#bullets.txt

And Perceptor awoke on a mediberth, his chestplate pried open and the sound of Nickel sobbing distant to his audials but piercing in it’s tones. And Pharma is there, his face scuffed and badly wiped clean as he takes Perceptor’s hand.

“We saved them, but.... Perceptor- Percy, Percy I’m sorry I... We tried but...”

“Where. Where is?”

“Hes gone, Percy.”, rasped Pharma. He looked over to a beeping life-sustaining unit that had four soft colors glimmering through heavy tinted glass before standing.

“They’re in their protoframes; they’ve survived... But Wheeljack couldn’t... He just didn’t have the strength. We managed to stabilize your spark, his last request was.. was to...”

“To What.”

“If it looked like he wasn’t going to make it.”, said Pharma quietly, “He told us to make sure you were stable. the bond breaking, it... It pushed your spark too hard and...”

Perceptor, horror on his faceplates, pushed himself into an upright seated position.

“He... he told us to siphon it off to him.”

“But.. But that would-”

“He was already dying, Percy. There was... There was nothing we could do. I’m so sorry.”

Perceptor felt it start in his tanks, something roiling and expanding and filling him to the tips of his servos and he thought he was going to be sick. He reached for the bin but the twist of his frame let it free-

And a sob billowed out from him like a storm breaking over the shore. He draped uselessly over the berth, hearing medics clamber in and feeling Nickel’s field and he howled his anguish into the air as he curled onto his side.

Perceptor remembered her, perched hapahazardly on Ironfist as they sailed away from the hellfire pit of Garrus 9. Remembered her climbing up on berths when the nightmares grew to be too much and remembered her tiny voice cutting like razor wire through the flickers of death and burning that sometimes rose before the optics of the unit.

His optics felt heavy and damp, and the heel of one hand moved to dry the better of the pair. Gently, ever so gently- like a child with a dusk butterfly in their clutches, he carefully scooped Verity into his hands.

He hurt. He hurt like when Ironfist had gone still and he hurt like when Top Spin and Twin Twist had gone cold and he hated how he hurt... He hated the acrid tang of regret in his intake and cradled cold little Verity in his hands.

“I’m sorry.”, he whispered.

He had no other words, no other words for an empty husk laying still in his hands like petrified bones lost to time.

They found him, asleep with his back against the table. Sitting on the floor with his legs crossed- Verity’s body curled on his shoulder and the temperature of ice.

A medic reached out, frowning, to pluck the dead organic from Perceptor’s frame only to find a pistol’s barrel nestled perfectly between their surprised optics.

They lay side by side, cold and dead and grey and all the things they were never supposed to become.

Perceptor stumbled, his vision blurring as he moved closer and closer and ever closer until he could reach out and touch them- visceral and real like faith never had been for him.

Like longing never had been for him.

Like hope.

And he lay his hand on Rodimus’s forehelm, petting the young Prime as the apologies flowed unbidden and unstoppable until he felt like the weight of his own words would pull him down into a darkness he knew all too well.

And then, he turned.

Drift smiled even in death- they both did. the reckless fools.

Perceptor’s steps faltered as he moved away from Rodimus to the ex-Con in repose.

No words were spoken; there were none left to say. None left to remember.

Perceptor said nothing as he leaned down, a brush of lipplates to lipplates before he straightened. He staggered to the wall, his back hitting it and he slid down to sit upon the floor and stare- stare into the yawning wave of grey slowly rising in his vision and he begged the shadows coiled in it to take him too.

He knew they wouldn’t. He was built- rebuilt to endure.

And endure he would.