#there is the comic that explores the Doctor and Magnus falling out but what about everyone else???

[ozzieinspacetime]

Something I've found is that Divided Loyalties really doesn't tell us why the Deca actually fall out. We're given the big reason- Millennia and Rallon are functionally dead, Vansell is a CIA member, The Doctor has been expelled, Drax and Mortimus have dropped out, Koschei and Ushas have gone off on research projects, etc- but what about the space in-between? When are the conversations had? Are they had at all? Is it let fester, or is their ending horrific and explosive?

There's a largely unfilled gap between the end of the Doctors Trail and the Beginning of An Unearthly Child and because of that gap we don't really know when the Deca go from "people being effected by grief but who are ultimately sticking together" to "people who would destroy a third of the universe just to watch the others get hurt"

[bibliocratic]

litany An exploration on endings. Or: all the ways it could have gone wrong and right.

jonmartin, spoilers for 200, content warnings in the tags

--

This is not what she thought victory would feel like.

Basira’s fingers tense and smart with overexerted aching when she stops to stretch them out. There is a geography of broken blood-vessels under the bruising that lies puddle-splotched over her hands which scrabble and claw talon-bent at the rubble. They are scored with scratches and tears where her exposed and dust-ruined skin has snagged on fractured brickwork.

She uncovers a foot first, as she pushes up and over the twisted mental of a window frame with an exhausted clatter. A trainer, the white doused with mud, the trailing laces caked stiff and russet. More heaving and hauling, her breath purging from her faster now – maybe, maybe, maybe, but she has lived too long now to believe in miracles. Overturning a fire-blasted section of what could have been once part of the imperious and grand stone stairwell, she reveals the leg the trainer is attached to, pulverised and off-angled by the weight of the collapse, the fabric of it drenched in soot. She peels back a cascade of plasterboard with a grunt, and there is a twisted pelvis, shattered ribs caved in under an acrid-smelling jumper. She’s not surprised at the dull punch of revelation, when she digs out hunched shoulders, coils of hair turned grey-white like swans’ down with the dust.

Martin is obviously dead. She hopes it was quick, fears it was not. His body lying stringless is curved around something, clutching it to him with his bruised and broken fingers. It takes many minutes of labouring, her spine seizing with complaint, sweat pooling at her brow and under her arms, but eventually she reveals Martin’s tender quarry, bundled up against his chest, blood-soaked from a wound long congealed. His own long and bloody fingers clenched and moored into the weft of Martin’s jumper.

She doesn’t need to check his pulse. She is cursed with enough sentiment to do so anyway. Crouching for a moment in the thick of the settling devastation, the fug of dust coating her nostrils, before she murmurs ‘I’m sorry’.

As she stands, she takes off her coat to lay it over them respectfully, the only shroud she can offer.

When her voice is composed, its cracks flattened out, she shouts the others over to tell them to stop searching.

--

The knife does not go in easily. There is force behind its thrust, a manic wave-shock of hysteric intent, and Jon’s lips part in a gasp as skin and sinew and flesh split. The noise wrenched from Martin is soiled with ruin, tremulous and saw-toothed, and he will never be able to forgive himself.

Jon’s eyes close. Peace of a sort granted to Magnus’ last and most beleaguered of Archivists.

And then they open. All of them, like the unfolding back of petals during blossoming, a meadow’s expanse of sight flowering on his face.

“No,” Martin whispers, the refusal almost lost over the tumult of the building around them. He pulls the knife out, and it drips onto the floor, making damp the material of his trousers. “No, nononononono.”

The wound presses together like lips, and then it is gone.

“I think it’s too late for that, Martin,” the Archivist says in that calm and reasoned voice of his.

--

It is a surreal, poorly-rendered mirror of before. A way the record of the world has slipped, juddered aground in a repeat. For all they have both changed, outgrown the casings of the people they were, for all they have endured both together and apart, it is a sick homecoming of sorts to stand again a second time round at the entrance to his hospital ward.

She’s brought supermarket flowers bunched in plastic, the last of a bad crop and too late to get the freshest, the stalks of baby’s breath drooping, the petals on the carnations mottled slightly and past their glory days. Jon lies submerged in sleep, the focal point in a placid storm of machines and wires. This coma chemically induced with no inkling of the supernatural, a last-ditch effort by the doctors to reduce the swelling on his brain. To give the body a chance to heal from the damage sustained during the collapse, his frame bludgeoned and punctured like a shrike-caught mouse, the smoke that has snarled like brambles in his lungs. The almost comically neat wound punched into his chest, nicking his heart.

She hopes his sleep is dreamless.

It takes him weeks to wake up.

“… Georgie?” he finally gasps out on an otherwise uneventful Thursday. His vocals are ribbed and scored with smoke damage. He’s sluggish as he blinks and turns and groans at the complaint of his body around him. “What – er?”

“Hey Jon,” she replies. “Good to have you back with us.”

She lets him acclimatise. Without his glasses, he squints and peers owlishly, like an inquisitive bird, absorbed by the novelty of his environment, the mundanity; the hospital-blue curtain that’s been pulled back around his bed, missing a few rungs and so hanging lopsided in places. The wilting flowers on the side table. The IV needles threaded into his arms.

“Did it work?” he asks finally.

“We think so.”

Georgie doesn’t add more. The conversation is one she knew they’d have, but it still feels like stepping out on frozen water. She is waiting for it to give beneath him, for the drop and drown in the unmoored cold.

His relief muddies in increments. His brow crinkling with a frown, glancing around again at the other beds. Their occupants dredged up and out and recovering from their private terrors, bringing the lessons of their landscape with them.

“Where - ?”

He looks up at her. The ice cracking.

“I’m… I’m so sorry, Jon,” she says.

--

“We made it. L-look, see, we’re – I don’t know where we are exactly, b-but that doesn’t matter, does it, because we’re together, yeah? We’re together and that’s… that’s what we promised.”

The blood is drying on his trembling fingertips, the crevices of his palm, and it flakes off like decaying leaf-fall. The front of his clothes is clogged and sodden, the slick slow to harden. The weight in his arms is making his shoulders scream but he can’t let go.

“We – we did it,” he repeats hollowly. Desperately. “We did it, s-so you can come back now. You can come back. Together, you promised.”

The winds of this new world blow as cold as the old one did, and it is Martin’s only reply.

--

“It’s for the best, Martin,” the Archivist says.

“Shut up,” his furious watcher snarls. “Don’t talk to me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t play st – Like him! Like he would! Using his voice.”

“It’s my voice. It’s me, Martin.”

Martin doesn’t respond to that. Their arguments are cyclical as roundabouts. He tells Martin he loves him. Martin tells him to fuck off.

The place where Jonah Magnus met his End, crumpled up on the dais of the Panopticon, has been cleared of blood. It distressed Martin to look upon, as evidence of his ascension rather than his capacity for brutality, so the servitors saw to its removal. The body he gifted to the mulch of the bone gardens, and the wailing growths flourished beautifully with the nutrients it bore.

The screams beyond the walls of the Panopticon cut off faster as he hastens them towards the End. He observes a world in its twilight. There is still torment, and it is unendurable and unfair but it will end under his reign, for good and for ever, and he will ensure that there is no more.

“You don’t have to stay,” the Archivist says. Considered. Gentle. “I know… seeing me like this is not what you wanted. I want us to be together while it ends, but I won’t force you.”

“And how is it any better out there?”

“It’s not,” he admits. “Here, I can keep you safe. I want you to be safe. I want you to be happy.”

“Well, you fucked up there then,” Martin snaps.

His anger is righteous and flint-spark, makes barriers that almost waylay his grieving. He looks at him, and for a moment, his gaze shakes. He will see nothing less than he expects to see, a man, unkempt from travel, a bit grubby. Coarse hands he has held, lines he has attempted to smooth. In many ways, this makes it worse.

Martin turns away, and the Archivist lets him go.

He needs time and they have more than enough of it now.

--

He is inconsolable when they dig them out. A horrible, anguished keening like he’s being struck, a gasping that violently gags and stoppers in his chest. His face twisted, blotching, his eyes swollen, and the picture he makes is ugly, rent-open, decimated, bawling into the body he’s crushed up against him. Rag-doll limbed. Ashen.

They can’t make him let go. His cries transform and degrade into wails, garbled wordless, the horizon of language lost. They aren’t even sure if he knows they’re there. The sound pouring out of him is frenzied, delirious and anguished by surviving the unsurvivable alone. He fades hoarse through the ruin he has made of his throat and then he just weeps into Jon’s chest, and still he will not let go.

Melanie’s the one that stops him using the knife the first time. Wrestling it from his grip more out of surprise than shock at Georgie’s shout, and her anger is poisoned with her panic, throwing it to one side and hearing it clatter, snarling that I’m not going to fucking bury both of you, you hear me, don’t even think about it, fuck you, you think this is what he would have wanted, you think we want to lose you too?

Martin doesn’t reply.

They are not fast enough to stop him the second time he tries.

--

There are two men, strangers to these parts, who moved into the village from elsewhere like seeds caught on breeze. They plant their roots in uneasy soil. They talk to no one, versed in polite but guarded pleasantries, their greeting smiles to-the-point and weathered like coastal walls to withstand even the most inquisitive of questioners.

The one who is tall has the pared-down appearance of someone who has lost a lot of weight through some wasting that gnaws upon him. A gauntness that accentuates the furrows and gulleys and crags of his face, worsens the snow-stark white of his hair. The one who is short has been formed naturally sharp in features, although the brown of his eyes is mellow, prone to distance and otherwise unremarkable. The rumour mill, that tumbles in cycles of chatter that rolls from suspicious to musing, supposes some great and devastating fire to account for the injuries on his hands and the exposed skin of his face and neck, the pocked divots like scattered spark burns, ragged scars from shrapnel of some kind.

The one who is short limps on a sturdy walking stick, fashioned from an oak branch divorced from its tree in a storm. Any travel ventured upon is slow and demonstrably an effort. His free hand clasped in the hand of the one who is tall, who decks himself in layers even in the mildest of weathers, whose eyes are biting as hailstones, awashed grey and framed with bruising as though his dreams are rarely kind.

They re-painted the outer walls of their house last summer, when the temperature wallowed sticky and dense and glorious. The tree in their garden has fruited its first pears, few and stunted but a start that promises better crops come next year.

There is the hope that the strangers are happy.

If they are, it remains nobody’s business but their own.

[writeyouin]

Swerve X Reader – Changes - Chapter 2

Chapter 2 – Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

A/N – Welp, this is the best I can do after that trip to A + E. It’s great being off work to write this.

Warnings – Mild Swearing.

Rating – T

Swerve grinned at his holo-form’s reflection, enjoying the winter look he’d just added. It was finally time for a visit to the next planet, Enpluam. The planet itself was said to be something of a winter wonderland, and as such, all of the crew had been ordered to adapt their holo-forms to have warm clothing so none of the natives got suspicious.

Swerve’s smile faltered as he caught sight of you behind him, failing to hide your frown. He spun around, suddenly insecure about his new outfit. “You don’t like it?”

You held up your hands defensively, “No, no, I love it, it’s just-” You shook your head, smiling instead, “It’s nothing.”

Swerve hugged himself self-consciously, “Please (Y/N), if you don’t like it… If you don’t like me-”

“Swerve,” You almost hissed, hurt by his suggestion. “It’s not your outfit, I love it. I love you. I just- I don’t understand why all these stupid bloody planets have to hate Cybertronians so much. I get that the war was horrible but it’s over now, it should be entirely up to you whether you want to go as a Cybertronian or not.”

Swerve reached out to caress your cheek lovingly, “(Y/N), it’s alright. We’re used to it. Besides, you know how much I like playing dress-up.”

You had to smile at the joke. Using it as an opportunity to change from your previously bitter thoughts about how Cybertronians were treated, you replied, “Yeah, well maybe you can dress up as a doctor tonight. I can think of a few places you haven’t examined on me yet.”

Swerve blushed, his vocaliser crackling with static like it always did when he was flustered. He swore to himself that one day, he would have a witty retort for your seductive comments.

You pecked his cheek, “Better not make that sound on-planet, or they’ll see right through you’re disguise.”

“Yeah,” Swerve finally managed to laugh, though he was already planning a doctor outfit in a sub-folder of his processor which he aptly named ‘Dr Sexy cosplay.’ “You looking forward to this planet?”

“I will be if you tell me what you’ve been planning.”

Swerve became rigid, “Plan- Uh planning? I- I haven’t been planning-”

You smiled knowingly, “Oh I know you’ve got something up that parka sleeve of yours Swerve. You’ve been quiet this week, so I know you’ve been hiding something. Want to tell me what it is now or save it for later? I promise I’ll act surprised if you do.”

There wouldn’t be much acting involved when Swerve told you about the mini-con shell he’d had built for you, he was sure about that. Swerve knew he had promised himself that he would tell you this week about his plans for you, but now the moment had been laid in front of him and he was too anxious to say anything. He’d planned to tell you on the icy planet below after taking you on the perfect date, which would hopefully serve as a reminder of how much he loved you so that you wouldn’t leave him after the news. He needed that extra time to tell you, and it would only be one cycle’s difference.

“Can you wait one more cycle?” He asked solemnly.

You raised your eyebrows, “Oh, a serious tone? Must be important.”

You pulled his hand towards yours, hooking your little finger around his own, “I pinkie-promise that I can wait one more day.”

Swerve vented a sigh of relief and pulled you into a hug which somehow felt less intimate than the silliness of the pinkie-promise. “Good. Great. One more day, and you’ll know.”

While you laughed, Swerve felt nauseated. Sure, you would know what he had been planning for over a year, but would you still love him afterwards.

The alarm beeped incessantly and you shot up unusually quickly from your sleep. “I’M UP! I’M AWAKE… I’m regretting setting this so damn early.”

Swerve couldn’t help laughing at your owl-eyed expression as you stumbled from the berth, barely keeping your balance when you landed. He hadn’t slept that night, not needing to as often as you did, but he had stayed with you because you made him promise to, though you’d neglected to tell him why.

“We’ve got a few hours before we get there you know,” He told you. “You can sleep a little-”

“No,” You said, running to the bathroom to shower. “No time. You and me have to be the first off this ship.”

“Loving the enthusiasm, but that’s usually me. The last time I woke you up this early, you threatened to petrol-bomb my bar.”

“MOLOTOV!” You yelled from behind the shut bathroom door. “I THREATENED TO MOLOTOV YOUR BAR. NO PETROL HERE. HAS TO BE BOOZE.”

“All the same, why the early wake-up?”

“Megatron and Ultra Magnus.”

“Sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G?”

“No.” You came from the bathroom dripping wet and wrapped in a towel that had Brainstorm’s face printed on it, blowing a kiss without his mouth-plate. You shook your head energetically, “Not kissing. Yelling. At me specifically. Before we go to any planet, they pull me aside and give me a lecture like I’m a kid. Don’t mention Cybertron, (Y/N). Don’t start a bar-fight with Whirl (Y/N). Don’t eat that weird fruit (Y/N), it could kill you. You don’t get any of those talks.”

“Okay, but in their defence, you did do all of those things on the last planet we went to.”

“Hey, first off, that dude should not have been listening, it was a private conversation and I could have been saying that Cybertron sucks for all he knew. Second, Whirl started that fight, after he dropped his holo-form and locked me in his cockpit, so that wasn’t me. And third, that fruit-guy said it was a grape and it looked just like one, how was I supposed to know it wasn’t one? Besides, I was with Velocity and she managed to save me so no harm, no foul.”

“Wow…You’re so cute when you’re irritated. Like a tiny chipmunk whose sole-purpose is to defy Dave in his quest to become the best singing Chipmunk of all.”

“Bite me,” You growled, walking into your wardrobe, looking for winter gear.

“Gladly, just take off that towel and I’m sure I can find a spot,” Swerve replied smoothly, glad he had the chance to be the cool one for once.

Stepping out of the wardrobe momentarily to tease him, you lowered the towel giving him a bit of a show. He wolf-whistled and you had to laugh, before changing into your clothes and attempting to speed dry your hair. Once you were ready, you were happy to find that Swerve had transformed into his alt-mode and was waiting to drive you to the hanger doors where the two of you would hopefully be the first to get off the ship.

In a crowd of disguised Cybertronians, you and Swerve found it easy enough to bypass Ultra Magnus and Megatron who were clearly looking for you. The second the hangar doors opened, the two of you ran outside hand in hand, laughing as fresh snow crunched underfoot.

“You know they’re going to talk your ears off when we get back,” Swerve said.

You shrugged, admiring the view of the icy covered town below, underneath a dark purple sky. “Who cares? Right now, all that matters is that the town is down there, it’s just you and me and… I’m in front.”

Swerve didn’t have a chance to respond as you started running down the hill towards the town, cheating in a race he wasn’t prepared for. His mouth stretched into a wide smile, ‘Joke’s on her, I don’t run out of breath.’

Despite that thought, you put up a good fight, almost beating him to the bottom before some snow gave way underfoot and you fell the rest of the way down.

“(Y/N)!” Swerve called frantically, catching up to you.

Although you were shocked by the fall, it didn’t stop you from laughing as you got up and wiped the snow off your clothes.

“Are you okay?” Swerve asked, grabbing your arms to check if you were alright and breathing a sigh of relief when he was sure you weren’t injured; for something so soft and squishy, humans certainly were resilient.

“I’m fine, but you’re not.”

“What-”

You shoved a handful of snow in his face and continued running.

“Oh, you can run but you can’t hide,” Swerve called, chasing after you.

There was plenty more time for fun and games as the two of you explored the world in the little time you had. Every so often, you would be reminded just how cruel the universe could be when you saw signs that warned against non-organics, but Swerve would quickly shrug it off and draw your attention to something else.

Finally, after exploring icy caverns, tasting new foods that didn’t spark any allergic reactions, watching a few of the locals, delighting in a spot of star-gazing, and generally experiencing things you never could have back on Earth, it was time to head back to the ship. Although Swerve was ready to finally tell you about the mini-bot shell, he opted to wait until he could take you to it so you could ask Perceptor and Brainstorm any questions that he might not be able to answer. There was a countdown on his visual feed that was a reminder of how long he had left in his promise to tell you; it was a relief knowing it would be gone by that night.

You walked hand in hand with Swerve through the cobble-stoned streets of the town, on your way back to the Lost Light.

“I just don’t get it,” Swerve grumbled. “How did you find that comedian funny? He was terrible.”

You thought of the comic who was in some kind of talent show by a sculpture of a frozen fountain. Then in a low voice so nobody would overhear, you said, “It’s an organic thing. Face it sweetie, you just wouldn’t get that kind of humour.”

“Fine. You just wait till we get back to our room, I’m going to find you some of Cyber- Uh, my home’s comedians,” He corrected as you crossed paths with another family. “Then we’ll see if you get my kind’s humour.”

You chuckled at his stubbornness, stopping when the two of you came to a short bridge that had three men on it. Two were human, the other was some kind of rock-like humanoid. Swerve tried to lead you on but you held onto his hand tightly, tugging him back. You knew what drunks looked like when you saw them, and the trio in front of you were clearly intoxicated.

“We should find another way back,” You whispered, unsettled.

“(Y/N), this is the fastest way back, trust me,” Swerve said, confident that after owning his own bar, he could navigate his way through a few overcharged organics.

Although you were still uneasy, you placed your trust in your husband and let him guide you towards the bridge. Upon seeing the two of you, the humans jeered. A sound like rocks being ground together let you know the other organic was doing the same.

“Oy, oy, lookee what we have here. Ain’t this a charmin’ pair?” A red headed man, with an almost blue tinted face from the cold chuckled.

“Alright gents,” Swerve grinned confidently. “Mind if we pass? Our ship’s leaving soon.”

“Oooh, is it now? You hear that Darren? Their ship’s leaving soon.”

Darren, the other human, an unremarkable man with a pock-marked face stepped forward, “I did hear. I also heard when he called us gents. I’m not a gent, are you a gent Al?”

“I don’t think I am. Nor is our mate here. He ain’t got the stones to be a gent.”

All three of them laughed at the awful pun, apparently finding it hilarious in their inebriated state. You felt your heart start beating faster, and once again you tried to pull Swerve away. This time he complied, realising his mistake in approaching the group.

“Nah!” Al called. “Don’t go, we was only having a laugh. Right lads?”

“Swerve!” You cried as the rock man grabbed Swerve and pulled him back for Al and Darren to mock.

“Listen guys, we’re all people here,” Swerve started to babble in his overly-friendly way. “We don’t have to fight and- oof-”

Darren punched Swerve’s stomach and Swerve doubled over in pain that he wouldn’t have felt outside of his holo-form, falling to the floor when the rock man dropped him.

“GET AWAY FROM HIM,” You screamed, running in front of Swerve.

“(Y/N), no,” Swerve groaned, trying to stand up.

“Aw look, he’s fond of his lass,” Darren laughed.

“Aye,” Al sneered, “I’m fond of her too. Tell you what, we’ll just take her and leave, yeah? Then you won’t miss your ship, will you, Swerve? Stupid fuckin’ name.”

The rock man reached past his human companions to lift you up over his shoulder, and you screamed in outrage, punching, kicking, hissing, doing anything possible to free yourself. Upon seeing you in danger, defending him of all things, Swerve snarled. Disobeying all the rules, he freed himself of his holo-form and mass displacement.

“THAT’S MY WIFE!” He roared in all his robotic glory, slapping Darren and Al to the floor.

The rock man, apparently panicked by the sight of a non-organic, dropped you and fled back into the town.

“(Y/N)!” Swerve rushed to your side and held you close, checking you for injuries. “Are you alright?”

While Swerve fussed over you, Al pushed himself up to stare in mute disgust at the scene of pure love before him. An organic and a non-organic married? It was an abomination that made him glad he hadn’t had his way with you.

‘Spoilt goods,’ He thought cringing as you and Swerve walked away from the fight, if it could be called that.

Abhorred and repulsed by you, Al decided to make the universe a better place. “Fuckin’ robo-whore,” He whispered, reaching into his belt for his pistol.

Just one headshot and it would all be over. Drunk as he was however, Al would not have made a headshot in a million years.

“You were right,” Swerve said, shaking his head and holding you close. “We should have never crossed that bridge.”

You didn’t say anything but you did gasp and lurch forwards as a bang erupted from behind you. Everything after that seemed to happen in slow motion. Swerve screaming. You looked down to your jacket, finding that it had changed from white to red. You tried to speak but couldn’t. Darkness kept clouding your vision. You were on the snow. Light again and you were in Swerve’s alt-mode. Darkness. You opened your eyes to find Ratchet and Velocity hovering over you.

You could hear Swerve shouting something, though you couldn’t see him.

“-NEW BODY- PERCEPTOR & BRAINSTORM- SINCE THE WEDDING-”

The next time darkness overtook you, you didn’t wake up for a long time, and as Ratchet and Velocity hung over you, they wondered if you ever would again.

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