Windshear’s cooling fans.  The pain, he had been passing along to Windshear.  The point of the test had been to endure without going offline.  He hadn't. But if he hadn't only because he had been shoving the pain over the bond....

Skywarp didn’t feel like he had succeeded.  His systems were so overused that the very air he sent to cool them seemed to chafe, and the lens lubricant streaking his cheekplates tasted like failure.  He nodded, dumbly, his vocalizer ached, staticky, raw.  “Too late to cut voc?” he croaked.  Windshear shook his head, helping Skywarp to sit up. 

“Fuel line next,” Windshear murmured. “Control the bond.”  The Trainer pushed back against the bond.  Skywarp hung his head, miserably. It was Windshear’s call, in the end, if he passed or not. And he had been leaking pain across the bond.  Surely that would affect Windshear’s willingness to pass him? What good would he do his Trine if they felt his uncontrolled pain?  He could cripple them.

Sorry, he thought, realizing how entirely inadequate the word was to express anything.  He squeezed his talons into fists as he felt Cutdraft step behind him.  Windshear gave a final squeeze at his shoulders before pushing away, an observer again. An observer who could feel along the bond.  He had to do better. He had to.  Starscream. Thundercracker.  They would go through this as well.  He had to show them it could be done. 

He looked up, finding Windshear’s face.  The black bomber’s facial plates were blank, impassive, but it helped Skywarp focus on the bond. You are connected to another, he thought.  Do not hurt him. Behind him, Cutdraft was adjusting a governor over Skywarp’s single engine.  He forced himself still, forced his optics, and his focus, on Windshear, as though he were trying to project himself over there instead of where he was.  The governor sat heavily atop his engine, shifting his balance.  A heavy reminder of what was at stake. 

A red burning sliced across his sensornet, then a billow of orange-hot fire as the governor fired the leaking fuel.  The flames leapt down his back, scorching into his already dark armor, red tongues licking under the plates at his cables, servos, the fine, insulated wires of his motor controls.  He cut his voc just in time before a scorching shriek would have blasted from his vocalizer. 

The flames died down. 

//Control the bond,// Windshear said, coolly.  //Firewall it.// He lay open, no walls, receiving everything Skywarp was sending, as if unable to protect himself: Skywarp felt an echo of pain across the bond, as the fuel-vent agony ricocheted back at him.

//Sorry.// Skywarp desperately tried to concentrate, to throw up a wall.  He didn’t even think how Windshear had hacked his comm.  He felt the pain buckle back against him, running into the hasty firewall. Some leaked around, but much less.  Not good enough, he told himself. Try harder.  You have to—

Another slice on his fuel line, another feral hiss from the governor, atomizing the fuel, then the click of ignition.  Skywarp sank his talons into the floor, metal scraping against metal, his talon points digging in through the grating, chipping off, creating secondary counterpoints of pain to the massive burning arch from his fuel line.  He tightened…everything. Determined to let nothing seep through the bond, he pulled everything back into himself, his hands clawing into tight fists, as if he could squeeze the agony together, contain it, control it, as if gripping it by invisible reins.

The self-repair prickled through his fuel line, sealing the cut.  Cutdraft stepped back, and Skywarp could feel him exchange looks with Windshear.  //Better?//he dared to ask, wincing as he struggled to unlock his finger joints from where they had dented into the grated floor. 

//I am not allowed to tell you,// Windshear said. But Skywarp felt a skirl of reassurance across the bond.  The miniscule subversion almost brought him to tears.  That Windshear would do that, for him.  He felt a trickle of hopeless, pathetic gratitude mix across the bond.  //One more cut,// Windshear warned.  He nodded, realizing too late that it gave away that he’d been comm’ing.  His terror showed on his face.  Windshear tilted his head in that by-now-too-familiar gesture. The ‘we’ll deal with this later’ gesture.  Skywarp only hoped there would be a later.  As a Trine. 

Cutdraft made the last cut lengthwise, down the fuel line, instead of across, perhaps as his own rebuke.  Fuel stung, gushing hot through the split line down into his control systems before the governor kicked on. 

Skywarp’s spinal cables arced from the sudden heat, flames bursting down his back column, flaring around his ribstruts. His arms tightened, helplessly, his hands helpless little balls of agony.  The heat from the flames melted into the insulation of his wiring, blasting against his face, his hands, blackening his already dark armor, filling his olfactory sensors with an acrid scorch.  He forced his concentration away from the blaring alarms of pain, shunting them aside, focusing instead on controlling the link, keeping it shut off, shut down.  The pain became a distant thing, immaterial, less important than keeping the pain from Windshear.  He was so focused on firewalling the link that he didn’t feel his autorepair seal the gash, didn’t react at all until he felt the icy blast of a fire suppressant against his frame. 

He rocked forward, his hands barely catching him, his entire frame trembling.  Cutdraft kept the fire suppressant on him longer than was necessary—a cold burn, but a strange kind of mercy, the icy pressurized foam cooling his overtaxed system.  Cutdraft cut the hose, and stepped back, switching to plain water, hosing him off. It felt almost soothing, but Skywarp refused to let himself relax. He watched the bluish foam rinse away from his shivering frame, eddying and pooling its way across to the drain.  He became aware of the three of the Seekers communicating over his dripping, trembling frame.  Were they judging him? Had he already failed? 

“One more,” Windshear said, approaching Skywarp, resting one hand gently on his shoulder.  “One more.”  His optics flicked from Skywarp’s face to something behind the grey flightframe. 

Skywarp nodded grimly. He could do it.  One more. He could. Almost over. 

Windshear knelt in front of him, offering him a wicked looking silver-black blade.  Skywarp stared at it for a long moment, uncomprehending.  Windshear reached over and tapped an exposed energon line in Skywarp’s leg.  The touch was intimate, and neutral at the same time.  Directing him. 

He looked up, onlining his voc in shock with a crackle.  Had he failed?  Was this what happened?  His talons closed blindly around the blade.  He had failed.  He had tried, tried with everything he had, and it wasn’t good enough.  He had bled through the bond.  He must have. Even worse, he hadn’t even felt it, had thought he’d finally gotten it right.

Worse than that: he had let Starscream and Thundercracker down.  His inability to focus, just as Thundercracker had always warned, had stripped this from him, and stripped him from them.  They would never be a Trine.  It had been the only thing to keep them going after Skyfire’s death: this regroup into a Trine, this planting themselves in orbit around Skyfire’s ghost, binding themselves to a living pain, a dead memory. 

This would destroy Starscream, Skywarp’s failure.  Just as well that Skywarp didn’t have to be there to see it. Cowardice, perhaps, cowardice to flee from the field of his own failure.  But he could do it, he owed them this. He could show them that just once he had focus and courage and was not afraid of pain, even if he could not control his bond.  He drove the blade, fiercely, with all the self-loathing he could muster, into the exposed line, the knife’s edge singing against Windshear’s startled fingers, sinking deep into the line.  He stabbed again and then again, a sharp white pain, pink energon spurting in droplets from the wound, splattering on his thigh armor, his hand, his chassis. He clamped hard against the bond, keeping this all to himself. My pain. My failure. My punishment.  This I will keep. This I will not let spill over onto anyone else, even though the consequences of my failure will. 

Windshear snatched his hand, driving him backward, the heavy governor atop his single turbine ringing against the floor.  “Stop,” Windshear said, and Skywarp felt a similar message burst across the bond.  Stop.  His firewalls had blocked anything from leaving, but Windshear’s had battered their way in easily.  Skywarp struggled, the pink-slicked blade slippery in his grasp, feeling the hot trickle of energon from the severed line in his thigh, even as Windshear’s bulk pressed down against him.  “Stop, Skywarp,” Windshear said. “Enough.”  He tugged the blade from Skywarp’s fingers, throwing it behind him. Skywarp could hear it clatter across the floor, could feel smaller hands—the grounder—throwing a hose-patch over what must be the mess he had chopped the line into. 

“You’re done,” Windshear said. “It’s over.”

“I failed!” Skywarp moaned.  He writhed. The grounder cursed as Skywarp’s thigh armor struck him in the chest, tossing him back.  He fought against Windshear’s greater weight and leverage, against his greater skill and servos not weakened by cycles of signal-dampening pain. 

“You didn’t. You didn’t.”

“I felt it. I hurt.” 

“The point isn’t in feeling it or not.  Screaming or not.  Reacting or not.  The point is the bond.  The point is proving that you can work beyond that, through that.  The bond was what mattered.” Windshear lowered his head, his vocalizer’s vibrations soft, intimate. “I didn’t feel a thing.” 

All of the miserable tension Skywarp had balled into himself released, flooding out of him in a wash of trembling relief. He whimpered softly, and felt Windshear jerk him against him, the long arms pull their chassis together. He clutched onto Windshear’s shoulder, the relief bubbling to joy, hugging his Trainer. He had not let them down.  They would be together.  They would be a Trine.  The joy effervesced through his system, transmuting the raw ache of pain into a trembling aliveness. Hope.  The future distilled into a poignant rush. 

“Control the bond,” Windshear muttered, pushing away roughly. “You’re making me look like an idiot.” But the one corner of his mouth that smiled, on those rare occasions that he did, quirked upward.

***

“One down,” Cutdraft said, watching Steelbrace prep for the next Cadet. “You’re done until next solar.” Skywarp had been bundled off to repair bay, where he’d lie in quiet quarantine, beginning his final upgrades, until his Trine joined him. And, Windshear had said, under his breath as the med techs hoisted the mobile repair cradle, he expected Skywarp to take care of them.  Skywarp had nodded solemnly, and Windshear had felt the earnestness across the bond, just now beginning to fade in intensity. 

Windshear nodded.  The spark bond needed time to fully fade. Starscream was next.  “This was the one I was most worried about.” 

“Looking at the end, there, I can imagine why,” Cutdraft said, dryly.  “You’re not the hugging type.” 

Windshear frowned, sourly. “He’ll get better. And his Trine needs that.” Skywarp was altogether too physical, but the other two were too reserved.  They needed him to draw them out. 

“They hate us, you know.”

“I think they’re more…afraid. It just looks like hate.”  He shrugged at Cutdraft’s doubting look. “Remember, I get to feel them.”  Cutdraft had a group this cycle. He’d know. He’d remember.

Cutdraft winced. “Worst part of that job.  Glad I only got a Bine this Training Cycle.”

Windshear tilted his head, noncommittal.  It was equally hard—matter of kind more than degree—to inflict the Tempering as to monitor the bond.  But the bond required feeling, knowing more about the Cadet than he ever thought he’d told you.  Windshear could feel things swirling around his processor, shadows and glittering fragments he knew must be Skywarp’s.  By the end, he’d know the Trine better than they knew themselves.  

Cutdraft jerked his chin at the spot on the floor where Skywarp had been. “Got a bit weird at the end.”

“They’ve been through a lot.  And his concern was for letting down his Trine.” 

Cutdraft shrugged. “Your call, of course.” 

Yes, Windshear thought possessively. My call.  “It’s about loyalty to the Trine.”

“It’s about the ability to endure pain. Without getting overwhelmed. The bond is merely something we can monitor easily.”

“It’s a violation,” Windshear said, softly. “One they endure to prove to us how open they are.”  A strength in that strange vulnerability, the willingness to obey.   

“It is,” Turbine said, from where he had been witnessing in the corner, looking up from his datapad, “about both.  And speaking of which, Windshear.  Cutdraft has asked me to ask you if you would Temper his Bine.”

It was Cutdraft’s turn to look uncomfortable. “I know that you won’t go too far,” he said, pleaded, softly.

“Of course,” Windshear said, humbled by Cutdraft’s trust, and what it did for him to ask. 

In the end, you did what was necessary, Windshear knew.  You inflict pain, because a smaller wound now is better than a devastating injury later.  You open yourself to feel along with the young mechs, feel the fear and stark terror, because to leave them entirely alone is at once too cruel and not cruel enough.  The war would be less kind.  Time would be less gentle.  The world had no room for mercy, or pity, or tenderness. They had to know.  It was the kindest mercy to teach them this. 



Comments

[mpinsky.livejournal.com]

Saw the word "Commandant" in the summary and couldn't resist sneaking a peak. ;)

Bravo, Antepathy! Bravo, I must say. Had me tensed up in my chair from the raw emotion in this one (though I can't help but liken the trial to something akin to a Seeker breakout).

It's quite a thing to see world building from this AU standpoint, as well as the learning curve all Seekers seem to go through in this universe. If only my headcanon was this complex!

This is in a series, correct? I would like to see how the other Seekers fare in their training.

[fierceawakening.livejournal.com]

Wow.

Yes.

This.

I know I should have more to say, but right now I just have... yes.