DID YOU FORGET ABOUT ME?!!? Well I didn't forget about you. Here, have some fic. Yes, I am one of THOSE fangirls but this, I promise you, is not that. You're safe. I'll try to stop sucking at posting genfic here.
I know, you're thrilled.
IDW
Spoilers for Spotlight Kup, AHM, LSOTW and set...mid Ongoing. To cover why Perceptor's suddenly a scientist again.
Perceptor did not move fast, nor did he consider himself intimidating. He noted, though he didn’t quite understand, why mechs swept out of his way as he stormed down the corridor, deployment flimsy rattling in his hand. It was outrageous. It was unconscionable.
It was…entirely Prowl.
He hit the codes for Prowl’s office, chiming for admission. He paused, then typed in the command overrides he still held from his time garrisoning the Command Hub. Prowl would not hide from this. Not this time.
The door whisked open, Prowl cocking one supra-orbital ridge in surprise. Not alarm—that was too much to hope for. But Perceptor knew that his overrides had been noted. A factor Prowl was probably trying to calculate right now. Good. Keep him guessing. Keep him off-balance.
“You seem…perturbed.” The half-smile slipping seamlessly into place. A mockery of kindness, of understanding. Perceptor had fallen for it before: never again.
“These orders.” Perceptor thrust the flimsy onto the console.
Prowl allowed himself to study the flimsy, holding it up as though he’d never seen it. A show, again demonstrating how unthreatened he felt. “Everything seems to be in order,” Prowl said, after a moment, laying the flimsy down, looking up expectantly.
Perceptor’s mouth flattened, lipplates squashing together. “Class categorization is incorrect.”
Prowl shrugged. “Scientist. That’s what you are.”
“Was.” He’d done the reclassification paperwork himself.
“Your datafile speaks differently.”
He tilted his head, letting the dim light glint off his reticle. His body spoke differently.
Prowl tapped his fingers on the desk, idly. “Drift is on Earth. I thought you’d be pleased to be reunited with him.”
Perceptor glared. “Not your concern.” He didn’t want to talk about Drift. Especially not with Prowl. It felt like a violation. Especially the way Prowl was using it—like a crowbar, prying under his armor. Did he want to be? Maybe. But on his terms. Not…thrust back to his weakness.
“I thought…since we were getting personal.” A hint of a smirk. Prowl tilted his head, the light from the monitors glinting off his red glossy chevron. A chevron, Perceptor thought, unmarred by battle. Barely a scratch, so different from Perceptor’s battle-worn armor. One time, strange to think, Perceptor himself had been so pristine, clean, armor well-maintained, polished. No dents, no scuffs. One time he had been this distant, godlike optic, staring down on the battlefield from on high. Mechs were pieces in a puzzle, the war was lines on a stellar map. Need a scientist? Make one. Need a mech to sacrifice himself? Contact an adventure-starved scientist and offer him a run with the Wreckers. Need a propaganda boost? Kill dozens of mechs to resurrect Kup.
Dirty hands, to do all that, for all of Prowl’s shine and gloss. Puppets, all of them.
“Sniper,” Perceptor said. “Not much call for that in Earth’s current mission parameters.” Investigating a cosmic seeding initiative, he recalled, that had flared into a siege armature battle and now had guttered to a strange, uneasy alliance with the indigenous life. And the latest updates indicated that that alliance did not require a sniper.
Prowl sighed. “We have enough mechs with guns.”
Perceptor felt his hand tighten over where he normally kept a sidearm. ‘All we need,’ the voice floated across his cortex, Ratchet’s voice, ‘is another clown with a gun’. Ratchet hadn’t understood, nobody understood except Drift. “My decision.”
He’d never be weak again. He’d be cold and hard, a blade of iron, who could push through Garrus 9 like a stolid tank. But even so, there was a limit to his hardness. Kup. Drift. There were lines he couldn’t cross. Which was why he held to his gun and his silence. He’d earned respect he’d never had before, had held his own with the Wreckers. He’d earned his right to bear arms.
“Your decision,” Prowl said, bemused, “is irrelevant. We need scientists. What with Skyfall and the recent opening at Kimia—“
“Ironfist,” Perceptor cut in.
“What?”
“Ironfist. Not ‘the opening at Kimia’. He has a name.”
“Had a name,” Prowl corrected, optics measuring Perceptor. “The fact remains, we need scientists. Good scientists.” Prowl tilted back in his chair. “It’s a compliment.” He let his optics drift to a feed coming from a low console. A power play, a reminder. He was busy; Perceptor was intruding.
Perceptor didn’t care.
“These orders are misclassified,” he insisted, tapping a scarred finger on the flimsy.
“You’ve been reclassified.” Prowl gave a shrug, as though the whole thing bored him. “Needs of the Army.”
Perceptor bridled.
Prowl leaned forward. “You took an oath, Perceptor. Same as all of us, any of us. What you want, what you feel, is irrelevant. The war matters. The war’s the only thing that matters.” For a moment, his optics blazed, the blue cold and hard as ice, the pleasant mask off, and a face of cold, brutal logic, exposed, like a ghastly framework, flayed of emotion, of decency.
“It’s not the only thing that matters.” If we all turned ourselves into hollow husks, chasing victory through numbers, hunting battle stats, win/loss ratios, viewing it as some gigantic accounting enterprise, who are we when we win? Can we win if we have sold the best part of ourselves for victory?
Prowl hesitated, his face seeming to reconfigure itself, the mouth pulling into a taut smile. “You’re right,” he said, easily. “Victory matters. And we need your cortex more than we need your gun arm. Surely, you won’t begrudge us your very best.”
Perceptor’s hands twitched, wanting to lash out, wanting to launch at Prowl the way Springer had notoriously done.
Prowl thrust the flimsy back across the table. “Needs of the Army. Now, is there anything else?”
Perceptor’s optics were cold. Kup, kept alive, addicted, a mouthpiece to be used at Prowl’s behest. Ironfist, sacrificed so that Autobots could keep their pristine image before the Galactic Council. They’d all been pawns.
As was he. Nothing more. He’d been a fool to think otherwise.
He took the flimsy back, his stabilized hands not even shaking. It was a kind of marvel, that, he thought. “No,” he said, his voice flat, dead, one who had seen the truth and was feeling the numb spread of its venom. He turned on his heel, sharply, heading toward the door.
“Perceptor,” Prowl stopped him with a word. He turned, saying nothing. He had…no more words. Prowl smiled, tilting his head, the light cutting his mouth into stark shadows, a smile made weapon. “Till all are one.”
“Till all are one,” Perceptor mumbled the words of the oath back, tasting like ash. Till all are one.
Primus help us all.
