Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

            They stand together, on the sand, under the cold stars. Silent. Waiting. Drift is agitated. The waiting is worse than he’d expected. If it must be done, it were best done quickly.

            Instead this waiting silence forces words from his throat.

            “I’m sorry, Wing.”

            Wing’s plating twitches, as though he’d forgotten Drift was there. He looks small and lonely without the Sword on his back. After a moment he says, “I’m the one who should apologize, Drift.” He turns to face Drift. His eyes are downcast at first, but he raises them to meet Drift’s gaze. “We were wrong to imprison you. Can you forgive us?” His gaze dips momentarily, then returns, aching. “Can you forgive me?”

            Drift thinks of the last few weeks. Dai Atlas’s suspicion, the dents and aches from fighting Wing, the locks, the secrets. Wing’s smiles. More energon than he’d had in a long time. A frame that felt better than it had in years.

            “I forgive you,” he says.

            “Thank you,” Wing whispers. “Drift, I have to ask—”

            Noise echoes across the desert. Wing turns, abruptly, and over his shoulder Drift can see them too, approaching in a cloud of dust. Wing wheels around, and for the first time, Drift sees fear in his face.

            “Drift,” he says. “When you go back… the Decepticons…” He gestures helplessly. “My city…”

            “It’ll be my secret,” Drift says, his throat tight. “I promise.”

            The fear goes out of Wing’s face—not for himself, then, but for his city. He is relaxed, suddenly, now that the awful waiting is over. “Thank you,” he says. “I wish you well, Drift.”

            Drift opens his mouth. He wants to say something. But he can’t say the same, not after what he’s done to Wing. What Wing is prepared to do for him. It would be a slap in the face. Instead he shuts his mouth, and Wing turns away, to face the slavers. They haven’t started firing, though they’re in range. It’s true, then—they want him alive.

            Wing’s swords come online in a snap-hiss of energy. He runs to meet them, and yellow blood gouts upward as the first alien falls to his blades.

            Lockdown appears at Drift’s shoulder; the slavers ignore them completely, swarming around Wing instead.

            “Let’s go,” he says.

            Drift can still hear Wing’s swords, the anguished cries of the slavers, but this is a tide that even Wing can’t hold back.

          “Pity,” Lockdown says, following his gaze. “He could have been useful to us. Still. They’ll find a ‘use’ for him.”

            Drift follows him, each step heavy and hollow. A sound from behind makes him stop—a scream. Wing’s scream. Pain.

            Drift is rooted to the spot. “What will they do to him?” he asks.

            Lockdown casts another uninterested glance towards the battle. “We could stay and find out. But we have a schedule to keep.”

            Another cry, broken and anguished.

            “Megatron’s waiting, Deadlock.”

            Deadlock. That’s his name.

            He turns his back on the battle and follows Lockdown across the sand, into the night.

            Wing keeps fighting after losing one sword; he even keeps fighting after losing the other, but it’s a short fight, unbalanced, and one of the brutes wades through its smaller brethren and picks him up in one hand. Most of the slavers are his size, but the brutes are bigger than even Axe and Dai Atlas. It squeezes, and something cracks, and Wing screams in pain. Energon bubbles up from a break in his midsection, dripping to the sand.

            “Careful,” a voice says. It is the leader of the slavers. Braid, he’s heard them call him, on those nights when he kept his careful surveillance over their camp. “We don’t want it dead.”

            Wing tries to burn the thing with his turbines, but it slams him into the ground hard enough that something else cracks; in his HUD one of his turbines flashes red and goes offline. He is grounded.

            The brute leans over him, snuffling, and it opens its mouth. Wing shudders as two wet tongues slather across his plating. He waits for Braid to reprimand it. But the reprimand doesn’t come. Instead the slavers—all of them, even Braid, standing over him and staring down into his eyes—laugh. There is anticipation, hunger, there.

            Is that what they want? His Spark flares in distress. He was prepared for pain. He was prepared to be taken apart piece by piece. But he hadn’t been prepared for this.

            Wing chokes and arches, trying to struggle, but the massive hands grab his thighs, spread them, and lift him off the ground. He dangles upside-down, disarmed and dizzy from energon loss and utterly helpless to resist. Its wet mouth opens and its dual tongues slather around his pelvic span, the gaps between his armor, honing in on the heat behind his interface panel and sending little shocks of charge through him. He shakes his head desperately, struggling, resisting, but the sandpaper sensation of its tongues coaxes his panel open, and the thing descends onto his valve with a ravenous growl. Wing shrieks a broken cry as both its tongues delve inside him, slippery and rough, sticky with its saliva, spreading his sensitive mesh lining and forcing his calipers apart.

            “It’s better if you don’t resist,” Braid says. “They’re not very intelligent. It’s going to take you anyway, so you might as well stop struggling—we wouldn’t want you to be too damaged.”

            Wing can’t reply in words as the double tongues slither over sensory nodes, setting his systems ablaze with heat. The thing wrenches his legs further apart, burying its face between to force its tongues even deeper. Alerts flash in his HUD as his legs are pulled out of joint and he wails in pain, falling limp.

            “What did I tell you?” the slaver tuts. He barks at the brute in his own language; Wing’s translation software kicks in. “Easy on the goods! It’s the only one to go around.”

            The brute whines apologetically, pulling its tongues out and leaving Wing’s valve slippery and cold. It lowers him, turning him the right way up, and for a moment he is relieved—please let it stop—but then he feels, to his horror, something brush against his valve. He looks down. The appendage jutting between its legs is long, horrifyingly fleshy, ribbed, and there are tendrils coming out of the tip that wave and probe as if with minds of their own… and there are two of them. He chokes, sobs, struggles again.

            The brute turns him around on Braid’s command, the better to give all the rest a good view. Wing writhes, but he’s helpless to stop that fleshy spike-equivalent from spreading the lips of his valve. The brute pulls him down in one violent movement, thrusting its hips up, and he wails as the organic spike drives deep into him, larger than his valve can accommodate without stretching, and a bulge appears in his abdominal armor as his internals shift out of the way.

            The second of the two organic spikes presses up against his aft, sliding between his thighs beneath the one inside him. The brute reaches down, grasps it, guides it to his rim. Wing lets out a harsh cry of pain as it breaches him, spreading him to maximum capacity. The slavers cheer. Wing barely hears as the brute thrusts again into him, and his body bounces and rides the movement. He can feel those tendrils moving inside him, latching onto his sensory nodes to feed upon and reciprocate the charge building in each one. The pleasure is intense, matched only by the humiliation of being taken, claimed, sullied, while these creatures watch and cheer for his shame.

            He’s never felt anything like this before, ever, no matter how exotic the toys he’d used, no matter how creative he’d been with his previous partners. He’s stretched so wide, but the organic spikes aren’t as solid as the ones he’s used to—malleable, like a glossa, but huge, bigger than most spikes, and those tendrils that are busily working feedback loops on all his most sensitive nodes? He’s never felt this way before. He chokes, his mouth falling open and oral lubricant spilling down his chin as he bounces on the organic spikes. His hands fall on his taut belly, feeling the shape of them as they move inside him, assisted by gravity.

            “Look at this slut,” Braid says to the others, still in his own language, perhaps unaware that Wing can understand him. “Can you hear it moaning like a…” The word is untranslatable. Wing’s body feels close to overheating. He rocks and writhes, partly on his own steam now, his valve dripping with his pleasure. His charge spirals upward, upward, and he comes, shamefully, screaming his release as his valve clenches down around the alien spikes.

            The brute grunts and groans piteously, tilting forward; Wing hits the ground on his stomach, gasping, and its weight falls on him an instant later, its spikes driving deep into him as its two secondary hands yank his hips back. He’s never taken anything so big that his belly stretches with every thrust. And then the spikes begin to throb, and hot liquid jets out into him, setting his sensors ablaze, and a residual overload ripples through him, sending his vision into static as its fluids pump into him.

            The brute pulls out of him, though the tendrils of its spikes are reluctant to leave and tug at his nodes until reluctantly releasing him, making him gasp. His valve quivers, spread wide and open, his own lubricant and alien fluids dribbling slowly out of it. He stares unseeingly at the sand for a while, his vents roaring, his mind blank with shock and shame.

            When cold reptilian fingers touch his thighs and turn him face-up, he returns to reality, focusing with difficulty on Braid’s nightmare face. The alien puts two, three fingers in Wing’s valve, grinning with all his yellow teeth.

            “How does it feel inside of you?” he asks, and puts another finger in: his entire hand. Wing keens, arching weakly at the wide stretch as Braid spreads his fingers teasingly. The slaver curls his fingers into a fist and pushes. Wing gasps and half-words spill from his mouth, protests and pleas alike, his hips jerking instinctively as Braid’s fist pumps in and out of him a few times, sliding easily through the brute’s leavings, pushing deep enough to touch his ceiling node if he’d known where it was. Wing’s head falls back and he moans, oral solvent trickling down his chin.

            The slaver uncurls his hand and explores with his long fingers, feeling the mesh lining, the calipers, finding the hard points of sensory nodes that make Wing twitch and gasp harshly when pressed, starting at the rim and moving inward. By the time he reaches the ceiling node, Wing is a shivering mess. He tenses up in horror as Braid finds the seal of his gestation tank and prods at it.

            “What’s this?” the alien asks, feeling around it. Thoroughly. That is the most sensitive place in Wing’s valve and he arches, his legs kicking out spasmodically, keening. Fortunately his gestation tank is not ready to open yet, and remains sealed. Braid gives up, at least for the moment, drawing his hand back to the rim of Wing’s valve. He runs his slippery fingers around the rim, then pauses curiously at the hard nub of his external node. He rubs it and Wing cries out, his engines revving.

           “Oh?” the slaver says. He repeats the action, and Wing’s reaction is no less intense the second time. “Interesting. Pain? Or pleasure?”

            He presses on it again, his finger rubbing in little circles around and around it. Then he leans down and opens his mouth, allowing his obscenely long tongue to flick against it, and Wing lets out a high, pure note. Braid alternates between tongue and finger, sometimes rubbing, sometimes stroking, sometimes tapping, and once pinching it between two digits—that sends a lightning bolt of need through Wing. Wing’s spike cover spirals back, allowing his spike to jut into the air. Braid laughs, an ugly grating sound, and wraps his scaled fingers around it.

            “Pleasure, then,” he says, pumping in short, squeezing jerks. Wing whines, arching and twisting, his fingers scraping through the dirt as he tries to claw his way backward. But the pleasure of it makes his movements sluggish, and another of the slavers steps up to hold him in place while Braid strokes his spike. He overloads with a strangled cry and a burst of transfluid that spatters hotly over his shivering armor.

            “Interesting,” the slaver says again, grinning with all his yellow fangs. Abruptly he buries his hand in Wing’s valve again and Wing gasps, jerking, oversensitive. The alien’s fingers probe again at his sealed gestation tank. “I thought maybe… it seems not.”

            Wing shakes his head desperately. “It,” he chokes, “it won’t…”

            The alien grabs his chin. “Speak up.”

            “Give up,” Wing says, trying to make it sound more like a command than a plea. By Cybertronian physiology’s standards, this has barely been foreplay, but if this keeps going…

            “Not so easily,” Braid says. “Not when my kind’s future is locked in your body’s secrets.” He jerks his head up to the others. “Have some fun,” he says. “But don’t damage it too much.”

            They turn Wing over onto his belly, pulling his aft up into the air, and a fresh slaver moves up behind him, long fingers pressing into Wing’s valve and spreading it open. He gasps as something thick and fleshy pushes against him. He glances back, flattening his pinions, and sees the slaver behind him has removed his lower armor pieces to reveal a large pinkish spike, one studded with what look terrifyingly like blunt spines. The alien groans and snarls as he pushes forward, sinking the spike into him, spreading Wing’s valve nicely: he’s taken bigger tonight, but this spike is the equal to a decently sized Cybertronian. He chokes as the spike draws backwards, its spines dragging against his sensory nodes: there is some pain, but it only adds flavor to the pleasure that swamps him. He lays his head on the ground as it starts up a rhythm of thrusting. He squeezes his optics closed so he doesn’t have to see them leering at him, considers offlining his audios so he can’t hear the things they are saying about him. But he doesn’t.

            “I want my turn next.”

            “I never thought a synthetic could be so wet, like a happy little…” That untranslatable word again.

            “Wonder what it feels like inside.”

            The ground shakes with vibrations and a hand grips the back of his helm, pulling him up to hands and knees. He opens his optics and discovers one of the slavers is tilting his head back, and one of the brutes crouches before him, presenting its double spikes. He tries to jerk his head away. But the spike moving in his valve makes him cry out, and before he can close his mouth, the tendrils of one spike are inside, stretching him open with surprising strength. He makes a desperate, shapeless sound of protest, that is abruptly muffled when one of the spikes plunges into his mouth. He gags, his body trying to rid itself of whatever blocks his intake, but the thing just grunts and thrusts its hips repeatedly. The other spike slides wetly against his face and audial fins.

            The spike inside him is hitting all of the best nodes, making his systems sing in pleasure. His valve calipers cycle in, rippling and squeezing, and charge begins to rise again. The noises he’s making around the brute’s spike stuffed in his mouth become more like moans, and his optics flicker.

            After a few minutes the brute howls, thrusting sharply forward, and Wing chokes as hot fluid gushes down his intake. More jets from its other spike, coating the side of his face and helm. He coughs as the spike pulls away, the tendrils flirting with his tongue as they go. The alien holding his helm has a hand on its own spike, pumping hard, and it’s a matter of seconds before it comes across his face too. At the same time the alien in his valve spends, filling him with liquid heat. Wing has enough left in him to override the old gestation protocols as Braid’s hand hunts around inside him again, stroking the seal of his gestation tank.

            “Another,” Braid says. And Wing cries out as another alien spike thrusts home. One of its spines rubs against his external node with every thrust and he moans, dissolving into pleasure, as more alien transfluid splatters across his wings from another one stroking himself. Scaly hands stroke his armor, his wiring, his face, and a new one pushes into his mouth; he sucks freely, his optics dim and unfocused, spines rough on his glossa.

            This time, when the alien comes inside of him, his gestation tank unseals.

            Braid’s exploring hand this time finds the opening. He makes a curious sound and pushes deeper, sliding his clawed fingers inside. Wing writhes as the fingers stroke the inner lining; every touch feels amazing with his gestation tank open, and he arches and bucks backward, his mouth falling open and alien seed sliding down his chin, as he overloads again, valve calipers squeezing Braid’s arm.

            “Interesting,” Braid says. “Now it’s time.”

            They turn Wing onto his back and he lies with his vents roaring, writhing in the dust as Braid’s hand draws out of him. He looks down, blearily, to see the appendage that appears when Braid unbuckles his waist armor: it is closer to the brute’s strange spikes, but elongated and supple, seeping its own lubricant along its length. It slides into his valve, not as thick as the others, but so long—it slithers, like a glossa, deeper and deeper inside him until with a cry of mixed fear and bliss, he feels it penetrate his gestation tank. Braid begins to move against him, and the tentacle undulates inside him, flexing, pulsing hot against his sensory nodes, rubbing against the inside of his gestation tank. Wing claws at the ground, arching and squirming: it is too much, too intense, and he has no name for the things he wants, whether he needs this to stop or go on forever. Looking down his own body he can see the shape of Braid’s tentacle moving within him. He moans, his optics flickering, and lets his head fall back to the ground, lolling side to side. There is no resisting this.

            Braid grunts, and the tentacle convulses, throbbing. Wing moans as it seems to ripple against his calipers. Almost as though round shapes are moving through it. He keens, beginning to understand, as fluids and round hot shapes alike begin to fill his gestation tank. Eggs. Braid is filling him with eggs. The pleasure mixes with horror, and he sobs, optical lubricant spilling down his cheeks—he wants it to end, but it feels so good, his body has never experienced pleasure this intense.

            He can’t resist, not against this, and his belly slowly expands, his internals shifting and his armor clicking as it refits itself. He feels so full in a way he’s never experienced, hot and heavy and sluggish and slightly sick, as the flood ends and Braid’s tentacle begins to retract itself. At least… at least it’s over, now, Wing thinks, as his body clutches down around the alien eggs in his gestation tank.

            But he’s wrong. He’s so very wrong.

            “The more of us fertilize the eggs, the greater our new young will become,” Braid says to the others. “So who wants to fuck the little…” That word a third time.

            Wing sobs and wails as they clamor for him. He squeezes his optics shut, trying to lose himself in oblivion, but an alien spike sinks into him, a slow and purposeful rhythm, and it begins again. He is trapped in this moment, in this violated body, his belly heavy with eggs and his valve filled with an alien spike. He cries and moans and writhes and falls limp in turns, as scaly hands stroke his distended armor fondly. The first alien comes inside him, its seed hot in his gestation tank, mixing with what’s already there.

            The ground shakes again and hands lift him up, in offering it seems, and he chokes and hangs helpless as a brute’s double spikes split his valve wide. He clings to it, crying, his hips rocking instinctively at the sheer pleasure of it, even when his back hits the ground again and it ruts into him. He takes a glance down, sees his belly shifting and bulging as it fucks him relentlessly, and he is hypnotized, drooling. It spills into him, and he runs a wondering hand over his belly as it bulges further, filling with seed. He lies passive and unresisting as a third slaver fucks him, then two at once, aware of nothing but the fullness and the pleasure and the pressure of the eggs and fluids inside him, pumping his gestation tank fuller and fuller.

            At last it seems they’ve had their fill; he feels stuffed full, his valve aching with the heaviness in his gestation tank that bulges his belly outward. The slaver Braid reaches inside his gaping valve, this time with some sort of device which he clicks in place at the top of Wing’s valve.

            “Take him home,” he says.

            By “home” he had meant the slavers’ base in the desert. Wing hovers between unconsciousness and wakefulness as one of the brutes carries him; every movement makes his staggeringly full gestation tank shift and he feels the need to purge his heavy fuel tank, but he keeps it down somehow. He drifts in and out of consciousness, waking in fits and starts: a door, lit hallways, finally a medical bay of some sort, where he is laid in a soft place which feels alarmingly like heaven to his overworked body. He is too exhausted to move as the straps of a sort of harness are tightened around his legs, arms, and torso, leaving his thighs splayed wide. There are other aliens, examining him with sensors and hands, and the next time he half-wakes there are leads and sensors being placed all over his valve and gestation tank, feeding who-knows-what information to his captors. Wing passes out again.

Chapter Text

            Twelve days. That’s how long Drift’s resolve lasts.

            He tells himself he’s not going to lose and sleep over this. They’d kept him a prisoner; now they’d paid in full. There shouldn’t be any more to it. Wing had made his choice.

            But the conscience that he’d kept buried for so long had broken free, some time in Crystal City, and now it nagged at him. He keeps hearing Wing’s scream. He keeps seeing Gasket going down with a fireball in his chest. He keeps feeling a medic’s hands on him, pulling him back from the brink of overdose. All people who had reached out to him, tried to help him. When had Drift ever helped anyone?

           Helping another is the highest calling any of us can aspire to, Wing’s voice whispers from the back of his mind.

            “What?” Lockdown snarls, finally, on day twelve, when they’re both getting on each other’s nerves and sitting on opposite sides of his ship’s cockpit. “You’re twitchier than a turborabbit in heat.”

            “Cybertronians don’t throw their own kind into the grinder,” Drift says.

            Lockdown gives him an incredulous look. “Besides the four million years of war, you mean.”

            “That’s different,” Drift says hotly. “We handle our own. We don’t sell our own kind to aliens.”

            “Still thinking about that? The neutral?” Lockdown snorts, kicking his feet up onto the console. “I wouldn’t worry about him. They’ll keep that little jet alive and kicking long after both of us are scrap. They’ll have to.”

            “What’s that supposed to mean?” Drift demands.

            “He’ll be no good to them dead, what they had in mind.”

            “What,” Drift growls. “What did they want with him?”

            “He’s probably pretty happy about it himself,” Lockdown says, grinning sidelong at Drift, like he enjoys riling him up. “Probably feeling real good right about now.”

            Drift gets up. Lockdown has an enormous height advantage on him normally, but with Lockdown sitting, their faces are on equal heights when he leans into Lockdown’s space, snarling into his face.

            “What. Are they. Doing. To him.”

            “Not like we were gonna use that valve anyway,” Lockdown says, lazily, leaning forward. “Unless you wanted it. That it? You wanted to bring him along as your little fucktoy?”

            Drift roars and punches him right out of the chair. Lockdown lands, cursing. He deploys his hook as he staggers upright.

            “You’re not that valuable,” he snarls. “You gonna cool down or spend the rest of the voyage in the brig?”

            Drift doesn’t even waste time talking. His body moves automatically as Lockdown lunges, slashing the hook at his throat. The hook rips through the air where Drift had been, but Drift is already under Lockdown’s guard, sweeping the bigger bot’s legs out from under him.

            Looks like he’d learned something from Wing after all.

            The bigger the bot, the harder the fall. Lockdown crashes to the deck, spitting static. Drift’s on him in an instant. This bit isn’t Wing’s finesse, but Deadlock’s brutality, and a few hard blows later, Lockdown’s knocked offline. Drift hauls him to an escape pod, shoves him in, and blasts him into space. Someone’ll find him sooner or later. Maybe. Drift doesn’t really care.

            He turns the ship around.

            It becomes clear to Wing as the cycles tick past on his chronometer, when he regains control of his faculties, that he’s in some sort of nest, soft and comfortable against his back and wings. There are drip-feeds running under some of his plating, spliced into his energon lines. The harness he’s attached to allows them to move him at will, like a marionette, positioning him in whatever way is most convenient for the moment. Usually that is on his back, his hips raised above head level, so the aliens can inspect his valve, check the sensors, make notes.

            But sometimes they arrange him so his head is at pelvic height for one of the brutes or normal-sized slavers, who slide their spikes into his mouth—held open by a ring—and fuck his face until they spill nutrient-rich fluids down his intake. His internal analyses shows him the fluid is more than enough to keep him going, and yet he burns through it alarmingly fast. More internal readouts tell him where all this excess energy is being siphoned off to: his gestation thank, to feed the eggs.

            And sometimes, when the eggs have absorbed some of the fluid in his gestation tank and he finally begins to feel lighter, more of them will come and pump him full of more until his gestation tank is stretched to capacity again: the device Braid inserted into him keeps their fluid from trickling out. If he resists any of this, the feeds pump sedatives into his fuel lines.

            He comes to realize, in his rare moments of un-drugged clarity, what is going on here. Their species has four sexes: the brutes, to protect a mating unit; the ovipositors, like Braid, to lay the eggs; a receiver for the eggs, to carry and develop them; and the fertilizers, who add their own genetic data to the eggs within the carrier. That is why they continue to take him: the more data given to the eggs, the greater an advantage they will have in survival. But their kind has been developing towards the technological, threatening their organic means of reproduction. He is a test subject: if his vestigial reproductive system, an adaptation Cybertronians evolved out of long ago, is able to successfully produce a clutch of their young, there is hope for the future of their kind.

            On one level he can understand this: they are trying to survive. On another, he is repulsed—perhaps, somewhere, there may have been someone willing to help them in a relationship of equals, but instead they had captured him, raped him, drugged and imprisoned him, made him their slave. Left him with no way out.

            They stop sedating him so much as the eggs mature—perhaps fearing it would have detrimental effects—but by this time it doesn’t matter; Wing is malnourished and ravenous. He sucks eagerly on the spikes they present to him several times a day, his glossa and throat flexing hard to drink down every drop of their fluids he can get to support both the developing young and his own body. They laugh at him, calling him slut and whore and carrier, but he can’t bring himself to stop—his thirst only grows stronger as the eggs consume every drop of strength he can give them.

            He feels no attachment to them, no more than a parasite stealing his fuel. They are not his: carriers in their species have no genetic attachment to the young, only provide a place for them to grow.

            It feels like forever until the day when Wing arches and bucks, his body rebelling, bearing down against the eggs in his tank. The aliens remove the device Braid had put inside him and gather around; the medics bustle between his legs, massaging his swollen belly, maintaining a feed of nutrients into his lines to replenish the energy he is pouring into the labor.

            It’s hard. He screams until his vocalizer is spitting static. His entire body shudders with effort as he pushes. Pain ripples over him, but also pleasure, an intense heat in his valve as eggs brush past his nodes. His valve begins to drip lubricant. His tongue lolls past the ring holding his mouth open as he pushes, writhing, and he overloads as the first egg spreads the lips of his valve and lands in an alien doctor’s waiting hands, whisked off somewhere Wing can’t see. He is distracted by the next egg pushing through the entrance of his gestation tank; his calipers flex to push it slowly down his valve, and he pushes, because he can do nothing else.

            After four eggs he is exhausted; he simply doesn’t have the energy left to push, though he still feels the instinct; his valve twitches weakly as his body makes another attempt. He sobs, feeling sticky and overwhelmed, as aliens move around him, arguing, but he barely hears them. More leads are connected to his body; his neck, his shoulders, his waist, the seams of his thighs, and into his valve, attaching at sensory nodes. He barely has time to wonder what they’re for when a tremendous electric shock pulses through him. He screams, arching suddenly up, and his valve convulses, forcing the next egg out of his tank and into the passage.

            They send another pulse through him, and another, and he writhes in his harness, shaking as he bears down automatically. The eggs resume their terrible motion down his valve as the aliens keep the pulses coming, and his convulsions send eggs slowly through the lips of his valve.

            Soon Wing is sobbing in pain, smoke rising from his joints; he has overloaded three times now, and his entire body feels like it’s on fire. His thighs and the nest beneath him are soaked with lubricant. His cheeks and chin are streaked with optical and oral lubricant. He is shaking uncontrollably, his plating rattling in hard shivers. He groans piteously, pushing out another egg. There can’t be many more. It must be over soon. Please, let it stop—let me die—Primus, kill me now—

            Another shock forces him to bear down hard, and another egg squeezes into his valve, down through the calipers, and he overloads a fourth time, knocking himself out as the egg pops from his valve.

            He comes to seconds later, barely online; the electric surges have stopped, but one of the doctors has a hand up his valve, seeking into his gestation tank and feeling around. He pants, limp in his harness, utterly spent. There are no more eggs. He feels lighter, empty, like he’s been opened up and scraped bare and closed again—not too far off the mark.

            He hears them talking—distantly he translates Braid saying, “Are they alive?”

            “Yes,” one of the medics says, and Wing hears tiny hissing and peeping noises; as the aliens shift around him he raises his head a few inches, far enough to see the eggs cracking. He turns his face away rather than look again.

            Braid appears like a nightmare above him, smiling with his yellow teeth.

            “Congratulations,” he says. “A healthy clutch. You should be pleased—you’ve brought new life to my kind.”

            Wing fades out for a moment; when he returns to consciousness it is to the unpleasant sensation of the feelers at the tip of a slaver’s spike creeping into his defenseless mouth. He chokes as the alien presses in, pushing into his intake.

            “You must be hungry,” Braid says, stroking his belly. “Don’t worry. There are plenty here ready to feed you. We need to get your strength back for the next clutch.”

Chapter Text

            Alone, it would be impossible, Wing says in his head, but Drift answers Frag that and goes in all guns blazing. He’s not overconfident like he was that first night. He’s showing them exactly how he shot up so fast to second-in-command of a Decepticon warship.

            He mows down the guards outside. The minute he’s inside he pins one of the aliens against the wall and snarls in his face.

            “Where is he?”

            The alien bleats something confused and terrified.

            “The other one like me, where is he?” Drift snarls. The alien points. Drift shoots it, leaves it lying in a heap, transforms and rockets down the maze of halls, letting his internal systems mark waypoints. Even if they weren’t, there’s a trail of dead slavers behind him. He has to ask for directions a couple more times.

            He’s deep inside the complex when he transforms and skids to a halt outside a long clear observation window. Looks like a medical facility inside, and a little way down the room—

            “Wing,” he breathes.

            He blasts the door open and leaps through the smoke, gunning down the aliens in the room, who look like they were in the middle of trying to move Wing. To hide him. He kicks aside a scaled corpse as he approaches. Wing is limp in a half-done harness, on his back in a bowl-shaped nest. Leads run out from under his plating. There’s a trickle of fluid coming from between his legs, and his belly is bulging outward like—like there’s something in there.

           “Wing,” he says. Wing’s optics flicker, unseeing. He makes a soft noise through the ring buckled into his mouth. Drift rips the gag away. “Wing.”

            Wing whispers something shapeless, something that’s trying to be Drift’s name, but his optics are still looking through Drift like he’s not even there. Drift rips away the leads and tubing, then the harness, tearing through straps.

            “Drift,” Wing says, faintly, but he’s coming back, coming out of it. Drift hauls him into a sitting position. Wing’s head lolls, but his optics make an effort to focus on Drift’s face. “Drift…?”

            “I’m sorry,” Drift spits, guilt and sick shame rising up in his fuel tank. He did this. He gave Wing to them. “I’m so sorry, Wing.”

            “Drift.” Wing’s hands come up, searching for something, and find Drift’s arms. He grabs hard enough to dent Drift’s plating. His optics are shifting between dazed and wild.

            “Get them out,” he slurs.

            “Wing…” Drift rips his arms out of Wing’s grip and grabs his shoulders instead, trying to steady him, trying to reach him, wherever he is inside his head. “Wing, we have to go.”

            “Get them out,” Wing groans; deprived of Drift’s arms, his hands go to his own distended midsection, fingers wriggling into seams as though he wants to pry the plating off. His voice rises to a shriek. “Get them out!”

            “We’re going,” Drift says, and wrenches Wing to his feet. Wing staggers and falls against a table, scattering tools. No way he’s walking on his own steam. As Drift reaches for him, Wing grabs a blade from the table. Drift seizes him just as he tries to drive it into his own belly. “Wing—frag—!”

            Wing doubles over, wailing in agony, struggling for possession of the knife, but Drift wrestles it out of his hand and throws it across the room.

            “Wing!” he snarls, grabbing Wing’s shoulders again so they’re face to face, like he’s a green soldier going to pieces under Autobot bombardment. “Wing, I need you to focus! Can you do that?!”

            “Get them out,” Wing sobs.

            “I will,” Drift says. Anything to get them moving. “I will, I’ll get them out, but we have to get out first, got it? Can you walk? Wing?”

            Wing squints at him; his optics get clearer for a moment. “I… Drift…? I…” He shakes his head. “I don’t… think so.”

            “Frag,” Drift swears. “Don’t squirm.”

            He heaves Wing onto his shoulder and staggers. Wing’s heavier than he should be. But at least he’s not fighting, or he’d be impossible to carry.

          “You—” Wing croaks. He’s still, miraculously, lucid for a moment. “You can’t do this. Run. K-kill me and run.”

            “I didn’t blow my only chance with the Decepticons to kill you,” Drift snarls, shoving out of the medbay. “Shut up and hold still.”

            Wing does, though Drift’s pretty sure he’s fallen unconscious. He’s dead weight Drift would be a lot better off without, but he came all the way in here, he’s not leaving Wing behind. Not unless there’s no way out—then he’ll do what Wing asks and kill him rather than let them—use him like that again.

            He can’t fight, so he hides when he can, pressing back into corners and side hallways while slavers dash here and there, heading for the medbay, trying to find them. He shoots when he can’t hide, making his way back to the surface; after a while he can’t even feel Wing’s weight. It’s the battle haze on him.

            Then the stars are above them, and Drift is staggering up the ramp into Lockdown’s shuttle. He dumps Wing on the cockpit floor and gets them into the air before the slavers can get their ships up.

            That’s when Wing wakes up, and screams.

            Drift nearly slams the ship into the ground in shock, but he keeps it speeding low, scanning for cover. There—a canyon where they can hide until the slavers give up searching, and until Wing is lucid again and can contact the city. He scrapes off some of the paintjob when Wing screams again, but he focuses on what he’s doing until he lands and cloaks the ship.

            Only then can he look at Wing. The jet’s rolled half onto his front, one leg tucked up under him, his arms wrapped around his belly.

            “Get them out!” he shrieks.

            “Wing!” Drift tries rolling him over. “Wing, how do I contact the city?”

            But Wing’s not hearing him anymore; he’s slid back into his haze, grabbing at Drift again. “Cut them out,” he begs. “Please… please… I can’t… not again… please…!”

            He breaks down into a wail, curling in on himself. His panel clicks open, lubricant spilling from it already.

            “Frag—!” Drift spits. Wing screams, his hand squeezing dents into Drift’s arm; his whole body shakes, tightens, and a second later something large and round pushes its way out of his valve. An egg. That’s why he’s so heavy, why his belly is all distended.

            Get them out.

            “Wing.” Drift finds himself suddenly, remarkably, calm. He grabs Wing’s face between his hands. “I need you to focus. Wing.”

            Wing’s vents are roaring, heat billowing off him, but his optics flicker, fixing on Drift’s face.

            Drift speaks slowly and clearly. “How do I contact the city?”

            In the brief respite between eggs, Wing reaches up, but not to grab Drift—his hardline panel slides open, and Drift scrambles to plug in before Wing loses it again. Wing pings him one bit of data: a comm frequency.

            “Help,” Wing sobs, and then his face twists and his voice rises to a cry and he bears down again. “Primus—Primus—” His vocalizer spits static as he thrashes and the old refrain pops up again: “Get—them—out!”

            “Sorry, Wing,” Drift says, quietly, and he is considerably more delicate this time than he was with Lockdown—one precise jab to the back of Wing’s neck and he goes dark.

            The first time Wing wakes up, there’s a tube leading under his plating again and he thrashes, tearing it out, determined to escape, and he fights against the hands trying to pin him down until something cold hits his systems and he goes black again.

            The next time, the drip-feed is back, and he is restrained to a slab. He misses his comfortable nest. Then he hates himself for missing it. Then he fights the restraints. A face swims above him.

            “Wing? It’s okay. It’s me. You’re safe.”

            “Drift?” he rasps. Terror pierces his Spark. “They—they got you too…?”

            He thrashes harder, until his wrists and chestplates are dented, not hearing whatever Drift is trying to say, because this can’t be happening, he needs it to stop, Primus, it needs to stop—

            The third time there are no restraints, and no drip-feed. There is something familiar nearby. A warmth he’s missed desperately. He reaches out without even onlining his optics and his hand finds it, unfailingly. His Spark leaps as his fingers wrap around the hilt.

            But the Sword had been left in the city before he’d…

            “Wing,” Drift’s voice says. Wing reaches out with his other hand. Drift’s hands catch it. “Wing. Don’t freak out again. It’s okay.”

            “Drift,” Wing whispers, not daring to open his eyes, for fear that he’ll see the slavers’ medbay. But he feels… lighter. His fuel levels are normal. He isn’t restrained. There are no beeping machines. No nest. No… He almost can’t bring himself to say it. “…eggs?”

            “Gone,” Drift says, squeezing his hand. “Destroyed. You’ll be okay, Wing.”

            Wing turns on his optics at last. There is light. So much beautiful light. Drift’s face, haloed.

            “You back with me?” Drift asks.

            “You…” Wing croaks. “You came back.”

            “Yeah.”

            “You came back.”

            “Yeah, Wing.”

            Words are difficult. He finds the one he’s looking for. “Why?”

            “You would have done the same for me.”

            “You came back,” he says again.

            Drift looks… pained. “Yeah, Wing. I did.”

            “Wh—”

            Wing stops before he asks. Already… already asked. He’s finding it hard to keep track. He’s…

            “I’m not…” he whispers. “I’m not… okay. Am I?”

            “You will be,” Drift says. “You’ve been through hell, Wing. It’ll take time. But you will be.”

            Wing’s fingers tangle tighter in his. The Sword is a calming presence, helping him get his thoughts in order. Drift’s free hand rests on his forehead.

            “You’ll be okay, Wing. I promise.”

            Wing rasps out another word. “Stay?”

            Drift squeezes his hand. “Yeah.”