Running Through My Head

The first thing Blackarachnia was aware of was the darkness.

No, to be completely correct she would have to say that the first thing she was aware of was the words still circling inside her scrambled mind. They tumbled and teased at the edges of her consciousness seconds before she tried to power up her optics. That's when she became aware of the darkness. She wouldn't have known that her optics were working correctly at all if there weren't error messages blaring against her vision. A faint frown pulled down at the edges of her lips, and she moved the information to rest in a corner where it wouldn't distract her. Most of the damage was minor, anyway…except for the injury to her head that had knocked her offline. To be honest, the reason she had pushed away the error messages was so she wouldn't have to remember the sickening crunch of caving metal as the falling rock hit her from above and behind.

A faint frown pulled down the ends of her lips as she remembered despite herself. The falcon had singled her out in the last engagement, and Megatron's bellowed orders to keep her busy had still been in effect at the end of the battle. At least, that was how she'd interpreted the situation, but that was because the Maximal had been losing at the time. A few well-timed blows had kept her from taking off to join her comrades or calling for help, and Blackarachnia had retreated quickly to keep the rest of the Maximals from finding her prize in the most obvious place. Instead of following Megatron back to the base, she'd dragged the falcon under an overhanging rock a couple miles off to one side and waited. The Maximals would either pursue the other Predacons or leave without even noticing Airazor's absence. It didn't matter to her, as long as she had the falcon to herself.

She could have killed her. She should have. But a desire for information and—to be blunt—an enjoyment of toying with her prey won out as the Maximal began to awaken. The situation was in her favor. Why shouldn't she enjoy herself?

The supposed interrogation had run downhill from there. Blackarachnia couldn't figure out why the Maximal's comments had gotten under her skin so easily, but they prodded at her control from all angles until she'd been almost been forced to act. The sudden attack by the falcon had taken her by surprise. She'd kicked away Airazor's gun before dragging her away from the battlefield, but they'd wrestled over her own gun like the falcon didn't have a broken wing and enough damage to need a CR Chamber. The spider had thrown her less experienced opponent, her skill in close combat more useful than aerial moves on the ground, but an awkward kick on Airazor's part had redirected the shot aimed at the falcon.

It had hit the rock ledge above them.

Now Blackarachnia lay in the darkness, her torso half-propped up by whatever she had landed on, and the words ran through her mind. All the things Airazor had said, more painful than she'd like to admit even in the depths of her spark, ran through her head as if they could distract her from the present. The words were interesting and the conversation required more attention, but they weren't enough. She couldn't help but read the error messages still vying for her attention.

What she read scared her. It scared her not in the sense of a battle rush, the fear for her life that kept her ultra-aware of every move around her; no, this was a fear of thinking ::I'm in serious slag,:: and feeling totally lost. She could see, but there was no light at all to see anything with. She could move, but she didn't dare to. Her communication circuits sparked and fizzled when she tried to access them, but even if she could call for help she wouldn't because there was no one who'd answer. Worse yet, she was afraid of what would happen to her if one of the other Predacons did come. Rescue wasn't exactly a good thing if it was just a scavenging mission. ::Being with you has certainly opened my eyes, Maximal. Not that the facts changed any, but that I still believed somewhere in here that the facts weren't everything. The Predacons aren't a team that helps each other; we're cannibals, thrown together into a group and just waiting for someone to fall and begin the feeding frenzy. It took until you pointed that out for me to realize that I didn't want to believe that. I'd laugh at anyone else who put any faith in that slag. Could I ever believe such a perfect surprise about myself?::

::I wish I hadn't started thinking about this stuff before I split my head open. Closing my eyes isn't drastic enough to block her out.::

Then why did she keep doing it?

She tried shifting an arm and gasped at the pain. Most of her spider legs were trapped underneath her. The fall must have twisted her around. She didn't think that she could free her right arm from the heavy weight it was lodged under, and she was laying on her other arm. After the flair of pain her attempt at moving had earned, she didn't even want to think about trying her legs.

The moisture she could feel slowly oozing onto her shoulder hadn't been there a moment ago.

::What'd she say? Something about flying me away. Pfft. Right.:: As if flying her away from the Beast Wars would make her any less of a Predacon. She'd DRAGGED the falcon away, and it was just the two of them. Had that made them any less of enemies? Captor and captive, as she'd waved a gun to remind the Maximal. Even with nobody else, even in a place without Megatron or Optimus Primal, they'd be free from obvious outside pressure and still obey the faction symbols they wore. ::I told you, birdbrain. I told you, and you didn't believe me. I'm not like you. I won't let myself be pinned down to one 'bot, even incorrectly. You said you weren't with Tigatron. Funny, I think you're the only one who was aware of it. I didn't let Tarantulas do that to me.::

But even with all the things she'd said, the falcon hadn't listened. Or perhaps she'd listened, just as Blackarachnia had listened to what had been snapped back at her. Neither of them had shown any reaction to the words that were circling her mind now. The words that shouldn't have mattered as much as they did, speaking about Tigatron tying the flier down, and nobody even bothering to try with the Predacon. Words about why their gender made such a difference.

::Why do I have to think about arguing with you now? Oh, that's right. I'm trying to distract myself. All the things you said keep running through my head, and it's not enough. You hear me, Airazor? This is not enough!::

Stuck in the darkness, her only companion the slow creeping flow of her own mech-fluid winding a treacherous path down her body, Blackarachnia stared helplessly at the error messages lighting her vision. They blurred and wavered, the damage keeping pace with the leaking fluids. A gradual numbness began to tickle the tips of her pincers. It would have been a relief from the pain—the armor on her right leg must have cracked under the heavy rock that smashed it down—if she hadn't known it was a particularly bad sign. She thought desperately of shutting herself down into offline stasis, but that wouldn't stop the steady drain of her life from the mess the back of her head had become. At best, it would only make the end of her life more peaceful, her mind slipping free of the words running through it. She was a Predacon, however. The easy way out wasn't the way her programming would accept.

Yeah, well, sometimes her programming really sucked.

Blackarachnia crammed all the error warnings into one tiny corner of her vision. They buzzed annoyingly, not audibly but visually as the error sources slipped in and out of numbness, making the lights flicker rapidly like a fluorescent bulb on its last legs. With an effort, the spider ignored them enough to scroll back into functioning circuits and bring them up into the empty, dark area that she could see. Her limbs were becoming increasingly dysfunctional due to the pressure on top of them, but she couldn't move them anyway; regrettably, she moved them out of her vision. Communications went with them after a few minutes spent trying to bypass the malfunctioning parts of the remaining chips stuck in her open head. She felt a brief moment of relief that they hadn't worked before her more rational side pushed the glowing icons out of sight. She knew what Tarantulas would have done to her if her signal had been picked up, anyway. Better to die here in the numbing darkness than watched by the other Predacon.

Of course, she mused somewhat hysterically before she could quell the feeling, her signature would have acted as a beacon for anyone within range if she hadn't been intent on hiding Airazor from the Maximals. Enough rock and dirt could muffle a robot's signature unless the searcher was right on top of the quarry; that had been why she'd dragged the falcon under the rock ledge to begin with. Now she was buried under the blasted thing!

But…

"Hello?" The word was barely a rasp, but it cleared her air filters of the dust clogging them. Her next try was stronger, "Airazor?" Had the bird gotten free? She looked down her list of working circuitry and tweaked her sensors. They triggered a bright error message in return, this one pulsing fast enough that it felt like a loud shrill in the confusion of her damaged audios. She shoved it out of the list, wincing at the warning light. She was hearing sight—not good. "Airazor!" She couldn't sense anyone near, but that meant nothing. Maybe the Maximal was down here, maybe she'd been crushed, or maybe she was long gone. "Hello?"

Her words were a virulent yellow in the darkness of the cave-in. Kind of pretty, she thought in a detached kind of way. She realized she'd said it out loud when a few words of soft purple drifted over to twine with the yellow.

Words of red formed slowly to join them as she watched, error messages fading from her vision as she focused on the light show. It struck her suddenly that for all the lights, she still couldn't see anything. Her words were only in her split head, then. No…not her words. She read them, their taste bitter in her optics, and recognized Airazor's words. She shut her eyes but couldn't block them out.

It felt like déjà vu.

.

I actually don't like this plotline of the ficlets much. No, that's not quite right: I have the feeling that the person who said there weren't any Blackarachnia/Airazor romances out there would dislike this plotline. I don't know...maybe my standards are lower.