Author's Note 4.8.08 : Caving in and doing that 28 meme that's going around. This is for my OC Whiplash, so if you haven't read The Long Road Home, you might be a tad confused. I'll be posing these in a once-a-week schedule, as I can do the short ficlets quicker than long chapters. Some may have teeny spoilers, and I'm saving the truly spoileriffic ones for last, after events in-story catch up. (And I will warn for spoilers, so you can skip if need be.) I'm posting these in the longroadhomefic Livejournal as well, but here too so everybody knows I'm still alive.
I am of course continuing TLRH, but out in real life I have been besieged by a first in my adult life: home buying. (I'm an adult? When the hell did that happen?) So the real story will be worked on, just a little slower than usual due to all the wailing and gnashing of teeth involved in getting a loan, finding a house, and moving.
So enjoy these snapshots of an Autobot named Whiplash.
14: On His Knees (warning: a teeny tiny spoiler for the extremely observant; also is SAD.)
Autobots do not, by nature, kneel.
Kneeling, abasing and lowering oneself before another to show respect, deferment, subordination, that's a Decepticon thing, and often an insincere one at that. Rather than that, an Autobot should, in the presence of one greater, endeavor to rise to such greatness himself, and thus enrich himself and by extension all Autobots. It's one thing to kneel to better speak to a being smaller than oneself; that is simply politeness, with no attitude of being cowed or otherwise inferior. To kneel is to show shame, fear, to be diminished.
Diminished.
Yes, that was it.
Whiplash felt diminished.
It was certainly no great shock. And by no means had he been blind to its coming. After all, it was one of the first things he'd learned about humans.
A human lived a single vorn, more or less, with luck and care.
Nic had been blessed with luck, as Whiplash understood such an ephemeral force; luck and courage and a fierce will and her own brand of blade-sharp canniness that had seen them through crisis after crisis, battle after battle. She had ridden Whiplash right into her seventh decade, albeit not nearly as frequently as she had in her youth, and certainly without the wild maneuvers and breakneck speed for which he had named himself. And it was at seventy-four that she began to act as frail as she looked.
Diminished.
Her flesh had finally begun to betray her beyond the minor aches and annoyances of age. She could no longer ride any motorcycle, much less Whiplash, instead having to ride in cars (more often than not, a willing Autobot) if she went anywhere outside the assisted living facility she now resided in. That was the cruelest blow, to both of them-- her body was failing, but her mind remained as keen as ever. She never said anything, but Whiplash knew that as much as he missed her comfortable, familiar weight, she missed being that weight.
"Let's take a ride, Whip," she'd say. "The food here is mushy and my ass hurts from sitting around all day. You'll sneak me out, right?"
"Always," he would reply.
But in reality, they would only take a long, slow walk through the lush green garden outside her little condo, at first carefully picking along the path in robot form until a nurse had politely informed them that he was scaring some of the more delicate residents, Autobot or not. Then Whiplash reluctantly put his holomatter projector to use, parking himself in bike form on Nic's picket-fenced patio while his avatar walked with her. It was probably the most use he'd made of the projector since Wheeljack had perfected the solid-hologram technology some thirty years prior. He preferred his human partners. He preferred not being alone.
He certainly didn't lack for company these days. Neither did Nic pine away her last years alone, because while Whiplash was by far her most faithful visitor, her two sons and one daughter were as diligent and doting, all of them possessed of the same sense of loyalty and fine-honed wisdom that had defined Nic. Her grandchildren were proving no different, leading Whiplash to wonder if it was some sort of genetic trait, or simply a testament to the force of Nic's character.
Force or no, at eighty-three, Nic was gone.
A single vorn.
And Whiplash knelt, diminished.
The grass over her grave plot was slightly greener, the layer of new sod raised slightly higher than the manicured lawn surrounding it. Massive arrays of flowers and greenery draped the double plot in a riotous display that would soon fade and die, just as she had. Whiplash parted the nasal vents to expose his sensitive atmospheric sensors, tasting the intriguing organic chemicals clouded around the flowers and committing the compounds to memory. California poppies, glory-of-the-sun lilies, broad-faced sunflowers, extravagant Arabian Night dahlias. Nic had been specific-- no roses, white lilies, or anything "waifish and maudlin" as she had put it. For some reason, Whiplash didn't have the same trouble some of the other Cybertronians did of giving personifying qualities to inert objects: these flowers were perfectly apropos-- proud, bold, vibrant, defiant, unafraid.
And they, too, would diminish.
Whiplash was alone at the site, on his knees in the bright sunlight, casting a hard-edged shadow over the wide marble headstone. To the left, her husband's name, and two dates, the latter one seventeen years passed. On the right, NICOLE BREANNA DARLING... and soon a stonecarver would come to etch in spark-breaking permanence the date of her passing.
In the center, deeply carved, the Autobot sigil, and glyphs in Cybertronian signifying that they had both been staunch allies and dear friends.
It was not an Autobot thing to kneel, but in this moment, he had to. He needed to be small, to be alone, to be diminished. If only in this moment, after all the other humans and Autobots had left the site after the ceremony. The moment drew on, his shadow becoming longer.
Sensors pinged. Someone was coming.
"Whip? Everybody's gone back to base-- Hot Rod's taking Carly and Julian into town for pizza. I can go with 'em if you need to stay here for a while..."
Terry was eighteen, tall and wiry, not short and athletic, his skin warm brown instead of porcelain-white and freckled, his cornrowed hair black-brown instead of coppery red. But there were hints of Nic in him, in the unapologetic tilt of an asymmetrical smile, the shape of his ears, the grey of his eyes. Soon, though, within a generation or two, the genetic stew would blend all traces of her away, and her descendants would forget, relegate her to photographs and ancient news articles.
His processor balked at that. Whiplash stood.
In his memory core, she was preserved. Every nanosecond, every word, even down to the last freckle. He would make certain her descendants and all their allies to come knew of her.
As long as his spark burned, she would not be forgotten.
She would not diminish.