![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hat_writes_stuffTitle: Hope Is A Plant You Can Care For (Or Kill)
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Transformers Mystic Tales AU
Characters: Shockwave, Blurr
Word Count: 2,118
Rating: Teen & Up?
Pairing(s): Shockwave/Blurr
Warnings: Attempted assisted suicide, aftermath of failed assisted suicide, body horror (mild by my standards), the realization that this does not solve everything
Author's Notes: SUICIDE SUICIDE SUICIDE, this is the suicide it is on page Shockwave fully believes he's gonna die and goes to it willingly. (Blurr, on the other hand, says, "Okay but I swore to end the existence of a demon, not the life of a person, so lemme just--" but it is not his POV today.)
Shockwave is, in Spellbound, an enslaved person who has to obey, cannot lie to, and I would assume cannot physically harm those who summon him. At the beginning of the AU, he was summoned by Blurr, whose reasons for that summoning are still shrouded in mystery (Keferon hasn't told us yet). Previously, he'd been summoned by Sentinel, and possibly other crankshafts, and forced to fight and kill not just people belonging to groups he wanted to help, but often times his own students, his own actual loved ones. There is an implication that, whenever Shockwave got summoned by someone who wasn't a complete monster, Sentinel arranged for that summoner's death. Shockwave (believes he) was turned into a demon, and made vulnerable to these summonings, by Primus himself, for Reasons.
So this is.
This one has been a lot.
Read carefully, Shockwave believes he's dying in the first half and he's so grateful for it.
And I kept having lines from a tumblr tag poem in my head as I was writing-- you can read it here, and I will transcribe it in the end notes because... uh, it's all. In images. If you're relying on a screen reader, that's not helpful, and I don't know if there's alt text descriptions or anything.
If you need something less A Lot than Spellbound, I can also recommend Keferon's Monster Hunter and Mimics AUs, set at earlier points in the timeline.
Congratulations, also, to Keferon, because the Spellbound tag is now a nice round 20 pages!
Summary: Shockwave's relationship with hope is very different than Blurr's.
Blurr gives Shockwave a very dangerous gift.
Part Shockwave's view of Sympathetic Magic, half an interpretation of the following, and latest, update of Keferon's Spellbound AU.
Predaking's consuming fire, Damus's shattering voice, and Blurr's last-minute touch-me-not.
It wouldn't hurt anything, Shockwave was sure. Blurr was a true knight, he'd keep his word, and even if he were trying to reach some sort of technicality where destroying the demon didn't take Shockwave with it-- Shockwave was dead. Only demonic magic kept his spark spinning, not the vital processes of a living frame. There was nothing alive in him for the touch-me-not to shy away from, if the death-bringer magic didn't simply destroy it before they could integrate into the potion.
So it wasn't worth Shockwave having complicated feelings about Blurr trying, one more time, to pull Shockwave away from the safety of death. Primus had done this, Primus chose Shockwave's punishment, and Blurr might have magic enough, knowledge enough, to destroy a demon... but he wasn't enough to undo what Primus himself had done. Here and now, at the last, Shockwave could afford to let Blurr have his one little blossom of hope.
Blurr offered up his potion, his work, with a soft smile and sad optics, and Shockwave--
There were things he wanted to say to his knight, beyond giving his thanks and wishing circumstances were different. But goodbye caught somewhere in his throat, heavy and suffocating when he'd already decided Blurr was allowed to hope. Any description of his feelings, in a last-moment admission, would turn into something far too long.
Shockwave had carried Damus's voice in a bottle without telling Blurr about it for-- too long. He'd waited too long. He caught Sentinel's attention, again, and if he didn't go now, he'd lose Blurr, the world would lose Blur, life would lose Blurr, and Shockwave would be at Sentinel's mercy again.
The time for explanations had slipped away, somehow, while Shockwave had foolishly indulged himself.
(And he worried he'd wasted that time on lesser indulgences. On simple touches, basic contact. On being allowed to carry Blurr, as well as walk with him. Evading Blurr's more complicated questions, pretending he didn't see Blurr's affections. If he'd asked, what more of himself would Blurr have given? Would going so far have tainted his knight, and would Blurr have let that stop him? Would it have been the worst thing? Primus didn't deserve Blurr.)
So when Blurr stepped back, when he drew his sword and sketched his gleaming ward, Shockwave didn't say anything more.
No lies, that he hoped Blurr's experiment worked.
No admissions, to slow them down.
No farewells, no letting on he expected Blurr's experiment to fail.
A last embrace, Blurr's remarkably potent ward, and Shockwave drank his death.
It wasn't tasteless-- it wasn't bitter or foul. It tasted of hot metal, a forge gone wild, and of camaraderie, of solidarity between equals. It tasted of love and grief and understanding-come-too-late, of doomed effort and of Blurr, of the wind-and-lightning of Blurr's own magic.
He wanted to watch Blurr to the last, and-- Blurr was the last thing he saw. Blurr's perfect form as he knelt, his elegant determination, the crackling glow of his brilliant magic.
But though Shockwave wouldn't call it perfectly painless, it-- wasn't what he feared it would be.
It was weakening.
He lost sight of Blurr as he lost his ability to stand, to support himself, and he heard more than felt the impact he made as he struck the floor.
Blurr was all around him. Blurr's ward surrounded him, defining the limits of reality. He couldn't see Blurr, he wouldn't be able to let his vision fade on the sight of Blurr's face, but this-- he was dissolving, Predaking's fire like soaking in something on just the high side of too hot, not comfortable but softening, relaxing. Damus's voice a low thrum, rattling through him, shaking the fibers of his being out of their weave, but a comforting sound for all that. If he could feel anything of the touch-me-not, then it was the love the flowers were created for, the memorial. But through it all, guiding the death bringer, holding the ward, slipping between pieces of Shockwave like a stiletto, like a scalpel, surrounding him like a lover's embrace, was Blurr, Blurr, Blurr.
It was not painless.
But there was comfort in it, and Blurr in it, and that, that was so much more than Shockwave had ever hoped he'd get.
He felt himself fading, ebbing, and it made for a peaceful triumph.
Frag Primus.
Frag Sentinel.
Frag them, and their judgment and torment and all the hate and pain and fear and doubt they'd steeped him in.
Here at the end, there was comfort, companionship, fidelity.
Here, at the end, Shockwave belonged only to his knight, only to Blurr. No one would ever be able to claim him again, and when oblivion slipped over him, it came with peace and gratitude and love.
Shockwave woke up and immediately regretted doing so.
Every single part of him ached, at best. His hands throbbed, his wings screamed, his right optic felt like someone jammed a pickaxe into it. His throat burned like he'd been trying to scream out his vocal processor.
For a long, awake-but-less-aware moment, the only halfway logical explanation Shockwave could come up with for all of that was-- he must have been to some bacchanal of a party, had far too much to drink, and passed out sometime before, during, or after rolling down a mountain made of Cybertron's sharpest, pointiest rocks.
But he was awake, and the only way to stop the pain was to get up and find a potion or a healer, so Shockwave shoved himself upright, and put a hand to his helm in the vague hope that this was one of the kinds of headache that improved by putting pressure on it. The stump of his smallest finger slipped into his empty optic socket and--
What.
His what.
His claws should skate over the muzzle of his head, his palm should press over the point where his optic rested in his closed mouth.
But Shockwave stared down at his hand.
His hand.
His hand, corpse-gray and coated in fine ash or dust.
It was a hand, blunt fingers-- the smallest missing, as though it had been pinched off and torn away-- just a normal hand. His hand. A mech's perfectly normal horribly damaged right hand.
He pulled his left hand up level and-- it still wasn't claws.
The smallest finger was a ruin, again, worn or maybe melted down to bare struts, terrible scoring along the side and heel of it.
Hands.
With-- fingers. Not a full count, but with evidence of where they should all go.
Shockwave had hands.
His hands flew to his face.
Helm, brow, optic, socket, cheek, horrifying jagged tear, nose, mouth--
Mouth!
Normal, normal, ordinary mouth! With lips and teeth and-- mouth!
It was not a complete inventory of features, but-- but it wasn't-- it wasn't--
And under him--
Under him, staring up, flat on his back with Shockwave straddling one of his thighs, under him, haloed in an arc of purple ash and his own sword like a headstone, was Blurr.
Blurr.
"It worked," Blurr said, barely vented in wonder, and then crowed, "Oh my god it worked?!" Shockwave was surely meant to react, to jump in and reply, but Blurr...
Blurr was so much larger, now.
"Do you understand?" Had his knight's tippets always been violet, and so dark? Shockwave thought they'd been lighter, bluer. "Shockwave! It worked!" He'd added a touch-me-not to the death-bringer potion, he'd used it to guide Predaking's fire and Damus's voice to-- to-- "You--" Shockwave was alive, because Blurr had used a memorial flower, a mourner's lasting tribute to a lost love, to direct death-bringer magic. "You aren't a demon anymore!"
And then Blurr seemed to notice what Shockwave had felt, of his face, and started fussing, asking questions, how he felt, if he was in pain, if he needed... something. Inspecting his wounds, his damage, theorizing.
Blurr had used a flower to carve Shockwave out of Primus's judgment.
It was too much.
His students-- his students had powered a memory spell that had allowed Shockwave to keep his own mind in the face of Primus's judgment.
He had been prepared to make his trial a long one, a drawn-out affair, one that would make the Council flat-out say what wasn't quite law, but Shockwave had only been able to answer Do you plead guilty? with No, before his spark lurched.
(Had it been the change that tore his hands like this? He remembered it, he remembered the pain, the pull that had started in his spark, the way his systems had shuddered and died and died and died and come back and he remembered remembering. He remembered having his wrists in shackles in his last moments as a mortal mech-- had tearing loose done this to his hands? Had he torn loose?)
Whatever Blurr had done, however he'd brewed his potion, steered his spellwork, it hadn't pulled from Shockwave's spark.
Becoming a demon was supposed to be irreversible because Primus reached out and used the magic in one's own spark to twist a mech. To turn all that magic into something-- hideous, a warning sign, unusable. To turn their magic, whether they used it or not, into strength.
Strength that summoners, hunters, could use to fight their battles for them.
Blurr's spell hadn't touched Shockwave's spark.
And Shockwave-- floundered.
Skids's spell, his students' reinforcement, shouldn't have been more powerful than Primus-- and yet. Shockwave remembered.
Had it been because Primus wanted Shockwave to remember? Wanted him in that much more pain? The only options Shockwave could conceive of, for so long, were Primus being more cruel than Shockwave had ever dared to imagine, or Primus being limited enough to be fooled by mortal mechs.
But Blurr--
Blurr took what Primus declared immutable, and undid it.
Was Blurr more powerful than Primus?
Was the sorcerer who'd created touch-me-nots more powerful than Primus?
Had Primus decided Shockwave had been a demon long enough, and it was time for some other punishment?
Had Ratchet been right all along in his belief that Primus was nothing but a fiction told to explain natural phenomena? But Shockwave had spent so, so long as a demon, as a tool, as a weapon-- if Primus hadn't done that, who had? It was too powerful a spell for a mere mortal. (But a mere mortal could undo it.)
Had Primus changed his mind, in the years Shockwave had been a demon? The Council would have had Blurr hunted down for witchcraft, not because of his spellwork but because of his speed, when Shockwave had been-- before Shockwave had been a demon. But not now. Not now, and Blurr claimed that was because of Shockwave's own school. Because of Shockwave's teachings.
It hadn't changed completely. It wasn't entirely safe. Sentinel was still out there, still hunting--
And Shockwave wasn't a demon anymore.
A mech, just a mech, a mortal, damaged mech-- he had one eye and was missing a good quarter of his fingers and he was afraid to see what had happened to his wings. He couldn't be summoned, he couldn't be compelled, and Blurr-- Blurr had just-- how much magic had Blurr poured into that spellwork? How drained was he?
"And if I..." Blurr looked up at Shockwave, stumbling out of his own musings. "Shockwave?"
They were in so much danger, and neither one of them was in any condition to fight a practice dummy, much less a knight of Sentinel's skill. They might be the only two people who knew how to reverse a demonization, and Sentinel, the Council, would kill them for that. Kill them at best, at minimum.
"Oh, no," Blurr said, softly, and reached to draw Shockwave too him. "Come here."
Blurr was so much bigger now.
His arms went all the way around Shockwave, easily, though he wrapped them around Shockwave's upper back and shoulders as though he were still all neck.
He hid his face against Blurr's chestplate, over his spark, let himself hold on, let himself ignore his own broken sobbing. He let Blurr soothe him, let Blurr try.
"You're... oh my god, you're not dead," Blurr murmured, happier than he should be. "You're alive. Could you even imagine? You're alive."
It was brilliant spellwork. Undoubtedly. It was amazing, Blurr had done something impossible, phenomenal, something Shockwave would have sold what remained of his spark for, ages ago.
But it was something that undermined the authority of Primus.
Worse, it undermined Sentinel and the Council.
Shockwave was alive, and Blurr had done it...
... And now, now?
Death might be the only safe escape for both of them.
END NOTES: The poem:
Hope is a weapon
Hope is a skill
Hope is a plant you can care for or kill
Hope is a discipline
Something you choose
Hard to stop looking for
Easy to lose
Hope isn't something to have or to take
If you cant find it, it's something you make
Make it from willpower
Make it from spite
Learn how to weaponize love in a fight
Hope is a shield and a thing to defend
End in itself and a means to an end
And the first three lines of that have been looping through my head while writing this. Because Shockwave and Blurr have such... different capabilities with hope. (Also frankly the touch-me-nots look a lot like the Lorax's trufula trees and Horton's clover.)
Okay.
So.
I know the end of this one is a little bit-- Keferon ended on a hug, visually, a beautiful embrace, and who am I to go angsting that up? But listen. Demonic magic is a lot to handle, Shockwave tells us this, and Blurr seems experienced enough to know it. Blurr was experimenting and controlling demonic magic and look at the first panels of this update again. Look at Blurr's hands, he's using even more magic. And look at Shockwave, zombie cheeses look at him, he's not just no longer a nigh-unkillable demon, he's mangled, he's a mess. He and Blurr are incredibly vulnerable right now, and they're out in the middle of nowhere with what support, what food, and only Blurr's possibly-endless money to help them, which won't help them if they can't eat it. They need rest and fuel and WAY MORE than nine large healing potions.
And Shockwave is so worried that they are out of time because this is what Shockwave first told Blurr about why he wants to die, and this is a reason that hasn't been stated in the narrative but it's... all over it, enough that it smears onto Mimics. But this? THIS is why Shockwave decided now, now, it has to be now.
And of course, Shockwave's students haunt this narrative in more ways than just Sentinel forcing Shockwave to kill (some of?) them for funsies and bigotry. Shockwave is a teacher. Who has he taught? Skids who made the thing that saved his memory. Predaking. Technically Damus, though we don't know if this was the only time (it wasn't in IDW). And while not his student? Blurr went to Shockwave's Academy.
Rung and Prima's fingerprints are all over this one, too-- is the sorcerer who made the touch-me-nots as a gesture for his dead lover more powerful than Primus? No, because that was Rung, for Prima. Or, yes, because that was Rung, and Primus is a fictional character based on a mistranslation or something.
As ever I'm just screaming ART and COLOR, but with this one I'm also screaming WORDS. Watch Blurr. Watch how long it takes him to say to Shockwave that he's alive. Because Blurr is so aware that Shockwave may not see that as a thing to celebrate, so he turns to what he thinks Shockwave might vibe with, the legitimately amazing feat of impossible magic Blurr just pulled off.
PS: I saw this and I could only think, "Hah! Now Keferon knows how it feels to look at art and go 'that's my words!'"
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Transformers Mystic Tales AU
Characters: Shockwave, Blurr
Word Count: 2,118
Rating: Teen & Up?
Pairing(s): Shockwave/Blurr
Warnings: Attempted assisted suicide, aftermath of failed assisted suicide, body horror (mild by my standards), the realization that this does not solve everything
Author's Notes: SUICIDE SUICIDE SUICIDE, this is the suicide it is on page Shockwave fully believes he's gonna die and goes to it willingly. (Blurr, on the other hand, says, "Okay but I swore to end the existence of a demon, not the life of a person, so lemme just--" but it is not his POV today.)
Shockwave is, in Spellbound, an enslaved person who has to obey, cannot lie to, and I would assume cannot physically harm those who summon him. At the beginning of the AU, he was summoned by Blurr, whose reasons for that summoning are still shrouded in mystery (Keferon hasn't told us yet). Previously, he'd been summoned by Sentinel, and possibly other crankshafts, and forced to fight and kill not just people belonging to groups he wanted to help, but often times his own students, his own actual loved ones. There is an implication that, whenever Shockwave got summoned by someone who wasn't a complete monster, Sentinel arranged for that summoner's death. Shockwave (believes he) was turned into a demon, and made vulnerable to these summonings, by Primus himself, for Reasons.
So this is.
This one has been a lot.
Read carefully, Shockwave believes he's dying in the first half and he's so grateful for it.
And I kept having lines from a tumblr tag poem in my head as I was writing-- you can read it here, and I will transcribe it in the end notes because... uh, it's all. In images. If you're relying on a screen reader, that's not helpful, and I don't know if there's alt text descriptions or anything.
If you need something less A Lot than Spellbound, I can also recommend Keferon's Monster Hunter and Mimics AUs, set at earlier points in the timeline.
Congratulations, also, to Keferon, because the Spellbound tag is now a nice round 20 pages!
Summary: Shockwave's relationship with hope is very different than Blurr's.
Blurr gives Shockwave a very dangerous gift.
Part Shockwave's view of Sympathetic Magic, half an interpretation of the following, and latest, update of Keferon's Spellbound AU.
Predaking's consuming fire, Damus's shattering voice, and Blurr's last-minute touch-me-not.
It wouldn't hurt anything, Shockwave was sure. Blurr was a true knight, he'd keep his word, and even if he were trying to reach some sort of technicality where destroying the demon didn't take Shockwave with it-- Shockwave was dead. Only demonic magic kept his spark spinning, not the vital processes of a living frame. There was nothing alive in him for the touch-me-not to shy away from, if the death-bringer magic didn't simply destroy it before they could integrate into the potion.
So it wasn't worth Shockwave having complicated feelings about Blurr trying, one more time, to pull Shockwave away from the safety of death. Primus had done this, Primus chose Shockwave's punishment, and Blurr might have magic enough, knowledge enough, to destroy a demon... but he wasn't enough to undo what Primus himself had done. Here and now, at the last, Shockwave could afford to let Blurr have his one little blossom of hope.
Blurr offered up his potion, his work, with a soft smile and sad optics, and Shockwave--
There were things he wanted to say to his knight, beyond giving his thanks and wishing circumstances were different. But goodbye caught somewhere in his throat, heavy and suffocating when he'd already decided Blurr was allowed to hope. Any description of his feelings, in a last-moment admission, would turn into something far too long.
Shockwave had carried Damus's voice in a bottle without telling Blurr about it for-- too long. He'd waited too long. He caught Sentinel's attention, again, and if he didn't go now, he'd lose Blurr, the world would lose Blur, life would lose Blurr, and Shockwave would be at Sentinel's mercy again.
The time for explanations had slipped away, somehow, while Shockwave had foolishly indulged himself.
(And he worried he'd wasted that time on lesser indulgences. On simple touches, basic contact. On being allowed to carry Blurr, as well as walk with him. Evading Blurr's more complicated questions, pretending he didn't see Blurr's affections. If he'd asked, what more of himself would Blurr have given? Would going so far have tainted his knight, and would Blurr have let that stop him? Would it have been the worst thing? Primus didn't deserve Blurr.)
So when Blurr stepped back, when he drew his sword and sketched his gleaming ward, Shockwave didn't say anything more.
No lies, that he hoped Blurr's experiment worked.
No admissions, to slow them down.
No farewells, no letting on he expected Blurr's experiment to fail.
A last embrace, Blurr's remarkably potent ward, and Shockwave drank his death.
It wasn't tasteless-- it wasn't bitter or foul. It tasted of hot metal, a forge gone wild, and of camaraderie, of solidarity between equals. It tasted of love and grief and understanding-come-too-late, of doomed effort and of Blurr, of the wind-and-lightning of Blurr's own magic.
He wanted to watch Blurr to the last, and-- Blurr was the last thing he saw. Blurr's perfect form as he knelt, his elegant determination, the crackling glow of his brilliant magic.
But though Shockwave wouldn't call it perfectly painless, it-- wasn't what he feared it would be.
It was weakening.
He lost sight of Blurr as he lost his ability to stand, to support himself, and he heard more than felt the impact he made as he struck the floor.
Blurr was all around him. Blurr's ward surrounded him, defining the limits of reality. He couldn't see Blurr, he wouldn't be able to let his vision fade on the sight of Blurr's face, but this-- he was dissolving, Predaking's fire like soaking in something on just the high side of too hot, not comfortable but softening, relaxing. Damus's voice a low thrum, rattling through him, shaking the fibers of his being out of their weave, but a comforting sound for all that. If he could feel anything of the touch-me-not, then it was the love the flowers were created for, the memorial. But through it all, guiding the death bringer, holding the ward, slipping between pieces of Shockwave like a stiletto, like a scalpel, surrounding him like a lover's embrace, was Blurr, Blurr, Blurr.
It was not painless.
But there was comfort in it, and Blurr in it, and that, that was so much more than Shockwave had ever hoped he'd get.
He felt himself fading, ebbing, and it made for a peaceful triumph.
Frag Primus.
Frag Sentinel.
Frag them, and their judgment and torment and all the hate and pain and fear and doubt they'd steeped him in.
Here at the end, there was comfort, companionship, fidelity.
Here, at the end, Shockwave belonged only to his knight, only to Blurr. No one would ever be able to claim him again, and when oblivion slipped over him, it came with peace and gratitude and love.
Shockwave woke up and immediately regretted doing so.
Every single part of him ached, at best. His hands throbbed, his wings screamed, his right optic felt like someone jammed a pickaxe into it. His throat burned like he'd been trying to scream out his vocal processor.
For a long, awake-but-less-aware moment, the only halfway logical explanation Shockwave could come up with for all of that was-- he must have been to some bacchanal of a party, had far too much to drink, and passed out sometime before, during, or after rolling down a mountain made of Cybertron's sharpest, pointiest rocks.
But he was awake, and the only way to stop the pain was to get up and find a potion or a healer, so Shockwave shoved himself upright, and put a hand to his helm in the vague hope that this was one of the kinds of headache that improved by putting pressure on it. The stump of his smallest finger slipped into his empty optic socket and--
What.
His what.
His claws should skate over the muzzle of his head, his palm should press over the point where his optic rested in his closed mouth.
But Shockwave stared down at his hand.
His hand.
His hand, corpse-gray and coated in fine ash or dust.
It was a hand, blunt fingers-- the smallest missing, as though it had been pinched off and torn away-- just a normal hand. His hand. A mech's perfectly normal horribly damaged right hand.
He pulled his left hand up level and-- it still wasn't claws.
The smallest finger was a ruin, again, worn or maybe melted down to bare struts, terrible scoring along the side and heel of it.
Hands.
With-- fingers. Not a full count, but with evidence of where they should all go.
Shockwave had hands.
His hands flew to his face.
Helm, brow, optic, socket, cheek, horrifying jagged tear, nose, mouth--
Mouth!
Normal, normal, ordinary mouth! With lips and teeth and-- mouth!
It was not a complete inventory of features, but-- but it wasn't-- it wasn't--
And under him--
Under him, staring up, flat on his back with Shockwave straddling one of his thighs, under him, haloed in an arc of purple ash and his own sword like a headstone, was Blurr.
Blurr.
"It worked," Blurr said, barely vented in wonder, and then crowed, "Oh my god it worked?!" Shockwave was surely meant to react, to jump in and reply, but Blurr...
Blurr was so much larger, now.
"Do you understand?" Had his knight's tippets always been violet, and so dark? Shockwave thought they'd been lighter, bluer. "Shockwave! It worked!" He'd added a touch-me-not to the death-bringer potion, he'd used it to guide Predaking's fire and Damus's voice to-- to-- "You--" Shockwave was alive, because Blurr had used a memorial flower, a mourner's lasting tribute to a lost love, to direct death-bringer magic. "You aren't a demon anymore!"
And then Blurr seemed to notice what Shockwave had felt, of his face, and started fussing, asking questions, how he felt, if he was in pain, if he needed... something. Inspecting his wounds, his damage, theorizing.
Blurr had used a flower to carve Shockwave out of Primus's judgment.
It was too much.
His students-- his students had powered a memory spell that had allowed Shockwave to keep his own mind in the face of Primus's judgment.
He had been prepared to make his trial a long one, a drawn-out affair, one that would make the Council flat-out say what wasn't quite law, but Shockwave had only been able to answer Do you plead guilty? with No, before his spark lurched.
(Had it been the change that tore his hands like this? He remembered it, he remembered the pain, the pull that had started in his spark, the way his systems had shuddered and died and died and died and come back and he remembered remembering. He remembered having his wrists in shackles in his last moments as a mortal mech-- had tearing loose done this to his hands? Had he torn loose?)
Whatever Blurr had done, however he'd brewed his potion, steered his spellwork, it hadn't pulled from Shockwave's spark.
Becoming a demon was supposed to be irreversible because Primus reached out and used the magic in one's own spark to twist a mech. To turn all that magic into something-- hideous, a warning sign, unusable. To turn their magic, whether they used it or not, into strength.
Strength that summoners, hunters, could use to fight their battles for them.
Blurr's spell hadn't touched Shockwave's spark.
And Shockwave-- floundered.
Skids's spell, his students' reinforcement, shouldn't have been more powerful than Primus-- and yet. Shockwave remembered.
Had it been because Primus wanted Shockwave to remember? Wanted him in that much more pain? The only options Shockwave could conceive of, for so long, were Primus being more cruel than Shockwave had ever dared to imagine, or Primus being limited enough to be fooled by mortal mechs.
But Blurr--
Blurr took what Primus declared immutable, and undid it.
Was Blurr more powerful than Primus?
Was the sorcerer who'd created touch-me-nots more powerful than Primus?
Had Primus decided Shockwave had been a demon long enough, and it was time for some other punishment?
Had Ratchet been right all along in his belief that Primus was nothing but a fiction told to explain natural phenomena? But Shockwave had spent so, so long as a demon, as a tool, as a weapon-- if Primus hadn't done that, who had? It was too powerful a spell for a mere mortal. (But a mere mortal could undo it.)
Had Primus changed his mind, in the years Shockwave had been a demon? The Council would have had Blurr hunted down for witchcraft, not because of his spellwork but because of his speed, when Shockwave had been-- before Shockwave had been a demon. But not now. Not now, and Blurr claimed that was because of Shockwave's own school. Because of Shockwave's teachings.
It hadn't changed completely. It wasn't entirely safe. Sentinel was still out there, still hunting--
And Shockwave wasn't a demon anymore.
A mech, just a mech, a mortal, damaged mech-- he had one eye and was missing a good quarter of his fingers and he was afraid to see what had happened to his wings. He couldn't be summoned, he couldn't be compelled, and Blurr-- Blurr had just-- how much magic had Blurr poured into that spellwork? How drained was he?
"And if I..." Blurr looked up at Shockwave, stumbling out of his own musings. "Shockwave?"
They were in so much danger, and neither one of them was in any condition to fight a practice dummy, much less a knight of Sentinel's skill. They might be the only two people who knew how to reverse a demonization, and Sentinel, the Council, would kill them for that. Kill them at best, at minimum.
"Oh, no," Blurr said, softly, and reached to draw Shockwave too him. "Come here."
Blurr was so much bigger now.
His arms went all the way around Shockwave, easily, though he wrapped them around Shockwave's upper back and shoulders as though he were still all neck.
He hid his face against Blurr's chestplate, over his spark, let himself hold on, let himself ignore his own broken sobbing. He let Blurr soothe him, let Blurr try.
"You're... oh my god, you're not dead," Blurr murmured, happier than he should be. "You're alive. Could you even imagine? You're alive."
It was brilliant spellwork. Undoubtedly. It was amazing, Blurr had done something impossible, phenomenal, something Shockwave would have sold what remained of his spark for, ages ago.
But it was something that undermined the authority of Primus.
Worse, it undermined Sentinel and the Council.
Shockwave was alive, and Blurr had done it...
... And now, now?
Death might be the only safe escape for both of them.
END NOTES: The poem:
Hope is a weapon
Hope is a skill
Hope is a plant you can care for or kill
Hope is a discipline
Something you choose
Hard to stop looking for
Easy to lose
Hope isn't something to have or to take
If you cant find it, it's something you make
Make it from willpower
Make it from spite
Learn how to weaponize love in a fight
Hope is a shield and a thing to defend
End in itself and a means to an end
And the first three lines of that have been looping through my head while writing this. Because Shockwave and Blurr have such... different capabilities with hope. (Also frankly the touch-me-nots look a lot like the Lorax's trufula trees and Horton's clover.)
Okay.
So.
I know the end of this one is a little bit-- Keferon ended on a hug, visually, a beautiful embrace, and who am I to go angsting that up? But listen. Demonic magic is a lot to handle, Shockwave tells us this, and Blurr seems experienced enough to know it. Blurr was experimenting and controlling demonic magic and look at the first panels of this update again. Look at Blurr's hands, he's using even more magic. And look at Shockwave, zombie cheeses look at him, he's not just no longer a nigh-unkillable demon, he's mangled, he's a mess. He and Blurr are incredibly vulnerable right now, and they're out in the middle of nowhere with what support, what food, and only Blurr's possibly-endless money to help them, which won't help them if they can't eat it. They need rest and fuel and WAY MORE than nine large healing potions.
And Shockwave is so worried that they are out of time because this is what Shockwave first told Blurr about why he wants to die, and this is a reason that hasn't been stated in the narrative but it's... all over it, enough that it smears onto Mimics. But this? THIS is why Shockwave decided now, now, it has to be now.
And of course, Shockwave's students haunt this narrative in more ways than just Sentinel forcing Shockwave to kill (some of?) them for funsies and bigotry. Shockwave is a teacher. Who has he taught? Skids who made the thing that saved his memory. Predaking. Technically Damus, though we don't know if this was the only time (it wasn't in IDW). And while not his student? Blurr went to Shockwave's Academy.
Rung and Prima's fingerprints are all over this one, too-- is the sorcerer who made the touch-me-nots as a gesture for his dead lover more powerful than Primus? No, because that was Rung, for Prima. Or, yes, because that was Rung, and Primus is a fictional character based on a mistranslation or something.
As ever I'm just screaming ART and COLOR, but with this one I'm also screaming WORDS. Watch Blurr. Watch how long it takes him to say to Shockwave that he's alive. Because Blurr is so aware that Shockwave may not see that as a thing to celebrate, so he turns to what he thinks Shockwave might vibe with, the legitimately amazing feat of impossible magic Blurr just pulled off.
PS: I saw this and I could only think, "Hah! Now Keferon knows how it feels to look at art and go 'that's my words!'"
