Title: Immolation (Part 29/100)
Prompt: "If"
Verse: G1 (AU)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1568
Pairings: Inferno/Red Alert
Other Characters: Mentions of Ratchet.
Warnings: Sticky.
Disclaimer: Do not own Transformers, or any of the official characters, do not get paid for doing this except with reviews.
Summary: Red Alert confronts Inferno about his suicide attempt, and resorts to desperate measures to avoid a repetition.
Notes: A continuation of my series of interlinked vignettes on the theme of Inferno being raped, and how he and Red Alert deal with it, centred around prompts from slash_100.
Groon – 1 hour.
Astrosecond - ≈.273 seconds
Orbital cycle: 1 day
If
Red Alert watched as Inferno's optics brightened, the sharp, bright pang of relief he felt somehow not reassuring, just another too-intense sensation layered over the pain and grief he felt because of the fire engine's actions. Because of his attempt to abandon him.
"Red...?" Even the sound of that voice, that warmly accented voice that used to wrap around him like an auditory blanket of comfort, even that hurt...
"Yes, Inferno," Red Alert answered, his own voice hollow. "I'm here."
Inferno's head tossed back and forth on the berth, the rest of his body remaining motionless. "I can't... I can't move..." he stammered, in a panic-stricken voice.
"You're not damaged," the red and white mech answered, somewhat relieved that Inferno seemed to care about the state of his body in spite of his earlier attempts to permanently disengage himself from it. "No thanks to you. Ratchet disabled your motor functions so we wouldn't have a repeat performance on our hands."
The fire engine had relaxed a little at Red Alert's reassurances, but the panic came back into his voice and face. "Performance? What happened?"
Unconsciously, Red Alert's hand went to his throat. "You don't remember?" he asked. "You don't remember attacking me, choking me into unconsciousness, escaping from the Ark, and trying to..." He couldn't bring himself to say 'kill yourself', just the idea of what could have happened was like a raw wound inside of him.
Inferno had the grace to wince guiltily. "I... I remember that..."
"Then you're wondering why you're still here?" Red Alert deduced, shuddering slightly, as he remembered what Ratchet had told him before, that it was nothing short of a miracle that Inferno was still around considering what his capacity to damage himself had been before he'd accidentally disabled his own motor control. Of course the Lamborghini would sooner resign from his position as Security Director and take up a full time job polishing Sunstreaker than tell Inferno that. "I'm not about to tell you what you might have done wrong, and give you the chance to correct it on subsequent attempts."
The red mech pressed his lip components together tightly.
"Why?" As Red Alert spoke the single syllable his voice crackled with static, a rush of cleaning fluid suddenly streaming down his face from brimming optics as he voiced the question that had plagued him since Inferno had been brought back to the Ark, covered in energon and badly mangled by his own hand. "I thought I was important to you. You risked everything to save me, why do that if you were only going to leave me afterwards?"
"But I didn't want ta leave ya..." Inferno's pleading tone was not without its own share of static.
"You had a strange way of showing it!" the red and white mech cried.
Inferno turned his head away in shame. "I... I'm sorry, Red, I wasn't thinkin' straight... Jus' the thought of everyone knowin', everyone talkin'..."
"You could have talked to me!" Frustration filled Red Alert – hadn't they just had a conversation to that effect the very night before Inferno had run off? Perhaps he hadn't been clear enough, but at least he could remedy that now.
"I panicked, Red... I wasn't tryin' ta hurt ya..." he said, shaking his head regretfully, a single tear escaping his own optics..
"Well, you did it anyway." Red Alert swiped angrily at his face, wishing the tears would stop flowing. "The attacking me I can actually understand, you were really upset, almost crazed..." Truthfully it had terrified him to see Inferno like that, and it gave him a new respect for the other mech's ability to handle him during one of his episodes. "But afterwards, when you had stopped, had some time to think... Your first thought wasn't about me, about the fact that I... I love you and want to be here for you... It was about how to make an even more permanent escape."
"I told ya, Red," Inferno stammered. "I wasn't..."
"Thinking straight. Yes, you've said that several times now." He took Inferno's face between his hands, forcing him to meet his optics. "What I want to know is how you're thinking right now. Are you going to do that again?"
"Red, I..." Inferno's hesitancy spoke louder than mere words.
Overcome by fear and panic, Red Alert grabbed Inferno by the shoulders and shook him until his dentals rattled. "Answer me!"
"I... I don't know, Red," the larger mech admitted.
The admission seared him like a beaker of acid poured straight into his spark, and all he wanted to do was turn around and walk, or better yet, run out of medbay, and lock himself in the security centre, never to emerge again. That would be the easy way, however, and Inferno hadn't taken the easy way when he'd given himself to Megatron and faced all those Decepticons, even if he had nearly taken it afterwards.
"Well, shall I tell you what I know?" Red Alert said in a dangerously quiet voice. "I know that if you ever try that again, I'm going to do the same thing, and unlike you I don't have my weapons disabled and restrictions placed on my whereabouts. So if you try, I'm going to do more than try, I'm going to succeed!"
An expression of horror crept over Inferno's faceplates, and his head jerked upwards, as if he would have risen had he been able to."Red, no! That ain't..."
"'Ain't' what?" Red Alert snapped, defending his position even though he knew what he had said amounted to the most underhanded piece of emotional blackmail he could ever imagine, but this was a battle for a mech's life, a mech he loved, and he considered the sharp, stinging pangs of guilt a small price to pay compared to the agony of an eternity without Inferno "Fair? Well, neither is what you did! Trying to... to... offline yourself without even waiting to see if things might get better, without giving me a chance to be a proper partner to you for once, a chance to give back a little of what you've given to me all this time!" He regarded Inferno searchingly, looking for a glimmer of understanding, hoping that his dire warning would have the desired effect. "Do you think that's fair?"
"No, Red," the fire engine answered.
"Alright, then. You remember that," he said, poking Inferno hard in the chest, but carefully, to avoid the fresh welds. "You remember that the next time you think about extinguishing this spark that is more precious to me than my own! I'm not doing this without you, and you are not doing this without me! However you choose to handle the rest of your life after this point, I will be there, every step of the way. So you'd better watch where you're stepping, because wherever you go I am fragging well going to follow – and if that's into the Matrix, or even the depths of the Pit itself, so be it."
Inferno's optics overflowed, tears spilling down the sides of his face unchecked. "But why?" he asked. "Why stay with me? Why say all those things? I ain't no good ta ya no more..."
"That's not true!" Red Alert answered vehemently, feeling taken aback and more than a little guilty for Inferno's emotional response, though he pushed the guilt away resolutely, telling himself that everything he did was for the best. Gently, he began wiping away his lover's tears. "You may not be feeling like your usual self, but you're still the mech I love and want to be with. Primus, you put yourself through horrible things to save me, how could I not want you after you did something so selfless and brave?"
"Don't feel too selfless or brave right about now...:" Inferno admitted.
Red Alert stroked Inferno's white 'wings' soothingly. "And I wasn't expecting you to. You've been strong for me all this time, but it's time for you to let that go, to focus on getting better."
"But what about you?"
"In case you don't remember, I lived most of my life without help from anyone – I think I can still remember how to do that. It's not that I don't still need you, because I do, I always will, I just don't need you to pretend to be strong for my sake. What I need is for you to be exactly as you are, right now, without worrying about how you used to be, or how you might be in the future. And when you're hurting and you feel sad or alone, I want you to tell me." The security director pressed a kiss to the middle of Inferno's forehead. "Can you do that?"
Slowly, Inferno nodded.
"Good. I'm going to go find Ratchet and see if we can't at least have some of your motor relays online, because right now I would very much like to hug you, and have you hug me back instead of lying there like a lump of slag."
"I think... I think I'd like that, too, Red."
