Lord Starscream.

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
Bayverse/Reign of Starscream
Barricade/Starscream
Warnings: Spoilers for Reign of Starscream issue two.

This purports to be an entry for tf_rare_pairing  's May 'Missing You' challenge.  Because it's so bloody short, please to enjoy bonus which is probably the thing that made me slash these two to begin with:

Oh and PS. thanks to katsuko , mpinsky  and swordage  for opinions/beta over on dreamwidth.

 

He came back.  Barricade clung onto that thought with a strength born of pain and despair.  He came back. To me.  If only for a moment, it does not change that he came back. 

If only I had not been broken. If only I had been useful, able to serve. 

Barricade shifted against the column that held the overpass up around him, his doorwings grating against the pitted concrete, struggling to sit up. Pain lanced his sensornet, spiking his core temp and clogging his processor array with incoming messages: errors, alerts, status permissions from auto-repair.

Just one more failure in a string of failures. He came back, only to see me broken, useless. 

Nothing new.

So what more could he do than what he did?  Leave, turning away, his last words trying to be full of promise, but echoing his disappointment.  He left to save us all.

Because, dear Primus, I am helpless to save myself. 

He chose the war over you.  Not a bad call; the right call.  Foolish to feel abandoned.  The war is more important than you.  You know this, Barricade.  You're nothing to him. You're...nothing.  Couldn't even make it to Mission City. Couldn't even capture one human. ONE.

Can, he berated himself, at least do this much. Can stop lying here, helpless.  Can do something. SOMETHING. 

I'm sorry. Sorry I let you down. Again. How many times, now? I'm sorry that you saved me, and I haven't been worth the effort. And yet Starscream kept giving you chances.  Just...not worth the effort. Never was. Never will be.  Known it all along, really, and Starscream probably knew it, too, only...(Barricade felt his spark chamber ache) only he deluded himself otherwise.  The fact that Starscream, normally so astute, so ruthlessly perceptive, would make such an error in judgment, repeatedly, and always for Barricade's sake, always, made him tremble with a mix of awe and regret as though he were teetering on the brink of a precipice. Unbalanced. Needing…something.

He wished he'd done things differently. So many things. But just now, when the jet had touched his arm, he wished he'd had the courage to ask for what he wanted, to blurt how he felt (in his injured state he could pass it off as a glitch), to apologize at a time when showing weakness wasn't so jarring.  Apologize, as if mere words could stitch together all the distance that yawned between them, forced apart by rank and history.  Forced apart by the exigencies of war. Barricade felt the echo of the touch along his arm, the elegant bronze-gold talons against the mangled white enamel of his upper arm armor.  A touch not intimate, and yet...not distant.

You're deluding yourself, he snapped, rolling to one side, one ankle servo sparking weakly as he tried to stand.  Deluding yourself. You are nothing special. He only picks you for those missions, puts you forward, so he can step in and minimize the damage. Or, and this thought rankled vilely, he sets you up where he can watch you fall.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe all along that’s how it has been: you being nothing more than his plaything. A twisted toy, a depraved entertainment. He’s certainly got that bend to his humor.  And Barricade had always provided quite a show. Failing is one thing you can do well, Barricade. 

Barricade braced himself against the concrete pillar, struggling to straighten.  I will. I will stand up proudly.  When Starscream came again, Barricade vowed to meet him on his feet, bring him something, show him something that he can respect.  Show him something that will say what Barricade lacked the words, the courage, to say out loud.  Something that will begin to make him worthy.

He stared out into the bright sky, thin white clouds scudding across the washed-out blue. The world he could not touch, grounded, limited. Pathetic. Clouds strove to erase the white contrails of Starscream’s departure, pull the white lines into nothing more than their indistinguishable mass. As if Starscream himself could be assimilated, erased. As if he were not…special, unique, beautiful.

The words, just the thoughts of them, were enough to make Barricade’s spark pulsate with unexpected emotion.



Comments

[anontfwriter.livejournal.com]

Awesome.

[katsuko]

*happy sigh* I'm still loving it, and if there was any more to it I think the power would be lost ♥

*is still eyeballing the scan and has slipped off into her happy mental place*

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

I know, isn't that scan like...the slashiest thing you've ever seen?

Thanks again for your feedback earlier!

[killer-rip.livejournal.com]

Oh man. Poor Barricade. So much inner turmoil.

This was awesomely written and believable. I especially loved the last two paragraphs.

[femme4jack.livejournal.com]

that was stunning

[synaltern.livejournal.com]

Ah, sweet soliloquy. That was wonderful; loved the look into Barricade's thought process(es).