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shadow_vector2011-01-18 09:01 am
End of the Line
Bayverse post '07 pre ROTF
Barricade, Starscream, Ironhide, Sideswipe
no warnings.
A/N for my silly 28s Barricade meme, 'exhausted'.
They had him cornered. At last. Cornered, alone, and running low on energon. He’d always known it would come down to this. How else could it have fallen out—alone, abandoned, the comm channel ringing blank, hollow, empty of sound. Autobots arriving nearly every lunar cycle. He’d counted up their steady arrivals with a grim concentration, counting down the odds on his survival with every ‘welcome’ ping on Autobot channels. The more of them, the more outnumbered, and it soon became only a matter of time before they caught up to him.
Only a matter of time.
Which had just, apparently, run out.
He didn’t bother speaking—anything that might have been ‘heroic last words’ had lost any real meaning to him and there was no one on the other side he really wanted to impress. He spun, taking the corner deliberately too hard, letting the centrifugal force throw him off the road, into the ravine, spinning in midair into his biped mode.
Ironhide slammed on his brakes, knowing his larger mass couldn’t follow the maneuver: Sideswipe overshot the turn entirely. Barricade heard the squeal of irate rubber of Sideswipe returning just as Ironhide launched himself at Barricade.
His shoulders slammed against the ground, window-wings splatted wide, gouging the scrub grass. Barricade swung his left hand up, ringing against Ironhide’s heavy helm, throwing his weight to try to get off the bottom.
Ironhide grunted, slapping one hand flat on his window-wing, hauling Barricade’s other shoulder up.
Barricade howled as the window-wing tore free, the stump guttering and sparking, pain so sharp it felt black and cold across his sensornet.
This, he thought, fiercely, is not how I die. I do not die sniveling in pain. Not if I can take out one of them with me.
He turned into the pain, rolling to his feet, swinging his spoke weapon. It bit into the top of one of Ironhide’s arm cannons with loud snarl.
The other fist, weighted with the other cannon, slammed into his face. One of his chin spires cracked, metal splinters flying across his field of vision. Barricade let the momentum throw him to the side, swinging that side’s foot into Ironhide’s midsection. He gave a satisfied grunt as Ironhide staggered to the side. His palms slapped the ground, pushing off to regain his feet, spoke weapon flying out again.
Ironhide blocked Barricade’s wrist. “Give up now, Decepticon.”
Barricade glared, feral, kicking one of his toe spikes up into Ironhide’s leg. That was his answer. Not going to make it easy for the Autobots. Why should he? They hadn’t made the last two years easy for him. He danced back, to get better range for his weapon, only to be stopped by another slam of weight over his shoulders, metal sparking contact from his torn stub of a window-wing. Sideswipe, finally catching up and making his introduction in what apparently passed for style.
Barricade staggered forward, Sideswipe’s weight heavy on his chassis, straining his stabilizers.
A hissing sound, and a pink energon blade materialized on the wrist wrapping around his fender. Frag. Barricade bent down, suddenly, throwing Sideswipe’s mass over his shoulders, feeling one pauldron wrench as Sideswipe flew over him, colliding heavily with Ironhide. They felt together in a tangle of limbs.
Barricade thought, for a half a klik, of trying to make a break for it, turning on his heel, sprinting for the road, running.
But there was no chance, as low-powered as he was right now, he’d evade pursuit for very long. And running away looked far too much, right now, like cowardice. He’d rather die sooner, and on his feet.
So instead, he waited, ranging around, revving the spokes in the afternoon sun as the two Autobots shoved each other aside, scrambling to their feet. “Come on,” Sideswipe said, brandishing one of his blades. “Surrender. We’ll let you live.” Something in the curve of his smile seemed to belie that.
“It’s not too late,” Ironhide said, “And no one’s here to see you defect.”
“Oh, is that how it’s done?” Barricade spat. “Guess you’re the expert on defection.” He gave a grim smile as he saw the barb strike home. After all this time, he thought, still stings, doesn’t it? All the more reason not to switch sides.
Sideswipe tried to flank him, stepping to one side, while Ironhide did his best to fill up the massive space of Barricade’s field of vision.
“I switched for a reason,” Ironhide said, brow low, angry. “Have you seen what you’ve become? What do you even stand for?”
Barricade’s lower optics dimmed, exhausted. “Stand for,” he said, hefting his weapon, “Stand for the Decepticon cause.”
Sideswipe laughed. “Why you even bother, mech? Where are they, huh? What kind of cause is worth it when they turn their backs on you?”
Barricade winced, the idea like a lance into his deepest fears. He’d been abandoned. Left behind. Useless. He was no use. All his work, all the clawing his way up the chain of rank, staring down airframes twice his size, pushing and proving himself and…he wasn’t good enough. All alone.
His weapon’s motor throttled down abruptly.
“That’s better,” Ironhide said. “See reason, Barricade.” He reached out one arm, the injured one, the damage Barricade had done to his cannon glinting raw silver in the sunlight against his black, like a frowning mouth.
No, he thought, dumbly, obstinately. No. They forgot about him; he would not forget about them. He would live the ideal—proving one’s worth. In this last moment, he would prove the Decepticon vision of meritocracy was right. He would die living his ideal.
His foot slipped in some red-brown mud as he shifted it behind him, moving wearily into a battle crouch. One last foray. One last attack. He had that much left in him. And…
…and it would be over soon.
His optics took a flashing look around the area—the summer-green grass, the red of the clay dirt, the grey white ribbon of the hardtop stretching like a string of potentialities away from here. Here’s where it ended. He nodded. He was satisfied.
He flexed his claws. “Frag your reason, Autobot filth!” he said, bending lower, preparing to lunge.
A roar seemed to fill his audio, and at first he swore, thinking that his energon had finally run out, and the jarring noise was his audio finally glitching, starved at last. No, not like this. Not just yet!
But the roar flashed silver and suddenly kicked up clods of dirt and grass, hundreds of steel rounds punching into the ground in front of Ironhide and Sideswipe, driving them back and then, just as Barricade turned to look, overbalancing on his weakened servos, he saw the silver jet dive from the sky, rolling out of his sleek jet shape, clawed toes slamming into the earth on either side of Barricade’s staggering frame. The jet’s doubled knees heaved under the mass, and his long arms flung out a wide semicircle of bullets.
“MINE,” Starscream yelled over the blaze of his weapons. He flicked one wrist, and it transformed into a rocket launcher, which he held steadily aimed at Ironhide’s head. “Give me a reason, traitor. More than you already have.”
Sideswipe gave a cry, swinging in toward the jet’s legs. Barricade lunged back at him, managing to push him off balance with his own, barely-controlled fall before Sideswipe’s energon blades could do more than skim through one layer of the jet’s heavy armor.
Starscream snarled, and stooped, and Barricade felt silver talons curl around his chassis, untangling him from Sideswipe with a ruthless swipe, and then the sudden lurch as the jet launched for the sky, clutching him like prey. He could barely do more than clutch onto wrist that held him as the jet sliced through the cooling atmosphere. He said nothing, until Starscream set him down on a patch of dirt miles and miles away from that desolate stretch of road, did nothing until Starscream pressed a pouch of emergency rations in his hands.
“Shall I have to feed you, too?” Starscream said, his voice half-goading.
“No…got it,” Barricade said, his starved fingers fumbling with the autoinjector. He sat for a moment, hunched forward over trembling legs, shuttering his optics against the bright scrubland sun, feeling the rush of energon through his systems like life itself. He cursed as his autorepair kicked on, in a white blaze of pain.
He stiffened, feeling a cool talon pinch his remaining window wing. “We shall have to get these both…replaced.”
“Yeah,” he said, tiredly. He shuddered again from the energon, more grateful than he could ever say. He raised his head to study the jet. The silver skin had been written on, carved on, delicate glyphs swirling over his armor in some intricate pattern. He jerked his chin. “Different.”
Starscream turned his face away, mouth calipers pinching. “Much has changed,” he said.
“Wouldn’t know,” Barricade retorted, bitterly.
“No,” Starscream agreed, and there was something in the quietness of his tone that shook Barricade out of his torpor, out of the fog of self-concern he had been swathed in. Living for himself, for mere survival. When here, here was the cause again.
“Got a use for me, huh?” he said, the bitterness leaching from his voice, into longing. To be useful. To be…worthy of notice. He wished it didn’t feel so much like joy.
Starscream dropped to one knee in front of him, fussing over the autoinjector. An excuse to cover his own discomfort. “I need mechs, yes.”
“You have a plan?”
The mouth worked strangely. “I…will. Soon.”
Barricade felt a smile begin to grow on his face, a real smile, the first smile since that day two orbital cycles ago. “Count me in,” he said. It was as close as he could come to ‘thanks’.
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<3
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This was wonderful, and when it got to the part where Starscream swooped in to save the day and yelled 'MINE' I totally squealed like a fangirl... and scared my dogs.
<3
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And I adore how you write Starscream--possessive, arrogant, and at the same time an actual leader who takes responsibility--and Barricade, who so desperately wants something to believe in when he can't believe in his own worth. This is just lovely.
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