27.May.06

Fool’s Paradise

by Rakshash

Author’s Note:Thanks to Syntia who pushed me into this for getting rid of my "laziness". Pffft. Me, lazy? Tchah…>_<

Submitted for the Third Bwint Fan Fiction Challenge.

Disclaimer :Don’t own Beast Wars. No profits from this fic. Boo hoo.

The stars winked down at me, oblivious of my inner turmoil.

I could view them at their full advantage, seeing that I was lying on my back facing the sky. I was also lying in a growing puddle of my own mech fluid but that played the least part in my internal conflict.

I inhaled as rivulets of mech fluid trickled down my chest and tittered weakly…the smell never grew old.

The distant sounds of battle came from afar. The spark wrenching howl of a lover torn from his beloved still echoed in my audios and I smiled. After all that I’d been through…pleasure and pain had merged into an aching euphoria at that point.

And she was dead…

When I first saw her…really saw her…she was training. Her gun pointed at the simulated target. Frozen in position.

She didn’t look deadly, or seductive, or arrogant. Not at all like the Blackarachnia everyone in the Beast Wars was to become familiar with.

Just a little puzzled. And wistful…

It wasn’t there for long…just a cycle, until Terrorsaur, blundering idiot, made a pass at her and, predictably, got blasted. She serenely took a verbal bashing from Megatron, apologized profusely and carted Terrorsaur off to a CR chamber. In command of herself, the perfect Predacon femme.

And she was back to her saucy, egotistic self. Winking at me, showing up in my lair when I least wanted to be disturbed, flirting with anyone and everyone. From Megatron who occasionally returned from a patrol with her with a sheepish look on his face, to the imbecile spotted feline in the midst of battle.

I don’t believe there was anyone on this mud-ball of a planet who’s manhood she hadn’t teased one way or the other, whether subtly or blatantly, whether in private quarters in the secrecy of night or in the heat of the battlefield.

In the beginning, at least, it bothered me. Then I realized she was testing how far she could go, and how she could use her weapons…all her weapons…to her advantage in a situation.

And that no matter how she carried on with all the other mechs, she always came to me, and me alone for help. In the first weeks I had helped her get the hang of things, shown her the lay of the land. She was too independent to completely rely on me, and indeed it never came to that. She flirted with me and I was tempted as any mech might have been. But I soon pushed that away…she was far too intelligent to be anything but a hindrance to my plans. Unfortunate…I’d thought she’d be a help, but apparently she had far too many brains to be anything but a liability to me. So I rebuffed her, she retired and we went back to bickering about everything and anything.

Then one night I returned to my lair and found her sitting there in the darkness. Not hacking at my computers. Not lurking in the shadows to startle me. Just sitting there with her black optics glinting. Puzzled. Wistful.

Perhaps she had decided seductive wasn’t working so she’d try something else.

Perhaps she wasn’t trying anything and wanted something genuine.

Whatever she was doing or not doing, she was at her most vulnerable and defenseless. And she’d come to me.

Suicide, really, and so I told her unsentimentally as I shoved her against the wall. I could have let it go…or I could have let her go on with it and let the affair run its course … but there was something alarming about the way she’d left her weapons behind and had just sat there trusting that I wouldn’t hurt her. The way she went disconcertingly limp as I grabbed her shoulders surprised me. She should have known by now that nobody could be trusted, especially a Predacon. Especially me. If she’d thought there was a connection between us simply because I supposedly "created" her she was sadly mistaken. And such mistakes could prove fatal.

For a cycle we stood like that, monitors flickering in the darkness, me leaning towards her, faces millimeters apart as I told her the folly of what she’d just tried to do.

When I finished I stood back and marveled at the destruction mere words could wreck.

She backed away and … I swear I almost kissed her. Almost. Because for a split second it hit me…I could go right ahead and accept her. I could hold her now and tell her I’d protect her and that whatever it was that had made her turn to me was perfectly justified. She would always, always turn to me and I would always be there. I could be more…much more…than puppet master here. And she would love me.

I almost did. Really.

But then…a sadistic little thought whispered to me an idea to compound the damage…and I couldn’t resist, being me…

I chuckled. She stiffened and a red flush spread on her cheeks as I laughed in her face. Being the Predacon I was I acted true to type and reveled in the misery I could cause.

I can’t explain what happened then.

She hit me repeatedly. Hard. She did have good moves, better than any mere protoform would have had.

Primus knew what she left me feeling like, and I loathed myself for feeling it. Told myself that naturally what with her being practically the only femme on the planet, it was to be expected. That every time I felt my spark throbbing with pure delirium at her approach was due to plain old-fashioned battle of the sexes.

She was back to normal later. We were at each other’s throats.

Eventually I got used to wanting her and wanting her dead at the same time.

There was still this craving, this…itch at the back of my mind that needed to be scratched away. I knew I could get rid of it if I just saw her like that again. If she would trust me enough to submit to me like that again.

But I figured I could never get back that total surrender.

When we shared minds, I admit I forced myself on her. She couldn’t take it, that I could see her every thought and read her every feeling. And I could have used that against her, I could have broken her down to that disturbingly vulnerable, unprotected creature I found so fascinating.

But, what she overlooked was, I didn’t. I never even touched her memories, no matter how curious I was. Why? It could have been that my hunger for the other side of her was accompanied by love, despite the Predacon instinct that made me reject her.

So while she screamed and raged later, she could never truly say I violated her…not the way I might have.

And I let her into my mind. I had nothing to hide. But somehow that terrified her the more.

I did torment her, I know. Drove her to madness, to the brink of suicide. I delighted in it. I was in control again. And I could dominate her the way she was controlling me ever since she showed me a side of her I could never have.

Everyone, from Megatron to the Maximals blamed me for her…shall we call it "attitude"? Her identity as a Predacon, and everything that came with it was supposedly because of me. But did anyone consider what she would have been like if I hadn’t? What, would she have been a demure little Maximal girl? Another Airazor?

I never noticed an iota of difference in her after she joined the Maximals. The deal changed and the priorities shifted…but the core consciousness and all it’s baggage remained the same.

Which was why, after her knight in shining armour enamored her and whisked her off, she returned to me.

We all have an image of ourselves. An image, not of how we are, but of how we want to be.

Hers takes her to the Maximals. To sit by the side of a noble hero, to be help-meet and Maximal soldier and bask in the reflected glory.

As if all the times she lusted after power, as if the time she nearly killed everyone at the time of the floating island, as if when she helped bring about Dinobot’s demise albeit in a minor way…as if all those times never happened and she could wipe the slate clean.

As if she could, along with the others, say that it was all Tarantulas’s fault, that it was he who reprogrammed her and it was all down to him that she was such a bad, bad girl in the past.

But truth be told I never did much tinkering with the protoform.

Because the strangest thing was, it may have been Maximal property, it may have had Maximal protection, it may even have masqueraded as a Maximal later… but it was not a Maximal.

I don’t know how a Predacon got into the works of a Maximal exploration vessel. I don’t know why Optimus didn’t have any records of her being a Predacon. If he did he didn’t do much about it except for being the most reluctant at letting Silverbolt get involved with her. Perhaps he thought her worthy of a second chance.

But there it is. She was a Predacon all along.

I don’t know why I didn’t tell Megatron. I had intended to but then…it’s always a good idea to have a card up your sleeve. Perhaps there were more Predacon protoforms hidden. Certainly Quickstrike adapted with abnormal ease to the Predacon lifestyle...and nobody even attempted a reprogramming with him.

Silverbolt with all his arguments of inner Maximal goodness must have amused her. Maybe she wanted to see how far he could go with it. And then she fell into the trap of security. Of having someone she could trust not to laugh in her face when she turned to him. My poor seductress weaved a tissue of lies to trap him, and eventually trapped herself. Faced with such blind naiveté it must have been all too easy to disregard my warnings of not trusting anyone with her own vulnerability.

I’d had a fear…long ago when we shared the same base yet couldn’t have been further apart…that she might, just might, be swayed by the Maximals someday. If she could find someone to trust. The spark’s a wild animal, it goes to the one who loves and trains it. Unless it gets shoved away.

The first time she returned to me she didn’t say anything.

I was stunned. Did she want me to kill her?

She just stood there staring at me, utterly miserable. The wistful look was there, finally, peeping out from behind her optics after so long. It inflamed me.

It was all her fault. If she’d just snapped out of her cocoon, stopped trying to be something she wasn’t…

My mouth felt sour and this time I was the one who hit her. I hit her until she couldn’t get up.

And then I held her and we sat in the moonlight.

I didn’t need to whisper, we were completely alone.

A racking sob…was that me?

And I’d thought she was the vulnerable one.

We said goodbye in like kind quite a good many times after that. I’ve lost track of how many times. She’d come when she needed me. I’d be grateful for the interlude in my work and the insecurities that came with it. Scheming is lonely work, and it was especially so after the war had dragged on for so long.

I saw her surrender willingly to me time and again. An escape from her confusion. It became a drug and each time it took a little more to get high. And I’d whisper how I’d been so stupid the first time, how I should have taken her when she came to me.

I still wanted to hurt her, that would never change. It was irresistible, she was so open to attack and I was me as I was then, inner sadistic demons and all. But now I never hurt her enough to drive her away. I think she found the pain reassuring. More reassuring than the fuzor’s sweet nothings, else she would never have come to me. If I was twisted, so was she…

I’m a good planner. But I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t think out where this was going. I suppose I had a dim idea that when my plans came to fruit, she would come back to her true senses and come with me for good. I’d accepted her after all. And that she’d eventually give me the codes to the Ark.

She wasn’t the only one living a fool’s paradise.

Oh, I’m not saying that I didn’t know she loved her little flying-puppy. She did, it was painfully obvious. They connected on a level I could never reach, so I never tried. She came to me, I beat her down then picked her back up and made it better. He came to her, she beat him down, he came again and again and again…she saw herself in that.

But I was the one she needed to wash away the guilt. The guilt that comes when you’re not true to yourself. The guilt that increased each time she betrayed him. Each time she distracted him from suspecting our trysts by flirting with Cheetor, each time she emphasized that she was a "bad girl" and nobody understood.

And now…this…

Almost exactly as I’d planned. Better, actually.

She was dead.

And I lay bleeding, gazing at the twinkling stars, wondering idly how I could have changed things. If instead of shaming her when she came to me I’d obeyed my split-second impulse. If I hadn’t succumbed to my twisted love later…if Silverbolt had never happened.

I grunted and turned over, ready to make my way back to…wherever.

The fuzor blamed me for her death…as if it wasn’t her fault, trying to re-programme herself. I’d warned her. I’d told her I’d sooner see her dead…or insane… than as a full-fledged Maximal. She wouldn’t have been happy. It was for her own good. And it would have meant…but I blocked that out. It didn’t matter now. She wanted to be a good little Maximal and she’d paid for it. I was happy, slag it. I’d wanted her dead before.

Silverbolt had loved her (that oh-so-delicious howl of misery), but never loved her the way I did. His love was based on a firm belief in an inner Maximal goodness in his "lady" that didn’t exist. His love was what drove her to me. Mine…my feelings for her were different…I’ve seen her for what she was, I’ve been inside her mind and she’s been inside mine, I’ve fought her and I’ve loved her and I’ve wanted her in a twisted way, yes, but none the less intensely and never based on something that wasn’t there.

I looked up again. The stars were getting out of focus. My mech fluid dried around me in thick clumps. Then I heard something. And it wasn’t the sound of Rampage devouring the poor fuzor.

It couldn’t be.

I transformed to beast mode and scuttled as fast as I could.

I couldn’t take in her new form, too busy with my other thoughts.

She wasn’t dead.

And she’d come back from the dead to save him.

The battle was over. The victors stood together, silhouetted against the moonlight in silence. Somebody murmured something…I knew that voice and I knew what she was saying.

I knew I wouldn’t see her again. She might as well have been dead as far as I was concerned…my witless widow, my little fool, my new Maximal with her precious epiphany. She’d crossed the Rubicon in more ways than one that night.

Not that I’d loved her. I’d never loved her.

Never.

And she’d never have come back from the dead to save me even if I had.

Or given up what she was for my sake.

After a few cycles they flew off together, and someone sobbed wildly in the remaining silence.

Was that me?

Perhaps none of us know what we truly want.

I admit I took liberties with the plot. Not my fault. My muses got trigger happy.

This was supposed to be a romance for Tarantulas…but I think it’s more of Blackarachnia’s for Silverbolt. Perhaps both.

Also I’d like to say I’ve gotten much more fonder of Tarantulas. He’s almost a favorite character now. In the top six in fact. Ah, the power of fan fiction *shakes head*.