Author's Note: So, I know I have been gone for AGES, and I am SO SORRY- I've been reworking Light of My World, entering College, etc., and things have gotten terribly busy, but that is no excuse to leave you all for so long. Thanks to everyone who's followed and/or favorited Light of My World - you literally are the only reason it's still here, since I'm that kind of person who hates to write if she can't tell it's being enjoyed. - TAKE NOTE: THIS MEANS I ADORE REVIEWS
So, now that I'm back, here's the plan. Rewriting Light of My World has been a blast, but I have to confess that many things haven't changed - and by that I mean that a lot of the things you read in the first version are still going to occur. Some aren't, and some are, so to preserve that lovely feeling of not knowing what's going to happen next, I'll just leave you with that fact and not specify.
My main goals in rewriting were these: more cohesiveness, realism, and less time-jumps. Yuss, that means you get to see more of how things get to be the way they are later. The characters are solidified, so if you see an inconsistency, chances are it's meant to be there. Still, please mention it to me? Characters are my favorite part of writing, but I'm not perfect, as you all well know. ;P
With that, I'll leave you to the prologue, since I've rambled on long enough.
Light of My World
By TheWeepingWillow555
Prologue
"Never lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel – it's a lifeline into a new, better world…" – Source To be Later Revealed
He felt as though he had frozen into a husk. The night was cold, dark, and screaming – an awful combination of smooth stillness and dim, shrieking chaos. Icy air kissed his body, hissing against the heat of his scorched, bubbling wounds. Hard metal shook beneath him; the air whistled above, high-pitched and unnatural; every horizon – even the core of the sky overhead – was aflame with abrupt flashes of fire and light; explosions he could not hear above the gale. But the feeling of cold was greatest. It caught him, quite literally numbing him to the painful grinding and burning in his middle, masking the luke-warm trickle of life that streamed down his sides in glowing rivulets of spilled energon. Ice was creeping through his cooling systems, and he couldn't feel his pedes any more.
Frozen, weak, and powerless against the cold, First Aid watched the fiery dance of burning war and streaking battle in the sky and simply tried not to feel – tried not to notice the tears of coolant running down his face; afraid that noticing them would force him to remember and acknowledge the reason why they flowed. The autobot medic didn't want to remember the moment the shot impacted with his middle – the horrifyingly familiar shape of the weapon that fired, belching blue flame and held in an even more painfully familiar, once friendly servo-
A harsh, guttural sob threatened to wrench the mech's jaws apart, but he did not let it. He swallowed it with a jolting shudder, and forced his optics up to watch the burning sky. Forcing himself not to think anymore.
First Aid was dying, and with his death the last hope Optimus Prime ever had of winning the war would fade into tatters of a dream; a fantasy none of them could believe anymore. This hope was clutched between his numb digits, carefully held inside the aching wound in his middle, so that the last dregs of warmth in his systems could keep it alive just a desperate little while longer. The hope cast a wavering flicker of white light between the blunt bars of his caging servos, pulsing and fluttering, little wires and mandibles ticking against his palm; seeking the delicate internals of a chassis wall – the nest in which the spark would live forever. A small ball of curling, flaming tendrils that glowed with a pure fire: a Cybertronian spark.
Unable to watch even a single explosion more, no matter how far in the distance or how weak the blast, First Aid finally closed his optics against the war that raged around him; against the plasma bolts that rocked the alien rock of the cliff beneath him. Autobots were dying, and he couldn't save them. Decepticons were dying, and he wanted to save them. That fact should have shocked him, but it didn't. The autobot medic never partook in battle for the simple reason that wrenching a mech's insides open – exposing his dying spark to the world – was something he could not force his hands to do. His hands just…wouldn't kill a mech, and his spark rebelled at the thought.
…Except that he had killed. He had-
With a choke, First Aid forced his mind again to wander, desperately seeking the solace of memories if nothing else would distract him. Faces flashed in his darkened vision – golden eyes framed by haughty silver and a blue bell of a helm – a sapphire visor set above a sharp, laughably charming grin – the silver mask below optics as blue as Earth's vast oceans, filled with more kindness that the seas could contain…
First Aid smiled slightly to unseen surroundings, lipplates aching and stinging as stretching cuts met cold air, and he sighed as he began to drift into the memories.
A crunch of a heavy pede against metal – the muffled whisper of skillful movement. His tired audials did not hear the sounds. The hand that touched his shoulder should have commanded more of an instinctive reaction, but First Aid's body was kliks away from freezing; all he could do was shuffle in a bizarre kind of dance, metal screeching against stone as he tried to scramble away. The servo he had hidden inside his bleeding internals cupped the little spark's casing more firmly, and his optics stuttered online.
"G-Gah!" He rasped, voice laden with static, panic racing through his systems, helm jerking and clattering back against the ground as he stared, horrified, upward.
Darkly towering above him, wings spread in mockery of an angel of earth, stood a shadow. A very familiar shadow. One that chuckled in a high-pitched, grating tone, scarlet optics narrowed and glowing like pits of molten steel.
"Well, well, well." The Decepticon Air Commander crooned, words laden with a thoughtful lilt. Horror faded into fury as Starscream's presence fully registered in First Aid's mind, and the junior medic recoiled with a snarl, engine revving for a single roar before sputtering and fading with a wheeze. An acrid stench filled the air, whipped away by the wind, but Starscream did not flinch throughout the display. Standing tall and proud and elegant amid the storm, framed by a molten sky, the seeker's powerful, slim form encapsulated the very essence of war.
"Honestly, Autobot," He said with a sneer First Aid more felt than saw. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were trying to get yourself killed."
The wounded medic barely heard the insulting comment – his processors were racing, and his anger was swiftly falling back into fear. The spark in his grasp was hidden by his own internals – clutched by servos that could be mistaken as protecting First Aid's wounds rather than sheltering a treasure. There was still a chance the seeker would not see it, but if he did, was there a possibility of mercy?
-Energon splattered over a golden cockpit, buildings falling, high pitched clicks of petrified agony slicing through the air like knives…!
No. The past had proven Starscream had no mercy nor consideration to the weak, let alone one so easily deactivated as the spark cradled in First Aid's servos.
"Not going to speak?" The seeker had crouched nearer; a darkly colored face loomed above First Aid's, closer than the flyer would come if the medic had been capable of stopping him. "Pity…"
There was no warning. Claws were tearing suddenly into First Aid's arms, bringing the weak limbs into the air, wrenching the closed fist from inside his middle, and agony shattered the medic.
First Aid screamed. High, long, rasping sounds ripped his throat wide open, sending sparks from his vocalizer into the air and over his attacker's scarlet chassis. He could feel his plating shake and warp, internals grinding and writhing in agony as his own servos were dragged free from the warm, ruptured depths. He had barely enough presence of mind to keep his fist partially unclenched as it came out into the cool air, though the spark rattled violently within it as his servo shook.
His protection didn't last long. Long, large claws pried his fingers open as easily as peeling a bloodied banana, and First Aid left all dignity behind as true terror and desperation gripped him.
"No!" He screamed, begging. Liquid streamed from his optics, clogging his vision as he gasped, and the strong taste of bleeding energon dripped in his mouth – sputtered in spatters of glowing blue droplets over his and his enemy's fronts as he sobbed. "No! Please no! Kill me! Not him! Kill me!" Not another death. Not another sacrifice – an innocent soul and pitiless evil. He couldn't live this again…
Silence met his sobs, and hope found a corner of First Aid's spark.
Please…
Then, after a pause that sent his hopes flaring, the claws plucked the spark from his palm.
He did not realize the screams came from his own throat. First Aid writhed, barely noticing how his energy splattered the seeker's cockpit - not caring when his middle bent and began to cave. He lurched forward, snatching at open air – reaching for the spark that had been taken from him. Metal screeched and energon splattered – there was static in his vision, and he fell forward onto his knees, servos slamming weakly to halt his fall – never losing sight of the flickering hope caged in Starscream's murderous claws.
Words failed him. He didn't know what he was saying, but it wasn't working. The seeker stood, holding the spark to his chassis, optics watching First Aid with a look that could be anything from disgust to satisfaction.
Shuddering on the ground, bent almost double and licked by rippling sparks as his internals rebelled and bled, First Aid felt his core go cold. Wrath burned like an icy fire, and his words faded into a strange whine as his vocalizer shorted out. Determination was burning through his panic and setting his plating rattling, and with a screaming tear of metal on metal, the medic dove to the side – rolling, snatching at the ground, and rising to a jerking halt on one knee only meters away from the seeker. In his servos was the comforting weight of a rifle; the familiar weapon that had blasted him through the middle, wrenched from the dead hands of the mech First Aid had killed before he could be killed himself. The body lay to his right, and even in his rage he could not bear to look at it. He could kill again - he would - for the sake of the spark in Starscream's servos-
…Except Starscream wasn't holding the spark in his servos anymore. It was pressed against his chest. Within his cockpit. Near his own spark. The arms that had held the sparkling were crossed over the flickering light, protective, aiming charge null rays at First Aid. There was murder in the scarlet optics, but there was also a strange look; a sort of wary, haunted fear.
Shocked, First Aid choked on his own glossa, and the tip of his rifle trembled as his servos shook.
Slowly, carefully, the seeker opened his lips, and the crackle of a comm spat into the air. "Megatron…" he said, clearly and carefully, as though First Aid were a bomb that would be set off by the slightest aggression…which he was. "Cease fire. There's no point any more."
Somehow, despite the pointed weapons and the pain, those words ruptured through First Aid like a silent thunderbolt. They felt like the swell of a rising tide from an ocean of hope; a flicker of light in his aching mind; a sigh in a silent room...
...With that single spoken phrase, the end of the war came in sight, and the sun began to rise...
Author's Note: Back again! So soon? Why yes, I am… few more things I want to mention - I know this is all nearly verbatim from the first version, but trust me there are some changes and they are very important for later. This sequence matters, as does the "who"s and "what"s of it. That's my excuse for barely changing anything… ^^;
Please please please review~! Missed you all, and would love to hear how you're doing as well as how you think of my writing style and such? Improvement is greatly desired. Much love, peoples! (If you're feeling a bit shy - too shy to review - feel free to message me privately? Thank you for reading~!)
~TheWeepingWillow555 (A.K.A Anna)