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shadow_vector2011-02-12 09:20 am
niyazi-a.livejournal.com) wrote in shadow_vector2011-02-12 09:20 am
Entry tags:
Rooftop
PG-13
IDW/G1 mid AHM 9
Perceptor, Drift
Warnings: ref to cutting/self harm, possibly vaguely h/c, oh and it's ME writing IDW sniPerceptor--do I need to warn for angst?
In my head, Perceptor blames himself for Sunstreaker’s death, though he doesn’t question Sunstreaker’s choice. And this one, for something I wrote out during office hours to see if I could get Perceptor and 'cutter' to work (turns out, lolyes), this one fought me, dictionwise.
The city—what was left of it—spread before Perceptor's vantage like a map of ruin. His rifle lay beside him, not discarded but...not able, right now, to provide any comfort.
It should have been me. Should have been me. They were counting, he thought, on me. My first time I'd been an essential part of the battle plan—the one who could easily, easily detonate explosive charges. And...I failed.
I failed.
He sat staring over the city from their stronghold's vantage, but his optics went distant, unseeing. Or, more precisely, as if overlaying a map of his failures and slip ups onto the topography. There is where I let myself get hit. There is where I became a liability. There is the detonation I should have blown. There is where Sunstreaker died instead of me, doing my job.
His hand rubbed idly at the rough patch in his throat cabling, on the left, where the dart had struck. That he could have succumbed, that a puncture so small could have taken him out of action, seemed inconceivable. He was weak, a liability. No matter that he hadn't been the only one. He'd let them down.
The night's darkness seemed to swirl around him, reflecting his mood. It seemed the only living thing, hovering over the citadel. The sentries barely moved, as though oppressed by the weight of the night's shifting atmosphere. He was off duty, but...what did that mean anymore?
Several floors beneath him the others were doing...whatever they did, to relax, to recover, to brace themselves to face the maelstrom again. That was...not for him. Relax meant letting his guard down. And he had not earned that right. Recover? There was no point. He needed to stay hard, focused. He'd crumble away entirely. He knew, he could feel it, how brittle this shell was he put up.
His fingers dug in a bit deeper, picking at the patch tape. He felt little prickles of pain from the injury, thin needles scratching over his net. He leaned into it. So little pain had taken him out. So little. It was humiliating. It was low. His fingers dug harder, until he felt the heat of energon welling around his fingers.
It should have stopped him—perhaps. But it didn't. Instead, he dug deeper, growling with a kind of violent pleasure, energon slide-trickling down his neck cabling. Pain lanced over his net, no delicate prickles now, but sharp blades of pain, like knives of glass. Perceptor tilted his head over, opening the gap. More, he thought. I can handle more. This much pain will not take me down. I will make myself harder. I will prove I can endure.
He probed the wound, his fingers clinical, studying the ragged tear with his scientist's trained finger pads. He could feel the hard grit of damaged rubberene from the toxin. The toxin, still inside him, no doubt, waiting, lurking, seeking another moment of weakness. So small. Such...failure.
He hissed into the pain, almost a threat, a challenge, daring himself to take more. The city's spread seemed to ripple and dim before his gaze, the outer world seeming to shut down, dropping in importance below the awareness of his body, his pain, pulling it like a blanket over him, letting it fold around him like a chrysalis from which he would emerge, he hoped, stronger.
A hand touched his shoulder, slipping silently up behind him, startling him. His hand clutched over his wound, tight, trying to hide, trying to play the gesture off as an innocent brush.
“Quiet night.” Drift's voice was deliberately bland, his face turned to the cityscape below.
“Yes,” Perceptor managed, unsteadily, his hand still on his throat; caught, and knowing he was caught. Waiting for Drift's next move, for the lecture, the rage he deserved. It struck him suddenly how stupid it was—damaging himself further, possibly hampering his effectiveness. He was useless before? And now? If they found him, bled out on the roof? Another burden, another liability.
No, it would be over. No more failures, no more letting others down.
But...Perceptor didn't deserve it to be over. He had not suffered enough.
And at the same time, the pain washing over him was...wanted. Needed. Deserved. Purifying, paying interest on the debt he owed. What was his pain, after all, compared to the suffering others have endured? Compared to death itself?
Drift pushed the rifle nearer to Perceptor, till the bipod legs bumped the red knee armor, settling himself on the ledge next to Perceptor. For a long moment he did nothing, leaning forward, staring at the city below, bent forward, his Great Sword's hilt over his head like a ridgespine, elbows on his knees, intent. Perceptor's gaze slid over, wary.
Drift cycled a vent of air, releasing it in a hard sigh. He reached over, hooking his hand in Perceptor's elbow, pulling the forearm down and away from Perceptor's damaged throat, Drift's own gaze never leaving the distant horizon, as though wanting nothing more than to hold Perceptor's hand for some solitary silent comfort.
The black-fingered hands curled over Perceptor's, twining through his long, thin fingers, holding it along Drift's thigh, seeming not to notice the sticky slickness of half-dried energon, or the sudden rigid thrumming in Perceptor's frame. Perceptor's gaze jumped from Drift to the night and back, off-balance.
“War,” Drift murmured, so softly that it seemed that the swirling night could have plucked the words from lips that Perceptor saw move in gold-silhouette, backlit by a watchlight, “does enough to hurt us.” His hands squeezed over Perceptor's, as if he could compress some comfort through pressure. He turned his head, looking Perceptor in the face for the first time, the gold light limning his cheek, the angular lamellar of his helm. “Don't you think?”
Perceptor's hand shrank in Drift's grip, the solid, strong hands of someone who had known guns, known swords as intimately as he knew anything in this world, one who had fought his way up from places Perceptor could never even imagine, someone who must have seen this failure, known this pain himself. And the blue optics turned to him were not cold and rejecting, nor distant and pitying, but warm, blue stars of one who was an equal, a peer in this pain.
“Yes,” he pushed the word out, fighting it over his vocalizer. And the night swirled, its cool air stinging against the drying tightness of the energon trailing down his throat cables, biting like shame with tiny teeth.
IDW/G1 mid AHM 9
Perceptor, Drift
Warnings: ref to cutting/self harm, possibly vaguely h/c, oh and it's ME writing IDW sniPerceptor--do I need to warn for angst?
In my head, Perceptor blames himself for Sunstreaker’s death, though he doesn’t question Sunstreaker’s choice. And this one, for something I wrote out during office hours to see if I could get Perceptor and 'cutter' to work (turns out, lolyes), this one fought me, dictionwise.
The city—what was left of it—spread before Perceptor's vantage like a map of ruin. His rifle lay beside him, not discarded but...not able, right now, to provide any comfort.
It should have been me. Should have been me. They were counting, he thought, on me. My first time I'd been an essential part of the battle plan—the one who could easily, easily detonate explosive charges. And...I failed.
I failed.
He sat staring over the city from their stronghold's vantage, but his optics went distant, unseeing. Or, more precisely, as if overlaying a map of his failures and slip ups onto the topography. There is where I let myself get hit. There is where I became a liability. There is the detonation I should have blown. There is where Sunstreaker died instead of me, doing my job.
His hand rubbed idly at the rough patch in his throat cabling, on the left, where the dart had struck. That he could have succumbed, that a puncture so small could have taken him out of action, seemed inconceivable. He was weak, a liability. No matter that he hadn't been the only one. He'd let them down.
The night's darkness seemed to swirl around him, reflecting his mood. It seemed the only living thing, hovering over the citadel. The sentries barely moved, as though oppressed by the weight of the night's shifting atmosphere. He was off duty, but...what did that mean anymore?
Several floors beneath him the others were doing...whatever they did, to relax, to recover, to brace themselves to face the maelstrom again. That was...not for him. Relax meant letting his guard down. And he had not earned that right. Recover? There was no point. He needed to stay hard, focused. He'd crumble away entirely. He knew, he could feel it, how brittle this shell was he put up.
His fingers dug in a bit deeper, picking at the patch tape. He felt little prickles of pain from the injury, thin needles scratching over his net. He leaned into it. So little pain had taken him out. So little. It was humiliating. It was low. His fingers dug harder, until he felt the heat of energon welling around his fingers.
It should have stopped him—perhaps. But it didn't. Instead, he dug deeper, growling with a kind of violent pleasure, energon slide-trickling down his neck cabling. Pain lanced over his net, no delicate prickles now, but sharp blades of pain, like knives of glass. Perceptor tilted his head over, opening the gap. More, he thought. I can handle more. This much pain will not take me down. I will make myself harder. I will prove I can endure.
He probed the wound, his fingers clinical, studying the ragged tear with his scientist's trained finger pads. He could feel the hard grit of damaged rubberene from the toxin. The toxin, still inside him, no doubt, waiting, lurking, seeking another moment of weakness. So small. Such...failure.
He hissed into the pain, almost a threat, a challenge, daring himself to take more. The city's spread seemed to ripple and dim before his gaze, the outer world seeming to shut down, dropping in importance below the awareness of his body, his pain, pulling it like a blanket over him, letting it fold around him like a chrysalis from which he would emerge, he hoped, stronger.
A hand touched his shoulder, slipping silently up behind him, startling him. His hand clutched over his wound, tight, trying to hide, trying to play the gesture off as an innocent brush.
“Quiet night.” Drift's voice was deliberately bland, his face turned to the cityscape below.
“Yes,” Perceptor managed, unsteadily, his hand still on his throat; caught, and knowing he was caught. Waiting for Drift's next move, for the lecture, the rage he deserved. It struck him suddenly how stupid it was—damaging himself further, possibly hampering his effectiveness. He was useless before? And now? If they found him, bled out on the roof? Another burden, another liability.
No, it would be over. No more failures, no more letting others down.
But...Perceptor didn't deserve it to be over. He had not suffered enough.
And at the same time, the pain washing over him was...wanted. Needed. Deserved. Purifying, paying interest on the debt he owed. What was his pain, after all, compared to the suffering others have endured? Compared to death itself?
Drift pushed the rifle nearer to Perceptor, till the bipod legs bumped the red knee armor, settling himself on the ledge next to Perceptor. For a long moment he did nothing, leaning forward, staring at the city below, bent forward, his Great Sword's hilt over his head like a ridgespine, elbows on his knees, intent. Perceptor's gaze slid over, wary.
Drift cycled a vent of air, releasing it in a hard sigh. He reached over, hooking his hand in Perceptor's elbow, pulling the forearm down and away from Perceptor's damaged throat, Drift's own gaze never leaving the distant horizon, as though wanting nothing more than to hold Perceptor's hand for some solitary silent comfort.
The black-fingered hands curled over Perceptor's, twining through his long, thin fingers, holding it along Drift's thigh, seeming not to notice the sticky slickness of half-dried energon, or the sudden rigid thrumming in Perceptor's frame. Perceptor's gaze jumped from Drift to the night and back, off-balance.
“War,” Drift murmured, so softly that it seemed that the swirling night could have plucked the words from lips that Perceptor saw move in gold-silhouette, backlit by a watchlight, “does enough to hurt us.” His hands squeezed over Perceptor's, as if he could compress some comfort through pressure. He turned his head, looking Perceptor in the face for the first time, the gold light limning his cheek, the angular lamellar of his helm. “Don't you think?”
Perceptor's hand shrank in Drift's grip, the solid, strong hands of someone who had known guns, known swords as intimately as he knew anything in this world, one who had fought his way up from places Perceptor could never even imagine, someone who must have seen this failure, known this pain himself. And the blue optics turned to him were not cold and rejecting, nor distant and pitying, but warm, blue stars of one who was an equal, a peer in this pain.
“Yes,” he pushed the word out, fighting it over his vocalizer. And the night swirled, its cool air stinging against the drying tightness of the energon trailing down his throat cables, biting like shame with tiny teeth.
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this is an amazing piece, hon. there's so much here. Perceptor as a cutter works the way you've portrayed it. (and since not all cutters are cut from the same cloth, you've definitely done it right here. i'm impressed.)
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