Title: Happenstance
Universe: Bayverse
Characters: Mirage, Thundercracker, First Aid
Rating: T (for battle gore)
Description: Companion to "Fences". This is not how Mirage pictured his end.
Invisibility means slag when it comes to avoiding Decepticon fire. He can hide himself, blend into the shadows, hide in plain sight. But it only takes one misaimed shot that he doesn't avoid for his special ability to be useless.
Not for the first time does Mirage regret his arrogance in preferring such an expensive mod. But no. He wanted to be unique. Special. Different from all the other towerlings and their flashy frames and paint jobs and pets and servants and personal, turbo-charged racers.
He wanted to be as invisible as his commissioners often made him feel. That, perhaps, had convinced him the most.
Now, here he is, dying on some battlefield amongst Autobots and Decepticons alike, having accomplished nothing he set out to do, having failed at everything, and with little to show for his efforts.
He can't transform. He can't call for help. Can barely move, truth be told, and certainly can't seem to twitch himself out from being buried by the dead airframe half-draped across his chassis. By the time some Autobot stumbles across him, if they even bother searching the battlefield for survivors, Mirage will be offline. Cold and grey.
This is not how he imagined his spark would extinguish.
His commissioners would sneer, Mirage thinks. They would have considered it a fitting end for a mech who turned so far from what they wanted. If they were still online, that is. But they aren't, because the Towers were the first to fall.
A bitter crack of a laugh escapes Mirage's vocalizer, loud amidst the after-battle silence, the cooling pings of once-heated metal, the faint groaning of another mech gradually turning grey in the distance, the drip-drip of a mech bleeding out.
Oh, wait. Maybe that's his own energon.
No, this isn't at all how Mirage pictured his ending. Or his function. Or any of it really.
Mirage's audials twitch. Overhead, he hears a low, rumbling sound. Engines. Jet engines. Seekers. Probably doing a sweep of the battlefield, checking for emergency signals, the usual. Easier for a Seeker to do a fly by than for ground vehicles to pick their way through the rugged, frame-strewn terrain.
The engine stalls. It gets louder. Closer. There's a harsh thump. The ground beneath Mirage trembles, his sensors struggling to make sense of the vibrations. Metal rings on metal. The Seeker has landed nearby.
Mirage's ventilations stutter. He struggles to online his optics. One is cracked, useless. But the other powers on in fitful bursts, giving him a bleary view of a large, dark shape approaching. He resets his optics again, hoping for a clearer picture.
The Seeker gets closer. Lifts a frame near Mirage's. Small, minibot maybe. Only the Seeker tosses it aside with a disgruntled grind of gears.
The Decepticon is within striking distance now, not that Mirage can move. He sees that helm swivel his direction, gleaming red optics bright to Mirage's fuzzy vision. The weight disappears from Mirage's chassis.
He makes a sound, a soft cry of pain escaping him. The empty frame had been heavily armored, spikes protruding every which direction, and one had pierced a line in Mirage's thigh plating. Energon pulses sluggishly from the wound. Guess he doesn't have much to spare.
Above him, the crouching Seeker makes a contemplative hum. "Got a live one, Screamer," he says aloud.
There's a pause. Mirage tries to move, but gets nothing. His fingers twitch. His vocalizer spits static.
Death would be preferable to the Decepticon prison camps.
"You sure? Could be useful as a trade or something."
A chill trickles down Mirage's backstrut. He attempts to activate his shoulder cannon, but error readings flash over his HUD.
His vision clarifies, the face of the Seeker coming into better detail. Not that it matters. In the end, one Decepticon looks like all the others.
"Whatever you say, Commander."
The Seeker's attention turns entirely to Mirage, optics gleaming in an unsettling manner.
Mirage reroutes a fair majority of his efforts to his vocalizer. He can't move, but he'll be fragged if he onlines without so much as a sharp word exchanged.
"Offline me," he challenges. Anything to avoid becoming a prisoner. "I'll tell you nothing."
The Decepticon stares at him for a long, confusing moment before he clucks a crude Seeker glyph. "You never could tell us apart, could you, Mirage?"
His spark surges. It's improbable.
"... Thundercracker?" The designation is little more than a static-laden whisper. His entire frame twitches. "You're still online."
But protoform grey now. His stripes and colors are gone. Abandoned or stripped from him, Mirage doesn't know. He's heard rumors but that's all. He can't see anything of the lovely turquoise that Thundercracker used to bear.
All he can see is that hideous Decepticon sigil stamped proudly on his once-lover's chestplate.
"Autobots can't bring me down that easily," Thundercracker retorts, his optics making a broad sweep of Mirage's mangled frame. "I say you've got ten breems before you grey out. Probably less."
"... Orders?"
"What else?" One of Thundercracker's talons drags lightly down Mirage's chassis, though he takes care to avoid the huge blaster wound. "One shot to the spark and another to the helm for good measure. You Autobots have the nasty tendency to survive otherwise. Hear you've got some kind of genius medic."
Mirage's ventilations hitch again. "Poetic," he murmurs. And how very fitting. A physical pain to match the proverbial agony of watching Thundercracker fly away what feels like vorns and vorns ago.
Thundercracker's optics cycle down and Mirage braces himself as protoform-grey arms reach for him.
No weapons emerge. Instead, Thundercracker picks him up, not gently, but with purpose, Mirage gasping with pain as unhappy sensors shriek with sensation.
"W-what are you doing?" Mirage demands, frame twitching, the smell of scorched circuits stronger now.
Thundercracker kicks on his thrusters, shooting toward the sky with a lurch in Mirage's tanks. Air rushes past his audials. The warning messages on his HUD screeches at him, flashing red and orange. Ten breems seems like an awfully short amount of time.
"What's it look like?" His once-lover retorts.
Mirage's vocalizer crackles, useless. His vision goes gray again, rife with static. His spark staggers, but not due to emotion this time.
No!
Stasis lock imminent.
His fingers twitch. His frame jerks. Pain flows outward through the large rift in his chassis. He tastes purged energon.
Everything goes black.
"-age. Mirage!"
He onlines his optics with a harried ex-vent, staring straight into the concerned visor of a medibot.
"Thunder... cracker...?"
The visor dims, the mech pulling back just enough that Mirage can put designation to faceplate. It's First Aid.
"What did he say?" Another mech demands and this voice Mirage knows without having to look.
"Nothing, sir. He's delirious," First Aid replies, shifting his attention back to Mirage's repairs. "Energon loss will do that you. Processors start shutting down, circuits get crossed. You know how that is, Prowl."
Mirage feels numb. First Aid must have him on some kind of sensor block. And his processors certainly feel awhirl. But he remembers.
"When he's more lucid, contact me."
"Yes, sir."
Mirage hears several clipped pedesteps before a door whooshes open and closed. The constrained field in the room is now gone, leaving only Mirage's own and First Aid's, leaking with concern.
"... Aid?"
"You're safe," the medibot reassures with a soft pat to Mirage's uninjured shoulder. "You're back on base."
"How?"
First Aid looks at him, visor as unreadable as Jazz's could be. "I think we both know the answer to that."
Mirage would bet the million creds he doesn't have anymore that Prowl knows the answer too. Which is why he's so eager to question Mirage.
Thundercracker should have offlined him. But he hadn't. Instead, he'd somehow deposited Mirage where he'd get immediate, medical attention.
Why?
Maybe, and a part of him clings to this thin hope, maybe their past is not entirely forgotten. Maybe there's still a chance after all.
a/n: Feedback is welcome!