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niyazi-a.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
shadow_vector2011-02-18 12:55 pm
Grey Areas
Title: Grey Areas
Continuity:Bayverse
Characters: Barricade, Starscream, Blackout
Rating: PG
Notes: Defiance issue 1, some spoilers, we’re not on Earth yet.
Just a short little thing to get my confidence back at writing SOMETHING I feel fairly nonsucky about. Hence, Bayverse genfic.
The world had been drained of color. As if the war itself had leached any vibrancy from walls, ground, living beings, till all seemed a dull, uniform grey. Even spilt energon and coolant quickly seeped to indiscriminate dark blotches on the ground, their colors swallowed by the death around them.
Even their armor had taken on the drab hues of the war—tactical camouflage, perhaps, rendering them grey and dull beige and black, save for the virulent red of their optics. A distinctive, a necessary adaptation, the lower wavelength of red allowing higher speed data calculation, and greater thermal sensitivity. But even they, Barricade thought, went grey and dead after time. And even before that, he’d seen a sort of distant film come over the optics, not made of dirt or grime, but of exhaustion, spark-deep weariness, and a surfeit of violence.
He’d seen the same dullness in his own optics.
And seeing the vessel streak across the sky, Megatron himself in blazing pursuit, like shooting stars gone wrong, had set the last measure of despair for Barricade. That was it. It was over. The planet’s living soul gone, torn out by the Autobots. They’d been had. Had somehow never thought the Autobots would, or could, commit such an act of genocide. Suicide. Doubtless some vain attempt to deprive the Decepticon forces their victory—a child smashing his toys so that no one else can play.
Except the Allspark was neither a toy nor the Autobots’ to take. Barricade slumped down on a outcrop of stone, barely listening to Starscream and Blackout bickering. Wasting charge, as far as Barricade was concerned. Wasting time. He wasn’t aware he’d spoken aloud until they both wheeled around on him, optics narrow, glinting, irate.
“Do you have a better use of our time?” Starscream sneered.
Barricade shrugged, refusing to back down. He hadn’t intended to start anything, but...that didn’t mean he’d back down. “Slag, no. Do what you want, the two of you.” Barricade pushed to his feet, glaring up at the larger mechs. “We all get to choose the manner of our deaths now. Just didn’t think you’d choose ‘whining’.”
Blackout bristled, stepping up aggressively. “We must wait for Megatron’s word before we proceed.”
“Must we?” Starscream sneered. “Such initiative, Blackout.”
“Someone needs to recall that loyalty to the Decepticon cause is more important than one’s own ambition.”
“And you are, I presume, that someone?” Starscream’s optics glinted dangerously. “You follow a mech; I serve an ideal.”
Barricade had had enough. He shot a round from his pulse rifle into the ground between them. Grey dust puffed up listlessly in a dirty cloud from the crater. “Gonna take this opportunity to intrude here, if you don’t mind, and remind you slaggin’ tactical geniuses that we’ve already GOT enough enemies. Call them Autobots.” He glared back and forth between the two.
Starscream snarled, his optics shuttering closed for a klik. “I, for one,” he said, haughtily, “will not stay here to die.”
“Running away?” Blackout snapped, his shoulder spines bristling dangerously. “Such is the measure of your loyalty, Starscream.”
Starscream scoffed. “Running away? No. Racing to catch up with our future.” He tilted his head to the black expanse of sky, the backdrop against which they’d seen their planet’s heart tear its way out of atmosphere. “Our future is not here, Blackout,” he said, only half-harshly.
If they were to have a future, Barricade thought, if they were to have a future at all, Starscream was right. Here was the end of life. Here was the death of color and future and hope. Here was nothing but breakdown leading to decay. No life, anywhere. Death feeding only more death. He nodded.
Blackout twitched. Hating the truth in Starscream’s words. “Our future,” he said, resisting. “Selfish.”
“Without us, there is no Decepticon cause. And no Decepticon victory.” Starscream. Level-headed. Practical. Self-serving.
Barricade tilted his head, keeping the muzzle of his rifle between them. “You have a plan?” The sky seemed to reach down its darkness to them, pressing against them as though it would keep them there.
Starscream grinned, and the faint light of the stars gleamed across his cheekflares like a blaze of hope. “Always.”
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The emotions in this are just so real, and it is impossible for me not to respect and feel for the characters. Your Starscream really has become the Starscream of my head canon.
Barricade's comment about them choosing death by whining could have been funny if it had not been so sad and true.