re_alignment_logs | ....bento in bed?

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....bento in bed?

WHO: Drift and Vandal (semi-closed ish? Ping us if you want in)
WHERE: The Medibay
WHEN: Nowish?
WHAT: Drift has found actual food with sufficient weeaboo content and thinks of the woman who is screamingly tired of twinkies
WARNINGS: it starts with a pink bento box with cherry blossoms and a bunny on it. WHO KNOWS what horrors await!!??

Wreckers don't do subtle, but on occasion, Drift still does stealth. And so he slips into the Medibay, late in the afternoon, carefully timing it so that he's not seen. He still has a few smears of gunk from the Junk Pile on his armor, but he didn't want to wait.

"Vandal?" he whispers, slipping toward the back where they'd set up a smaller berth for her. "I have something for you."

Something, in fact, that he's holding behind his back.

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"Oh?" That's... news to her, "Care to share? Or is that too invasive a thing to ask?"

She peers at the mechanisms in his neck, tempted to get a closer look, but she won't touch, too afraid to mess something up there. She'll just keep her hands moving, alternating between scratching him behind his fins and under his jaw.

For a moment, she feels bad. She already knows a lot more about Drift than he knows about her. Then again, she thinks he'd probably be disgusted if he knew the truth.

"It's no secret. I started the war on the other side." A half-bitter smile. "Traitor, betrayer, I guess. I let myself get used. No...I wanted to be used, to do anything to make things change."

A lift of one shoulder in a shrug. "Things changed. And I thought I wasn't, but I was. Losing myself, or what I thought I fought for."

It's strangely easier to talk this way, head tilted upward, not having to see her face.

Her hands still, because that strikes a little too close to home. Enough that she has to swallow the sudden lump in her throat.

"I know the feeling, big guy."

She wants to tell him, but there's that awful pettiness that craves the friendship. It doesn't matter now, that he's a giant robot, and that she wanted a robot friend since she was six. He's a good person, and he is her friend.

"I'm glad you turned out for the better."

"I wish you didn't." The smile seems to fade, slightly. It's bad enough he knows that regret. He really doesn't want to think of anyone else.

"You can tell me about it. If you want." He lays one hand, gently, on the side of the berth. He hopes it's a comforting gesture, but he's not really good at this. All he knows is Wing would know what to do right now, what to say.

"It wasn't easy. It still isn't. But I'm trying and I hope that counts."

He's too fucking good.

Her hands slip back into her lap so she can examine her ruddy fingers.

"Maybe sometime. I'm just... I'm a pretty bad human, Drift. That's all. I've really made some huge fuckups. And not on any small scale."

That's what she'll leave it as.

"And uh, my name isn't 'Vandal'."

She owes him this much at least.

"It's Karrie. Karrie Norton," She follows it with a distant snort, "Vandal just sounds cooler."

Edited 2012-08-03 16:56 (UTC)

No, no he's not. He's trying, though, Vandal.

He looks down at the floor, his greaves, for a long moment. "I fought on the wrong side, for millions of years. I got the only people who ever tried to help me killed." He forces himself to look up, meet her gaze. "Not sure you can beat that, but I know I've got no ground to hold anything against you."

"Karrie." He's less surprised than she might think. She'd hid in the suit for long enough. He shrugs. "Went by Deadlock. Sort of the same reason."

"It's hard to imagine you as a bad guy, honestly," no matter how hard she tries. She doesn't really want to though.

"I don't know. What I did was pretty bad."

She doesn't really want to play the 'who's the worse person' game with him.

"Deadlock, huh? Gotta say... I like Drift much better."

She busies herself with tracing the seams on his hand, examining the small mechanisms at the joins.

"You don't have to tell me." He'd had his own past thrown in his face so often that he'd learned that there was sometimes no more valuable possession than privacy.

"But I can listen. And maybe understand."

He cants his helm. "It was given to me by Megatron himself. I was proud to have it. In some ways, it was the first thing I owned, the first real respect anyone gave me."

And he'd followed that blindly.

He gives a distant grin, before shaking off the shadows of the past, slowly turning his hand over so that she could see the palm.

"Who's Megatron?"

A fair question.

She considers it a moment. Maybe, even if he does hate her for it, which she doubts he could truly hate someone, she'd deserve it.

"I killed an entire station of people. Innocent people. I let them die and then turn into fucking monsters. Because I was stupid and obedient. The church I joined- the church of Unitology. It's a religion where I come from. They told me they had an important mission for me. So the government wouldn't be able to get in the way anymore."

So here it is, spilling out.

"Go in, cut a few cables. That's why they called me Vandal. Turns out I was actually releasing a... a kind of pathogen. Fucked up. Killed people and mutated them into-"

She can't really describe it.

"So yeah. I let myself be manipulated, and even when I tried to stop it, I just made things worse. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole station got fucked. Thousands of people, Drift. S'one hell of a kill count."

It doesn't really feel better getting it off her chest, but she's ready to be judged all the same.

"Megatron was the leader of the bad ones. But when I met him, he was the one helping us get heard, getting us noticed."

He shrugs. He still has no idea what to do with that: that he still saw the injustice in the prewar Cybertron. That he'd still probably join to fight against it.

He reaches forward, gently, trying to brush her shoulder. He's not good at comforting gestures, but maybe it'll do something.

"Vanda--Karrie. It wasn't your fault. You didn't know." And he knows how thin that sounds, because he didn't believe it when he was first told it. "But you know right from wrong, which is more than those who used you did. You wouldn't have done it if you'd known."

He tries to meet her gaze. "That means you're not a bad person."

"The Decepticons, right?" She's picked up on some of the vocabulary here, "Yeah. The path to destruction is paved with good intentions."

That could be said for the both of them.

She leans back against the hand, hands moving to her face. How is it that his patience and understanding seem so perfectly reasonable? She has to swallow that lump in her throat again.

"Yeah well. If I'm not-" She doesn't really believe him. But she's too tired to argue it.

"If I'm not then you're not."

Well this turned depressing.

"Fucking hell I can't believe I just told you all of that."

Edited 2012-08-03 21:59 (UTC)

"Yes. At the start of the war we at least believed we were right. Or at least justified."

He nods. "Yes. But we have to believe in redemption. Because we can see, and feel, what we did was wrong. The best we can do is try."

Drift grins, rubbing one finger over her shoulder. "And I'm still here, right?"

Well aren't they just a pair? She hasn't even known him that long and she already feels like she's found one of the best friends she's ever had in her life.

Smiling up at him tiredly, lips twitching.

"You know. The one problem here- I wish you were small enough to hug. Because I would hug the shit out of you."

He grins. "Not sure that's the best expression for it, though. But anything I can do to make you feel better...?"

Because he was alone after his worst moment: Wing was dead, he'd turned his back on the City he didn't deserve. And it had been lonely and he'd wished for someone to understand, or just not to judge.

"Well, you know what I mean."

She'll settle to squeeze his hand and move back over to start scratching behind his damn silly ear-fins again.

"You're kind of the best friend I've ever had."

Sadly, that's not a long list to compete with.

"I do." He was just trying to take the sharpest, most poignant edge off the rawness of the moment.

Drift tilts his head into the scritches on his helm. It felt good, but mostly he recognized the simple need for something harmless and nice to do.

"I'd like to be better."

"I can't really imagine any way you could be," She says, absently petting the flat of the helm fin, "I mean. Shit, I kind of just told you the worst thing I've ever done, which was pretty fucking bad."

She pauses to laugh humorlessly.

"And your response is to tell me I'm not a bad person. I think you're pretty far up the 'great and accepting friend' scale."

A beat.

"And you brought me lunch in a cute little box. You've put up with my bullshit since I landed my dying ass on this rock. And you haven't asked a single thing in return. I don't even know what I could plausibly have that you would want, but shit, Drift..."

She shrugs, sighing.

"I don't even know what to say."

He gives a smile, but there's a sort of sad, wistful edge to it. "I could be Wing." Wing was better, in just about everything.

"But the point is, you know it's bad and you feel bad about it. I...Deadlock didn't. Ever." That makes you better than him by a long shot, Vandal.

"All I ask of you, of anyone, is a chance." He has a lot to make up for. "So...just give me that much."

"Yeah, you could be. But I don't want you to be Wing. I like you how you are, you big dork."

She squeezes the thin white metal.

"You're not that guy anymore, though. As far as I can see."

There's an affectionate tug at his ear, firm enough to get his attention.

"Look pal, I don't care who or what you used to be. You're my friend now, and I'll give you all the chances you want and then some. But you're also going to have to bear hanging out with me. That means listening to this crappy, five-hundred-year-old music with me and possibly watching bad movies if I ever find some."

Another tug, this time turning his head so she can stare right into those blue optics, a wry smile stretching her face.

"Are you up to the task?"

It's honestly the first time anyone's ever told Drift he was good...as he was. That he wasn't the ex-Decepticon who had no right to fight with them, or that he wasn't better than he was.

He honestly has no idea how to respond to that.

So he defaults to defending Wing. "Wing wouldn't judge you, either. If you told him what you told me."

Ow. You know, for the record, that finial is sort of sensitive. So he follows her lead, meeting her gaze. And grinning back. "I think I can handle that."

"That's good for him, he's a nice guy like that. But my point is, I'd rather you were just you."

She releases his finial and gives his head a pat.

"Good. I would expect that much."

So now her best friend is a samurai car robot from another planet.

"But...?" Wh-why would anyone choose Drift over Wing? Drift knows he wouldn't. "_{...thank you.}"

"I don't think I'll ever get the hang of that singing though." He shakes his head.

Good then. He gets her point. She suddenly feels particularly stubborn, like a kid refusing replacement for a broken favorite toy.

"Come on, you're a regular Barry White," The engineer shrugs, laying back on her makeshift bed.

"You remember the lyrics, right? I don't cry when my dog runs away..."

She prompts him to follow with the next line.

"Who's Barry White?" He's getting that feeling again, being slightly over his head. But she seems happy. And Wing was right: it was good to make someone else happy, it was the best feeling in the world.

He likes her voice better. Her real one, not the one through the Rig. There's a pause and a wince, because he knows his voice is probably terrible. And he still has no sense of rhythm at all. In his defense, it's a hard rhythm.

"I don't get...angry at the bills I have...to pay?" Not that he knows what bills are. He figures the worst that could happen is she'd laugh.

"A singer on earth who was famous for his amazingly smooth voice." It's only fair she explains it to him. She won't leave him to flounder too much.

"Good! You do remember."

She doesn't care if he can't actually sing. She can't carry a tune either, so there you go. It's more funny that she can actually get him to try.

"Lovin' is what I got."

"Yeah, that's...not me." Drift will sing, for her, but he's not delusional.

He has no idea why she likes this, but it's a small enough thing to do. And he almost--almost--actually gets the tune this time. "I said remember that."

"Is this how it's done? You eat and then sing?"

"Don't be so hard on yourself."

She rolls over, scooting enough to lean against his arm and actually get decently comfortable.

"Well it's not really a thing we do. I mean not necessarily. But I guess it could be. I'll teach you some other songs, too."

The engineer grabs a small box on the nightstand, projecting a VI screen from it and a list of titles.

"Pick one."

Being hard on himself is pretty much what Drift has always done.

He stares at the projection, careful not to move the shoulder she's leaning against. The titles mean nothing to him. "I don't know...something easy?"

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