Shame

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

R
Bayverse, NEHIP AU
Starscream, Barricade
refs to noncon, h/c fic

Yet another of my bingo fics for hc_bingo , 'sexual extortion'.   For those who have spared themselves NEHIP (which I am actually debating picking back up), all you need to know is the kink meme request that started it is that the Fallen noncons Starscream to create all those hatchlings.  Of course, I don't do mechpreg, so....

 

Starscream wedged himself between the supply crate and the wall. The only place he could feel safe. His own recharge had become more of a target than a haven—they could find him there, and had, too easily. Word had gotten out, gotten twisted.  His mission, the ‘honor’ that the Fallen had assigned to him, had spread—that he allowed others to spike him.  Then ‘allowed’ became ‘endured’.  And ‘endured’ had faded to…this.  Hiding.  In shame and fear, thighs gummed with old transfluid, armor scraped and dented. 

The Air Commander.  Reduced to hiding in a storage hangar. 

He leaned forward, folding his arms around his legs, resting his chin on one of his patellar plates.  He felt…ill.  He couldn’t tell if it was physical or some sort of psychosomatic reaction. The aches were real, the feeling of filth was at least half-real.  The swollen pain of his fluid chamber was real.  But the cold burn of shame, of humiliation, was it less real? It could not be traced back, the same, direct way, to the other pains. It was intangible. But somehow just as real, and even more awful. 

How…how could he go on?  He no longer even questioned how he could lead.  He was reduced—and he felt the reduction acutely—to wondering how he might make it through the next dutycycle. The next cycle. 

A thin moan tore itself from his vocalizer, a papery sound of misery. It didn’t help.  It didn’t relieve the pain, the crushing shame. 

A blade of light stabbed into the room. It lit upon one of his toes, sticking out from behind a storage crate.  He froze, not daring to move, even to withdraw the betraying toe. “Who’s there?” a voice hissed. 

A moment stretched.  Dust silted in the air, thickening the silence. 

A footfall. Then another.  Starscream heard the hum of another mech’s system, the servos only half-firing, keeping the mech in a nervous crouch. “I heard you,” the voice said, approaching. “I heard you.  Come out.”

Starscream leaned back, carefully, optic peering through the narrow gap between two crates.  A flash of white and black. Barricade. His systems released, audibly.   Barricade would not…he couldn’t even bring himself to finish that thought.

The smaller mech jumped around the corner, hands curled into claws. They stared at each other, tension thick, wary.  Even though he did not fear that Barricade would assault him, he’d be a fool to think he was automatically safe.

“Starscream?” Barricade said, straightening up, taking in the jet’s miserable posture. His lower set of optics flicked over Starscream’s frame, his upper focused on the jet’s face.

Starscream ground his mouthplates together, bitterly. Caught out. Seen. Cowardly, tainted, filthy. “Yes,” he said.  His voice was scratchy and staticky. He waited for the barrage of questions—why was he here, what had happened, what was he doing? 

He couldn’t imagine having the courage to answer any of them.

Barricade’s arms dropped to his sides, losing any appearance of attack, talons uncurling.  He stepped forward, reaching one hand out, letting it hover over Starscream’s forearm.  Not touching, but making an offer to touch.  And Starscream realized he understood. Not fully, not entirely, but he understood well enough the constant wear and stress of fear. Understood that sensation of not being safe, not being comfortable, within one’s own frame.

“It is for the continuation of our species,” Starscream whispered.  Trying it out, saying it out loud to see if he believed it more in front of a witness. “We all must endure so that our kind may live.”

“No one should be asked to endure this.” Flat, the ring of truth damping the tinny false-noble sound of Starscream’s words.  Starscream hunched, as if the smaller mech had reached in and twisted at his spark-chamber’s lines.

And he saw a sudden helplessness in the grounder’s optics, Barricade’s frustration that even the best he could do would do nothing to fix it. He could not undo the past. He could not un-rape Starscream. He could not make the noble ideal mesh with the brutal reality.  Saving their race, yes.  But saving them for what? Another round of horror like this?

The grounders optics seemed to scorch his armor. He couldn’t bear being looked at, not right now, not with these thoughts, these doubts beginning to stir in his cortex.  He looked up, his mouth working, trying to find the right words. The words of the Air Commander, who did not need pity, or sympathy or comfort.

No words came. Just a high keen of raw pain.  He saw the pain echoed in Barricade’s face, as though he were somehow spraying some of his suffering from his body, his spark, onto the smaller mech.

The hand lowered, resting gently, neutrally, on his arm.  Accepting the burden of pain Starscream was giving him. Understanding. 

Starscream lowered his head between his knees, the hard rough-edged ball of agony in his core beginning to loosen, soften, move. 

The hand lifted off his arm after one comforting squeeze. “’ll watch the door,” Barricade said.  Giving him some small privacy, some miniscule safety. The best he could do. Which wasn’t much, but it was something offered from a damaged hand that had not much to give. He nodded, peering up between his legs, one hand releasing its grip from his opposite joint to stroke the silver-taloned hand as Barricade moved, in mute gratitude.

Comments

[ultharkitty.livejournal.com]

Very nicely done indeed.

(Sorry, I'm not very articulate this evening. But this works exceptionally well, and Barricade's final words are perfect.)

[yukiko-angel.livejournal.com]

This whole concept is guts wrenching, but just this sole moment of understanding is great.

[playswithworms.livejournal.com]

Dah! Poor Starscream ;_; And Barricade offering to watch the door is such a small thing, and yet means everything here.

[ithilgwath.livejournal.com]

...I reiterate my need to give hugs.

There's such a hopelessness pervading this piece--the act of hiding being proven useless, even though the one who found him was ...an ally, if not a friend; the acknowledgment of an untenable situation; of having the concealing lies stripped away like wet tissue paper. And yet they both endure in the way any victim of child abuse is very familiar with, that feeling of being trapped. Hiding is only a delay, it's never safe.

But it's better than nothing.

*lots more with the hugging* I really hope they get their escape, in one way or another.