re_alignment_logs | stripping away fear

Entry tags:

stripping away fear

Who: Drift, Wing, Ambulon
What: Stopping Drift from being...Drift.
Where: Vector's, the Hub.
When: Today
Warnings: Probably a lot of yelling. Mostly at Drift.
What the hell is going on here?: Collapsing a locked post and actiony things into one so as not to spam the game with Driftidiocy.

There are caves under Vector's palace. He'd seen them before, catching glimpses as he drove over the bridges--little mouths of darkness in the crystalline walls.

And he's found one, now, where the wind through the chasm pulls a pure, beautiful note out of the stone, and at night, lights glimmered in soft, will-o'-wisp pastels, piezoelectric in the crystal. It's beautiful. And it reminds him of Crystal City, in ways that make sense probably only to him. Beauty, peace, and the knowledge of how precious life is when you realize you're about to die.

He didn't want to do this. But there was no other choice. He couldn't live in fear, any more than he could expect others to die in his stead. So he sat, day and night, holding that fear, studying, peeling it back, layer by layer, laying himself bare, good and ugly, bad and beautiful. He studied fear, how it moved through his body, copperwire and tight. He asked it questions, until he understood.

He'd been afraid on Cybertron, but here, he'd realized that fear of death is a selfish thing. It had been new to him, anyway: Deadlock hadn't feared dying. He'd gladly die, if it served a purpose, if it advanced the side of right.

He'd been on the wrong side, then, but that thought was still in him.

The fear he'd felt on Delphi was the fear of dying...for nothing. Fear of being trapped by his past, dying unable to escape who he'd been.

That was another world. That wasn't here.

He wasn't afraid of pain. A mech didn't stab himself through the chassis if he feared pain.

What he did fear, in the end, was hurting others. This was new to him, here. On the Lost Light, he had to say no one would miss him. Perceptor barely spoke to him. Rodimus was his one friend, but he knew no one could replace Rodimus in Rodimus's own spark.

Here...though.

And he couldn't shake that fear. He couldn't make the hurt of that go away. But he had to say good bye. Because Wing deserved, in the end, to know how he'd felt and what he meant.

He cycles one last vent of air, and turns on the comm.

"Wing.

There's something I have to do. Please believe me when I say there's no other way." He sighs, struggling for words. They're going to be his last ones, or the last ones he wants to be remembered by, not whatever puling weak sobs Tarn would probably pull out of him in his last moments.

"It's Tarn. He's going to want to kill me. He thrives on fear. It's what he lives for. He's the worst of what the Decepticons became--what you saved me from becoming.

"We need to know how he works, so we can stop him. We need--I need--him not to go after anyone else. And I can't let anyone 'protect' me. I...can't. I can't have someone else risk themselves. Not for me.

"I can find out how he works, how he kills. If the worst happens, I'll come back. Believe this. We've seen the dead return, and no one--no one--has more of a reason to want to come back." Because he has Wing, which he never had back in their world.

"Don't be upset, Wing. Please. I--I can't bear it. The thought of hurting you is what kept me from going after him the first time I saw him on the network. But he'll hurt you more, if we let him. He'll try to twist you up, make you live afraid of the future. I don't want that for you. Not about me."

He looks up, off camera, at the night sky, beyond the cave's mouth and gives a fond, almost tearful smile. "I used to look up, you know. Wherever it was, when everything seemed the most hopeless, I used to look up into the stars and find the brightest one and say 'There. That one is Wing, looking over me.' You've always been my brightest star. Please don't let this dim your brightness."

He pauses, for a long moment, whispering "I love you," before he cuts the feed. He's delayed long enough.

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"And what about the people you leave behind, Drift?" Ambulon added. "What about your friends? What about Vandal?" He glowered. "What about the people left to suffer because of your damned martyr complex? The people you're trying to protect - you can help them by staying alive and working with the rest of us."

Ambulon went to intervene, to stop things from getting physical. But... He stayed put, crossed his arms. No. Not right now. Though he wanted to slug Drift's fool head in, he restrained himself as well.

"I'm not going anywhere. Trust me," he said a moment later, a short distance behind Wing. "I never intended to."

He glanced up at Drift - torn between anger and even pity. There was so much he wanted to say. Drift's words - they had stung more than Ambulon should have let them. He knew it was nothing personal. Yet... He looked to Wing again. "That's why you're here," he mumbled, then fell silent.

This was getting personal now, and Ambulon knew better than to involve himself. Unless one of them decided to break out into a fight, in which case, he'd quite quickly step in to mediate.

For now, however, he chose to watch from the sidelines.

"No, Wing! It's...it's different." Don't ask him how, but it's different. His hands squeezed together, tense and nervous.

He flinched as Wing confronted him. His voice shook. "Wing. What better cause--what did you teach me, if not to lay down my life to protect others?" It was less a challenge than a question--what did he get wrong?

"Vandal's...," he couldn't bring himself to say it. Not right now. "I let her down. I should have been better, done better." And it was only a matter of time before he let Wing down, he figured.

"It won't matter what I remember. I don't have to. Everyone would see it." Oops, yeah, did he forget to mention that part? Drift wanted the whole thing broadcast on the Link. For educational purposes. "Look. I have to do something."

Wing's pinions flick and the white helm tilts as if in challenge. He really would like to know how it's different, but he knows there's no answer forthcoming.

It's hard for Wing to hold onto his ire though, especially when it's fueled so fiercely by love and causing Drift obvious distress. He sighs as he steps forward, reaching out to hopefully settle his hands on Drift's shoulders, his mouth set in a determined line but his brow furrowing under his helm.

"I did. And maybe I made it look too easy. But understand that the heart of the notion is to value all life. That includes your own. You can save more people alive than you can dead. Sacrifice is the last resort, it's why we don't draw our Great Swords in every battle."

He shakes his head vigorously in outright refusal. "No, she's not. Not til...we find a body or she wakes up in a temple." If only they could ask Vector...he would know if one of his Marked had passed, wouldn't he? "If that's the case, then we both should have."

Drift's next words provoke a strangled noise. "You'd--you'd broadcast it!?" Wing's imagination is a little too ready and available with imagery to go with that. If he could go pale he would, but as it is his field goes cold and something turns in his tanks. "What if he disrupted the feed!?"

"It's different. It just...is." He knows that's a tension between them. "Because you're, well, you. And I'm...," he shrugged.

"Besides. You're important here. This place needs far more of your influence than mine." His hands close over Wing's wrists--not to remove, just to hold them, to feel some contact. Wing might feel the slight tremble in his frame.

"No, Wing. I fought with her. I made her uncomfortable. If we hadn't argued, she would have commed when she needed help." There, he said that.

The hands clutch on Wing at the jet's next words, afraid to feel the hands on his shoulders pulling away. "Wing. It would work. Everyone would see it. Everyone would know how he works, and what to avoid. And he wouldn't turn it off. He's...Tarn. He'd probably find it 'fun' to have an audience. It's how he creates fear."

"...someone I care about very much," he finishes. Not that it's relevant. Except maybe it is.

"You're right, I suppose I am. I'm heavily involved here, I have a lot of responsibilities. It's a lot to handle Drift. They need me..." A squeeze to those shoulders, thumbs brushing the sides of Drift's neck. "And I need you."

He means it, and in more than just a companionship sort of way.

"Drift, these things happen. She would have commed if she could have, but she didn't comm anyone. Me, Perceptor, none of us got messages." See Drift, it's not just you.

Wing just has to stare for a moment, then shake his helm as if trying to banish the images. "But Drift, aren't we then doing his work for him? Publicly broadcasting torture? It'd strike fear into anyone who say it and turn the Link into an even greater weapon for Tarn to use."

"Wing. You don't need me. You knew me for what? A few weeks, a long time ago." It's the opposite that's true: Drift needs Wing, as his anchor, his compass.

"We just...we should have found something by now. I'm botching the search." He shakes his head: more proof that Ultra Magnus is right. "People don't want to talk to me."

That's not that important right now: he's trying to make everything right. He's lost Vandal: he wants--desperately--to save someone.

"But knowing the worst is the best remedy to fear. He's always used mystery as a weapon, why no one knows anything in the first place." He still thinks like a Decepticon at times: he can't really imagine how upsetting it would be to mechs used to millions of years of war. And deeper, maybe, if he did this, he could finally clear the slate.

Wing twitches back, and then he does pull his hands away, closing them over his chest protectively. "Well, you...certainly dismissed that easily. I'd tell you how exactly, but you'd only tell me how I'm wrong, yes?" His gold optics shutter over some emotion, shoving it from the fore with some effort before looking back to Drift. "Why is it so hard for you to accept that you're important to others Drift? Is it to make running off and doing things like this easier?"

He shakes his head. "Not just you Drift. It's the police force's job, why they aren't more involved I don't know." If anything Wing feels remiss in this. He was on the law committee, wasn't there more he could do?

"Maybe for those with enough fortitude. There's plenty of civilians here Drift." He looses a heavy sigh. He's not defeated, but this feels like losing regardless. "Even if this is the only way, there's a better way to do it. Plan a method of extraction before he actually kills you, create a secure feed that he can't disrupt and broadcasts on a narrow band... Maybe even deal with him somehow legally so you're not just proving Ultra Magnus right."

It's hard to hide the slight hitch in his ventilations, tight and nervous. This frightens him more than Tarn: losing the thing that matters most to him in the world...through his own fault.

One hand reaches, as the jet's optics close, but he pulls back, afraid to touch, afraid it's unwelcome, his hand hovering almost brushing Wing's cheek. "...Wing." He couldn't think of what else to say for a long moment. "Wing. When...the only other time I've ever been important to anyone, it was Megatron. And that was only for what I could do, not who I was." Megatron had sent Lockdown to find him, because he wanted his soldier back, nothing more.

"Tarn isn't the police force's job. Not yet. All he's done is threaten and that's not a crime."

He turns his face away. He has no answer to that. Any of it. It seemed so...sensible, when he'd though of it, the best way to get the information seen by as many minds as possible, as many mechs capable of figuring out how Tarn worked.

"I was...going to..._{with Saber}." See? He had a plan. Sort of.

"Wing. Ultra Magnus got upset last time because things happened and I didn't do anything. I'm doing something. It's the only thing I can do."

Part of him regrets saying it, but it is the truth as he understands it. He wants so much to give: love, trust, affection, praise; it's difficult when his offerings are rejected or invalidated. In a sense maybe he's partially at fault though. If Drift doesn't understand what Wing sees in him, maybe he just needs to work harder at convincing him. Drift's ability to accept it didn't make it any less true, this he had to remember.

Even though the edges of discomfort are clear on his face, he still turns into Drift's hand, craving touch, contact, just as much. "New things to get used to I guess..." His tone begs Drift to please, try.

"No, but Vandal's disappearance is. We need more people on it."

"Saber? Is that enough to give a good chance of success?" He sighs again. "There's something to be said for baiting him into action, out into the open, but let's work together Drift. There are a lot of minds we can put of this. Ultra Magnus agrees with your desire to be proactive, but if we strike first it makes things difficult. He's worried about you confronting Tarn. I...thought he was wrong at the time..."

His head tilts and he cycles and vent, his flight panels shifting uncomfortably.

"Drift, there's something else..... Remember when I had those dreams about Prism's attack on you? And I...sensed some of what was happening during Overlord's attack on Perceptor..." He feels oddly guilty about this and doesn't know why. "I. Think I figured out what's happening."

He wishes he didn't have to do this, that he could just forget all his responsibilities, and wrap himself around Wing forever. He lets his thumb stroke over Wing's cheek, his optics coruscating with emotion.

"We do. We need to find her. There has to be something. But I can't even do that with...Tarn."

"Saber's offered, and, well, she's...she won't be upset. When the worst happens. She should also be safe from him." Things he can't say about Wing. He gives a wry smile. "I don't think 'worried' is the word Ultra Magnus would use."

"What? What's happening?"

In truth Wing wishes the same, and maybe there's time for stolen moments, but he also knows that seeing to their duties is what affords them some peace in which to enjoy each other. He steps closer, a bar before Drift's path in a different way, his hand moving to cover Drift's over his cheek.

"We'll find a way Drift. You can't help her at all if Tarn captures you. Who knows how long he might..." Wing cuts it off then, because he's not willing to entertain the notion.

It's even doubly important, given what he has to tell Drift next.

"I think... it's the Sword. Yours. And the remnants of my old bond. There's..._{a piece of me in there}...along with other former bearers." Or perhaps more than a piece, but Wing didn't know. Nothing about this was 'usual' and their knowledge of the Great Swords was far from complete. It's eerie to think about, for him. "It's linked us, but only one way."

"It's not an 'if' with Tarn, unless we stop him." He shrugs. No one's got a plan for that, either.

He blinks, trying to take in what Wing's telling him and despite the warm hand over his, he feels a sudden chill. "What? Why didn't you tell me this sooner?" He's playing out all the ways this could be awful.

He sighs, the noise rife with malcontent. His flights panels shift uncomfortably. There's so much in this that creates conflict in him. Legal issues he's trying to hard to uphold even if he only partially believes them, the personal reasons for doing so which further cloud the issue.

And of course, the knowledge that if he gives in because he values and respects choice, that he's sending a loved one to die, which doesn't feel like love at all, just cowardly surrender.

He's never before had to choose between love and the preservation of life. And he never wants to again.

"I still don't understand why we can try and come at this as a team. Make a plan. Increase the chances of success." He tucks his flight panels to keep them from rattling. "You seem more focused on the doing of this than the success of it."

Wing isn't willing to let go, if anything he grips Drift's hand more firmly. His head ducks. "I only just figured it out, this past week. With Jetfire's help, when we were going over my cockpit reconfiguration." He looks up, pleadingly, because he feels like it's an invasion of a sort, that this exists without Drift's consent. "I'm sorry."

"Because it's not your problem. It's mine, and Ambulon's. No one else should get involved."

Drift's tired of arguing, tired of being challenged. "Someone has to do something. Do you think I should just cower in fear and wait for someone else to do something?"

He frowns. "How bad is it? How much do you know?" How much privacy doesn't he have anymore?

Ambulon had been leaning nearby, arms folded, listening somewhat closely. Didn't really want to invade their privacy, buuut. "You just admitted it's a shared problem!" He was suddenly standing between the two lovebirds, jabbing a finger against Drift's chest. "'It's mine, and Ambulon's'. If that's the case, why aren't we working together? Why do you have to assume responsibility of the entire situation? You're hardly being fair, and you're not listening to reason, otherwise you'd realize what you're about to do is completely stupid!"

He's about to say something when Ambulon interjects. It's just as well because he's at a loss. He doesn't think confronting Tarn like this will solve the problem, but Drift clearly has no desire to work with him or anyone else on an alternative.

No matter what Wing chooses to do here, he feels like he's doing Drift some kind of wrong, and the lines between duty and personal feelings are starting to blur.

He shifts back, turning partially away, a slight dip to his helm as he fixates on some point in the distance. "Strong emotion or pain seems to be the only thing that comes through strong. I...I think I can block it out, close it off, with practice."

"Because you wouldn't work with me. None of you will. We need to know how Tarn works if we are thinking we can ever fight him. But no one's doing anything." He feels like a broken record, and the only one trying to do anything but hide.

Stupid. Really. He glowers at Ambulon, and then at Wing, who doesn't seem to be disagreeing with that assessment.

"Then," he says, trying to master his emotion, "I'll take it off. Leave it here." He reaches behind him, hand closing over the Great Sword's hilt.

Wing had had a feeling his discovery of the link was not going to go over well, but this, well, this was worse than he anticipated. The timing that forced it certainly did not help. He's realizing now that he has a bond with Drift that he's feeling ashamed and remorseful of, leaving him sick and disconcerted. Part of him wants desperately to flee, to put some distance between then, because it's the only recompense we can offer right now.

But the other part is frustrated beyond all means with the situation at hand. He sidesteps Ambulon and turns to Drift, an open hand thrust into the air between them, both pleading and accusing.

"No one's doing anything because you haven't given us a chance to! I gave you plenty of more constructive ways to come at this tactic and you shrugged them all off!" He's fraying around the edges now, voice high and strained with a collision of anger and fear. "Why not ask Perceptor what he thinks? He's analytically minded, surely he can run all the variables and tell you the chances of success better than I. Or why not Vector, the one who has to fetch you back if--WHEN--you die. Except, no wait, you don't trust him and he's probably still lying unconscious in a medbay somewhere right now!'

The gold optics flicker with a tangle of emotion, searching Drift's face as he pants softly through his vents. When Drift reaches for the Great Sword, Wing almost stops him. But no.

"You don't want me that close, fine. But do you even know how much you're sacrificing if you do this? And for what? Information you can't even guarantee we'll get?"

"Because you don't know Tarn. And Perceptor--" His voice crackles. "It's not an option. All right?"

The pile of accusations is too much. He tears the Great Sword from its bracket, wincing as he snaps one of the bracer hooks from the force of it. He thrusts it at Wing. "Take it, then. If all it is is some new way to control me, tell me you know better than I do, then I--I don't want it."

"If you cared about me half as much as you say you do, you'd give me some respect for making my own decisions instead of using the fact that you care as a way to manipulate me." He's shaking, the words pouring out of him, with that sense that he knows he's going to regret them, but he can't stop them even so.

Wing hears that snap and flinches, a small bit of sympathy pain, until Drift starts speaking again.

"To control you--!?" He looks shocked, optics darting between Drift and the hand holding out the sword, the weapon suddenly a terrible omen, not just a symbol of his greatest failure but a sign of Drift's rejection.

With Drift's last strident words he's twitching back, both hurt and appalled. His mouthplates work but the sounds are a jumbled and staticky sputter at first. "M-Manipulate you! Drift, I... What am I supposed to do?" he begs helplessly, "there's no right choice for me here!"

"Either I keep your respect and send you to die or I lose your respect and keep you safe!" The words come out high strung, desperate and frustrated, until he seems to cave, as if realizing there have been too many casualties in this battle. "...or am I too late for that already? Do I even have your respect still?"

Because it does feel selfish. Maybe this was never meant to be. Maybe sacrifice is what binds, defines, and ends them again. Is that their fate?

He shakes, visibly, a shadow falling over his face as he struggles for control. It's not lost to him, the irony, that the emotional devastation of Drift's loss is acceptable but the second hand physical torture is not. Wing will feel pain regardless, but without the sword, he can be of no comfort either. And there's pain here, even now, before the thing has even begun. In a way, this is worse torture. Harder to bear than any physical suffering. And beyond that, harder to repair.

But how much of this is concern for Wing's suffering and how much is guilt for being the cause of it?

He shudders, near violently, biting back words, the cutting kind, because there's enough pain in this already. He has to do something decisive, and soon, or this was going to end more terribly than it began. He has a notion now, what it should be...

"Maybe it's not about you. Maybe it's about me. Maybe it's about something bigger than me."

He frowns. "What I don't understand is that it's all right for you to sacrifice yourself, for me, for your city, but I can't do the same. How is that not hypocrisy? How is that even sense?"

He's right, because it should be, but things keep getting clouded in this, and Wing is having obvious trouble reconciling all of the warring emotions and beliefs within.

But he knows one thing for certain.

"Drift." His voice is quiet, tired now, but no less sure. "I never said you couldn't. I just want a chance to make sure it's worth it. I don't want you giving up your life for a maybe."

"You argued with Dai Atlas to the bitter end, not willing to give up until all your options were exhausted."

Wing raises a hand to place it over Drift's, on the Great Sword's hilt, the contact tingling strangely in his palm as he presses it back towards Drift's chest. His tone hardens slightly, still weary, but like a mech offering up his last defense.

"Give me two days. Megatron can afford us that much, no one will be hurt in that time. Two days to improve this, make the plan more solid, to make your chances better." He softens, the words imploring as they slip past his lipplates, "Please Drift. Your life is worth everything to me. Let me make it so we gain everything we can."

Drift wants to pull away from the touch on his hand, but he finds himself, instead, clamping his other hand over Wing's, locking their hands together over the Great Sword's hilt.

"Two days. After that, I handle this myself." He hates that he's giving in, but he knows he can't refuse Wing.

He wishes things were clear cut and easy like in storybooks. But Wing knows better, even if there was a time long ago that he didn't, much.

He was too close to giving up and walking away, something without a doubt that he'd regret. So when he's pulled closer--that physical acceptance far more than the verbal--is welcome beyond words. Some of the tightness over his aching spark loosens, emotion moving over his face with a strange relief.

A solemn nod.

"If I can't in two days... Then regardless, you can go to him. I won't stop you." The pinch of worry still creases his face, but his words are deeply earnest. "I'll help you, however I can."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

stripping away fear

>kicks - ohohohoho

/drowns under all the yelling.

/throws you a life preserver?

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Let me know if I'm getting this right the way we discussed!

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God I'm sorry TEAL DEER META /faceinhands

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