Spirits Of Another Sort
Oct. 23rd, 2025 07:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hat_writes_stuffTitle: Spirits Of Another Sort
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Transformers Mystic Tales AU
Characters: Shockwave, Blurr
Word Count: 3,740
Rating: Everybody?
Pairing(s): Shockwave/Blurr
Warnings: The Usual Spellbound Suicidal Ideation Warnings, body horror (mild by my standards)
Author's Notes: So, again, as usual, Spellbound deals with themes of suicide, assisted suicide, the right to choosing your own exit, recovery, recovery thwarted, et cetera. This fic is no different. but it does end much less ambiguously than anything I've written for Spellbound so far. Chronologically, we are after this update, but not yet at the abandoned shrine of the next.
I was trying to write some 'so hey since it's the last chance, do you wanna fool around' porn set in that little walk, but Shockwave and Blurr were not cooperating, they kept on wanting to say emotionally charged things at each other instead. And then I saw this post and whoever you are, Anon, with your Maleficent AU, good job cos I've been writing for hours.
Basically I went, "Okay, what if they were both mutilated and groundsick about it?"
I can't wait to see what Blurr's actual deal is, but, y'know. This was a fun exercise in What If.
Summary: Shockwave is out of time.
Blurr has been keeping a secret.
This is a canon-divergence AU for Keferon's Spellbound AU wherein Blurr is a fae/fairy with his wings removed. This one has an actual hopeful/happy-for-now ending!
Blurr was uncharacteristically quiet, for much of the trip out of town. There was a shrine, an abandoned one, that... felt appropriate, as a final resting place, and would be fairly safe if the spell was too powerful, or the death-bringer magic was, and Blurr could only protect himself, rather than contain it all.
Blurr hadn't even said anything about one death-bringer's magic not being enough; Shockwave knew they needed two, but hadn't quite told Blurr about Damus's voice, yet.
He'd have to.
He was out of time.
They were maybe half a megacycle away from the shrine when Blurr finally spoke.
"Will you tell me about that guy?"
"He's dangerous, and you should avoid him." True. And fulfilled his obligation to answer his summoner honestly-- though as Blurr had asked will you tell me, Shockwave could have just said No, I won't. "Why do you ask?"
"He hurt you. He used you. I think he might have been the one to hurt your students, to use you to try to wipe your work out of the world. He threatened me, when he threatened to summon you. He's taking the last of my time with you away from me." Blurr vented, slowly. "So if you want to tell me to avoid him, I'm going to need a much better reason than 'he's dangerous.' I'm dangerous. And I don't know what your knightly vows were, but mine included opposing evil wherever I find it."
"He... was promoted to my place in the Senate, after." Shockwave gestured at himself. "He's a hunter himself, and a politician, and powerful. Even if you have to run to the other side of the world, you should avoid him. Don't confront him, Blurr."
"I don't want to confront him," Blurr said, but it was said just wrong for Shockwave to relax. "I want to find him and kill him."
"Blurr, no--"
"Why not?"
"Because you aren't a murderer, for one thing," Shockwave started, but Blurr shrugged it off, with an odd twitch of his shoulders.
"I'd make it official, a challenge between knights, so it isn't murder. And it sounds like someone needs to fight this guy-- I was charged to protect the defenseless, to act with honor, and to oppose evil wherever I find it. I'm not a politician or a teacher, I don't fight evil with words. I fight evil with my sword."
"You are a true knight," Shockwave said-- aiming to soothe, even if he did believe it patently true. "But Sentinel isn't. If you lose--"
Blurr turned from Shockwave-- hurrying up the road just a bit-- his shoulders twitching again. "Then I lose," and Shockwave should have focused on what Blurr said, and not on how Blurr moved, not on how unnatural that twitch looked without--
-- without wings.
With only Blurr's tippets streaming in the breeze, a pale imitation of wings. A wisp of an echo, in cloth.
Shockwave reached out with one excuse for a hand, to touch Blurr's back-- to nearly cover Blurr's back. Blurr obligingly stopped, always hungry for contact, but this time Shockwave could feel the motion, the twitch.
"Grouders' backs can't move like that," Shockwave said, as gently as he could.
"... Not on the road," Blurr said, and wrapped his hands around Shockwave's wrist to tow him off to one side-- through trees, into a little clearing. Again, he turned his back to Shockwave, but his hands worked at the fittings of his cuirass.
"Blurr!"
"I don't know what it looks like," Blurr said, holding up his chestplate-- and letting the back of his cuirass fall.
Shockwave's scandalized protests died in his throat.
Blurr's back was scraped-- or burned, on closer inspection, a swath of dug-in gouges melted glassy, as though someone had somehow taken a smelting-hot cable or chain and dragged it over Blurr's back. That would have been bad enough, that someone had attacked Blurr that way, that the injury hadn't seemed to heal properly-- bare silvery metal showed through in every scar-- but the damage ran right over...
They weren't even stumps.
They'd been cut away too close, burned away.
But at one point?
Blurr had had wings.
Shockwave touched the-- remains of them with the barest brush of his claws, watched how the amputated mechanisms worked themselves fruitlessly at his touch.
"What--" No. No, he could at least be as kind as Blurr tried to be. "Will you tell me what happened?"
"He carved my wings off with a copper chain," Blurr said, softly, sadly.
... with a copper chain. "Blurr-- are you-- are you a fae creature?"
It would explain-- Blurr had a tendency towards thoughtlessness, impulsivity, but he also tried to be careful with his words. Shockwave had heard that the fae were liars, and that the fae couldn't lie but could misdirect, and that the fae were bound by their oaths-- as surely as if they were bound in copper chains. He'd also heard, more concretely, that the fae were godless beings, who had somehow created themselves, or perhaps were the creations of fallen Primes, but-- whatever they were, however they came into being, they lived outside the light of Primus. If Blurr were some sort of fae, it would explain a great deal about him, how he spoke, how he acted, what he did and didn't seem to fear.
Blurr's shoulders hitched up. "I was."
"You... were."
"Do you know what we call a fairy without wings?" Blurr asked, shifting to pick up his cuirass, to cover himself again.
"Grounded?" Shockwave guessed.
"Mortal," Blurr corrected, "sometimes just dead."
Suddenly, Blurr's almost-fear of heights-- or of not having enough ground to stand on at great heights, made sense, too. Shockwave had lost his wings, but he longed for the sky; Blurr had lost his wings and immortality. Fear of falling could outweigh longing for the sky, if falling could suddenly kill you.
Shockwave, very carefully, moved to help Blurr fasten his cuirass, so Blurr didn't have to twist to do it himself. "He was going to kill you," Shockwave said. "He hunted you like any monster, and-- it was Sentinel? Who cut your wings off? That-- I wasn't raised around many flyers, but I do know nearly every flyer culture considers amputation of the wings to be an almost blasphemous level of mutilation..."
"Because it's something barbarian grounders do to flyers before killing them," Blurr agreed, "because it's the only way for a mortal mechanism to kill one of us. It's probably why flyers got a reputation as witches, too, ages ago."
"... I still wish I were surprised Sentinel would do such a thing," Shockwave said, and settled a massive hand on Blurr's shoulder. Blurr, for his part, reached up to hold Shockwave's hand in place, to press his claws closer. "You survived."
"I don't think he expected me to run."
"... With an injury like that? Blurr, I'm impressed you could run, and I've seen you run. You--" Primus, but Shockwave wanted to hold him, to pull him into a hug. But he had to leave Blurr more freedom of movement than that, just in case. "You should keep running. He would have killed you. If-- if he realizes who you are, that you're not just my summoner but a monster who got away, he will kill you."
If there were any way Sentinel could separate a demon from their summoner without killing the summoner, he'd do that, and use Shockwave to kill Blurr. To hurt them both as badly as possible, in retaliation for embarrassing him.
"I've been mortal long enough that-- I don't want to die," Blurr assured him. "I've just realized... there are moments, circumstances, where it might be worth it. Things I'd be willing to die for."
"You're worth a hundred of Sentinel."
"Well, that depends on how many monsters he's killed," Blurr countered. "If it's close to a hundred, it's worth the risk to stop him, isn't it?"
"I don't suppose you'd give your word you'd stay away from him, as a last request?"
Blurr shook his head. "You don't have anything to offer for it."
"Is that how it works?" Shockwave asked, curious despite himself. "It has to be some sort of deal?"
"More like a contract." Blurr at least, at last, moved to lean against Shockwave. "A verbal contract, but one I'd be bound by-- and one where you have to be very careful of your exact words and my exact words. You got lucky, you know, promising to do whatever I want, rather than whatever I summoned you for-- I might have been putting off getting my own tasks done because you..." Blurr shuttered his optics, and hugged Shockwave's arm to his chest. "Your needs have been a little more important. And now they have a time limit."
"... I can't offer to stay," Shockwave said, even if he knew Blurr wanted it, likely more than anthing else Shockwave might do for him. "I can't offer you that in exchange for staying away from Sentinel, because he won't stop. Blurr, you can't-- you can't go somewhere he can't follow, can you?"
Blurr hissed in a vent. "I. That. Depends on a lot of things. Not as I am now," he offered.
Which was not an absolute no. "What would you need? Could I get you what you needed?" Blurr had-- mostly-- done the same for Shockwave, after all. "I want you safe-- that's part of what's making me hurry."
"He couldn't follow into fairy lands," Blurr said, but it-- felt like it was hedging. "I'd be safe from him there. You'd be safe from him, there. But fairy lands aren't magical, happy places, and I don't know that you'd like them much. Maybe you'd try to fix them, for all I know. Maybe you could. I could bring you with me, easily, no trouble at all, but without my wings? There's no getting there."
"Does it have to be your original wings?" If he could find Ratchet, he might, might be skilled enough to build a replacement pair...
"I have no idea. And I don't know if Sentinel kept my wings as a trophy or smelted them down as unclean monster-stuff."
Shockwave would honestly guess Sentinel had kept them as a trophy, and tried to recall if he'd seen anything, in his time under Sentinel's thumb, that in hindsight looked like it could have been part of Blurr. Nothing stuck out, unfortunately, because Shockwave's time under Sentinel's thumb had largely been an exercise in torment and misery.
"You might not be allowed to foul those lands with a demon, anyway," Shockwave sighed, and Blurr...
Blurr twisted in Shockwave's arms, hands splayed on Shockwave's chest, optics nearly blazing up at him. His face was a study in such hunger, such vicious determination, that for the first time since noticing his new summoner was easily the prettiest person Shockwave had ever seen, Blurr looked fae.
"If I were everything I should be," Blurr purred, or possibly growled, and either way Shockwave felt remarkably consumable in the face of it, "I could peel you right out of this fantastic shell and breathe life into your mortal corpse before your spark stopped spinning."
"Hgnk," Shockwave said, intelligently, before he processed Blurr's actual words. "You could-- this. This is-- Primus did this, it's immutable, absolute-- fantastic shell? You couldn't..."
... So perhaps he hadn't processed Blurr's words well.
"I summoned you," Blurr said. "You're mine. What the summoning ritual lets me do as a mortal pales in comparison to what I could do as a proper fae with that-- that right to you. ... It's wrong," and the blazing fervor went out of Blurr. "I know that now. It's wrong, mortals and mechs and monsters and demons are all people, just as much as I am, and I have to use the power over you I've got honorably. But if I were whole-- you're mine, not Primus's. Primus took your face away and turned his face from you, right? You're mine. So it wouldn't be a matter of raw power, but of whose claim over you has more power. And my claim wins there. You're mine."
Shockwave shivered.
"Is it true that the fairy lands are outside the light of Primus? Are they outside his reach?"
Blurr tucked himself against Shockwave much more normally. "I don't know. I don't understand Primus, not really. There's never been a fae Prime, at least, or a fae demon."
"And nothing one might call an act of god?"
"We call those 'natural disasters,'" but Blurr said it fondly, "and we ward against them pretty capably."
"Blurr..." Shockwave closed his mouth over his optic for a moment, before looking down at his knight. "Blurr. I don't actually want to die."
"I know," Blurr said, which took a great deal of the wind out of Shockwave's sails.
"You know? How?"
With a slow vent, Blurr said, "I saw you with that other demon, the death-bringer with the destructive voice. I-- I would have shown myself eventually, I just-- you were teaching him and it was beautiful, I just wanted to watch you do what you love, for a bit."
... So he knew about Damus's voice. That would explain why he hadn't stopped to protest that they were missing half their ingredients. "I meant to tell you I had the second half..."
"But then we would have had a reason to stop looking for a farshee," Blurr said. "You put it off. You didn't want the potion immediately-- not until Sentinel. Because-- because with healing, with care, with kindness and probably also fuel and rest and beauty around you, with the circumstances that were so bad changed, maybe living starts to feel a little less like terrible torture." Blurr offered up a wry little smile. "Adjusting to mortality took some time and doing."
"I want to go somewhere neither Sentinel nor Primus can reach me again," Shockwave said. "I thought death was the only option. If there's another place that can give me that safety..."
For a moment, Blurr blazed again-- and then crumpled. "I'm broken," he said, and Shockwave gathered his knight up, held him close and waited for Blurr to wind his arms around Shockwave's neck of his own accord. "I can't. I would if I could, but I'm mortal."
"Without your wings," Shockwave agreed. "But if-- if you had them..."
"I'd have to find them," Blurr muttered into Shockwave's neck. "I have no idea where that crankshaft lives, much less where he'd keep his sick trophies. And that's assuming he keeps sick trophies."
"I know where he lives," Shockwave said. "I know the layout of his house. I can't remember ever seeing fairy wings there, but that doesn't mean much-- I wasn't critiquing his decor, I was grieving. At best." More like despairing.
"Shockwave, no-- no, I won't order you to go rob his house, he hurt you, he wants to hurt you more, I heard him--"
"But I'm yours, right now," Shockwave said. "I'm your demon, you summoned me. Until I die, you die, or you dismiss me, I'm yours. Sentinel can threaten me, he can threaten you, he can say all sorts of terrible things, but while I'm yours, he can't really stop me.
"And... we could make another contract. Knowing what we know now. Or an addition to the original. If you can get me to a safe place, where Sentinel can't reach me and Primus probably can't, I'll consider that a fair alternative to my destruction. And... if I get you your wings back, which I understand is the very key to that safe place..." Shockwave smoothed a hand over Blurr's back, remembering those still-livid wounds and wondering how long he'd been out in the mortal world. "If I get you your wings back, you'll give me mine?"
"... As you are now," Blurr asked, fingertips trailing down Shockwave's neck, "or as you were before? I'm agreeing-- I am agreeing either way I just want to know."
"... You could do either?" That was somehow more impressive than, as Blurr put it, peeling him out of his demonic shell. (That hadn't been quite how Blurr put it.)
"Shockwave, restored, with a claim on you, I could turn you into anything. Your old self, this self with wings on, a Predacon, I could turn you into a shapeshifter and let you decide what to look like at any given moment. But I-- I'm also-- I thought I'd have more time to work on it..."
"Blurr?"
"I'm sure there's a way to separate the mech from the demon with the magic I can use now. I just-- I just haven't hit on it yet."
But Shockwave shook his head. "I wouldn't want to be mortal here. The danger is too great."
"You get used to it," Blurr said, smiling just a little. "But it's just as well-- I'd want you to drink so many healing potions first, and eat a good meal-- a feast of a meal-- and sleep, so so so much sleep. And-- every other good thing that might help what's inside you. Baths? I wonder if there's a bathhouse that would cooperate..."
"Is it so important that you try?" But Shockwave couldn't help but like seeing Blurr trying to work out a problem, even if it ought to be beyond him.
"Not for you, maybe, not if-- not since you're willing to let me keep you if I can keep you away from your enemies," Blurr allowed. "But-- that other demon, the death-bringer?"
"Damus."
"Was he happy? In his work in his place as someone's demon?"
Damus had been delighted to hear that Shockwave liked 'his mech.' "You'd help other demons? You'd-- try to restore them, to free them?"
"I can't fix their memories," Blurr said, "so the people Primus destroyed stay gone. But-- but it was-- it was something I was thinking of doing after anyway. For some... meaning. Before Sentinel turned up and threatened to finish killing me so he could keep on torturing you. Really can't we kill that guy? We could kill that guy I'd be happy to kill that guy with you killing a mutual enemy is a very traditional date activity where I come from--"
"Not where I'm from!" Shockwave laughed. "Ask me again when we both have our wings back," he said, because that-- if Blurr had his wings back, he'd be powerful enough to defend himself against most things Sentinel could bring to bear, and Shockwave could get between Blurr and any copper weapons.
"When we both have our wings back," Blurr said, pulling out of the hug to smile up at Shockwave like a sunrise. "Can I-- can-- may I-- I'd like to kiss you right now though," Blurr concluded, blushing. "If you want. If you'll let me."
... Oh.
Oh, Blurr had said date activity and Shockwave had said ask me again when, and that-- that acknowledged the... the things Shockwave had been very carefully not thinking about since he realized his impossibly-pretty summoner had a marked tendency to just.
Touch him.
Without fear or disgust.
(He'd damn near broken down weeping the first time Blurr had thoughtlessly hugged him.)
"I... am surprised you want to," Shockwave admitted. "I know what I look like." Especially compared to what Blurr looked like.
"Big," Blurr seemed to agree, only with very bright optics and an intensity that... didn't want to fit in such a brief word. "Big and tall and strong and it is so-- the way you can just-- your arms are as long as I am tall," Blurr said, and swallowed, and went on, "and you can just scoop me up and carry me around that's-- a lot for a racer for someone used to keeping pace with people. And your neck is. I like your neck. I like your neck a lot. Long and thick and graceful and you, you generally you're so graceful. I don't normally see people as big as you be half so graceful and it's..." And Blurr's gaze flicked down, though he probably couldn't see much of Shockwave other than his neck, and back up to Shockwave's face again. "... Yeah. I know what you look like, too."
And Shockwave had to take a moment.
Because Blurr, his knight, his beautiful little knight who was perhaps so pretty because he was a fae creature, seemed to like how Shockwave looked.
"Why-- why don't you think I'm hideous?"
"Wildly different cultural standards?" Blurr offered. "Also regardless of how you look, I happen to really like how you feel."
Shockwave suddenly had a lot more questions about just how different fairy lands, fairy cultures, were.
But-- but.
But.
"One kiss," he concluded. "Soft, please. For now, with an option to more... later. I need-- processing time."
"I understand that," Blurr said. "I-- I think I need to have a long run and a long cry and either a stiff drink or a very rich dessert. Unfortunately we're camping and I'd feel bad running off after the last two and leaving you alone--"
Shockwave put a claw to Blurr's lips.
"Kiss me," he said, "and we'll go on to the shrine and camp there. Have your run, and your cry, and come back, and-- we can recharge together," which they'd been doing more often, with Shockwave feeling safe enough to actually sleep. "If you can wait until we're further from here, safer, for your drink or dessert, I won't complain about the cost."
"Even if I buy you three-to-ten for every one of mine?"
Blurr's smile seemed firmly back, and genuine again.
"I don't need to eat," Shockwave reminded.
Blurr stretched up and pressed a kiss-- soft and sweet, but with his lips parted, his teeth just barely there-- to the corner of Shockwave's jaws. "But I want to give."
Blurr had just kissed him, like it was no hardship at all, like it was-- like Shockwave was truly desirable.
"I. I have heard it's rude and borderline dangerous to refuse a fairy's gifts," Shockwave allowed, trying not to sound as stunned as he felt.
"Mm, well, there you go," Blurr said, and nuzzled at Shockwave's neck-- but didn't kiss again. (Would he wait until Shockwave asked for more?) "You wouldn't want to be rude now would you?"
"No more so than you'd tolerate," Shockwave said, and--
And, with several caveats as to where and how, Shockwave let himself want to live.
ORIGINAL END NOTES:Do I want to be just screaming about the latest update? (Which does not appear to actually be tagged?) Yes, yes I do, my god the colors, the lighting, Blurr's tippets, I strongly suspect I know whose house Blurr let himself into, also the deep TFA-based irony of any Blurr going 'it's fine as long as you're not afraid of dark, confined spaces.' The way Blurr curls up on top of Shockwave, once Shockwave is asleep, so he can be absolutely sure he'll at least know if Shockwave wakes up first and tries to end himself.
BUT NO. Nope! Here I am with references for my fairy bullshit!
Anon proposes an AU. At which point I says to Celaeno, I says, "Okay but what if that doesn't just make him wingless but mortal?" IE, Fae Blurr is just Spellbound Blurr, but with extra explanations? Such as:
Why Blurr is so damn mysterious. And also he spends so, so much money. Just scads of money. While Shockave wants to go higher, Blurr wishes there were more solid ground to go with the view. Shockwave doesn't approve of how much money (and Blurr seems to know a lot about fairy lands, also).
(ALSO. In that comic. "I'm not going to take your soul to a land of magic and happiness" is some Girl Genius levels of foreshadowing, Keferon! Ahem.)
Blurr's expression at the end, when Shockwave reasonably-enough says that he doesn't want Blurr to repeat his fate? That is not the expression of someone who is all that worried about what Primus will do to him. And in the point-of-divergence comic, Blurr is just VERY ready to kill Sentinel.
And of course, going all the way back to the second comic, we have some Exact Words.
In conclusion, maybe Blurr is a fairy and just hasn't said anything about it yet!
For the record, cos I don't want to go that far and because Celaeno asked, if they manage to find Blurr's wings, and they're intact, just sort of putting them over the sockets/connections would let them heal back onto him, good as new, because Fae Magic. The scars on his back from the copper chain, however, are probably permanent.
I used copper as my 'cold iron' because it's a Discworld reference (Lords and Ladies, the Fair Folk have copper-based blood that oxidizes green) and iron wouldn't make sense for TFs. I would have used whatever makes energon pink, because iron makes human blood red, but uh. Does anyone know what makes energon pink? I will change it if so.
NOTES AS OF MAY 1 2026: So, yeah, Keferon may have been giggling at me, but hey, I had fun!
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Transformers Mystic Tales AU
Characters: Shockwave, Blurr
Word Count: 3,740
Rating: Everybody?
Pairing(s): Shockwave/Blurr
Warnings: The Usual Spellbound Suicidal Ideation Warnings, body horror (mild by my standards)
Author's Notes: So, again, as usual, Spellbound deals with themes of suicide, assisted suicide, the right to choosing your own exit, recovery, recovery thwarted, et cetera. This fic is no different. but it does end much less ambiguously than anything I've written for Spellbound so far. Chronologically, we are after this update, but not yet at the abandoned shrine of the next.
I was trying to write some 'so hey since it's the last chance, do you wanna fool around' porn set in that little walk, but Shockwave and Blurr were not cooperating, they kept on wanting to say emotionally charged things at each other instead. And then I saw this post and whoever you are, Anon, with your Maleficent AU, good job cos I've been writing for hours.
Basically I went, "Okay, what if they were both mutilated and groundsick about it?"
I can't wait to see what Blurr's actual deal is, but, y'know. This was a fun exercise in What If.
Summary: Shockwave is out of time.
Blurr has been keeping a secret.
This is a canon-divergence AU for Keferon's Spellbound AU wherein Blurr is a fae/fairy with his wings removed. This one has an actual hopeful/happy-for-now ending!
Blurr was uncharacteristically quiet, for much of the trip out of town. There was a shrine, an abandoned one, that... felt appropriate, as a final resting place, and would be fairly safe if the spell was too powerful, or the death-bringer magic was, and Blurr could only protect himself, rather than contain it all.
Blurr hadn't even said anything about one death-bringer's magic not being enough; Shockwave knew they needed two, but hadn't quite told Blurr about Damus's voice, yet.
He'd have to.
He was out of time.
They were maybe half a megacycle away from the shrine when Blurr finally spoke.
"Will you tell me about that guy?"
"He's dangerous, and you should avoid him." True. And fulfilled his obligation to answer his summoner honestly-- though as Blurr had asked will you tell me, Shockwave could have just said No, I won't. "Why do you ask?"
"He hurt you. He used you. I think he might have been the one to hurt your students, to use you to try to wipe your work out of the world. He threatened me, when he threatened to summon you. He's taking the last of my time with you away from me." Blurr vented, slowly. "So if you want to tell me to avoid him, I'm going to need a much better reason than 'he's dangerous.' I'm dangerous. And I don't know what your knightly vows were, but mine included opposing evil wherever I find it."
"He... was promoted to my place in the Senate, after." Shockwave gestured at himself. "He's a hunter himself, and a politician, and powerful. Even if you have to run to the other side of the world, you should avoid him. Don't confront him, Blurr."
"I don't want to confront him," Blurr said, but it was said just wrong for Shockwave to relax. "I want to find him and kill him."
"Blurr, no--"
"Why not?"
"Because you aren't a murderer, for one thing," Shockwave started, but Blurr shrugged it off, with an odd twitch of his shoulders.
"I'd make it official, a challenge between knights, so it isn't murder. And it sounds like someone needs to fight this guy-- I was charged to protect the defenseless, to act with honor, and to oppose evil wherever I find it. I'm not a politician or a teacher, I don't fight evil with words. I fight evil with my sword."
"You are a true knight," Shockwave said-- aiming to soothe, even if he did believe it patently true. "But Sentinel isn't. If you lose--"
Blurr turned from Shockwave-- hurrying up the road just a bit-- his shoulders twitching again. "Then I lose," and Shockwave should have focused on what Blurr said, and not on how Blurr moved, not on how unnatural that twitch looked without--
-- without wings.
With only Blurr's tippets streaming in the breeze, a pale imitation of wings. A wisp of an echo, in cloth.
Shockwave reached out with one excuse for a hand, to touch Blurr's back-- to nearly cover Blurr's back. Blurr obligingly stopped, always hungry for contact, but this time Shockwave could feel the motion, the twitch.
"Grouders' backs can't move like that," Shockwave said, as gently as he could.
"... Not on the road," Blurr said, and wrapped his hands around Shockwave's wrist to tow him off to one side-- through trees, into a little clearing. Again, he turned his back to Shockwave, but his hands worked at the fittings of his cuirass.
"Blurr!"
"I don't know what it looks like," Blurr said, holding up his chestplate-- and letting the back of his cuirass fall.
Shockwave's scandalized protests died in his throat.
Blurr's back was scraped-- or burned, on closer inspection, a swath of dug-in gouges melted glassy, as though someone had somehow taken a smelting-hot cable or chain and dragged it over Blurr's back. That would have been bad enough, that someone had attacked Blurr that way, that the injury hadn't seemed to heal properly-- bare silvery metal showed through in every scar-- but the damage ran right over...
They weren't even stumps.
They'd been cut away too close, burned away.
But at one point?
Blurr had had wings.
Shockwave touched the-- remains of them with the barest brush of his claws, watched how the amputated mechanisms worked themselves fruitlessly at his touch.
"What--" No. No, he could at least be as kind as Blurr tried to be. "Will you tell me what happened?"
"He carved my wings off with a copper chain," Blurr said, softly, sadly.
... with a copper chain. "Blurr-- are you-- are you a fae creature?"
It would explain-- Blurr had a tendency towards thoughtlessness, impulsivity, but he also tried to be careful with his words. Shockwave had heard that the fae were liars, and that the fae couldn't lie but could misdirect, and that the fae were bound by their oaths-- as surely as if they were bound in copper chains. He'd also heard, more concretely, that the fae were godless beings, who had somehow created themselves, or perhaps were the creations of fallen Primes, but-- whatever they were, however they came into being, they lived outside the light of Primus. If Blurr were some sort of fae, it would explain a great deal about him, how he spoke, how he acted, what he did and didn't seem to fear.
Blurr's shoulders hitched up. "I was."
"You... were."
"Do you know what we call a fairy without wings?" Blurr asked, shifting to pick up his cuirass, to cover himself again.
"Grounded?" Shockwave guessed.
"Mortal," Blurr corrected, "sometimes just dead."
Suddenly, Blurr's almost-fear of heights-- or of not having enough ground to stand on at great heights, made sense, too. Shockwave had lost his wings, but he longed for the sky; Blurr had lost his wings and immortality. Fear of falling could outweigh longing for the sky, if falling could suddenly kill you.
Shockwave, very carefully, moved to help Blurr fasten his cuirass, so Blurr didn't have to twist to do it himself. "He was going to kill you," Shockwave said. "He hunted you like any monster, and-- it was Sentinel? Who cut your wings off? That-- I wasn't raised around many flyers, but I do know nearly every flyer culture considers amputation of the wings to be an almost blasphemous level of mutilation..."
"Because it's something barbarian grounders do to flyers before killing them," Blurr agreed, "because it's the only way for a mortal mechanism to kill one of us. It's probably why flyers got a reputation as witches, too, ages ago."
"... I still wish I were surprised Sentinel would do such a thing," Shockwave said, and settled a massive hand on Blurr's shoulder. Blurr, for his part, reached up to hold Shockwave's hand in place, to press his claws closer. "You survived."
"I don't think he expected me to run."
"... With an injury like that? Blurr, I'm impressed you could run, and I've seen you run. You--" Primus, but Shockwave wanted to hold him, to pull him into a hug. But he had to leave Blurr more freedom of movement than that, just in case. "You should keep running. He would have killed you. If-- if he realizes who you are, that you're not just my summoner but a monster who got away, he will kill you."
If there were any way Sentinel could separate a demon from their summoner without killing the summoner, he'd do that, and use Shockwave to kill Blurr. To hurt them both as badly as possible, in retaliation for embarrassing him.
"I've been mortal long enough that-- I don't want to die," Blurr assured him. "I've just realized... there are moments, circumstances, where it might be worth it. Things I'd be willing to die for."
"You're worth a hundred of Sentinel."
"Well, that depends on how many monsters he's killed," Blurr countered. "If it's close to a hundred, it's worth the risk to stop him, isn't it?"
"I don't suppose you'd give your word you'd stay away from him, as a last request?"
Blurr shook his head. "You don't have anything to offer for it."
"Is that how it works?" Shockwave asked, curious despite himself. "It has to be some sort of deal?"
"More like a contract." Blurr at least, at last, moved to lean against Shockwave. "A verbal contract, but one I'd be bound by-- and one where you have to be very careful of your exact words and my exact words. You got lucky, you know, promising to do whatever I want, rather than whatever I summoned you for-- I might have been putting off getting my own tasks done because you..." Blurr shuttered his optics, and hugged Shockwave's arm to his chest. "Your needs have been a little more important. And now they have a time limit."
"... I can't offer to stay," Shockwave said, even if he knew Blurr wanted it, likely more than anthing else Shockwave might do for him. "I can't offer you that in exchange for staying away from Sentinel, because he won't stop. Blurr, you can't-- you can't go somewhere he can't follow, can you?"
Blurr hissed in a vent. "I. That. Depends on a lot of things. Not as I am now," he offered.
Which was not an absolute no. "What would you need? Could I get you what you needed?" Blurr had-- mostly-- done the same for Shockwave, after all. "I want you safe-- that's part of what's making me hurry."
"He couldn't follow into fairy lands," Blurr said, but it-- felt like it was hedging. "I'd be safe from him there. You'd be safe from him, there. But fairy lands aren't magical, happy places, and I don't know that you'd like them much. Maybe you'd try to fix them, for all I know. Maybe you could. I could bring you with me, easily, no trouble at all, but without my wings? There's no getting there."
"Does it have to be your original wings?" If he could find Ratchet, he might, might be skilled enough to build a replacement pair...
"I have no idea. And I don't know if Sentinel kept my wings as a trophy or smelted them down as unclean monster-stuff."
Shockwave would honestly guess Sentinel had kept them as a trophy, and tried to recall if he'd seen anything, in his time under Sentinel's thumb, that in hindsight looked like it could have been part of Blurr. Nothing stuck out, unfortunately, because Shockwave's time under Sentinel's thumb had largely been an exercise in torment and misery.
"You might not be allowed to foul those lands with a demon, anyway," Shockwave sighed, and Blurr...
Blurr twisted in Shockwave's arms, hands splayed on Shockwave's chest, optics nearly blazing up at him. His face was a study in such hunger, such vicious determination, that for the first time since noticing his new summoner was easily the prettiest person Shockwave had ever seen, Blurr looked fae.
"If I were everything I should be," Blurr purred, or possibly growled, and either way Shockwave felt remarkably consumable in the face of it, "I could peel you right out of this fantastic shell and breathe life into your mortal corpse before your spark stopped spinning."
"Hgnk," Shockwave said, intelligently, before he processed Blurr's actual words. "You could-- this. This is-- Primus did this, it's immutable, absolute-- fantastic shell? You couldn't..."
... So perhaps he hadn't processed Blurr's words well.
"I summoned you," Blurr said. "You're mine. What the summoning ritual lets me do as a mortal pales in comparison to what I could do as a proper fae with that-- that right to you. ... It's wrong," and the blazing fervor went out of Blurr. "I know that now. It's wrong, mortals and mechs and monsters and demons are all people, just as much as I am, and I have to use the power over you I've got honorably. But if I were whole-- you're mine, not Primus's. Primus took your face away and turned his face from you, right? You're mine. So it wouldn't be a matter of raw power, but of whose claim over you has more power. And my claim wins there. You're mine."
Shockwave shivered.
"Is it true that the fairy lands are outside the light of Primus? Are they outside his reach?"
Blurr tucked himself against Shockwave much more normally. "I don't know. I don't understand Primus, not really. There's never been a fae Prime, at least, or a fae demon."
"And nothing one might call an act of god?"
"We call those 'natural disasters,'" but Blurr said it fondly, "and we ward against them pretty capably."
"Blurr..." Shockwave closed his mouth over his optic for a moment, before looking down at his knight. "Blurr. I don't actually want to die."
"I know," Blurr said, which took a great deal of the wind out of Shockwave's sails.
"You know? How?"
With a slow vent, Blurr said, "I saw you with that other demon, the death-bringer with the destructive voice. I-- I would have shown myself eventually, I just-- you were teaching him and it was beautiful, I just wanted to watch you do what you love, for a bit."
... So he knew about Damus's voice. That would explain why he hadn't stopped to protest that they were missing half their ingredients. "I meant to tell you I had the second half..."
"But then we would have had a reason to stop looking for a farshee," Blurr said. "You put it off. You didn't want the potion immediately-- not until Sentinel. Because-- because with healing, with care, with kindness and probably also fuel and rest and beauty around you, with the circumstances that were so bad changed, maybe living starts to feel a little less like terrible torture." Blurr offered up a wry little smile. "Adjusting to mortality took some time and doing."
"I want to go somewhere neither Sentinel nor Primus can reach me again," Shockwave said. "I thought death was the only option. If there's another place that can give me that safety..."
For a moment, Blurr blazed again-- and then crumpled. "I'm broken," he said, and Shockwave gathered his knight up, held him close and waited for Blurr to wind his arms around Shockwave's neck of his own accord. "I can't. I would if I could, but I'm mortal."
"Without your wings," Shockwave agreed. "But if-- if you had them..."
"I'd have to find them," Blurr muttered into Shockwave's neck. "I have no idea where that crankshaft lives, much less where he'd keep his sick trophies. And that's assuming he keeps sick trophies."
"I know where he lives," Shockwave said. "I know the layout of his house. I can't remember ever seeing fairy wings there, but that doesn't mean much-- I wasn't critiquing his decor, I was grieving. At best." More like despairing.
"Shockwave, no-- no, I won't order you to go rob his house, he hurt you, he wants to hurt you more, I heard him--"
"But I'm yours, right now," Shockwave said. "I'm your demon, you summoned me. Until I die, you die, or you dismiss me, I'm yours. Sentinel can threaten me, he can threaten you, he can say all sorts of terrible things, but while I'm yours, he can't really stop me.
"And... we could make another contract. Knowing what we know now. Or an addition to the original. If you can get me to a safe place, where Sentinel can't reach me and Primus probably can't, I'll consider that a fair alternative to my destruction. And... if I get you your wings back, which I understand is the very key to that safe place..." Shockwave smoothed a hand over Blurr's back, remembering those still-livid wounds and wondering how long he'd been out in the mortal world. "If I get you your wings back, you'll give me mine?"
"... As you are now," Blurr asked, fingertips trailing down Shockwave's neck, "or as you were before? I'm agreeing-- I am agreeing either way I just want to know."
"... You could do either?" That was somehow more impressive than, as Blurr put it, peeling him out of his demonic shell. (That hadn't been quite how Blurr put it.)
"Shockwave, restored, with a claim on you, I could turn you into anything. Your old self, this self with wings on, a Predacon, I could turn you into a shapeshifter and let you decide what to look like at any given moment. But I-- I'm also-- I thought I'd have more time to work on it..."
"Blurr?"
"I'm sure there's a way to separate the mech from the demon with the magic I can use now. I just-- I just haven't hit on it yet."
But Shockwave shook his head. "I wouldn't want to be mortal here. The danger is too great."
"You get used to it," Blurr said, smiling just a little. "But it's just as well-- I'd want you to drink so many healing potions first, and eat a good meal-- a feast of a meal-- and sleep, so so so much sleep. And-- every other good thing that might help what's inside you. Baths? I wonder if there's a bathhouse that would cooperate..."
"Is it so important that you try?" But Shockwave couldn't help but like seeing Blurr trying to work out a problem, even if it ought to be beyond him.
"Not for you, maybe, not if-- not since you're willing to let me keep you if I can keep you away from your enemies," Blurr allowed. "But-- that other demon, the death-bringer?"
"Damus."
"Was he happy? In his work in his place as someone's demon?"
Damus had been delighted to hear that Shockwave liked 'his mech.' "You'd help other demons? You'd-- try to restore them, to free them?"
"I can't fix their memories," Blurr said, "so the people Primus destroyed stay gone. But-- but it was-- it was something I was thinking of doing after anyway. For some... meaning. Before Sentinel turned up and threatened to finish killing me so he could keep on torturing you. Really can't we kill that guy? We could kill that guy I'd be happy to kill that guy with you killing a mutual enemy is a very traditional date activity where I come from--"
"Not where I'm from!" Shockwave laughed. "Ask me again when we both have our wings back," he said, because that-- if Blurr had his wings back, he'd be powerful enough to defend himself against most things Sentinel could bring to bear, and Shockwave could get between Blurr and any copper weapons.
"When we both have our wings back," Blurr said, pulling out of the hug to smile up at Shockwave like a sunrise. "Can I-- can-- may I-- I'd like to kiss you right now though," Blurr concluded, blushing. "If you want. If you'll let me."
... Oh.
Oh, Blurr had said date activity and Shockwave had said ask me again when, and that-- that acknowledged the... the things Shockwave had been very carefully not thinking about since he realized his impossibly-pretty summoner had a marked tendency to just.
Touch him.
Without fear or disgust.
(He'd damn near broken down weeping the first time Blurr had thoughtlessly hugged him.)
"I... am surprised you want to," Shockwave admitted. "I know what I look like." Especially compared to what Blurr looked like.
"Big," Blurr seemed to agree, only with very bright optics and an intensity that... didn't want to fit in such a brief word. "Big and tall and strong and it is so-- the way you can just-- your arms are as long as I am tall," Blurr said, and swallowed, and went on, "and you can just scoop me up and carry me around that's-- a lot for a racer for someone used to keeping pace with people. And your neck is. I like your neck. I like your neck a lot. Long and thick and graceful and you, you generally you're so graceful. I don't normally see people as big as you be half so graceful and it's..." And Blurr's gaze flicked down, though he probably couldn't see much of Shockwave other than his neck, and back up to Shockwave's face again. "... Yeah. I know what you look like, too."
And Shockwave had to take a moment.
Because Blurr, his knight, his beautiful little knight who was perhaps so pretty because he was a fae creature, seemed to like how Shockwave looked.
"Why-- why don't you think I'm hideous?"
"Wildly different cultural standards?" Blurr offered. "Also regardless of how you look, I happen to really like how you feel."
Shockwave suddenly had a lot more questions about just how different fairy lands, fairy cultures, were.
But-- but.
But.
"One kiss," he concluded. "Soft, please. For now, with an option to more... later. I need-- processing time."
"I understand that," Blurr said. "I-- I think I need to have a long run and a long cry and either a stiff drink or a very rich dessert. Unfortunately we're camping and I'd feel bad running off after the last two and leaving you alone--"
Shockwave put a claw to Blurr's lips.
"Kiss me," he said, "and we'll go on to the shrine and camp there. Have your run, and your cry, and come back, and-- we can recharge together," which they'd been doing more often, with Shockwave feeling safe enough to actually sleep. "If you can wait until we're further from here, safer, for your drink or dessert, I won't complain about the cost."
"Even if I buy you three-to-ten for every one of mine?"
Blurr's smile seemed firmly back, and genuine again.
"I don't need to eat," Shockwave reminded.
Blurr stretched up and pressed a kiss-- soft and sweet, but with his lips parted, his teeth just barely there-- to the corner of Shockwave's jaws. "But I want to give."
Blurr had just kissed him, like it was no hardship at all, like it was-- like Shockwave was truly desirable.
"I. I have heard it's rude and borderline dangerous to refuse a fairy's gifts," Shockwave allowed, trying not to sound as stunned as he felt.
"Mm, well, there you go," Blurr said, and nuzzled at Shockwave's neck-- but didn't kiss again. (Would he wait until Shockwave asked for more?) "You wouldn't want to be rude now would you?"
"No more so than you'd tolerate," Shockwave said, and--
And, with several caveats as to where and how, Shockwave let himself want to live.
ORIGINAL END NOTES:Do I want to be just screaming about the latest update? (Which does not appear to actually be tagged?) Yes, yes I do, my god the colors, the lighting, Blurr's tippets, I strongly suspect I know whose house Blurr let himself into, also the deep TFA-based irony of any Blurr going 'it's fine as long as you're not afraid of dark, confined spaces.' The way Blurr curls up on top of Shockwave, once Shockwave is asleep, so he can be absolutely sure he'll at least know if Shockwave wakes up first and tries to end himself.
BUT NO. Nope! Here I am with references for my fairy bullshit!
Anon proposes an AU. At which point I says to Celaeno, I says, "Okay but what if that doesn't just make him wingless but mortal?" IE, Fae Blurr is just Spellbound Blurr, but with extra explanations? Such as:
Why Blurr is so damn mysterious. And also he spends so, so much money. Just scads of money. While Shockave wants to go higher, Blurr wishes there were more solid ground to go with the view. Shockwave doesn't approve of how much money (and Blurr seems to know a lot about fairy lands, also).
(ALSO. In that comic. "I'm not going to take your soul to a land of magic and happiness" is some Girl Genius levels of foreshadowing, Keferon! Ahem.)
Blurr's expression at the end, when Shockwave reasonably-enough says that he doesn't want Blurr to repeat his fate? That is not the expression of someone who is all that worried about what Primus will do to him. And in the point-of-divergence comic, Blurr is just VERY ready to kill Sentinel.
And of course, going all the way back to the second comic, we have some Exact Words.
In conclusion, maybe Blurr is a fairy and just hasn't said anything about it yet!
For the record, cos I don't want to go that far and because Celaeno asked, if they manage to find Blurr's wings, and they're intact, just sort of putting them over the sockets/connections would let them heal back onto him, good as new, because Fae Magic. The scars on his back from the copper chain, however, are probably permanent.
I used copper as my 'cold iron' because it's a Discworld reference (Lords and Ladies, the Fair Folk have copper-based blood that oxidizes green) and iron wouldn't make sense for TFs. I would have used whatever makes energon pink, because iron makes human blood red, but uh. Does anyone know what makes energon pink? I will change it if so.
NOTES AS OF MAY 1 2026: So, yeah, Keferon may have been giggling at me, but hey, I had fun!
