Needless to say, I was pissed when I saw that following Dreadwing's death there were barely five new fics concerning him, yet following Optimus' supposed departure there are suddenly twentyfive+.
What the hell.
No offense, but I am disappointed in you people. I would have expected stories to start being made that built and created more on his character, because the writers didn't do much with him and he had so much that could be filled in and looked at before they just shot him in the chest and walked away trolololing. Anyway, I decided to help try and remedy this mistake, beginning with a sort of reaction one shot. I am working on a multichapter story that hopefully I can keep writing for, but we will have to see.
I will never ever own Transformers.
I've always thought wishes were for the dreamers who either couldn't afford to get what they wanted or were too lazy to work for themselves. I've always assumed wishes were for those that could do nothing but hope, imagining whatever it was they suddenly decided was a necessity. I've always believed wishes were silly and stupid.
But now...
Now I wish I had a wish. I wish I could truly be answered, my call be heard. I wish I could right what had been wronged. I wish I could fix things.
It didn't have to be like this.
I know I'm being a child, crying over something like this. It's not even real. It's just some pixels on a screen with people on the other end talking into microphones and matching the picture movement.
But that's not true to me. It is real. It's real in my heart. It's real in my mind. It's real and it destroyed me.
So that is why I kneel by the window, glaring hatefully at the stars as they twinkle down on me in a false sense of security. That is why I mutter the same words over and over under my breath, holding a solid image in my head as if it were the only thing I could ever think of. That is why I suddenly want my wish to become reality.
"Take me to him," I say slowly and with purpose, trying to force my voice to be listened to as I crouch by my window.
"Take me to him." Maybe if I say it steadily enough I will be granted my simple plea.
"Take me to him." I have been repeating this for about half an hour now, and my throat is dry and my lips are sticky, but still I mutter these words, like a chant partially forgotten so the singer only says what they remember, which turns out to be not very much in the end.
"Take me to him." I suddenly change my tactics, deciding to further my foolish acts by attempting communication with the deaf beings that may or may not watch over us.
"I have never asked for anything from you. This is a one time, extremely rare moment in my life. I just want to go. Let me go. Let me go please. Take me to him." I am silent now, fingers digging into the wood of the windowsill and teeth clenched as I hold back a scream.
I am still unanswered. What a surprise.
The tears return, my spite and malice replaced with the broken fragments of my will. It hurts. It hurts so badly. I just want the pain to go away. My heart is in a brutal battle of tug of war, unable to decide whether to rip itself apart or draw itself in so tightly it just disappears. My thoughts are empty and dead as I slide onto the floor and curl up into a shuddering mess of despair and cold sorrow.
Why am I even acting like this?
I don't understand. I have never reacted to a character death in this way. Usually it's just a hiccup of regret that they died, followed by outraged cries of denial and disbelief, but in the end I know it is just a story and loss is to be expected in war.
But no.
No, this time it physically hurt. It drove a wedge of splintered remorse into my chest and the wound was infected instantly, the growth of rot consuming everything within. I fell apart. I cried and screamed and shrunk into a quivering ball in my bed, rocking myself back and forth and back and forth in an attempt to calm my racing and burning heart.
I can't even properly explain what it was like. Words do not hold the appropriate levels of description. Imagine being run over by a truck covered in spikes and hooks over and over and over and over. And surviving the encounter. And then getting salt and acid poured into every wound while vultures eat you alive. And still surviving it all, feeling each piece of your being as it is digested and decayed and destroyed.
Only worse. A lot worse.
There is no accurate comparison.
I let out a strangled wail, curling even tighter and burying my teeth into the fabric of my pants as I scream into the muffling material. I still do not feel small enough. I still want to keep twisting and folding in on myself until my bones creak in warning of snapping. I still want to just disappear.
I don't know how long I remain like that, because the darkness consumes me and I fall unconscious, the hard wood of my floor the last thing I remember before I am plunged into an airless, spaceless vacuum where my core is jettisoned out on the other side.
And I dream.
I dream of simple things, like the colors of trees and the light refracting off the dew in grass. I dream of the sounds of the birds as they fly over and sing and the little tickling feeling of a tiny giggling fairy that lands in my hair. I dream of the monsters that lurk in my waking world, always out of sight but so close in my mind. I dream of the beasts that stalk my shadow, and the shadows of themselves, as they curl in wait for me to be alone and in silence.
And then I dream of a dream.
An injured falcon lies limply on the cold floor before me, his wings splayed haphazardly and eyes open in a weak stare at what's left of the world he thought he once knew. His brilliant and royal colors have faded to a dusty variation, flecks falling off to rust into nothing and blow away in some unfelt breeze, disappearing into the darkness.
He has been left to rot, just like me.
I am beside the once glorious bird, fingers just short of touching and lips parted in a soundless word of comfort. He doesn't see me, but he knows I am there. He doesn't know what I am, but he knows I am no threat. It is a silent allowance.
I gently lift him off the solid darkness around us, cradling his loose form carefully and tilting his head so I can look into his dull crimson eyes. Still, he doesn't see me. But that doesn't matter, because he can feel what I am doing.
I whisper his name into the nothingness, fingers lightly stroking his slowly dissolving feathers, brushing away the collected dust to reveal his true glory. The title seems to set in the silence, and he moves his gaze to meet mine, our emptiness reflecting off of eachothers'.
He doesn't understand me, why I am here, or what I am doing, but I just shush his unvoiced thoughts with a tap to his golden beak, smiling softly and dragging him closer to my chest. We sit in the darkness, me carefully brushing his form and him continuing his mute observance.
I tell him I am there for him, that he isn't alone, that he won't be alone once he returns to the Well. I tell him not to worry, that he is cared for and supported, and that he has nothing to regret.
His eyes close farther, the feathers that cover his body sliding off and shrouding my view for a moment. And then I am beside his helm, his optics flickering a few times as I rest a hand on his cheek and rub soothing circles into the metal. His energon stained dermas curl in a small smile, closest servo twitching to me minutely, before he is gone.
The light in him leaves, the stress in his taught wings relaxes out, and the air in his choked vents is released as Dreadwing, my wayward falcon, joins his brother and the countless others that have fallen in the War in a peacefully eternal slumber. I sit and watch his frame weaken and slump, nothing but a hollow shell of what used to be a magnificent warrior. Even in death though, he carries a naturaly regal air, like a sleeping king only waiting for the rising of the sun to wake him.
If only that were the case.
I am still broken inside, only I feel better that I was there for him in his last moments, that I was able to provide some semblance of company as he left the cruel world for good. I no longer hurt so much, but a new feeling is rising. One that I cling to like a starving animal.
An anger. A roiling fury and venomous loathing for the one who caused both myself and my departed companion so much grief. It consumes the empty numbness and replaces it with a burning passion, hot enough to smelt a weapon out of the safely locked away madness I am suddenly setting free.
It was Starscream's fault. It was always Starscream's fault.
As my dream of a dream fades back into my usual sleep, I grin, my imagination filling me with how sweet it would be to listen to the screams of the frail, pathetic butterfly as I tear his wings off, one by one.
Pluck.
Pluck.
Pluck.
Pluck...
Sweet dreams, my Falcon.