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shadow_vector2010-10-07 07:54 am
Soundless
Bayverse
Barricade, Blackout
refs to traumatic loss of hearing, h/c
for
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hc_bingo prompt 'loss of hearing'A/N Yeah, I have no idea what it's like to function as a deaf person, and I kind of find the idea that being deaf is something that needs 'comfort'. But, I have lost my hearing temporarily from standing too close to artillery, and that was pretty terrifying. So, hopefully this will be non-offensive.
The sonic shockwave’s distinctive *thoom* blasted the area in front of Blackout. Glass shattered, primitive electrical systems whined into failure, lights burst into falling sparks and shards. The LM vehicles groaned to abrupt stops as the blast disrupted their programming, their engines dying suddenly, rolling sluggishly forward on inertia before giving up entirely. And above it all, Blackout loomed, ferociously competent, laser cannon punching into the stalled assault. The humans staggered, carried further on their own arrogance than their poorly retro-engineered vehicles, before realizing their helplessness. Nothing they had could do more than irritate Blackout. Which, they were realizing, was a bad idea. His wave had disrupted the electronics in their night vision and laser targeting. Useless. They fled, leaving Blackout in control of the battlefield. Which is, he thought, what they should have done in the first place.
The battle had unfolded for him in an almost blissful silence: to shield himself from his own weapon, he had to cut all audio, including commnet. It sharpened, he felt, his other senses, sight and reflexes especially, the battle flowing around him in washes of color and movement. The extra processing room made time seem almost to slow, boosting his reflexes. All in all, worth the trade.
He strode across the battlefield, chain gun primed ready to mop up any resistance. He let the humans flee: it was not in his mission objectives to slaughter them, merely to hold them off until Barricade could return from his mission. Not merely data retrieval this time: data destruction. Had to be carried out personally, thoroughly—take the data, and destroy every record of it, every capability of recall. Barricade had volunteered for the job with a surprising alacrity, until Blackout remembered…Frenzy. The interceptor probably figured he might find a few leads about his symbiont’s location. Blackout had said nothing, merely hoped that if Barricade discovered anything about Scorponok, he’d let Blackout know.
Even if it meant hearing Scorponok was dead.
He turned to the entry of the building Barricade had thrown himself into, to see a trembling mass of metal, white on black, sparks crackling from unsteady joints, the glass from his doorwings cracked into an intricate web. Oh no. Barricade. He must have been in a mass of the LM vehicles when Blackout had done his targeting, their weird signatures blocking his own. Or just stepped out of the building.
Frag. Blackout raced over, rotors tight. “Barricade,” he said. No response. He tapped one of the pauldron tires.
Barricade whirled, optics wide with terror, talons curled into attack claws. “Back off!” he yelled.
“It’s me!” Blackout said, wincing as Barricade’s talons nicked one of the lines in his wrist. Ow. What the…?
Barricade’s limbs sparked as he shifted. “Back off!” he yelled again, but his face was uncertain. “Blackout?” He shook his head. “Blackout?” The panic resurged on his face, his optics flickering.
Realization struck the copter. Barricade must have been nailed, pretty good. His audio was out. Blackout hit commnet. Nothing. Not even personal freq. Frag. He tapped his audio and made a swiping gesture.
Barricade squinted. “What? My fraggin’ audio’s out!” The volume was way too loud. He was trying to hear himself, and failing.
Blackout shrugged, frustrated. He hit his soundwave generators and gave another shrug.
“You?” Barricade snarled. “You slaggin’ did this?”
“It was an accident!” Blackout blurted. Oh. Frag. Right. How to...no. There was no way he could get that across with no comm.
Barricade lunged at him, talons a flurry of glittering steel alloy. Blackout dropped back a step, letting the assault ring off his chassis, grabbing Barricade’s wrists by the tires. He shook his head, meaningfully. No. Trying to help, here, Blackout thought. Not the slaggin’ enemy. Barricade struggled, the tires squeaking against Blackout’s fingers. Blackout shook the wrists, meaningfully. He could feel Barricade’s panic, like a sour harmonic in his EM.
“It comes back! It can be repaired!” Slag. This was awful. He could calm Barricade down in half a klik if he could only get him to understand.
The interceptor shook himself free, wobbling back a few paces—with his audio, his balance gyros were affected.
“Barricade!” Blackout said, stepping forward. Barricade jumped back, stumbled, fell hard on his aft.
“I can’t…I can’t….!” Barricade’s optics flared with worry, the lower set irised to pinpoints. He clapped one of his hands over his audio, whimpering. Still not believing. Still trying to cycle some code to make it work.
Blackout dropped to one of his greave-arches, aching. Nothing he could say would work. Even if he could think of the right words, even if he could get them through to Barricade, convince Barricade that with time, or at most, a cycle in repair bay, it’d all be fixed, he knew that nothing would help with the now—the helplessness, the blank feeling that your systems are down, that strange void in your data input constantly querying, probing, hinting for data. The grating shriek of the ringing of empty feedback, tearing into your processor, jamming your queue with junk code. Above all, the excruciating, lived realization of how fragile your systems were and how easily they could, any of them, all of them, go wrong.
He’d learned to deal with it because it was necessary. His systems had developed a subroutine to compensate, shifting the process load to his other sensory input, strengthening his visual feed, his olfactory, sensitizing and interpreting vibrations from the ground against his pede sensor pads. And also, because he had control. He could switch it on and off. To someone like Barricade, with no control and no experience, it must be terrifying. He couldn’t imagine. To him, silence was like a cocoon, protecting him. But to someone else, it was an injury, an infliction. Worse than that, a robbery. Giving pain, but taking, also, a sense. Stealing wholeness.
And Blackout had no way to comfort him. So he did the only thing he could do: knelt by Barricade, trapped in his own helplessness, the screeching sounds from Barricade’s mewls and clawing scrapes of his armor against the pavement seeming to echo in the gulf between them: Barricade wrapped in his agonizing silence, Blackout raw and exposed and guilty. HE had done this to Barricade. It was his fault. He had taken away, robbed Barricade of his sense and his security, and the least he could do is witness it, allow Barricade to rage at him. He realized this now. If it made Barricade feel better to hit him, Blackout deserved it. He would take it as his penance, as his price for his mistake.
He reached forward, for the hands he had caught earlier, pushed down, pushed away, not knowing, not understanding what Barricade needed. To lash out—to push his pain and fear out of his body. He understood it now. He hoped it would be enough.
Barricade uncoiled, his optics blinking, confused.
“You can hit me,” Blackout said, thumping himself on the chassis with his free hand. He hated how much they depended on words, and how bad he was with them. Barricade sat up, looking at his wrist in Blackout’s grip, then up to the copter’s face. Blank. Uncomprehending. Blackout jerked his chin in a stiff nod. Ready, he thought. Bring it on. He released Barricade’s hand, waiting.
Barricade quivered, his optics bright with shame. His arms reached out, slowly, crest furrowed, wrapping his arms hesitantly around the copter’s neck, pulling him down, pulling them closer together. The interceptor buried his face in Blackout’s throat. Blackout felt the frame vibrate against him, the talons desperate and clinging. The EM field hummed its worry against his, the harmonic diluting against his own, the shorting audio prickling against his armor. This was…not what he’d expected at all. His own hands came up, awkwardly, clumsy and huge, pulling the smaller groundframe against him.
He had no words, even if Barricade could have heard them, but he felt, strangely, the body yield against him, taking a mute, animal comfort in the proximity of their bodies. And it didn’t fix anything…but maybe it helped.
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I think you have a couple of typos :
Nothing they had could do more than irritate Blackout.
Above all, the excruciating, lived realization (should that be livid? sometimes there are usages of words I am not familiar with...)
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i'm also a bit giddy because i'm reading your other work right now - especially the derpy cade.