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pastelgrungewrecker · 3 years

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My Pride Goeth Before His Fall

Stand up high in the prow Noble barque I steer Steady course for the haven Hew many foe-men

{More fallout from this, mind the tags, warning for eye trauma.}

“What will you do, Whirl of Polyhex, if your son’s retaliations become more... severe? How will you feel? What will you say?”

Whirl swallowed the lump in his throat, feeling his better eye brimming with tears that dripped over the lid- dewdrops that tangled in his arctic lashes.

“I’ll tell my young’n I’m proud. I’ll tell my baby bluebird I’m so, so proud...”

The words spat in the face of victims will always be cruelest- they will always be demanding and vindictive, ordering them to be Bigger and Better than the Poor Lost Souls who Hurt Them But Not Really That Much.

It will always be wrong. But still, it will continue.

This was no different.

Quickdraw breathed deep and slow, eyes no longer able to blink doe-long lashes over flickers of summer sunshine; sunshine snuffed out by someone who’s life had been so dominated by old and outcast ideals that they took Judgement on someone they deemed unworthy solely by their birth. Their existence.

Their family.

He answered questions with a voice level and cold and calculating to a fault- a voice that felt near robotic, digressing his pain and fear and suffering and choking down the feeling of being a spectacle...

They asked him to prove his cybernetic eyes were real, he did not cry as he held his eyelids wide and slid one free- as it was taken by a lawyer as a man in gold watched in burning horror.

He did not look at the cameras all around the courtroom. He did not look at his selected peer with his destroyed hand and rage-twisted scowl. He did not feed the vindication of his audience, he did not drink down their shame as he outlined the pain and cruelty he had lived so long through.

“I retaliated as any scared little brother would.”, he said quietly, “My sister had been shot, had been beaten. They were hurting my big sister like they wanted to hurt me for so long. I had to make it stop, in that moment. In that exact second, all I wanted was for them to stop. To let me help her. To let me try to keep my big sister with us.”

“And then?”

“And then, when my sister recovered, they wanted to hurt my little sisters. My little sisters who’d... never done anything to them. They held Chrona and sliced her cheek. They restrained Dani, and Kiki.”

“They sliced your sister’s cheek? So you knew the defendant had a knife?”

“Yes.”

“And still you aggravated them?”

“They gave me a choice, did he tell you that?”, asked Quickdraw, his circuitboard eyes drilling holes through the sleaze and grease coating the loaded question, “It was either they hurt my sisters... or me. I still remember what he said, exactly.”

“A-ah. And can you say for those present...?”

“You want us to let her GO? Alright, then we wanna make a deal. You won’t let us erase the Conspawn? You want us to leave your bastard sisters alone? Then you gotta pay up Quickdraw.”, he recited, “ You pay the piper and the kiddies go home free.”

“Is that so- can you back that up with evidence?”

“Yes, the security footage that was shown yesterday also includes audio, and he can be heard clearly saying it.”

A patronizing stare before the lawyer chuckled to himself, “I find that hard to believe-”

“Then play it.”

Silence.

Quickdraw’s eyebrows tilted down- just a degree, just enough, “If it is so hard to believe, then play it. I insist sir.”

Quickdraw watched the color rise in his oppositions face before they spat demands, as the judge pursed their lips and nodded. As the footage rolled and Quickdraw refused to flinch at the sounds of gravel and rattling fences.

You want us to let her GO...

The lawyer’s face darkened in anger. He stomped to the mockingbird cage of the stand and slammed his hands onto the wood, staring between Quickdraw’s unnerving eyes.

“Tell me, sir. Is it fun to watch?”, he asked in a hiss, a glimpse of Whirl’s manic sneer visible, “Does it make you all warm and tingly, watching them rip my face open after threatening the only people I’ll ever care about?”

“Witness dismissed.”

The judge nodded as Quickdraw rose and stepped away- His growing hair tied in a braid and swaying slowly in time like the serpent trying to tempt a Messiah.

Whirl watched, pain in his face as his chest clenched like a fist closed around each lung and twisted. When his name was called, summoning him to the stand his son had already haunted, he walked like he was set for the gallows.

He sat uncomfortably, frame and soul and grief too large for the box the law settled him in in this sideshow trial.

He listened to his sins read aloud, the sneer curling so many faces except the ones that mattered. He hung his head, his own braid overlong like the anchorchain of old ships in legends forgotten by everyone except those who sang the old songs.

He knew this tactic. He knew they wanted him angry and loud and brash and cruel. He knew they wanted to use his mistakes as the ink to sign away his son’s soul.

He felt the fire that always burned in his chest cavity snuff out, tendrils of smoke leaking up and up and out through his mouth to curl into words laced in the mist of tears cried at midnight into a bottle he hid between the headboard and the wall before Brainstorm woke up.

“What will you do, Whirl of Polyhex, if your son’s retaliations become more... severe? How will you feel? What will you say?”, asked the lawyer, pondscum clinging to the words.

Whirl swallowed the lump in his throat, feeling his better eye brimming with tears that dripped over the lid- dewdrops that tangled in his arctic lashes.

“I’ll tell my young’n I’m proud. I’ll tell my baby bluebird I’m so, so proud...”

“Pride, in violence?”

“He’s... He’s been through hell, my poor li’l dino nugget.”, said Whirl, choking on his words and unable to blink away traitorous tears, “He’s seen... He’s seen too damn much. Too much I couldn’t save him from and my GOD did I try to save him...”

The lawyer faltered, seeing the liquid stardust running down both of Whirl’s cheeks now.

“He’s seen all his parents fall the hell apart- and thank God we had Frogyy, I mean. Mimi. She kept alla us goin’, kept my babies safe during that mutiny on the Lost Light.”

Those present shifted uncomfortably.

“And then we made it here- and it was s’posed to be safe, sir.”

The lawyer flinched, the judge leaned to the side to gently rest a hand on Whirl’s shoulder.

“Take a deep breath, Mister Whirl- I understand this is hard to talk of. Take your time.”

A shaking breath, “I was a fuckin’ Wrecker- cream o’the crop and all. I had killcounts and I had mission successes and I had downright MURDER under my belt and I... I helped make. I helped make Quickdraw. QD. My li’l bluebird- me ‘n my honeybee made that! And Quickdraw is...”

Whirl wiped his face with a metal hand, “Quickdraw is ev’rything I thought I fuckin’ lost, back when they took my hands... my eye.”

He looked to the lawyer, “And then someboys decided that my li’l bluebird’s wings had to be clipped. They took his eyes cause his big sister’s Papa was a Con once upon a time. Cause her daddy suffered and burned down and built back up and she used that strength to stand tall and help her siblings do that too.”

The lawyer’s face was mottled with anger and fear.

“And you’re gonna stand here, in front’f your God and your Country and your HONOR... And ask me what I’m gonna tell him when he grows into his talons and defends the nest? I’m gonna tell him I’m proud, sir. I’m gonna look at him and tell him I’m proud that he stayed soft an’ loving in all the ways I couldn’t. And I’m gonna tell him I’m proud that he knows when to fly away and call the flock and I’m proud he knows when to stand and flare his claws and fight back.”

“Don’t you-”

“Counsel, I think that is quite enough.”, said the judge flatly, “So far, the past three days have been nothing but you desperately trying to say that a boy, when faced with violence, was wrong in defending himself and you should be ASHAMED of your behavior in this court!”

The silence was heavy and thick.

“You have proven nothing except, time and time again, that the attack on this family was mindless vigilante cruelty! There is no justification for these actions and all present know it. This... constant tearing of stitches is now over, Counsel, and the jury will now be dismissed to decide the outcome.”

The slam of a gavel, the rustle of people rising to their feet.

Whirl’s head hung down, words and images swimming round and round like dying minnows in polluted lakes before someone reached in to hold his steel hands tight.

He raised his head, expecting Brainstorm or Perceptor or even Ratchet or Cyclonus.

Xaaron looked down at him, tattoos on his chin warping from the way his lips trembled.

“I... I am sorry, Whirl.”, he whispered, “I am sorry for my assumptions- about you, about the family, about everyone. I... I simply did not understand. I did not try.”

Whirl blinked, slowly.

“I can see, now, that my... my grandson, your. Your bluebird. Is a survivor. As his parents are, as. As I once was. I spent so long in misery that I forgot that it loves company- but often mistakes it for competition. You have born much, and you have fought to never let it touch him, and something in you has broken from this.”

“I tried to keep my fam’ly safe, Mister Xaaron. And I fucked it up.”

“No. No you did not. You did all that you could, with all that you had- when those who could have helped turned their back upon you.”

Whirl rose from his seat, his prosthetic hand and Xaaron’s clenched together in some kind of unity, of steadying.

He stepped down from the stand for Xaaron to stand in front of him, and bow his own head.

“I am sorry for letting my own foolishness compound this family’s grief, and pain. But I want, more than anything, to make amends.”

Whirl swallowed, another lump in his throat made of baby’s breath and grave lilies as he felt Brainstorm seem to appear at his side.

“Then come visit.”, said the scientist quietly, “Come visit, get to know them, us. Without all... this interrogation. Come learn who Quickdraw is, aside from our names and the kid’s pain. Please.”

Xaaron’s head rose, and he nodded, “I will. Once the verdict is delivered, when you all go home I.. I will come and. And visit.”

Mimi stood by Quickdraw, watching the trio converse. Mimi’s arm went around her taller but younger brother’s birdcage ribs, and she hugged him gently.

“It’s gonna be alright, pigeon.”

“Why d’you always call me pigeon?”, he huffed.

“Cause you’re actually a dove, Quickdraw, you just don’t recognize it yet.”

#pastelwrites #humanformers #fankids #crim is going to Destwoy Me UwU #mentions of eye trauma #cybernetic prosthetic fuckery

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