[ THE "DRIFT GOT HECKED UP BY TARN" CATCH-ALL POST ]

[auramatic]

Who: Drift, Rodimus, Ratchet, Megatron and whoever else wants to chime in
What: the inevitable fallout of the fucked up shit Tarn just did to Drift
Where: Red Alert's clinic
When: starting a few days after Tarn beat the shit out of Drift
Warnings: a lot of sad. a lot of gay

jk i'm lazy, thread starters below

Comments

FOR MEGATRON

[auramatic]

As soon as he gets his voice back, Drift asks for Megatron.

His vocalizer is freshly repaired, still raw and healing in his throat. It's good to have a voice again, even if it still sounds a little out of sync, crackling faintly with static. But it's healing relatively quickly compared to the rest of him -- it's been barely two days since he woke up, still less than a week since Rodimus hauled him back here. Everything aches, the freshly soldered joints, the slow, cauterize repair of his internal systems, the edges of his plating where he's still missing chunks of it simply for lack of materials. There are still faint creases on his face and helm, remnants of the dents Ratchet fixed in malleable plating. But what Drift is most keenly aware of is the Decepticon brand carved deep into the plating on his chest where his Autobrand had used to be, deep enough that Ratchet had to seal the cuts in order to stop the bleeding.

Drift has Ratchet help him sit up on the slab -- can't do it himself, not with the fresh welds across his stomach. Ratchet clears the room without a word. Drift didn't have to ask him to. He waits, propped up heavily against the wall, his face drawn and set.

[towardspeace]

It isn't long before Megatron arrives at the clinic. He's restless, impatient to deal with Tarn before this keeps happening, and it shows when he steps over the threshold of the room where Drift is recovering, brisk and angry.

His expression, when he sees the injuries, the brand, is like thunder.

"I assure you," he says as he strides over to the slab, "Tarn will be taken care of."

Maybe it's the fact that he's no longer feeling the effects of the fool's energon, or maybe it's just how furious he is about all of this, but there's something of the old Megatron in his bright, furious optics and the taut clench of his fists that's been missing for a while – he still looks tired, though.

[auramatic]

Drift's optics settle on Megatron's face the second he walks into the clinic and they stay fixed on him, his gaze heavy and unwavering. He looks tired, too -- wrung out and worn down, but his body language doesn't shift at all as Megatron approaches, no tensing or relaxing. Drift notes the shift in Megatron's movement, the look in his optics, more acutely than most Autobots would, but aside from a flicker of light across his optics, his expression is unreadable.

He doesn't seem to respond at all to Megatron's fierce proclamation, just gazes right back at him. There's no trace of a smile on his face, the last vestiges of his usual optimistic facade withered away. When he speaks, his voice is low and quiet, raw with static.

"I have a message for you from Tarn."

[towardspeace]

"A message," Megatron repeats, and his optics narrow, lingering again on the Decepticon symbol carved into Drift's plating. He looks utterly, thoroughly unsurprised. "Of course." He folds his arms, and the bitter anger on his face forced to take a back seat for a moment to a look of serious concern – it's still there, it isn't hidden, but it's not at the forefront. "What did he tell you?"

[auramatic]

Drift vents out a slow hiss of air from his vents, barely audible. His optics don't leave Megatron's face, unwavering, boring into it.

"He told me," Drift says, his still low and thrumming with some barely buried tension, rage or fear or resentment -- it's impossible to tell, "to tell you in excruciating detail how he beat me within an inch of my life, blow by blow. That he broke both of my wrists, kicked me until I could feel a tank rupture, crushed my vocalizer in my throat. How it felt when his voice nearly suffocated my spark."

Drift leans forward then, slowly, the freshly welded plating on his stomach creaking as he does. His gaze deadens, still fixed on Megatron -- then something in his expression ripples and suddenly he looks strikingly like Deadlock, the unbridled thirst for violence still buried deep, but the unyielding intensity of his gaze remains. The inscribed brand on his chest seems to gleam under the bright lights of the medibay.

"This is your fault," Drift intones, but the roiling tension in his voice starts to break through, wavering and flanging slightly. "You can't protect your crew. He'll work his way through all of us, one by one, until none of them are left. Until nothing stands between you and him. He says he'll be waiting."

[towardspeace]

Megatron doesn't look away either. The light in his optics burns with silent fury – and the larger part of it is what he's willing to publicly own, that Tarn's actions are abominable and made all the worse for the fact that they're ultimately his responsibility, but beyond that, buried a little way down but still there, is a tyrant's indignation at this insult.

"I'm flattered that he thinks my crew would want to stand between me and him," he mutters angrily, enraged above all at the stupidity of it. He vents out, heavy and frustrated. "He won't be waiting for long, I'm sure. Did he tell you anything else?"

[auramatic]

Drift's frame seems burdened with an invisible weight, pressing down on him, but he doesn't buckle.

"Yeah. Yeah, he did." Drift's optics sharpen and his lips pull back from his teeth in an expression that is most definitely not a smile. "He told me to tell you how proud I am to wear your brand."

Drift leans forward a little more, bracing his arm across his lap as if he might fold over like a house of cards otherwise. His other hand goes to his chest, covering the brand Tarn had carved in him, fingers digging into the grooves in the plating, and his optics burn.

"Well, Megatron? Should I be?"

[towardspeace]

Megatron leans forward, too, one hand gripping either side of the end of the slab. His optics are narrowed to fiery slits.

"I don't think it's my place to tell you what you ought or ought not to be proud of, Drift," he says, his voice very, deliberately, excruciatingly even. "Is there anything you want to say to me before I find Tarn and persuade him to end this idiocy?"

[auramatic]

Megatron's staring him down and maybe once, in another lifetime, Drift might have backed down to it -- but after what he's just been through with Tarn, even the renewed power in Megatron's aura doesn't make him flinch away. Maybe it would later, maybe at any other time, but not now. Now Drift just stares right back, his face slack once again.

He's silent for a moment. There's a lot he
could say -- that Megatron shouldn't have let
this happen in the first place, that if Megatron was going to wait until he'd already lost the war to have a change of heart then the least he could have done was clean up his mess before he went gallivanting off into space, however noble the quest... Drift knows those circumstances might not apply here, but nonetheless he knows Megatron didn't do anything to dissolve the Decepticon movement besides make some paltry announcement before he arrived on this Cybertron. It's not enough. Drift's not sure it'll ever be enough. He would know.

But air hisses slowly from his vents and he sits back, his expression unchanging. "No," he says, his voice quiet and flat. "No, there isn't."