Liminal

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW/G1 mid AHM 9 Spoilers like whoa for series to that point.
Perceptor
A/N initial dialogue from the comic. The name of the ship, Black Star, is entirely my headcanon.
Warning: spoilers, and angst.  My god, the angst.
for tf_speedwriting  prompt 'Fade Away' by Breaking Benjamin, also heavily inspired by Brian Turner's "Here, Bullet". And also because ravynfyre  made me this sexy new icon. ^_^

 

 

“…I’d give anything to have Perceptor right now—the old Perceptor. Like this war needed another clown with a gun.”

Perceptor stopped in the threshold.  No, froze.  Froze would be more precise—an icy grip seizing at his spinal struts.  Ironhide caught the flash of red from the corner of his optic, his old warrior’s periphery as finely honed as ever. Ratchet’s head turned, following Ironhide’s gaze.  He had the…decency, Perceptor supposed, to look mortified. 

“Perce—“ Ratchet began, holding out one hand, pleading for some forgiveness.

There was no need.  Perceptor shook his head, cutting him off.  No need.  What Ratchet didn’t understand, what none of them seemed to understand, is that the ‘old’ Perceptor was dead. He had died on the decking of the Black Star, spilling out in a puddle of energon, words and shame.

“Hear him out,” Ironhide said, sharply, stepping into Perceptor’s path, as he pushed forward through the room, cutting through it like a laser scalpel. 

Perceptor stopped.  “No need,” he said, his voice soft.  “He’s right.” He let his optics stare down into Ironhide’s, flat, save for the artificial depth of the targeting reticle’s rangefinder, until Ironhide moved aside.

“Where are you going?” Ironhide tried to make it sound more like a demand than the question it was, clutching on to some vestige of control. Control was in very short supply here, lately, and Perceptor saw no harm in letting Ironhide keep what little he did have.

“Keep watch,” Perceptor said, his voice floating, thin and distant even to his own audio. He let it trail behind him, crossing through the far door, stooping as he stepped out into the narrow balcony.  Behind him, he heard the others begin to argue…about morale. It struck him that some time ago he might have found the paradox ironic.  Now…no.  That was another time, another him.

 Here, yes.  Good vantage—elevation, clear firing lines, few blind spots. Strange how quickly he’d mastered this new art—half intense devotion, and half the fact that at the root, sniping was merely a complex mathematical formula. Windage, muzzle velocity, gravity, rotational speed, force on impact—it was nothing but a chain of calculations and control.

Control.  Something, at last, Perceptor could control.  Unfortunate that it was smaller than one of his fingers.

 He settled himself on one knee, resting his left elbow on his raised left knee, stabilizing the heavy weight of the rifle’s barrel.   It was the best use of him, now, he knew.  The Swarm might return. And his injury had…cost the life of another. If he hadn’t been so careless in their run through the city, if he hadn’t gotten hit, he could have ignited the second set of explosives.

Instead of Sunstreaker.

Not that he questioned Sunstreaker’s choice. If he’d been capable only of that, if he’d lost a hand, his targeting optic, he’d have done the same as Sunstreaker.

But he hadn’t, and he couldn’t, and Sunstreaker’s death became another debt he owed.  It seemed no matter how hard he tried, he was a liability.  What more could he do? What more could he do? What hadn’t he thought of yet? 

Ratchet’s words echoed back to him, ‘the old Perceptor’.  Would the ‘old Perceptor’ see something that he no longer could?  Had more than his vision changed? More than his armor? Sunstreaker had died to save others, but also to end his own pain.  Would Perceptor’s reason be any different, since the choice was the same?

He bit the inside of his mouthplate, calling himself back, a habit he had picked up since…then, a reminder that his words had cost lives.  No.  Distraction was failure.  You cannot afford another slip, another loss. 

He tilted forward, running the muzzle of the rifle in a careful, precise angle sweep, left optic keen on any movement, damping visual feed, for the moment, from his reticle.  Precision was a liability in this circumstance, until he had a target, a tunnel vision that was blind to any periphery.  

A metaphor, he thought, suddenly.  Tunnel vision. That’s what you’ve become, Perceptor.

No.  That’s what this war has become.  I have become merely a microcosm of it, a fractal reflection, a hologram of the whole.  All the violence, the cool, efficient brutality, and…the pain.

He shifted, scanning the buildings in front of him, looking for the obvious spots for countersnipers.  He made no effort to hide—if being a target would draw them out, reveal their threat, he would gladly be the catalyst of their revelation, a revelation that would destroy them.

And him?  No great loss. The only regret he’d have dying at any moment was all the death debts he had left unpaid, that they had given their lives for him and found it a very bad return for their investment.  They deserved better than mere suicide by combat from him.  They deserved everything. 

 As if…as if he could take the suffering onto himself, into himself.  As though by punishing himself enough, he could lessen the suffering of others. 

It doesn’t work like that.

No, it doesn’t, but then…how can I be anything else?  How can I, how dare I, be happy under the weight of all these deaths around me? How can I breathe this icy air, this atmosphere of loss and mourning we can’t express, and be any other way.

Behind him, he heard Ironhide and Ratchet  and Kup talking, their argument subsided into a companionable hum.  How could he express how…offensive that was to him now? How risky, how vulnerable?  Show a flash of happiness, a flash of concern for another and the war, like a sentient thing, some predator of malicious instinct, would sweep in on wings of pain and snatch it from your fingers.

None of them, for all their wisdom, for all their craft at war, had figured that out by now.  Show pleasure and the war will ruin it.  Love something and the war will deface it in front of you, cackling with glee. The only way to stay safe, the only way to stay sane, was to become numb, solitary.  As cold and relentless and focused as an unfired rifle barrel. 

Like good concealment—become indistinguishable from the landscape.  Fight the war by blending into its very fabric, surfacing only to throw yourself into its path, flinging your life—half-life—like a flare of light, to distract, blind it from its intended target. Take me. Take me, your more loyal servant.  Take me, the one who is already half-dead in your service, yet who still deals death.  Ignore the young, the beautiful, the weak, those with still enough spark to hope.  Take me.  Take me, the one who fires coolly into your gaping mouth.  Take me, the one no one will mourn.  Take me, because this burden is too hard to bear, this debt is too high, and anything like a smile or the simple joys I used to take in life are…blasphemies, insults to the dead. 

You cannot fear death if you are halfway dead.  You cannot betray life if you are only half alive. Straddling that threshold, for as long as you are able.

He scanned the ground again, the now-familiar ramparts that seemed etched with the histories of the dead, as though they were finally staking claim on the world of the living, stains of energon, the circular pox of small-arms rounds, dents and damage merely outward signs of inner change.  The whole place seemed to breathe death, to leech light and life into a flat, still grey.  

This is home, Perceptor thought, where the living are the enemy, where movement is threat, where motion brings death.  This is home, sinking into the morass of the dead.  And it's almost over. Some day he'd cross that line too many times, slip his balance on that threshold. 

And he only hoped that what little he had would be enough.

 

Comments

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

I think the only reason I come within oh...a light year of getting this Perceptor 'right' is...he's so damn angsty. It just comes with the SniPerceptor territory!