Forlorn Hope: Repercussions

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG-13
IDW/G1 Forlorn Hope AU
Jetfire/Sixshot, here also Autobots and Terrorcons
slight ref to self-harm, but...it's Sixshot


Forlorn Hope (IDW: Sixshot/Jetfire)
FH-3
Relapse
Transgression
First
Rescue
Half Truths and Shadows
Coping Mechanism
Kiss
Of Mice and Terrorcons
Best Plan Ever!!
Resonance
Two Sides
Pespectives
Interception

 

 

Jetfire lacked words to describe how he was feeling, watching the footage unspool across the video screen. He hated that he was already questioning Optimus’s motive for bringing him here. He was a scientist, not a warrior, not a tactician.  But he’d been asked to see this…why?

It had to be Sixshot.  It had to be some attempt to ‘remind’ him about Sixshot’s brutality.  The scene played out in numb silence, captured only from the front arrays of the crippled courier ship, as Sixshot spun and dove in ruthless pursuit of the small escort craft.  It was supposed to, Jetfire thought, make him disgusted: Sixshot heartlessly killing so many Autobots, mechs that Jetfire perhaps knew. 

But it didn’t. All he could think was how beautifully Sixshot flew for all his ungainly mass, and how skillfully he maneuvered in the vacuum and then some sweet poignant regret that of all the things they had done, they had never flown together. 

He shifted, uncomfortably, knowing he was having the wrong reaction, knowing that the way his vents caught as he watched the screen had nothing to do with the damaged mechs, the crippled strafers and escorts, but a fierce longing and a sense of possessiveness—that is mine. I had that…once.

“It’s okay,” a voice murmured, softly, just as a gentle pressure registered on his arm.  First Aid, looking up at him, optics open and blue with concern.

“I am not…upset.  For me,” he amended hastily.  Because the loss of life was truly regrettable.  But it was also what Sixshot did. Who he was.  And it was somehow hard to reject that, especially when Jetfire thought that he’d been accepting the same thing all along, merely in lesser degrees, from the Autobots. They all killed: Ironihide, Optimus, even Ratchet. Even Jetfire himself.  They all engaged in the brutal game of combat.  Just because their numbers were smaller, did that make them ‘better’? Did that make them ‘right’?   Did that make Sixshot, then, somehow odious? 

“You can be,” First Aid offered.  “It might help.” 

Oh. Another who thought he was….  Jetfire shook his head. “I am fine.  But thank you for your concern.”

The hand tightened around his wrist.  “You can always talk to me,” the small jet said.  Jetfire blinked, feeling, if possible, even more self-conscious.  Strange how he never felt that way around Sixshot.

“Thank you,” he said, hollowly, and then his vents caught entirely as a blue flash illuminated the screen and the courier ship’s main gun lanced a massive energy bolt right at Sixshot.  He became acutely aware of the others around him, his audio almost crackling with their attention.  He forced himself to show no reaction, to force the next vent cycle.  It felt like a betrayal.

Sixshot grew huge on the screen, unfolding in a swift, breathtaking elegance into the mode Jetfire remembered all too well and all too intimately. He could feel the arch of the white thigh against him even as he saw it sparking with damage, energon and other fluids vaporizing into frozen crystal dust almost instantly, powdering space with fine glitter.  And the body braced itself, wrenching the gun free from its mounting.  The camera juddered from the force used. 

Jetfire couldn’t tear his optics off the image as Sixshot approached, swinging the gun like a club, his optics lit with a red inner light that was somehow familiar to Jetfire.  And then the weapon struck and the camera went black.

There was a moment of stunned silence in the room. 

“Not his usual type of mission,” Ironhide ventured, eventually. 

“Indeed,” Optimus said. 

“There were survivors,” Prowl added.  “That is atypical for his missions.”

“Not many survivors,” Ratchet corrected. 

“Still, it is unusual,” Optimus said.  And they looked, almost as one, at Jetfire. 

“I—I don’t know anything,” he said, helplessly, feeling a sense of vertigo, teetering on a razor-edge. “He never talked about upcoming missions.”  He felt himself wince, weighing one betrayal against another.

“Mechs died out there,” Ironhide said, optics hard and flat, like a blunt blade.

Jetfire felt the whipcrack of guilt.  “I-I don’t think he had a lot of say in his missions. He did as he was ordered.”

“By who?”

Jetfire felt a sinking terror, like falling, but in slow motion, the way a fall from a very great height feels when things are too far away to measure against. “I don’t know. He never said.”

“He never said anything?” Ironhide’s tone was dubious.

Well, not much of anything.  Jetfire shook his head. “I am sorry.” He was telling the truth, and while he was glad there was nothing to tell, he felt a worm of shame that he would have kept his silence either way.

“He told you…nothing useful?” Prowl leaned forward. “Weaknesses, vulnerabilities?” 

That one confidence of Sixshot’s flashes of madness writhed guiltily in Jetfire’s conscience. “None I can think of,” he said, quietly, feeling his core temp spike with a new, sudden self-loathing. “If I…if I think of any, however,” he said, lamely, trying to mitigate.  First Aid’s hand squeezed his, and he never felt more like withdrawing from touch.

[***]

Sixshot growled at the Terrorcons.  Well, most of them. Hun-Grr was up front, flying the ship—his ship!—while the others were ranged around Sixshot, lying on the floor of the cargo bay.  He didn’t need them, especially not staring at him this way.  Weak, torn open. 

“You do it,” Rippersnapper nudged Cutthroat.

“No way.  Uhhh, Sinnertwin.” Cutthroat jabbed him with an elbow.  Sinnertwin snapped at him, ferally.

“I’ll do it,” Blot said, pushing forward. 

“What?” the three others blurted.

“I’ll do it. Someone needs to do it. None of you want to. And I do the stuff none of you want to do.” Blot nodded, pleased with this display of logic.  Huh, they all thought he was, like, dumb. 

“No way.”  Rippersnapper had obviously reconsidered the pros and cons of the thing. Pro: touching Sixshot.  Con: perhaps getting killed in the process.  Sixshot did not look like he was in the mood to play patient.  But whoa.  That would be hot.  “I’ll do it.” 

Blot looked…whiny, in addition to his usual ‘slimy’ and ‘smelly’, so Rippersnapper added. “But you can, uh, help or something.”

“Don’t need help,” Sixshot muttered.  “Auto-repair.”

“But Sixshot,” Cutthroat said. “Kinda blew a hole in your leg.”

Sixshot struggled up to his elbows, looking at the injury. No longer in the frigid cold of space, repair nanites were blue-silver twinkles over his damaged components instead of dusting off in powdery glitter. “Seen worse.”  His power core hadn’t even bumped his temp into the critical range.  Still, a full on pulse-laser from a cruiser was nothing to shake off.

“Even the Reapers didn’t get you this good,” Sinnertwin said.  Again, with Mumu.  The others glared him down.  “Umm, yeah.”

“Reapers got me,” Sixshot said, flatly. “Different way.”  Fraggin’cybertoxin. Without which, though…. His face twitched in irritation.  Weakness. Jetfire was a weapon, a weakness, more damaging than any chemical compound. If anyone knew…. 

“Got you how?”  Cutthroat, with all the tact of a…whatever he was.

“Toxin.”  Enough words.  Sixshot pushed up to sitting. He did not want to talk about it.  At all. And anyone other than the Terrorcons might have picked up on that.  He glared around the half-circle. “Better now.”

Rippersnapper ran a multimeter over the wound. “EM’s a bit off.”

Sixshot shrugged. “Degausser got hit.” He could feel the change in his magnetic field.  Good thing he rarely depended on it.  Though Jetfire had…noticed it. 

Rippersnapper peered into the gap in the armor. “Oh. Got it. I can fix it.” He looked up—he’d be rummaging high up in Sixshot’s thigh and apparently thought permission was a good idea.

It was.

Sixshot nodded. “Repair supplies in that hatch.” One of the—few—perks of his job.  Personal ship. Customized stores.

And the rest decided to stare at him as Rippersnapper and Blot got to work.  Sixshot braced himself against the pain.  His armor was too heavy and dense for the sensor cilia to penetrate fully, so it had overcompensated by hypersensitizing his internal systems.  Another thing only Jetfire knew.

And not like he’d volunteered that, either. 

[***]

An involuntary growl escaped Sixshot’s vocalizer.  Jetfire stopped, freezing immediately, the wrench hanging a few microns over the exposed line.  He’d been letting Jetfire do that refit. It had been too long, and lying on his back, rib strut exposed, green armor laid open like a clamshell, Sixshot was remembering why.

“I am sorry,” Jetfire said, almost a reflex.

“Nothing.”

“No, it is something,” Jetfire corrected, his optics blue and insistent.  “It should not hurt.”

“Doesn’t hurt.”  A lie. Sixshot looked away. 

“Sixshot,” Jetfire pushed, dipping his head, optics seeking out Sixshot’s.   “Please don’t lie to me.”

Another growl, for a totally different reason. “Used to it,” he said.  It wasn’t a lie. Not entirely.

“It doesn’t mean it’s right,” Jetfire’s brow furrowed under his helm.  “These are subdermal systems.  They should not hurt.”

A shrug. 

Jetfire lay the wrench down, his optics serious. “Is this why you do not like being touched? Because it hurts you?”

Sixshot snorted. “No.”  He rapped the heavy armor of his chassis with one hand.  “Barely registers. Alloy.” 

“Hm.”  Jetfire tilted his head, studying the exposed systems.  And Sixshot suddenly felt less like a patient but a bit more like…science. He didn’t know if it was an improvement. “Sensor overcompensation,” he said, nodding, satisfied. He looked over to Sixshot’s face, lighting up. “We can fix that.” 

Sixshot shifted. Fixed. He was not at all sure he liked this ‘lying down’ position. Hadn’t liked it at the start. Really didn’t like it now.  “Design tolerance,” he said, trying to push himself upright.  “Don’t feel pain.” Part of the whole idea.  How else to build an unstoppable war machine than to make him incapable of registering the normal signals that told a body it was going beyond its limits? 

“You do feel pain,” Jetfire said. He prodded at the exposed cable, gently, watching for the wince. And then he moved his finger into a gentler stroke down the cable, as if trying to wipe away his point now that he’d made it. “And it seems a high price to pay.” It was the closest Jetfire had come to talking about what Sixshot did.  Mutually awkward—Sixshot destroyed worlds.  Killed Autobots.  Jetfire tipped his head, considering. “Does that…is that what your fascination is with touch?  Because you seem to calibrate down well.”  His wings gave a little quiver of remembered pleasure. 

Sixshot’s optics were transfixed on the wingtips.  He shrugged.  “Don’t know.” A lie. He did know, and that was precisely the source—well, one of them—of his fascination with the shuttle: the exquisite reactions that seemed to ripple across metal skin designed to be supersensitive to pressure and heat and ion streams and a thousand other measurements for interstellar flight. Thinking about it drew his hands into action, one reaching for the sensitive join of Jetfire’s elbow.  Jetfire gave a pleased little chirr before his optics glinted, an unaccustomed spark of mischief, and he stood up, pulling away.  Only little friction noises from his ailerons revealed his desire as he bent over Sixshot, pushing him down, fingers splayed on one shoulder, while his other stroked the inside of Sixshot’s opened armor. 

“Jetfire,” Sixshot warned, but his body juddered at the rush of sensation, swirling, sparkling over his net. 

Jetfire gave a smile, tinged at the edge with a smug sort of delight. “Consider this research,” he said.

“Research,” Sixshot muttered, but he let his hands fall away.  

Jetfire’s grin grew, triumphant, his hands bolder, the one on Sixshot’s shoulder curling into the exposed part of Sixshot’s throat, the thumb skimming along Sixshot’s chin. “An experiment.”

“Experiments need controls,” Sixshot said, struggling not to succumb to the feathering, gentle touches. How had Jetfire known the interior of his armor was so sensitive, when Sixshot did not know it himself?  He vented, ragged, hating and wanting the warm victory that lit across Jetfire’s face.

“Oh,” Jetfire teased, “I have control.” He dipped his head in, letting his EM field slide like silk over Sixshot’s.  “You don’t need any.” He seemed almost giddy with his boldness, at one level aware that in any other circumstance he’d cringe at the lines, but too caught up in it to care, almost intoxicated with his own audacity and the heady rush of bringing so much pleasure to Sixshot.  He slid down Sixshot’s prone frame, until Sixshot felt an electric lick at his open armor, and then the strangely familiar weight and tingle of a glossa down his exposed struts.  Places that were not designed for this kind of contact, suddenly licked, teased, nipped.  Jetfire may not have been an expert, his kisses and nips awkward and new, but Sixshot’s systems didn’t know any better.  He fought signals trying to tell him this was a threat, trying to lay himself open, available for Jetfire as the white mech was for him.

His sensor net spiked with contradictory signals—pain, pleasure, delight, threat, swirling together in a dizzying rush, his hands clenching on either side of the table, warping the metal, as Jetfire continued his playful ‘experiment’.  He hissed his desire, cooling system thrumming on.  He wanted Jetfire on top of him, below him, anywhere near him, satiny armor sliding under his fingers, feeling the vibration of those wings, tracing the line between red and white  up and down the seams before his palms slid flat and gentle over the broad panels. He could almost hear the sound Jetfire would make—a little squirming squeak, the wings humming with taut tension trying to hold in his desire. His hands ached from wanting to touch.

Sixshot’s hands leapt up—reflexes trained for other assaults working here as well—catching Jetfire’s wings. “Enough experiment,” he said, throatily, hauling up on the wingtips, hands hard and insistent, and brooking no rejection.  Jetfire knew better than to thwart him, allowing himself to be pulled up the chassis, letting his blue canopy slide, in that way that always caught at Sixshot’s desires, over the Phase Sixer’s chassis. 

“You wanted something?” Jetfire teased—surrendering physically, perhaps, but not utterly, even as Sixshot’s hands closed on the narrowing between his upper and lower wings.

Sixshot snorted.  Dumb question.  But he’d have to make it more obvious, then. “You.” 

[***]

Sixshot flinched back to himself, an agonizing red lance of pain across his net. He wasn’t with the shuttle, on that blasted asteroid station.  Though he was, again, on his back, systems exposed. 

“Sorry!” Rippersnapper yelped, as though anticipating a blow. “Just…jammed really hard in there. Bit of shrapnel.” One of his hands was lodged high into Sixshot’s thigh casing. 

Sixshot sat up. “Get it myself.”  He paused, trying to shake off the last cobwebs of memory, sending a command to online the rest of his pain array before he thrust his hand in under the armor. He dug in blind, tearing at cables and hydraulics heedlessly, trying to summon enough physical pain to override the sudden discontent that swept over him.  

His optics flashed white with the collision of so many alarm signals.  Still, it wasn’t enough. He growled, tearing the shrapnel fragment free in a slick cut of energon and pain.

“Whoa,” Cutthroat murmured. “Hardcore.” Even he quelled at the look in Sixshot’s optics.

 

Comments

[eerian_sadow]

i need my little wibbly-lipped emoticon from AIM right now.

[chibirisuchan.livejournal.com]

Structurally, I love the in-and-out of different perspectives here. Different scenes that all add to the same conclusion. Emotionally... wiiiiiiiiiibbbble! ;___; Even for Blot. "I do the stuff nobody else likes doing! Go me!" I have SO been that person. (puts on a hazmat suit and hugs him)