literature

Silence

Deviation Actions

antepathy's avatar
By
Published:
669 Views

Literature Text

PG
IDW
Drift, Wing, OC (Spire)
no warnings
for tformers100 prompt 'Silence'
It was a special kind of torture, Drift decided, to be more or less attached to Wing at all times. Not just the continual exposure to Wing's toxic levels of optimism, but just the fact that someone was responsible for him. He chafed. He was responsible for himself. No one else. No one else should get involved.
He slouched against the wall as Wing swept by him again, energy blades flashing, casting white and blue sparks like shooting stars against the black metal of another Knight's blades. The room echoed with the noise of clashing blades, the whirring hum of engines and actuators, echoing through the  broad, high space. Some sort of practice space,  with high arched windows, carved, ornate racks for a  variety of weapons dotted along the wall.  
Stupid stuff, Drift thought.  Archaic weapons, no range on them at all.  Anyone with a gun could kill any one of these metal-swinging idiots, fell them from a safe distance.
Which meant that this was just a game, really. No matter how serious Wing's expression—and he never smiled, taking these 'practices' with a solemnity that seemed almost out of character for him—it was a game.  A distraction.  Silly mechs playing at war.
They wouldn't last five kliks in a real battle.
Here, though? They went at each other endlessly, it seemed, blade meeting blade, blow meeting block or evasion, like some kind of a fluid dance.  Back and forth across the room, whirling, dodging, sweeping forward, driving back.
The blue Knight Wing was fighting dropped low, his metal blade flashing, scoring a thin silver line across Wing's abdomen, just as Wing's dual blades sliced down toward the blue helm.
They both stopped, Wing's blades flicking up out of the way, wrists snapping up, the blue mech straightening.  
"Good one!" Wing said, snapping off one blade, stroking over the injury that was beginning to seep energon.  
"You'd win, though," the other mech said, easily.  "Yours was a kill move."  
"Yes, but it left me open, Spire," Wing said, "And it's no small thing that you saw the advantage and took it."  
Drift growled to himself by the wall.  "Fraggin' ridiculous."   They looked over. He shrugged. "Standing around complimenting each other.  Next thing you know you'll be thanking each other."
Wing grinned, fingers still spread over his injury. "At the end, yes, we do exactly that.  For the effort our opponent has put into making us a better fighter.  For honoring us with their best."  
Drift's optics rolled. Should have figured.  Everything here was swathed in these ridiculous philosophies, stupid rituals.  "Personally, I've got no problem with an enemy who's not at his best.  Whole point is to win. Makes my job easier."
The look of ineffable sympathy Spire shot Wing enflamed Drift's temper. "You do not understand our ways, stranger," Spire said, coolly. He stowed his own swords.  "Everything you said indicates that. We are not enemies.  We are not fighting to win. We aren't…fighting."
"Then you're useless.  All of this, doing nothing. Killing nothing…except time."
Spire's mouth narrowed to a thin, tight line.  He turned crisply to Wing, bowing deeply. "Thank you," he said, formally, "for the benefit of your experience.  But I…must go now." His optics slid to Drift, making clear that the reason was…Drift.  
"And I you," Wing returned, "We can perhaps continue another time?"
Spire nodded. "Let's patch that."  
Wing tilted his head, considering for a moment. "That…won't be necessary.  Drift will gladly do it."
Spire's optics jumped between the two. His shoulders hitched. "It is your decision, Wing."  Dripping with doubt. As though Drift wouldn't patch it right. He gave another semi-bow, and strode off.
"Sorry," Drift said, churlishly, flatly.
Wing dropped to a knee beside him.  "You should never apologize for speaking your mind.  Oppression begins with thoughts."  His gold optics were warm, not cold and hard like Spire's.  
Drift jerked his chin at the retreating figure. "He doesn't like me."
"Does that matter?"  That strange half-teasing, half-earnest…thing Wing did.  
Drift shrugged. "Didn't think pacifists did hate."  
"There is a difference between not agreeing and hate, Drift." A rueful return shrug. "At least…here."  
Drift glowered, until a falling droplet of energon seeping from between Wing's fingers pattered against the floor. "Get you patched up," he said, gruffly.
Wing's smile glowed like he had won some victory. "Yes." He rose to his feet, holding out his other hand to Drift.  Drift shrugged it aside, but the gesture was so perfectly and completely Wing: maddening, frustrating, and yet…impossible to take offense to. And, oh, Drift had tried.
He followed Wing over to an alcove under one of the broad, high windows, the bright light of the artificial day casting the black mullions into an intricate tracery of shadows on the floor, skimming over their bodies like gossamer as they moved.  The repair kit was in a carved bracket on the wall—like everything here, it was prettier than it had to be.
Including, he thought abruptly, Wing.  
Wing, who had sprawled back onto the alcove's ledge, propped on his elbows, watching Drift as he dropped one knee on the ledge next to Wing's ribstrut.  Energon smeared over Wing's abdominal plating, the cut oozing fitfully from the silver-cut lips of the wound.  Drift had seen worse, way worse. He swabbed a small cleansing rag over the wound, mopping up the leaking energon.  Wing craned his neck, watching, curious. As though he didn't get injured that much. As though this was an entirely new experience.  
"Probably going to hurt," Drift said, holding up a small nanite vial, the silver viscous liquid seeming to swirl and move on its own.
"I am not afraid of pain," Wing said, quietly, his smile growing mysterious, as though he knew something Drift did not. His grin stayed on his face as Drift cracked the capsule, spilling the silver liquid slowly over the wound. The nanites got to work quickly, knitting together the metal panels enough to stop the energon leak. Drift tore a measure of patchtape and hesitated, suddenly aware of…touch. It was stupid. He'd just wiped the wound down, but now, suddenly, the idea of laying patch tape, smoothing it with his fingers over Wing's abdomen, the sensitive plates of his ribs.  
He'd patched mechs he'd hated, in his time.  No hesitation, no weird thoughts. Why was this different?
He grunted, pushing the thought aside with effort, and defiantly slapped the tape along the cut, keeping his gaze fixed and set along the line of the wound, keeping his touch hard an impassive, refusing to meet Wing's gaze.  "There," he said, flatly.  
"Here," Wing teased, his voice music and movement against the dark bar of Drift's.  
"Small thing.  Tape can come off later."  Stick to the neutral, to what he'd seen before thousands of times.  
"Thank you."  Wing sat up, pushing off his elbows, and suddenly his helm was a handspan from Drift's, his gold optics so near that Drift could feel their warmth on his face.  "It will need to be sanded and enameled later.  I could…find someone else?" An offer, an acknowledgement of Drift's discomfort, and also, Drift thought, a challenge.  He could feel the optics travel over his face.  
"No." His voice sounded strange in his own audio, but his cortex spooled out images of Wing, lying beneath him as he stroked a sanding tool over the armor, smoothing away the spall from the overactive nanites.  His hands shook.  This is nothing different, he tried to tell himself. You've done this dozens of times.  Hundreds. "I finish what I start," he said, and it seemed to echo strangely in the high vaulted room, as if caught and rebounding from the shadows of the window mullions, his words reaching away from him, into a high, sacred silence.
Having a crummy night. Have some pointlessness.
© 2011 - 2024 antepathy
Comments10
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In