Solace

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG-13
IDW/G1 LSOTW mid/late issue 6
Ironfist, Verity Carlo
aaaaaaaaaangst, h/c for 'head trauma'. 
spoilers for LSOTW, for hc_bingo feb challenge

“No,” Ironfist’s voice was soft, as though speaking too loud would hurt.  His quietness shut Verity right the hell up, like all of Springer’s yelling never had.  “It was my own fault.”

Ironfist had thought that was the worst of it—that his own carelessness, clumsiness, in that Kimia lab with those cerebro-shells that had caused this. Well, most of this.  It had started there, though.  And it had felt like irony—since all Ironfist had that was worthy to serve the Autobot cause was his cortex, and his own hubris had damaged that, making him worthless. 

Until…Prowl had approached him, with that deal that was, he realized now, (too late, of course), too good to be true. Join the Wreckers. Do real good. Discover hidden strengths.  Make a real difference in the war. Live a dream.

He’d been fooled.

No, he’d fooled himself, letting his own optics be dazzled by the images Prowl conjured in front of him.  Everyone said that Prowl was cold, heartless.  Ironfist wouldn’t believe it.  If Prowl were as emotionally dead as they’d claimed, he’d never have painted such word pictures, stirred up words like ‘valor’ and ‘heroism’ and most of all, most seductive of all to the mech who’d spent his life in a sterile, narrow lab, ‘camaraderie’ and ‘adventure’.

He hadn’t thought he’d regret it.  He hadn’t thought he’d only have…one adventure, though.  And he certainly hadn’t thought he’d ever meet anyone like Verity. 

“You doin’ all right?”  Verity’s brown opt-no, eyes. They were called ‘eyes’. Her brown eyes seemed almost liquid with concern, and had none of the mobile fire from combat.  She looked down at the repair berth’s control panels helplessly.

Ironfist nodded, then shuttered his optics quickly as the motion caused the world to swim sharply up and down, colors smearing into long dark blurs.  He felt vertigo grab for him. 

“Hey—“ Verity said, leaning over. 

“No,” Ironfist said, hastily. “I’m fine. Really.” He fought back the swimming lurching sensation. No, he was here, flat on a berth.  Stabilized like one critically injured.

He was.

No he wasn’t.   He was just…useless.  Worse than that? Other mechs, better mechs than he, had died there.  Topspin. Twin Twist. Even Pyro, who at first just seemed to be a jerk had shown himself, and everyone, what real heroism was. 

All Ironfist had done was send a radio signal at Overlord, setting the dozens of deterrence chips Springer had fired into the Phase Sixer into their destruction sequences.   It had killed Overlord, but also Impactor—the legend—an any other former prisoner. 

All those deaths. 

It tainted any possible valor in the act.  Innocents had died—at a thought from Ironfist. 

The weight of Aequitas in his cortex throbbed—another trauma, another burden.  His real part in the adventure, the reason the others had fought so hard to cover him, keep him protected. He could see it now, his damaged cortex spooling their advance out in a frame-by-frame loop, as they dove, and covered, subtle, professional, always keeping Ironfist safe. How many had died because he hadn’t realized?

“Hey.” Verity bounced up onto the berth.  She was so small: Her entire body barely larger than his head.  And yet for all her size, she was bursting with life.  Always moving—her hair, her hands, her skin as she breathed, her face as she played through a thousand emotions.  She was warm and brilliant and a live, and next to her, strapped to the gurney for his own protection (no, not for that, for Aequitas’s protection, to make sure the program files arrived intact and complete),  he was chill and still and…death.

Or close to.

The cerebro bullet turned in his cortex, boring its way in.  They’d told him if he didn’t stress himself, didn’t think too much, he could last for vorns, long stretches of life laid before him before the bullet drilled its way to his core cluster. 

But was that life? Not to Ironfist.  Life without thinking was worse than death. It was all he could do; it was all he knew. And he knew better than they: he’d designed the damn things. 

He hadn’t realized how much it would…hurt though.  Physically yes, a strange agony of something moving inside one’s own armor, like a worm, like an infestation, firing down pain and terror signals, sometimes so many that he blanked out entirely.  And worse than that, though, was the emotional toll, the knowledge he was dying graven into his sensor net every instant of every day.  Life seemed a beautiful vision slipping through his fingers, racing past him while he was strapped down. 

“Yes, Verity?”

Verity’s face went through one of those ripples of emotion he found so captivating.  “Y-you’re going to leave me, aren’t you?” Her eyes glittered, a droplet of saline crystalline on one cheek.

“I’m sorry, Verity,” he said, turning his head slowly toward her, fixing his gaze first on her face, so that the room didn’t veer and blur like before.  “I don’t want to.”

Red splotches, in a fascinatingly random pattern, bloomed over her face.  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I did. Prowl knew.  Perceptor knew.” 

“You didn’t tell me!” 

“I didn’t think you’d care, Verity.  I’m…not much of a fighter.”  He’d seen the way she glowed at a brusque nod from Springer or Kup. He knew what she valued and knew he wasn’t it. 

“Going to kill Perceptor for this,” she said, her voice the dark hard tone he’d only hear once before, in the Aequitas chamber.  And Ironfist had no doubt of her sincerity.

He shook his head. “Please don’t. It won’t solve anything.” 

“It’d hurt someone!”  Her small fists balled, hands that seemed too tiny to ever hold a weapon, too fragile to hurt anything. 

“And what good would that do?”

“I dunno.” Verity’s face flared with anger. “Spread it around, at least.” 

Such a Verity answer: Ironfist felt a smile reach his optics.  “Verity,” Ironfist said. “If you kill Perceptor, you’ll be…the last of us.”  He hated saying the words, hated the pain on her face.  “Please.  For me.”

She burst into tears, throwing herself on his chassis, grabbing with her small fingers in his armor, burying her face against his chestplate.  He felt her small frame heave, the strange softness of her endoskeletal structure warm an fascinating against his cold plating. “I don’t want to be alone,” she sobbed, and he felt the heat of her tears on his armor, the slight salt sting of it.  He raised one hand, stroking it awkwardly over her back, feeling the fine silk of her hair, the satin of her skin.  “I don’t want to be the last one.” 

“I know. I know. And I’m sorry, Verity.”  He hated this. The helplessness was like a second, invisible cerebro bullet, eating into his cortex.  “But honestly? It should be you.  You or me?  You.”  He was nothing, already half dead. And Perceptor…? No, if there had to be one to carry on the Wrecker name, one who embodied all they stood for, of the three of them, it should be Verity.  Fierce and loyal and tough, and bursting with life.  It should be her. 

“I can’t.” Ineffable depths of raw pain in her voice.

“You can. You’re a Wrecker. There’s nothing we can’t do.”

“Then don’t DIE!” She pounded on his armor, the blows thunking dully, ineffectually.

He felt a pain in his chassis, almost as bad as the one in his head. “It doesn’t work that way.” He curled his hand over her, feeling the heat of her body over his palm, as if he could protect her from himself.  “You can go on. You have to.  Someone has to remember us right.”  He poked her gently in the back.  “You know Perceptor can’t do that. Imagine if he wrote this out?”

Despite herself, Verity laughed. The sound was harsh, awkward, but genuine.  “It would be statistics and grid coordinates.”

Ironfist nodded. “It has to be you, Verity. I have no right to ask, but please. Keep us alive as we should be.”

Tears welled up again, but they  were different somehow, clear and clean. She nodded, her mouth working. 

“Thank you, Verity.”

“Stupid,” Verity said, sitting up, another of her mercurial shifts, as though a frame this small lived life so much faster.  “I should be comforting you.”

Ironfist shook his head. “No, Verity.  It…lets me do something.” He knew that wasn’t the right way to describe it, but when he saw the fierce determination kindle in her eyes, the way she tossed the glossy black of her hair back over her shoulder, saw her sink her fingers and toes back into life, moving forward but somehow not forgetting…it helped. He couldn’t describe how, but it made a difference.

He made a difference.

And that was all he’d ever wanted to do. 

 

Comments

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Oh Ironfist is really adorable and his whole story is so incredibly sad! Glad you liked it!

[mewsing.livejournal.com]

Bwee... *sniffffff* ;_;

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

*pets*

[chibirisuchan.livejournal.com]

;________;

man, I badly want an AU where Ratchet gets in there and fixes Ironfist up good and proper and Verity gets to pester him until she's a crotchety old lady in a rocking chair and he's her portable-space-heater techno-cat-equivalent with extra bonus philosophical ramblings. ...And maybe then gets her brain transferred into a much more durable shell just because as long as I'm dreaming up sappy fixit AU why not go for the gusto.

*wibbles*