100 Dinobots: Unworthy
Hee hee...Icon irony, since Swoop is decidedly not happy in this. :)
Prompt: Unworthy
Required Character(s): Swoop
Other Featured Character(s): Ratchet
Rating: K+/PG
Warnings: Over-the-top ptero-angst ahoy!
Genre: As advertised: Angst.
Word Count (Not including this intro): 1,664. Well, that's sort of like 1,000, right? *headdesk*
Notes: Gee, it's "fun" to be awakened at 1AM by an angsting pterosaur. Especially when you just went to bed at 11PM. I think Swoop's underlying angst is matching mine, of late. I've been having some pretty rough struggles with feelings of uselessness and unworthiness and such, so it's bleeding onto him, I guess. But in any case, this would not leave my head until I wrote it down. At 3AM. So now - Much to your delight, I'm sure - I dump my wee-hours "therapy writing" on all of you, hoping that I caught all the 3AM-induced typos and general nonsensical-ness in my lunch-hour editing session. I have no idea what the context of this is, so don't ask. It's just a completely context-less conversation that bloomed in my head in the wee hours of last night.
"You don't understand," Swoop insisted to Ratchet. "You and Wheeljack try, more than anyone else, but even you don't understand. You don't see it. But we see it. We know. We are aware of it every second of every day. We know that if we are weak, then we are worthless. And if we ever become worthless, then...Then you know what will happen to us."
Ratchet gaped at Swoop, speechless for long, long moments.
"You really believe that?" he eventually asked with quiet bewilderment. "After all this time, you still believe that? All of you?"
Swoop snorted, folding his arms over his chest as he leaned back against the wall of Ratchet's small, cluttered office.
"All of us. Because after all this time," he answered, "the only real change is that things aren't said directly to our faces anymore. That's about as much credit as we get from most of you, but for a select few. And thank Primus that one of that select few is Prowl or else who knows what Optimus Prime would have done with us by now."
"That's...that's not true," Ratchet sputtered. "You are widely respected, at the very least."
Swoop gave him a tolerant but sad smile.
"You like to think that, I know," he said quietly. "But, really, if someone needs help and has a choice in the matter, they'll go to you. Or First Aid. Or Hoist. Or Wheeljack. Or Perceptor. Or even Sparkplug. They'll go to me if they're dying and the rest of you are busy and so they have no other choice." He tried, but largely failed, to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
"You're exaggerating," Ratchet insisted again. "Tracks-"
Swoop smirked tiredly.
"Yes, Tracks," he said. "One of the Autobots who 1) feels like he owes me something and 2) along with Mirage, is almost as much of an outsider as we are. I don't think he trusts the rest of you, so he seeks out others who aren't trusted. Birds of a feather, as they say. Mirage would probably join our happy little flock, too, if we weren't several miles beneath his contempt."
Ratchet stared at Swoop; he was probably right about Mirage, but everything else…? Ratchet tried hard to think of something meaningful to say, racking his processors to think of an answer, to say something good, something to help heal what was obviously a long-simmering hurt, but nothing was coming to him. He was quick when wit and sarcasm were required, but when comfort and encouragement were needed? Not so much. That was Wheeljack's department, at least when it came to the Dinobots. But then Swoop was talking again, anyway, saving the floundering Ratchet.
"I'm in a bad place, Ratchet," Swoop was suddenly confessing. "Always have been. I'm a Dinobot, but I'm the weak link, the weakest of them. I'm the one with the least value, the most unworthy of the unworthy."
Ratchet opened his mouth to protest, but Swoop spoke over him.
"No, don't say it," he said, shaking his head at the medic. "It's true, and you know it. Slag may be a giant pain in the aft, but at least he can inflict serious damage on the enemy. You just have to make sure he's pointed at the Decepticons before you wind him up and let him loose. Same with Grimlock. Same with Snarl and even Sludge. But me? I've always been aware of my place and of how vulnerable it is. I've always known that I have to prove myself worthy of existence every single day, or...or else."
"You have nothing to prove, Swoop," Ratchet said quietly but meaningfully, frowning and leaning toward Swoop, as if doing so would somehow make his words more true, as if it would force his words through the wall of Swoop's protesting denial. "Nothing," he reiterated urgently.
Swoop smiled again, but it didn't reach his eyes and the gratitude in his expression was overwhelmed by the weariness.
"Not to you, maybe," he acknowledged softly. "Not to Wheeljack. But to everyone else...? Yes. Yes, I do. So I can't tell you how many hours I've spent studying the Seekers, watching vids of them, learning how they fly and fight, trying to figure out their strategies. I pored over their records and profiles, too, trying to find weaknesses in them of any kind. Physical, psychological, tactical, something. I tried - I still try - to be better at fighting them. But they are by nature better than me at that. And they always will be because they live for battle and I...I don't. I do it because that's what I'm supposed to do, not because I'm particularly good at it and certainly not because I want to."
Ratchet frowned again, never suspecting that Swoop, who had always seemed to him capable and quietly self-confident - as opposed to Grimlock's loud self-confidence - thought himself useless, that he thought his value wholly based upon what he could do and not simply upon who he was. But Ratchet wasn't sure that he could convince Swoop otherwise. He was far out of his depth. Wheeljack would be far better at this discussion that he'd found himself engaged in, but Wheeljack wasn't there. Ratchet sighed resignedly, hoping that he at least wouldn't completely screw this up, that he wouldn't say something utterly stupid and end up making Swoop feel even worse. He had a talent for doing that sort of thing.
"No one has ever expected you to be able to take the Seekers on by yourself, Swoop," he quietly pointed out.
"Then why is there only one of me up there?" Swoop plaintively asked, reflexively voicing a question that had long plagued his mind but that he'd never actually worked up the nerve to ask…until now. "I was it in the air, Ratchet, until Skyfire came along. By accident. It was just me up there until Skyfire and then finally Powerglide and then the Aerialbots and Blades came along. What was I supposed to think?"
Ratchet blinked; he'd never actually thought about it…but Swoop had a point.
"The others are supposed to back you up," Ratchet answered, lamely. Weak as it was, it was the only answer that occurred to him, and he felt vaguely shamed by that. There were so many ways that he and Wheeljack could have done better by the Dinobots, and he was only just now realizing some of them, fifteen years later. A human saying about hindsight came vaguely to him, of a sudden.
"And they try their best," Swoop was agreeing, nodding sadly. "But we up in the air move a lot faster than they do on the ground. I'm easy to isolate up there." He sighed and added, "Sometimes, I think the Seekers don't destroy me only because it's so much more fun to be able to toy with me on a regular basis. It's…humiliating."
Ratchet sighed again, helplessly this time.
"Why haven't you said anything about this before?" he asked.
Swoop gave him an indecipherable look, eyes shadowed with something that might have been fear.
"Couldn't," he said, his voice flat, an obvious bandage over a deep, gaping wound. "Can't be weak."
"We're all weak sometimes, Swoop," Ratchet countered.
"You can be," Swoop countered right back. "We can't be. I, especially, can't be. Like I said."
Ratchet closed his eyes, fighting back a wave of anger. Not at Swoop, certainly, but at his comrades. His friends. Optimus Prime, especially. They had forced the Dinobots - his own creations, young and innocent in a strange way for individuals born to inflict massive bodily damage - into this sort of mindset. Into thinking that they existed on sufferance. Into thinking that they were unworthy unless they performed like trained animals or, worse, mindless, non-sentient drones on the battlefield. It was…infuriating. But Swoop didn't need to see that. That was a discussion to be had somewhere else. With someone else. Clenching his fists under his desk, Ratchet forced the fury aside, settled his gaze back on Swoop, who was watching him with cautious curiosity.
"Swoop," he said quietly, "I honestly don't know what to say to convince you of this, but…that isn't true. You are no different than any of us and, really, we all know that. You can't be strong all the time."
"Maybe not," Swoop conceded. "But I have to try. But…it's hard. Because even doing what I was designed to do, even when I sometimes manage, somehow, to do it well…It wasn't enough. So when I heard you complaining one day, all those years ago, that the medbay was understaffed, I thought that maybe...Maybe I could be useful here, even if I ended up spending my days scrubbing floors with a toothbrush. Because I need to be more. I need to make up for what I lack. Have to do that. "
"No, you don't," Ratchet insisted, suddenly rapping a fist on his desk, making Swoop jump. "If you want to be more, that's wonderful. But have to be? Swoop, why are you putting this on yourself? You…are valuable simply because you exist, because you are a precious life, a sentient individual just like any of us, even the humans. You're not valued because you can shoot down Seekers or even because you can save someone else's life. If you couldn't do that anymore for whatever reason, no one would think less of you, much less harm you."
"I wish," Swoop answered in a small voice, pushing away from the wall and beginning to pace as he talked. It was, Ratchet fleetingly reflected, a habit that he shared with Wheeljack, a convenient excuse not to look someone in the face. "I wish that was true. But it isn't. Not for me. Not for us." Bitterly, he added, "Good old Dinobots, there to save our sorry afts. And Primus help them if they aren't."
Ratchet sighed, rubbing wearily at his forehead.
"I thought we'd gotten past this," he said, "a long time ago."
"I wish," Swoop replied quietly, regretfully, "that we had."