Loyalty

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Verse: G1
Rating: PG13
Summary: Vortex's punishment for overstepping his bounds.

 

Everything hurt. His frame was gouged, rotors bent and seeping, trickles of energon drying crustily along his armor. His vents wheezed through his air intakes, struggling to cool his systems overheated by the beating that Onslaught had been delivering for the last cycle. Even more than that, though, Vortex’s ego hurt. Hurt all the more because he deserved this: deserved even worse than this—though he was, in his way, grateful he had gotten this much.

Onslaught understood him. Onslaught knew how he needed to externalize his pain. More: Onslaught was willing to do that for him—transfer his guilt and fear and inner darkness to his outer body, where it would seep and bleed and, finally, a bit at a time, heal. The marks on his frame, across his sensornet, pain which otherwise would fester underneath, come boiling up, boiling out, boiling over. As it had, which was how he had ended up here.

He hated the gratitude almost as much as he hated his need for this pain. He certainly, though, did not hate Onslaught.

He had done—all unknowing although that was no excuse—an unforgiveable wrong. Singlehandedly, he had taken down his own team. Destroyed Bruticus better than deliberate sabotage. Overstepped. Given in to his darkness, which he could clearly no longer be trusted to hold in check.

He wouldn’t apologize: he couldn’t. Not like words could make it any better. His pride wouldn’t let him, even so. But Onslaught, he knew, could read the mute apology in the way he did not even struggle or fight against Onslaught’s blows. The way he refused to even allow his optics to beg. He would take what Onslaught decided was his toll without even trying to get him to mitigate it. Give me all that I am worth. Good and bad. May I be worth punishing. Redeeming. 

Onslaught stepped back, as if sensing surrender. “Enough,” he said, quietly. He flattened his hands, as if so many punches had tightened the servos. 

Vortex couldn’t even find words. What now? Pathetic, he thought, looking down his dented and energon-spattered forearms. He felt his muteness acutely, like a failing. A gaping wound. He felt he should apologize. Say something, offer SOMETHING back. Submit to Onslaught’s authority in some more...verbal, less visceral way. 

He owed Onslaught. For more than this. For more than understanding him. And he had—obviously, so obviously now that it pained him worse than any of the injuries Onslaught had given him—let him down. It had been building for a while, the thing with Swindle, becoming a palpable pressure, grinding away at Vortex’s temper, which had finally snapped, as if metal fatigued. The fraggin’ mech had been diluting their energon, selling the surplus. Unspeakable betrayal, Vortex had thought—shortchanging his own team. Weakening them, and for personal profit.

Right. He called that betrayal. As if he had the ability, much less the right, to judge. Compared to what he had done: destroying his own team? He’d thought—foolish miscalculation—that he’d handle it, not bother Onslaught with it. Presumption. Overstepping his bounds. It didn’t matter that it was motivated from a desire to take care of things, to spare Onslaught some effort. To…help. Pathetic. You can’t even help yourself.

He wasn’t sorry for what he had done, not at that level—it had been pure. Cathartic. His systems running cleanly, unclogged from the darkness, the sludge in his processor. It had turned, for a brief moment (it seemed) his viciousness into righteousness.

He had been fooled. No. He had fooled himself. 

He had destroyed his team. He had been…unable to focus on the consequences of his actions. He could act, but he could not see. That, he had failed. That, he was sorry for. But he could not put that into words. He wished that, in a way, Onslaught would continue, beat him more, take him, push him on a surge of pain past his inarticulacy, until the words would come. As much as part of him loathed the idea, another part would have spilled in relief to be sobbing on the floor, groveling, exploding, melting down, able to explain. Able to believe he deserved forgiveness.

That was why, in the end, he could not apologize.

He pulled himself onto his knees, stiffly. Words would not come. And Onslaught knew better than to expect them. Only Vortex wanted to speak. Only Vortex wanted to…try to fix things. Because yes, his last attempt had worked so fraggin’ well. Shut up and learn your lesson, he told himself, harshly.

“Let’s go,” Onslaught said, hauling Vortex up by one arm. His hand was gentler than Vortex wanted, but even this, possibly, was punishment—not to hurt you as much as you feel you deserve.

He trusted Onslaught’s judgment implicitly—as he should have trusted him to handle Swindle’s cheat. Wordless—everything he wanted to say somehow clogged, glommed together in his vocalizer. 

“Go…where?” he managed, after a long struggle. Onslaught was watching him, neutrally, measuring his pain. 

“Have to report to Megatron,” Onslaught said. “He’ll see you’ve been disciplined.”

“Don’t have to….” He couldn’t find the right ending for that sentence. He should probably have been in terror of Megatron, but…he wasn’t. All Megatron could do was kill him, yes, without a thought or barely an effort. Could order his death with a quick, instantly-forgotten,  callousness. And that’s all it would be, and all Vortex would be to him.

Which was why Vortex didn’t care: Megatron’s decision of his life or death, punishment or reward, was impersonal, immaterial as the hand of Fate itself. Life or death were not, had never been, his choice to make—he was a fighter. Death could snatch him at any time. Death was…irrelevant.  

Onslaught was not. And the difference was—he didn’t care what Megatron thought of him: he did care about Onslaught’s opinion.

It wasn’t because Onslaught was closer, saw him every day. It was because of…things like this: the Combaticon leader’s strange consideration. He pulled together both Vortex’s need for self blame/self pain, with the appearance of punishment. A careful, precarious, but skilled balance between what Vortex needed and what was required to satisfy the outsiders. And that…and that Onslaught would keep this here. No further. The others might remark his injuries, but Onslaught would leave them to make their own inferences. 

“Not your problem,” Onslaught said. He tugged Vortex more roughly. The copter winced as the action shifted his weight onto an injured ankle, blessed pain. Pulling him out of his mind, into his frame. Into the moment, not the past or the future but the NOW. The copter limped after Onslaught to the grav lift. 

Vortex questioned sometimes why Onslaught followed Megatron. Loyalty programming could do so much, but…demagoguery could undo just as much and just as fast. Onslaught was too smart to fall for Megatron’s slick rhetoric. It had to be something more. Something deeper. Something Vortex was too blind or limited to see.

But with his own judgment—Vortex dare not question Onslaught’s choices. Look no further than your loyalty forces you, he told himself.  Your judgment is flawed; your vision near-sighted. Trust those you place above you, the closest you can see.  Trust in what they decide. Loyalty is personal: faith impersonal. Loyalty to a cause is dangerous; loyalty to an ideal, fatuous. Give your loyalty to another—one you can see and study and know— not from a distance but up close. So you can see that they’re measuring up, that they’re not becoming a veneer of themselves, an idol/ideal, selling their own best selves into the slavery of ideologies.

Onslaught deserves that loyalty. Because he had no ideology beyond efficiency, beyond his team. Because you cannot control yourself, but he can. Because he gives it. He will go in there and confront Megatron and will take the censure as though it were his own. He will not stand by while anyone insults us—no matter how deserving we are. He fights for us even when we don’t deserve it—as I don’t, not right now. He takes hits for us, for our failings, without a word of complaint. He takes punishments meant for us. Without lashing out at us, taking his rightful pound of flesh. He simply goes…quiet for a while.

And that’s when I will protect him. Vortex’s hands balled into bruised fists.

Vortex followed Onslaught down the dark, tall corridor—deliberately intimidating architecture, the ceiling lost in shadows to remind entrants of their smallness. “I’ll make it up to you,” Vortex offered. It was the closest he could come to an apology.

“No need,” Onslaught said, his visor stonily facing the approaching door. 

Yes, yes there is, Vortex thought to himself. I need.