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shadow_vector2011-02-11 07:46 am
First Binding 2/2: Facing the Blade
IDW/G1 Drift miniseries
Wing/Drift
graphic descriptions of 'torture'? bondage/modified shibari, vaguely disturbing stuff
A/NThe Sioux tribes often practiced ritual suspension during Sundances, which takes the notion of enduring pain as a method of gaining spiritual power (as a warrior tribe) much, much further than I do here.
Part one here
“Yes,” Drift said, simply. He’d waited until later, waking Wing reluctantly, when the pull of hunger was too much. And he’d thought that if he was on reserves, Wing must be beyond them. He placed another cube of energon before Wing, jutting his chin in a command. Drink.
“I’m not done with this one,” Wing said, meekly, holding up his first cube.
“Then drink faster.”
Wing grinned. “You did used to command, didn’t you?”
Drift frowned, but then pulled himself back on topic. “I said, yes.”
Wing nodded. “I heard you. Why?” His optics shuttered, gratefully, after another sip, holding the cube tipped against his mouth.
To prove I can handle it. To prove I’m not weak. If Wing could do it; I can. Drift’s temper flared but he heard himself say, “I want to know.”
Wing tilted his head back down, laying the empty cube beside him on the berth. “Yes,” he said. “It can be terrifying the first time.”
It looked pretty fragging terrifying whatever time it had been for Wing. But Drift stilled the swirl of what he’d hate to label fear. He was not afraid. He was not weak. He would prove it. He managed a shrug.
“I will not leave you,” Wing said. “Sometimes, that is a comfort.”
Drift wanted to refuse it, to snarl away Wing’s offer, but, with the memory of Wing’s shuddering body still alive across his sensornet, he couldn’t.
“When?” he said, pushing.
“Always impatient,” Wing said, optics bright, before adding, softly. “Tomorrow. I need to recover.” He spread one hand, taking the blame for the delay—Drift saw through the feint.
“You don’t think I’m ready.”
“I think you are. I regret the delay. But, honestly.” Wing’s optics met his, level, clear and pure. “I am the one who is not ready.”
Drift growled but subsided, remembering Wing, wracked, blind. He nodded, finally, not that he had any choice. But it struck him, suddenly, the pains Wing was going through, had gone through since his arrival, to preserve his dignity, his sense of self-control. Even now, barely recovered, he was solicitous of Drift.
And it struck him that a few days ago—even yesterday, perhaps—he would have found such concern something between an insult and a weakness.
[***]
“Black,” Wing said, “I think black.” He plucked the black coil from the shelf, turning to where Drift stood, awkwardly, wanting to get it started. He knew he wouldn’t back down—he’d never backed down. But he wanted this…over.
“Why black?”
Wing held out the rope. “The colors have meanings. They represent our greatest challenges.”
Drift frowned. “What’s black mean?” He thought back, guiltily, to his completely random choice for Wing’s binding.
Wing smiled. “You’ll tell me in the morning.”
Drift grunted, but what had he expected? A typical Wing answer. “What does red mean?” he countered.
Wing dipped his head, a little, for once, embarrassed. “Emotion,” he said, quickly, as if trying to get the word out as swiftly as possible, afraid that it might cut him. Wing gestured for Drift’s hands. “Ready?”
Drift put his hands out, approximating the position Wing had. Wing’s knotting was…just like Wing—fast, elegant and ornate. Cuffs looped Drift’s wrists, joined in the middle by a long bridge of two strands which Wing held like a lead. Wing showed a drooping loop near Drift’s thumb. “If the compression gets too tight, this will release some slack into the binding.”
Drift’s binding hadn’t had that. “Won’t need it,” he said.
Wing tilted his head. “This is how the first Binding is done, for everyone, Drift.”
Drift growled. “Won’t need it,” he repeated.
Wing simply nodded, then tugged at the long ends, to where he’d sunk his sword in the same bracket as before. “Kneel,” he directed, “Facing the blade.”
“But—“
Wing shook his head. “This is how the first Binding is done.”
“Have a feeling I’m going to get sick of that sentence.” Drift dropped to his knees, holding his bound arms out obediently.
Wing chuckled, flipping the long center strand in a loop around the pommel. “Probably.”
Drift shifted on his knees, testing positions. Wing waited, keeping in his line of sight, until he settled. “You can talk,” he said, “and I will answer. Nothing you say leaves this room.” Wing squatted down, one of his knee stabilizers brushing Drift’s shoulder. “Nothing you say leaves me, ever.” His optics blazed. Drift nodded, but he had the feeling that he…didn’t understand it at all. Wing nodded, brusquely, stepping around the blade, throwing his arms around Drift’s shoulders, his cheek rubbing against Drift’s audio. Drift could feel the heat and the weight of him, like a blanket, behind him. “I will not leave you,” Wing whispered, and the voice was like cool silk sliding over Drift’s systems.
Wing stepped away. Drift could hear him moving around behind him, quietly, almost retreating. Drift tried to settle himself in. The sword’s silver blade confronted him: his newly blue optics cast dual reflections back at him, sharp and clear on the honed metal of the blade. The bindings pulled his arms up—he could feel the slowing pulse of his energon circulation system in his forearms. He turned his head, trying to loosen his neck servos—no way they were already tight.
He waited, trying to ape Wing’s deep, calm ventilation, forcing air through his vents. His optics fixed on their reflections on the sword’s broad surface: blue and hard. Unfamiliar, uncomfortable. Autobot optics. He studied his face, the contours still his, but…unfamiliar. To be honest, he’d never spent much time looking at himself. Always survival and then after that, always a battle.
Now, no battles, no survival, only his face, unavoidable, a hand-span in front of him. His face…what Wing had seen and trusted, implicitly. What had Wing seen in it?
He stared some more and his face seemed to change, somehow, the reflection writhing, altering, the mouth twisting into one of Deadlock’s hardened sneers, one of gutter-rat Drift’s pinched, hungry looks. He felt his throat tightening, his vocalizer crackling static.
“Are you well?” Wing’s voice, soft, pitched so low that Drift could pretend not to hear it, that it wouldn’t interrupt.
“Fine,” Drift breathed, trying to force the images away, trying to make his face his face again, but failing.
“If I may offer advice,” Wing said, moving slowly, quietly just into the edge of Drift’s periphery, a white ghost of an image. Drift’s optics flung themselves toward the white glow hungrily. “Do not fight it, Drift. Let it happen.”
“Not fighting.” A lie, and he could hear the sound of the lie, a flat sour note, and he knew Wing could hear it, too.
A pause, Wing trying to think of what to say, and then, “You always make things harder on yourself than you need to, Drift.” The voice was soft with affection, pulling any sting or judgment from the words. He paused for a moment, before stepping away, moving close enough that Drift could feel the soft brush of his EM field against him as he moved, leaving Drift to his pain.
Because…it had begun to hurt now, a buzz starting from across his shoulders, the struts jammed at the upper end of their range, and spreading through his whole body, a grey murky static with flashes of white, like a thunderstorm. It seemed to have mass and depth, it made its own noise, a loud rumbling buzz that seemed to rise like a wall of fog between Drift and everything else but the blue glow of his reflected optics.
And it struck him that Wing was right. That he was fighting, making this harder than it had to be. But also…that he knew no other way. That the very core of him was a fighter. The most basic parts of who and what he was was resisting something. Without that…?
He heard a sound, a high keen, like a flash of one of Wing’s energy blades, slicing through the darkness, realizing slowly that it was coming from him. He repulsed from the sound, at first, but it seemed to fill him, the sound clean and pure. A sound of pain, but a sound honest about it, not pretending to be anything else, not disguised as music.
He shifted forward, almost without thought, without will, as though his body overrode his conscious process, leaning him forward until he felt the cold metal of the Great Sword against his brow. His ventilations were ragged, uneven, rattling from his ducts, his arms shaking, somehow heavy and weightless at the same time.
Drift’s awareness shrank, reduced, to the limits of his own body, to the sheer volume of pain he seemed capable of holding. Time seemed to cease, space seemed to fall away, until he could not even feel the floor under his shins, and the bindings on his wrists were merely lines of constriction.
Sometimes he thought that the sound of Wing's footfalls was the only thing keeping him sane, letting him feel that time was passing, that he was not caught, trapped in some chrysalis of agony. He forced himself to continue, one of Wing’s footsteps at a time, thinking no further, promising no further than surviving until the next footfall. And he thought, dimly, that Wing must know this somehow, with how long and how steadily he paced.
Let go, Drift. Feel the pain, don't hide from it. Let it wash over you. The pain is not you. Feel the emotions that come with the pain and...let them go. Let them go, Drift. And Wing's voice was a caress, a cool hand on his hot systems. And Wing had endured this.
And it struck Drift that…Wing had not spoken. That the voice that sounded like Wing, soft and warm and gentle, was…not from outside.
He felt something, sharp, electric, surge through him, something welling up from some place deep inside him, rushing toward his vocalizer. His hands clutched, closing around the dangling ends of his binding rope, the powerful something tearing from his throat, feeling like it was exploding from his armor, blasting his EM field.
He clung to the rope, feeling the cool blade heat under his helm, feeling his own overheated net stir around him, pain like a red grey haze. He wasn’t sure how much he could take.
Weak. You’re weak.
No. I’m not. I’m not weak. I’m a survivor.
I’m weak. I can’t take anymore.
One more footstep. One more. Hold out one more.
He could not imagine how this could hurt…this much. Boundless agony, relentless, shifting with every move he made to ease himself, like an enemy with faultless parries, driving the advantage, driving Drift before him, forcing Drift to exhaust himself, toying with, mocking, Drift. His shoulders burned, his knees burst out throbs of pain into the floor, like sonic pulses, his wrists seemed icy and tight, his fingers, each of them, alive with cold swollen fire. Ventilation hurt, moving hurt, sitting still hurt, looking hurt. Everything. There was no surcease.
“You’re very brave,” Wing murmured, the voice so gentle it seemed to penetrate like slow waves, as if he could somehow sense, feel what Drift was going through. And it was Wing’s voice, outside him, a small link of connection, the words he most wanted, needed to hear..
Drift tried to respond, but only a groan came out. No. Not brave. Weak. He knew he would break, could feel it rising, cresting, ready to crack and split like fatigued metal. And after? Annihilation. Ground to nonexistence. Pain twisted higher around him, as though he were enveloped in flames, charring and scorching, making him brittle, fragile. And with a sudden rush, as though being pushed off a cliff top, he…
…broke.
It was as if he vanished, everything he thought and said he was, everything he believed he stood for, everything he’d spun into the core of his life simply collapsed, cracked open like an egg, revealing emptiness. Oblivion. Nothing. No pain, no sensation at all. No thoughts, no feelings. Just…awareness. Beyond time, beyond judgment.
If he didn’t know better, he might have called it ‘peace’.
[***]
Sensation blazed over his net, abruptly, blinding him. His systems wailed, orienting him harshly. Up/down, left/right, weight and mass, systems popping to his awareness.
“It’s morning. Drift. It’s morning.” Wing’s voice, gentle in his audio, repeating the same phrase over and over, until it had finally penetrated. Drift’s optics cycled on, and he saw Wing, kneeling down on the far side of the sword’s bracket. Wing’s optics were the most welcoming light he’d seen, brighter and gentler than the false-sunlight that jabbed through the window. Wing’s right hand rested on the knot between Drift’s two slack hands. Drift grunted. “I wanted to make sure you were functional before I unbound you,” Wing said. “Some mechs fear that they were released too early, as some…mercy.”
Drift frowned, motion coming stiffly to his facial plates, but he knew he was in that category. If he’d woken up on a berth, he’d have presumed failure. Pity. Weakness.
Wing’s mouth pulled into a matching frown. “I…was tempted.” He let his thumb brush one of Drift’s fingers. “I’m sorry.” He straightened, abruptly, tugging on some part of the knot Drift couldn’t see, and suddenly, the whole thing seemed to fall slack, his hands dropping, limp. Wing took one hand, swiftly pulling apart the bound cuff. Drift could feel the warmth of Wing’s fingers, holding his energon-starved cool palm, fingers pecking like birds at the binding, and it sent a shiver of silver through him.
The hand dropped slack to slap against his dark thigh as Wing repeated the motion on his other wrist, holding onto that hand for a trifle longer than necessary before releasing it, with a flash of self-consciousness.
Drift rocked forward, bracing his weight on his hands, which nearly burned with the pain of returning energy flow, the actuators stiff and unfired, as he struggled to his feet. He would get up by himself, and he knew Wing read that in his posture, stepping out of the way.
Drift rocked forward, half-upright, grabbing for the arm that Wing automatically extended, accepting that much assistance. His legs felt new, weak, and yet somehow clean, as though they had been stripped and refit, as he moved slowly to the small alcove, where, two mornings before, he had helped Wing. Wing hesitated, standing nearby, ready to turn and leave Drift to some privacy.
But…Drift had had enough of privacy, enough of being locked to the confines of his own skin. And maybe it was a weakness, but it was a weakness Wing would never reveal.
He touched Wing’s hand, and the jet turned, like a flower chasing the sun, folding down around Drift onto the flat dais. Drift’s hands were hard on Wing’s body, driven by a desire to feel, to engage in the outside world, to remap the contours of himself. Wing purred, obligingly, dipping his face into Drift’s throat, murmuring, “And black? Did you discover what it stands for?”
Drift nodded, letting the gesture travel through contact. Yes, he’d learned.
Need.
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honestly curious...