[Locked to Freyja]
"Permanently."
They had been no more than pixels on a screen in the palm of his hand, but the words echoed in his head ceaselessly.
"Human. And now you're staying that way.
Permanently.”
At the time, he had been furious. He had been angry and enraged and pissed off and every other variant of the emotion that he could put a name to. He had paced around his little camp, ranting and raving and screaming his fury at her utter irrationality to the sky. Then he’d collapsed to the ground to cradle his throbbing knee, the whole time muttering imprecations in the best approximation of Cybertronian that the human mouth and throat could manage.
It was only when he woke in the dead of night-tangled in Autobot charity with his fuel pump slamming painfully in his chest, hauled from another nightmare of cold and pressure and crushing helplessness at he bottom of the ocean-that he gave into despair. He didn’t manage to get back to sleep again that night, but at least he put the time to use.
Blackout watched the sun rise from the top of a tumble of rock that had defeated him earlier. He had been thinking for hours.
Alone with the moon and the cold stars, he was briefly tempted to suicide. Bouncing an inconsequential few feet had been enough to wrench the mechanism of his knee so that he still favored it. Surely it wouldn’t be difficult to orchestrate a more damaging fall…
But he found, as the night drew back at dawn’s approach, that he wasn’t suicidal. Angry and in pain and still slagging cold, horrified and frustrated and abandoned, but not suicidal. That would be too…easy.
He had to get out of here. It was an obvious conclusion; already the supplies had been given were dwindling, and he had no desire to wait around and see just how long Autobot mercy held out. He had to get himself into a center of habitation.
Somehow.
Even from the elevated vantage of his perch, there was nothing to see but sere dust and sentinel stone. He knew there were roadways crossing this damned wasteland, but not where they might be relative to his current coordinates. If he could find his way back to where Bumblebee had found him, if there was still a track detectable by his human senses, he might be able to follow it to a highway…
No-too many variables, and he didn’t even have the input of his probability generator to recommend the optimal course of action. Blackout sighed, not even aware he was doing it, and rubbed a hand across his eyes, unaware of that too. What was he supposed to do? By the AllSpark, what was he supposed to do?! There was nothing in any of the standard protocols that took a situation like this into account. There were no precedents he could follow, no examples he could use to set a plan.
(The possibility of apology occurred to him, of course, and was summarily dismissed. After all, Decepticons did not apologize, and anyway, hadn’t she told him it was pointless? He was not going to beg her for the privilege to attempt to earn restoration. Even with humanity-true, permanent humanity-staring him in the face, and no respite in sight, this he wouldn’t do.)
He spent the whole of the day thinking about what he could do…around drinking and eating, and even a few hours of recovery sleep in the middle of the day. One option kept presenting itself, insistently, and if there was another, more favorable course of action, he was missing it.
He would not beg for forgiveness…but perhaps he could ask for help.
~*~
((And an IC post, too.))
…Freyja.
A word?
((I wrote this on a train! 8D I mean. Deity-hackable, of course, if anyone else really wants to shove their gods into this. I will probably be unable to tagback tonight because my Internet connection’s gone to shit worse than usual, but I will be back ASAP.))
They had been no more than pixels on a screen in the palm of his hand, but the words echoed in his head ceaselessly.
"Human. And now you're staying that way.
Permanently.”
At the time, he had been furious. He had been angry and enraged and pissed off and every other variant of the emotion that he could put a name to. He had paced around his little camp, ranting and raving and screaming his fury at her utter irrationality to the sky. Then he’d collapsed to the ground to cradle his throbbing knee, the whole time muttering imprecations in the best approximation of Cybertronian that the human mouth and throat could manage.
It was only when he woke in the dead of night-tangled in Autobot charity with his fuel pump slamming painfully in his chest, hauled from another nightmare of cold and pressure and crushing helplessness at he bottom of the ocean-that he gave into despair. He didn’t manage to get back to sleep again that night, but at least he put the time to use.
Blackout watched the sun rise from the top of a tumble of rock that had defeated him earlier. He had been thinking for hours.
Alone with the moon and the cold stars, he was briefly tempted to suicide. Bouncing an inconsequential few feet had been enough to wrench the mechanism of his knee so that he still favored it. Surely it wouldn’t be difficult to orchestrate a more damaging fall…
But he found, as the night drew back at dawn’s approach, that he wasn’t suicidal. Angry and in pain and still slagging cold, horrified and frustrated and abandoned, but not suicidal. That would be too…easy.
He had to get out of here. It was an obvious conclusion; already the supplies had been given were dwindling, and he had no desire to wait around and see just how long Autobot mercy held out. He had to get himself into a center of habitation.
Somehow.
Even from the elevated vantage of his perch, there was nothing to see but sere dust and sentinel stone. He knew there were roadways crossing this damned wasteland, but not where they might be relative to his current coordinates. If he could find his way back to where Bumblebee had found him, if there was still a track detectable by his human senses, he might be able to follow it to a highway…
No-too many variables, and he didn’t even have the input of his probability generator to recommend the optimal course of action. Blackout sighed, not even aware he was doing it, and rubbed a hand across his eyes, unaware of that too. What was he supposed to do? By the AllSpark, what was he supposed to do?! There was nothing in any of the standard protocols that took a situation like this into account. There were no precedents he could follow, no examples he could use to set a plan.
(The possibility of apology occurred to him, of course, and was summarily dismissed. After all, Decepticons did not apologize, and anyway, hadn’t she told him it was pointless? He was not going to beg her for the privilege to attempt to earn restoration. Even with humanity-true, permanent humanity-staring him in the face, and no respite in sight, this he wouldn’t do.)
He spent the whole of the day thinking about what he could do…around drinking and eating, and even a few hours of recovery sleep in the middle of the day. One option kept presenting itself, insistently, and if there was another, more favorable course of action, he was missing it.
He would not beg for forgiveness…but perhaps he could ask for help.
~*~
((And an IC post, too.))
…Freyja.
A word?
((I wrote this on a train! 8D I mean. Deity-hackable, of course, if anyone else really wants to shove their gods into this. I will probably be unable to tagback tonight because my Internet connection’s gone to shit worse than usual, but I will be back ASAP.))