InsaneJournal

Family
Title: Family
Author: Delilah Draken
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Transformers (2007 movie)
Pairing(s): Bumblebee/Sam Witwicky, Jazz/Starscream/Skyfire
Sequel/Series: sequel to Requiem
Status: Finished
Disclaimer: The stories are mine. All the rest - characters and locations you've heard of in TV shows, movies, books etc - belong to their respective owners. I am just borrowing them.
Summary: Some things are not told.
Author's Note: prompt #96 – Keckle at tamingthemuse

“Tell me something about your home.”

The words are softly spoken, like a mirror's breath upon frozen skin. They guide imagination's lost heir back into the empty void that sometimes is called memory. What they find there, hidden behind a veil and chained to the ground with roaring viciousness, is not a pleasant sight. It might remind the viewer of a dead animal lying beside an oft visited road, this feeling of helpless curiosity which compels one to look and look and look.

Somewhere inside a shattered dream, a young child starts to cry for mercy. But this time there is no parent there to give nonsense promises and hug the fear away. This time the child is really alone.

“Please,” is whispered, as if the speaker has waited for a very long time and now has lost even the will to keep on pleading for a treat that will never be their gift.

He sighs. The sound so worn and brittle like sunlight right before dawn. Too old to be truly dark, but also far too young to burn with the fire of a frightened nova.

“My father,” he begins; the words carefully chosen and weighted for their accurate meaning, “was a flyer.”

In his mind's eye, fighting with the fiendish sword of recollection, he can see his creator standing before his smaller child-form. The adult smiles and there is a whole universe of happy moments swimming within the blinking stars of a gentle face. With the absolute wisdom of the very young, the child knows that nothing bad would ever dare to touch him as long as he is safely tugged away in the strong arms of a parent.

The sound of a door closing make the two turn around. The child does this with the free exuberance of a favoured heir welcoming beloved and long missed family, fast feet carrying him on the shortest way possible into open arms. A hug follows.

The adult has not moved to greet the other. The silence stretching between them is a sure sign for the child that something is dreadfully not right and will never be right again.

“My father was a flyer,” he repeats. “They were among the best flyers and pilots of their time.” An unclear sadness rides the melody of language, as if even thinking about that time can create the kind of glad melancholy that often arises in the shadow of great tragedy.

“It made Jazz laugh all the time when the three had to hide from their fanclub.”

“Three?” comes the question. It makes him halt and think about what he just said, think about how to explain the triploid nature of a people that are so different from basic humanity as anything can get.

For a short moment he falters, lacks the words for what he needs to tell, but in the end he decides that no explanation is needed. The things are just like they always are.

“Yes, three,” he answers. “My father. The three individuals that created me.”

And that is all he will say about that.

He will not tell about the one whose name he forgot because it was never mentioned again after the day that ripped them apart. He will not tell that the only thing he remembers is the feeling of being held by giant arms that could carry him as high as the sky.

He will also not tell about the day that Jazz brought him to the outer colonies because Starscream, gentle Starscream who'd rather hide in a laboratory than even think about the world outside, has vanished without a trace only to be found later again in the guise of Megatron's second in command.

He will never tell, because...

Because as much as he loves the human called Sam Witwicky, there are some things that only family needs to know about.