Strikewing looked at himself, dimly reflected in the repair bay ceiling. He forced his ventilations calm. Tonight. It would all come together tonight. And he could leave…so much behind. They'd been counseled, the novices, they would mourn for the lives they were leaving behind, but he? He felt nothing that could be described as 'mourning'. Only a fervent desire to let go of the heavy burden of the past that felt like it had been crushing him—more thoroughly and agonizingly than all the wreckage of Altihex.
A new start. And to commemorate it, new armor, all stripped to bare metal, titanium alloy. He'd get his colors tonight. He'd become a Knight of Cybertron.
The repairtech tapped him on the shoulder, tilting his head. They were sworn to silence, this night, until the ritual began. Strikewing lay back, obediently. It had all been explained. They allowed no mystery here, no fear of the unknown, at this level. He knew what they were doing. Just…not how it would feel.
He twitched, the repairmech gently parting his thighs, opening the newly installed hatch. It felt…odd, and the hands were gentle, peeling the covering film from the equipment covers, using a fine brush to spread a thin coat of oil. Strikewing's gold optics flickered over the length of his chassis, feeling the delicate brushes licking across the newly exposed metal. It felt…good.
A reassuring nod from the tech, and then the small cable to his control cortex snapped into the small socket in the base of his neck. A tingle—also not unpleasant—up the coding channels, and over his sensornet, awakening the interface protocols for the first time in his reconstructed body. His head swam, and the repair tech laid a warning hand on his chassis, to keep him still. Strikewing lay back, closing his optics, riding the surge of sensations and colors and smells and sounds as the protocols ran basic receptor functionality.
The sterile white and silver of the repair bay seemed too harsh to his optics, the edges too sharp, and even the small sounds of the repair tech's motions grating. Strikewing could hear the buzz of electrons singing through his circuitry, feel the stasis pressure of his joint pistons, and beyond that, the clean reach of his sensornet, like some foldspace laid over his physical body.
The tech nodded, and Strikewing sat up slowly, hand brushing his now-closed hatch. Ready?
Never more so: to discard his past, to rend his pain into pleasure, to begin anew, leaving behind the ruins of Altihex, leaving behind the helplessness and agony and madness of those days to be reborn into something, someone, powerful and calm and alive. Someone who could make a difference.
[***]
The doorway loomed in front of Strikewing, the arches heavily fluted, reaching to the point far above his head. The doorpanel itself was covered in an intricate interlay of different metals and stones, some beautiful, complex thing he knew only that he couldn't read. Last chance to turn back, he thought, then felt something like a smile on his face. No. He'd never wanted anything more than this.
The door opened, inward, on hydraulic hinges. Like everything in the Knight's Citadel, it was built on old technology: failsafe. Power could be lost, utterly, and doors could still be forced open, Knights able to move freely. It was reassuring: they had thought of everything. The horror of Altihex couldn't happen here.
And behind the door, Dai Atlas. The Order's Air Leader, his face stern. "Kneel." The first word spoken in the entire day, the sound almost…bursting with resonance and meaning.
Strikewing entered, dropping to his knees, bowing his silvered helm. The light seemed to glisten strangely over the unenameled surfaces.
"Do you wish to become a Knight of your own free will?" The voice, carefully neutral, in case he decided to turn back: there would be no shame.
He felt a tremor around his spark. The ritual, begun, as he'd dreamed of every day since the Knights had rescued him. "Yes." His voice quivered, but with excitement, not doubt.
"And what name to you bring here."
"Strikewing." The last time he'd ever say this name. The room caught the word, like a silvered, elegant cage, the sound echoing around its latticed walls. It no longer served him. It represented everything from which he was trying to get away.
A nod, and Strikewing knew this was for the Order's official records. Who he was. And Dai Atlas, in time, would be the only one who would remember. He hoped.
"And what name do you take here?"
"Wing." Simple, humble, without the violence of his coded designation.
A nod. "Wing." Dai Atlas's voice, deep, rich, echoing. Accepting. And he began the Creed, the long form, the two-part one, where Wing merely had to answer 'Yes' or 'I do' or 'I understand' in a complicated pattern that had to be carefully memorized. Did he pledge his life to protect the future of Cybertron? Yes. Did he promise to obey the Order's Masters in all things? He did. Did he understand that the Order's secrets were not to be told to anyone? He understood. On and on the long list of questions, boundaries, the poles around which he would build his new life, his new identity.
"Rise, Wing," Dai Atlas said, finally, gesturing with one hand, calling Wing forward, honoring the name. Wing stood, and moved to the dais, perching himself on the edge, wings flaring slightly. At this point, their training had ceased, what came next was one of the Order's secrets, not to be trusted to mere novices. Others had engaged in speculation, but Wing had simply…held faith. It didn't matter what came next: He would be a Knight.
"Reveal yourself," Dai Atlas said, quietly, turning to a small cabinet, its doors mazed with silver.
Wing hesitated, looking down at his stripped armor, confused. And then. Oh. His hands shook as he opened his interface panel. This had been one of the rumors, yes. The air struck the covers with a ghost of a caress, a reminder of the repair tech's neutral, but stirring little brushstrokes.
He looked up, hesitantly, as Dai Atlas returned, fitting some kind of glass vial into a silver device. "The first secret," Dai Atlas said, and his voice no longer had the sonorous tone of ritual, but almost conversational, reaching out, "is one long lost to others. Data: our memories, habits, skills, emotions, our most precious heritage, is not solely ours. It can be shared, wholly. Bodily." He stepped in front of Wing, one hand resting on the stabilizer on his knee. The touch was soothing and thrilling both at once. "During interfacing, the emitted fluid contains those memories." He tilted his head. "But you were no virgin, were you?"
Wing shook his head. Strikewing—he was already thinking of his past as belonging to another person and it was almost an effort to summon his own history—had had lovers. It had been almost surprising to have his interface protocols deactivated during his novitiate, but…he'd understood the temptation that must be avoided. His body was new, entirely virginal, but his experiences were not. And he found the time without to be almost a relief.
Dai Atlas nodded. "You did not know the protocols for data acceptance. Very few do. But they keep us alive to each other, they keep us strong and…," he held the strange device, "they have another purpose. They can bring you back to life."
He reached one hand, gentle, careful, between Wing's legs, pushing the thighs apart, one finger caressing the spike's cover. "Before battle, or any time you feel your memories, yourself, has changed enough, you may update the memory file we store here. With your wet memory, and your sword, we can…renew you."
Wing's bare wing-panels ruffled. Immortality. Cybertronians were a long-lived race, but this was…beyond even that. Triumph over death in combat. It was almost inconceivable. And it was being offered to him, with an open hand. No wonder the Order guarded its secrets so tightly.
His spike cover retracted, spike releasing slowly—the hydraulics and gears untested, new, into the space between them. With Dai Atlas's explanation, he had an idea what came next, but still gasped as the device was fitted over his spike, the small teeth of a chuck biting along the base.
"Lie back," Dai Atlas directed, thumbing a button on the side of the device.
Wing dropped back, wings folded tightly against his back, acutely aware of the silver lump sitting over his spike, even before its inner mechanisms activated. Small, electrical pulses fired over the device's inner meshwork, licking along his spike's sensor nodes. He shuddered, old memory and new sensation flaming together. His optic shutters drooped closed, mouth parting, ventilations unsteady as the device began working the delicate charge in a slow, steady rhythm, building overload charge in languorous, delicious teases, like a thousand small tongues of delight. And he could feel Dai Atlas's optics upon him, as though studying his desire, and that gaze only fired his need, his bare silver hands clutching on the dais's white surface, hips twisting, the tiniest thread of a moan escaping his vocalizer.
His hips jolted, abruptly, overload charge firing across his nodes, and he felt for the first time the hot run of transfluid up the channel of his spike, clamped in place by the device, its flood captured, neatly.
He dropped heavily onto the dais, body quivering as if wrung out, servos on the last of their spilling charge. Dai Atlas waited, and then Wing felt the gentle touch on the device, and the teeth releasing, the device carefully lifted away. Dai Atlas detached the vial, filled with the shifting silver of transfluid. "This will be in storage until you decide to destroy it."
Wing nodded, weakly, watching as Dai Atlas moved to stow the silver vial and replace the device. It wasn't over, he didn't think. He'd had no signal that he should leave. Still quivering with the intensity of a virginal overload, he curled onto his side, around his slick spike, waiting, one wing half-flared, protectively over his side.
"Now," Dai Atlas murmured, coming back, "the other side of the equation." He rested a silver hand on Wing's upraise hip, thumb stroking a semicircle down the back. Wing shivered, gold optics turning to meet Dai Atlas's gaze. The silver hand slid down his thigh to his knee, wrapping around the stabilizer's blade, lifting gently, opening Wing's legs. "It may hurt, Wing," Dai Atlas said, apologetically. "I will be careful."
Wing nodded, letting himself be drawn back onto his backplating, wings a paltry cushion under him, as Dai Atlas dropped, suddenly, to his knees. Wing felt the hot pressure of a glossa against his valve cover, tracing light, gentle circles until the cover yielded back. He whimpered, feeling the nodes inside the valve activate, and a remembered want floated through his cortex. He forced himself to lie still, letting the glossa trace its way around the rim, dipping lightly, teasingly, into the valve itself.
Dai Atlas stood up, his own spike unsheathing itself already thick with lubricant, pulling Wing's hips to the very edge of the raised dais. His hands found the swells of Wing's shoulder nacelles, tracing over their sleek contours, delaying the moment, his dark spike between them, optics limned with gentle concern as he pushed back and seated the tip of his spike against the mouth of the valve. Wing felt his ventilations catch: Dai Atlas was rated a larger mechframe, the spike much larger than Wing's. He nodded, after a moment, and Dai Atlas shifted his feet, pushing in with an agonizing slowness. They both felt the valve's lining unpleat itself before the spike, the spike's surface scraping the valve's rim as he pushed deeper, until the lining stretched taut around him. Dai Atlas gave a chuffing sigh—the only sign so far of his desire other than his lubricant-glossed spike.
Dai Atlas shifted Wing's legs, catching under the knees to draw them straight upward, changing the angle of the valve, his hands coming around to stroke up the thighs, flirt with the gaps in the knee armor, as he began moving slowly, almost gingerly, against the valve. Wing's ventilations came in sharp gasps, his hands clutching across his chassis, as the slow, careful thrusts built charge and desire across him. His sensornet was alive, tingling, dancing with sensation—the warm slide and weight inside him, the light caresses of Dai Atlas's hands on his shins, everything with the sheen of new experience.
Dai Atlas shuddered, the great frame juddering as though shaken by some enormous hand, and Wing felt the scald of transfluid in his new valve. But…something different as well—the fluid stroked, pulled, not flowing back along the valve but captured, caught in the valve's end.
And then vertigo struck, like a wall blanking him from all sensation for a long moment, as though severing his sensor net, and he was merely floating in this strange tumult, and then flashes of pictures, waves of emotion—not his—sliced through his cortex, too deep to hurt. He heard a sound, and realized, later, it was his own voice, whining pitifully. He felt his weight shifted, and Dai Atlas's arms wrapping around him, lifting him off the surface, soothingly stroking his wings. And a mouth, gentle, on his helm.
"It will pass, Wing." Dai Atlas, a rumble against his chassis. "Those are my memories, the memories of the Order. The memory of us all. Each of us," he said, his voice taking on a lulling tone, "is a vessel for all of us." Wing nodded, weakly, understanding. Another gentle stroke down his back, asexual, as if Dai Atlas's spike was not still buried in Wing's valve.
"When you recover, Wing," he murmured, as though consoling a child, the same voice Wing remembered from when they pulled him out of the ruins of Altihex, "You shall get your sword." Another nod.
"But first," Dai Atlas said, laying Wing back down upon the dais, as though he were fragile, likely to shatter. He felt fragile, surprised his wings didn't snap at the touch. The worst of the dizziness had passed, the memories seating themselves in his own programming, spreading and settling through his net.
"First," Dai Atlas repeated, "your colors." He stepped back, unsheathing himself, both of them twitching as the spike pulled free. Dai Atlas studied Wing, bare silver and vulnerable, as Wing reached to close his hatch. "White," Dai Atlas said, "For intensity." A quirk of a smile. "And I think red." He brushed Wing's shoulder, the knee flares, "for emotion. And then," Another considering tilt of the head, the fingers brushing Wing's footplate, his thigh. "Black, for all you have endured."
Wing shook his head, wiping a hand down the thigh as if to erase the last color. "The past. It's not me anymore." He didn't want any reminders of who he was, what he had been through. Strikewing was gone. Done.
Dai Atlas shook his head. "That doesn't work," he said, sadly, reaching for Wing's hand, catching it in his larger one. "The past may be a closed book, but one we can never, entirely, throw away. Nor," he added, his face growing stern, the Order Master creeping back into his voice, "should you want to. What you have been through, Wing, is what gives you strength and compassion. You should not want to lose those lessons."
Wing pressed his mouthplates together, around the pain, knowing that Dai Atlas was right. He was wise. He was an Order Master. "Yes," he said, quietly.
"In time," Dai Atlas said, brushing his mouth across Wing's bare lip plates, "you will understand, Knight."
The title thrilled Wing, and he clung to that, hand curling in Dai Atlas's with all the strength he had.