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shadow_vector2011-01-01 10:42 am
niyazi-a.livejournal.com) wrote in shadow_vector2011-01-01 10:42 am
Flight
G
G1
Skyfire
pre-war
prompt for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
merfilly 's Genfic in January challenge: Flight
A/N I think I most relate to Skyfire in that way of being always a little too big, too clumsy and too aware of my own limitations when dealing with people.
Want to sign up or see what else might be coming?
Gen In January Prompt Masterlist
Skyfire felt more than gravity’s fingers seem to loosen their grasp on him as he broke through the top of the troposphere. Gravity and light faded behind him, becoming weak, dim, something in his past that could no longer hold him, while space opened like an enormous, giving, jeweled palm. In all that space, in the interstices between stars was a kind of peace he could not find in any other place. He would miss his friends at the Academy, miss the hectic rounds of exams and studying, miss the familiar smells of the chemistry lab, and his favorite chromatograph. But out here, he was free from so much. And those things he would miss receded with the light, Doppler shifting away from his propulsion, already dim and quieted, edges softened.
He knew, acutely, that he was…just no good at relationships. Of any kind. Even friendship was a constant struggle for him, a push-pull of wanting and diffidence. He could talk comfortably only about one subject: science. Beyond that, he stammered, and felt every inch of his massive size, every gram of his weight, the slow, methodical working of his processor. Skyfire: Heavy and slow and blunt.
But…here, in flight, he simply felt strong. Strong and graceful and sure, and there was no need for words or wit. Just movement and observation, almost as if his armor expanded, the boundary between him and the universe evaporating, disappearing, completely irrelevant. He and the universe felt like one, he just one tiny coordinate of consciousness on an enormous grid, whose job it was merely to observe, to feel, to know.
This was science, or what was, to Skyfire, the heart of science. This was his religion, his blessedness, in the vastness of space. It was color too subtle for normal optics to sense. It was an exquisite interplay of gravities caressing his skin as he flew, coaxing and nudging, teasing his senses like some vast, gentle lover. It was a tranquility brimming with motion, a fullness seeming so deceptively empty.
He swam in the light of a thousand stars, his armor feeling sleek and perfect. With no one with him for scale, he did not feel huge and awkward, but infinitesimally small, gracile, delicate against the mass of the emptiness around him.
And the music. The deep steady hum of radio waves, a velvet tapestry of sound, against which neutrinos sang high melodies, their vectors and speeds translating into pure, sweet notes that put all other sounds to shame, that he could feel resonating across his systems as though he himself were an instrument, being played by space, part of the great symphony of the universe.
He never knew if this was what flight felt like to the others—he was too awkward to ask, too afraid they would look at him askance, as though his sudden eruption of passion was comical at best, or a complete abdication of scientific objectivity at the very career-destroying worst.
And in a way, he wanted to keep it his secret, his communion. Even if they wouldn’t laugh at him, even if they would understand, he wanted it to be special. Wanted, just once, to be special, to have something just his, his and no one else’s. A failing, but he hoped a small one, a forgivable one. And he hoped it mitigated his selfishness that he turned his love of flight to serve science, yoking his two great loves together.
They thought he loved these journeys for solitude, for his chance to be alone. It was…so much more complex than that. He hated solitude for its own sake. Leave him in the lab for too long and he twitched, ached for contact, needed, wanted words and touches, no matter how bad he was at the actual act of communication.
But out here…there was no such thing as solitude or loneliness. There was no such thing as self, merely a singularity of being that was, in essence, everything. His components were merely the extensions of reactions borne in dying stars, his thoughts merely synapses, electrical impulses among the enormous sea of ions.
In his lab, in his room, he was trapped in his own thoughts, limited by the confines of his life, or of his narrow, carefully structured experiment. There, were walls, ceilings, floors…others reminding him of what he was, and what he was not.
But here…. Here he was unlimited, without boundaries. Here he was not trapped in his own mind, aware at every turn of his own problems, the thousand petty details of daily life—deadlines and schedules and paperwork. Here he was free and powerful and one with something mysterious that, had he been other than who he was, he might have considered divinity.
G1
Skyfire
pre-war
prompt for
merfilly 's Genfic in January challenge: FlightA/N I think I most relate to Skyfire in that way of being always a little too big, too clumsy and too aware of my own limitations when dealing with people.
Want to sign up or see what else might be coming?
Gen In January Prompt Masterlist
Skyfire felt more than gravity’s fingers seem to loosen their grasp on him as he broke through the top of the troposphere. Gravity and light faded behind him, becoming weak, dim, something in his past that could no longer hold him, while space opened like an enormous, giving, jeweled palm. In all that space, in the interstices between stars was a kind of peace he could not find in any other place. He would miss his friends at the Academy, miss the hectic rounds of exams and studying, miss the familiar smells of the chemistry lab, and his favorite chromatograph. But out here, he was free from so much. And those things he would miss receded with the light, Doppler shifting away from his propulsion, already dim and quieted, edges softened.
He knew, acutely, that he was…just no good at relationships. Of any kind. Even friendship was a constant struggle for him, a push-pull of wanting and diffidence. He could talk comfortably only about one subject: science. Beyond that, he stammered, and felt every inch of his massive size, every gram of his weight, the slow, methodical working of his processor. Skyfire: Heavy and slow and blunt.
But…here, in flight, he simply felt strong. Strong and graceful and sure, and there was no need for words or wit. Just movement and observation, almost as if his armor expanded, the boundary between him and the universe evaporating, disappearing, completely irrelevant. He and the universe felt like one, he just one tiny coordinate of consciousness on an enormous grid, whose job it was merely to observe, to feel, to know.
This was science, or what was, to Skyfire, the heart of science. This was his religion, his blessedness, in the vastness of space. It was color too subtle for normal optics to sense. It was an exquisite interplay of gravities caressing his skin as he flew, coaxing and nudging, teasing his senses like some vast, gentle lover. It was a tranquility brimming with motion, a fullness seeming so deceptively empty.
He swam in the light of a thousand stars, his armor feeling sleek and perfect. With no one with him for scale, he did not feel huge and awkward, but infinitesimally small, gracile, delicate against the mass of the emptiness around him.
And the music. The deep steady hum of radio waves, a velvet tapestry of sound, against which neutrinos sang high melodies, their vectors and speeds translating into pure, sweet notes that put all other sounds to shame, that he could feel resonating across his systems as though he himself were an instrument, being played by space, part of the great symphony of the universe.
He never knew if this was what flight felt like to the others—he was too awkward to ask, too afraid they would look at him askance, as though his sudden eruption of passion was comical at best, or a complete abdication of scientific objectivity at the very career-destroying worst.
And in a way, he wanted to keep it his secret, his communion. Even if they wouldn’t laugh at him, even if they would understand, he wanted it to be special. Wanted, just once, to be special, to have something just his, his and no one else’s. A failing, but he hoped a small one, a forgivable one. And he hoped it mitigated his selfishness that he turned his love of flight to serve science, yoking his two great loves together.
They thought he loved these journeys for solitude, for his chance to be alone. It was…so much more complex than that. He hated solitude for its own sake. Leave him in the lab for too long and he twitched, ached for contact, needed, wanted words and touches, no matter how bad he was at the actual act of communication.
But out here…there was no such thing as solitude or loneliness. There was no such thing as self, merely a singularity of being that was, in essence, everything. His components were merely the extensions of reactions borne in dying stars, his thoughts merely synapses, electrical impulses among the enormous sea of ions.
In his lab, in his room, he was trapped in his own thoughts, limited by the confines of his life, or of his narrow, carefully structured experiment. There, were walls, ceilings, floors…others reminding him of what he was, and what he was not.
But here…. Here he was unlimited, without boundaries. Here he was not trapped in his own mind, aware at every turn of his own problems, the thousand petty details of daily life—deadlines and schedules and paperwork. Here he was free and powerful and one with something mysterious that, had he been other than who he was, he might have considered divinity.
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This is beautiful. Your descriptions of Skyfire's perception of flight and space are glorious, and the contrast of being alone versus being by himself but part of something greater gets at something profound and fundamental that I've never seen described better.
Sorry, I'm totally flailing. This just gets to me in a way I can't really express or explain, but thank you for writing it.