Crossfade 2

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG-13
Bayverse
Mindwipe/Skystalker
warning: possibly disturbing images of infection, h/c prompt

A/N: written for hc_bingo  prompt: septicemia/infected wound.

Follow on to Crossfade  If you don't want to read all that: Mindwipe's solenoids that give him his abilities have serious effects on him: as in, no short term memory.  Skystalker has been split into two bodies in an attempt to save him after his injuries.  Neither really copes all that well.  

It was Skystalker who discovered it, shortly after he’d realized that Mindwipe didn’t do daily maintenance. Possibly because in all that time no one had ever considered the possibility that someone would forget something so basic. 

This was Mindwipe. He had his own designation on a continual HUD.

“This whole area,” Sky said, tapping along an upper chest plate.  “Nothing?”

“No,” Mindwipe said, his visor tilted, curious.  “Is that abnormal?”

Slag ye—Sky cut himself short.  He should know better than this by now.  Mindwipe had no short term memory—Skystalker had to have it for him. And common sense, apparently. “Yes,” Stalker did the speaking this time. “It’s abnormal.” 

“Oh.”  One thing for the larger mech—he had adapted to this simply enough; turning his head to face Stalker where he leaned against the wall as though it were the most natural thing in the world.  Adjusted, Skystalker thought, way better than I have to this.  He still hated been split into two, hated the necessity, the accident that had split his spark.  He’d’ve gone mad, he was sure of it, if he hadn’t had those brief periods of blessed blankness, lying between Mindwipe’s solenoids, letting the mech’s latent charge sap at his own short term memory. As if erasing his pain. It always came back, but…those ebbing moments helped.  Any moment he could not acutely, vividly recall his former self—huge, sleek, powerful, colorful—was a moment without bitterness.

And for that, if nothing else, he loved Mindwipe.  And could not bear to think of him hurt, especially hurt to this extent.  “Can I strip it down?” he asked.

“What?” A short lag, familiar now to Skystalker, as Mindwipe tried to recall the last few kliks.  “Uh, sure.”

Skystalker grinned. “I asked if I could strip this down because you can’t feel anything,” he reminded, patiently. 

“Oh.  Yes.  If you think that’s best.”  A pause. “That’s not normal, then?” Completely blank.

“No, it’s not.”  Stalker again, amused.  Sky locked down for a handful of decas as Stalker headed to the maintenance facility for tools.  Skystalker wasn’t yet used to long term very different physical actions. Easiest just to switch one of him down while the other did the tough stuff.  Another thing too bizarre, but that Mindwipe had accepted as entirely normal.

Maybe normal looked different with no memory. 

Stalker came back with the basic kit, and Sky took over, Stalker retreating to the wall, away from the effect of Mindwipe’s solenoids.  Sky tapped the plate in question. “Can you pop the armor locks for me?”

“What? Oh. Right.” Another hitch, as Mindwipe consulted his running HUD to remind himself.  Frag, Skystalker thought. I have no idea how he lives like that.  “I’ll try.”  One, two of the locks popped.  “Yes?” Mindwipe asked, his tone cheerful.

“Two of them. Never mind. I’ll get the others.” There was no sense getting angry.  Mindwipe wouldn’t remember why.  Sky scrambled around the bomber’s chassis, ducking under the arm, his small claws tracing the line of armor locks. He worked in silence for a few moments, the locktool working at the stiffened armor locks.  Finally, the last one gave with a bit of a crack.  He lifted the plate, felt resistance.  That…shouldn’t happen. He wrapped his fingers around the armor plating more securely, bracing his feet on the ground, putting some weight behind his next pull. 

It gave with a sort of sticky yielding resistance.  And…a smell. Awful.  Corroded metal and rancid grease.  Sky’s olfactory sensors whitelined and autoshutdown.  “Mindwipe,” he said, laying the panel aside, and turning to the orangey-black slime gunking up the sensor-cilia panel. “What happened?” The question slipped out. It was, perhaps, a reasonable question in the circumstances. Just not for Mindwipe.

“Don’t know,” and for a klik, Mindwipe’s cheerful tone faltered. Sky and Stalker both caught the worried optics, staring at the festering wound.  “That is new.”

“No it’s not,’ Stalker said, reasonably.  “That’s old damage.  That you should have had looked at.”

“I’m…sorry?” The optics lifted to Sky’s face, worriedly.  Such an unaccustomed expression: Mindwipe normally defaulted to blandly cheerful. It was…disturbing, the change. 

Sky sighed. “Don’t worry. We can fix it.” He turned and hopped off the berth (hating his diminutive size) to grab a fluid bin and some cleansing rags.  First task was to clean off the suppurating ooze.  He began wiping down the frame of the panel, watching Mindwipe’s face for reaction. Frag. He really hoped this didn’t hurt. 

The gunk wiped off easily enough, revealing pitted metal, swollen and twisted out of form.  Frag.  Skystalker couldn’t repair this.  This required a full pull out and replace.  Still, he could do…something.

He wrung out the cleansing rag in the bin of cleanser fluid, watching, distressed, as the clear liquid instantly turned murky.  When he turned around again, Mindwipe’s optics were on the damaged cilia plate, one black finger probing at the cilia. Instead of being pink and healthy, the cilia were white-grey and brittle.  It should have hurt. It should have been agony to touch raw cilia, but dead?  Nothing.  He looked up, that realization clear across his broad face. 

“I…don’t remember how it happened. Or when. Or…anything.”

Sky made a sound, tight, in his throat, a sound of empathetic horror. To not…KNOW what happened to one’s own frame…he couldn’t imagine.  It must have hurt at some point. Must have been a vicious pain for a long time. But it got logged in as long term data, normal, and then overwritten as it self-sealed, as it festered and failed until…nothing.

Mindwipe’s optics met his, his voice very soft. “Sometimes,” he said, tentatively, as if the words might collapse under their own weight, “I hate what this has done to me.”

The cleansing rag dropped from Sky’s fingers, making a wet, rustbrown splat on the berth.  He stood unsure, not knowing—neither of him—what to say, what to do. 

“Help me remember?” Mindwipe said, quietly. “Not just the damage, but the stories?” 

Yes.  Sky flung his small arms around the larger mech’s neck, neither of them heeding that his fingers were sticky or that his chassis bumped against the deadnumb cilia.. There was so much pain and yet so much promise in that request—that Mindwipe wanted him—needed him as much as he needed the bomber. 

Stalker spoke, where he leaned, Skystalker’s memory, out of the way, out of the action, and yet still trying to contribute.  Do his part even though Sky and Stalker were one.  “We’ll remember for you.”  So you won’t have to suffer the blankness of not knowing but also, unlike me, you won’t have the terrible weight of knowledge of what you once were and what happened to that tearing down upon you. So you won’t ever feel or look like this again.

 

Comments

[akisawana.livejournal.com]

I love this pairing! This is awesome!

[crimsonseastorm.livejournal.com]

*squee* I was hoping that you'd write more with these two!! They're just so wonderful xDD I have to applaud Skystalker for his patience; not only is he dealing with his own issues but Mindwipe's as well 8(

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

Aww!

I got a second Skystalker for my toy collection in reaction to the first fic. Currently they are spending time with Omega Prime (the combined form of RotF Jetfire and Optimus Prime) while Mindwipe stays with G1 Jetfire and the section of the Jet Harem on the desk shelf (the whole harem connot fit anymore, especially since the Command Trine was completed).