Heavily inspired by this post from death loop au by @keferon :
Blurr should be worrying about what happens next. What could be looming around the corner. The unknown. Chaos. Destruction. Death.
It should worry him that Swindle is here now too. In the middle of it all. Because of him.
But for this one moment, Blurr can’t seem to find it in himself to care. Because Swindle had come across universes. To get back to him.
Blurr hadn’t quite believed it – when Swindle had first approached him, started talking. He had expected another scam, another con – another swindle. Not familiarity. Familiarity that set Blurr on edge, even as he couldn’t quite place where the sensation was coming from. The idea that this Swindle was different. And the longer Swindle spoke, the more the sensation grew. Blurr had found his mind going blank with the shock of realizing that things felt different, felt familiar because this Swindle was his Swindle.
And then not only was Swindle here (because how could Swindle be here), but he was reciting all the little details of their lives – of their bar. Details hidden in memories Blurr had thought were gone. Memories Blurr had tried to bury. Because he thought they were forever out of reach.
Swindle should have been forever out of reach. And yet here he was, re-immersing Blurr in the details of where their lives had for a brief moment overlapped together. It had been enough to make Blurr smile as his past sharpened from a faded dull grey to full color.
The black polishing cloth. Purple tablecloths. Blue vortexes. And golden sharks.
Golden sharks. Blurr had needed to stifle a laugh at their mention. Of all the little details Swindle listed, it hadn’t surprised him that Swindle remembered them. The one point of running the bar they had constantly quibbled over.
A 3 shanix price difference and golden sharks.
To Swindle, it was a sign of how Blurr was too soft for the world of business – charging less for the more complex drink just because he liked making it. It was a sign of why the bar – why Blurr – needed Swindle. (Blurr wondered if Swindle had known how right he was, even if it had been for different reasons than what was stated. Blurr needed Swindle.)
And yet despite the controversy, the price of the blue vortex had remained – complete with its golden sharks. And Blurr had known why. Because Swindle liked the little golden sharks too.
Swindle had liked them so much that he had been the first to add one to a blue tornado. Grabbing one from where they sat in the stock being unpacked for the bar and dropping it into the glass of the drink Blurr had been mixing for him. Blurr can’t believe he ever forgot the smile that had lit up Swindle’s face when Blurr had mixed one for himself next. That smile was blinding in his newly awakened memory.
Admittedly Swindle would have liked the golden sharks even more if they added more shanix to his pockets. But to Blurr, those golden sharks had become worth more than the loss of shanix. Because the blue Sharknado and the purple tablecloths were what made the bar not just his, but theirs. And they made Swindle smile. And that was something worth more than all the shanix in all the banks on Cybertron. To be able to share a smile, a laugh, a drink around the counter of a bar…. To have a life. It had been more than Blurr ever thought he’d get.
Blurr had wondered it the price remaining the same meant the same to Swindle. Had hoped that maybe, just maybe, there were some things in Swindle’s life more valuable than money. Had wanted to believe that maybe he was one of them. And now….now maybe this was the proof. Because finding Swindle here really should have been impossible. Starscream, sure. Swindle, no way. It should be impossible – was impossible. To make Swindle’s presence across universes un-impossible…Blurr can’t begin to imagine what the cost would have been, but he is certain there would have been – possibly still is – a cost. That Swindle paid that cost…for him….
Blurr hadn’t realized when he ended up in Swindle’s arms. Had barely recognized the sound of his own voice as the words poured from his mouth at light speed. Because when had he last been able to talk like this? As though with an old friend. With an old friend who was quite likely more than a friend. Certainly closer than Blurr and Starscream had ever been or could ever be, even tied together by their doom as they were.
Talking about everything and nothing at all. Catching up. About Swindle. About Blurr. About the universe.
But never discussing the truly serious matters. The deaths. The scars. The never ending cycles.
Because for just a moment, none of that matters.
Blurr is no longer alone.
He had walked beside Swindle, wandering through this universe. Showing Swindle the places he knew, places he’d been. Even as they felt brand new to Blurr himself – as though he were only truly taking them in now, for the first time.
Walking and talking. Shoulder to shoulder. Close enough that Blurr could feel Swindle’s field brushing against his own. Close enough that if Blurr timed his steps just right, the plating of his shoulder would brush ever so faintly against Swindle’s arm.
They had walked and talked until the places and words had run out. Ending up back at Blurr’s.
Blurr still isn’t sure he believes it. That Swindle is really actually here. From where he is seated, he leans closer to Swindle so that his head rests completely against Swindle’s arm. Warm gold against cool blue. Blurr can feel the warmth. Can feel the cabling in his neck loosening, tension bleeding out of his frame, spark slowing to a steady hum.
There are no words really. Things like this – good things – don’t happen to Blurr, in his experience. Or when they do, they are short-lived and far outweighed by the suffering the universe doles out on him as repayment. And Blurr has had a lot of experience. Blurr knows the predictable unpredictability of how every universe will play out. But there has never been anything like this. Swindle does not belong here. Impossible. Impossible any longer though to imagine any possibility that Swindle is not here, is not real. Not when Blurr can feel the weight of him pressing close – has been feeling that weigh for some time now.
Swindle does not belong here.
That no longer matters though.
Because Swindle is here.
Blurr can let down his guard. Can relax. Can finally rest, even if just for a brief moment.
And in this moment, so long as they have each other, nothing else matters at all.
thinking about an idw-adjacent starscream death loop au. semi-horror, but with an underlying plot and greater goal at the end of the story.
it's an idea i've had in the back of my head for a while, but i can't really figure out how to logically write a fic about it. so maybe i'll just keep it as an idea. maybe i'll write a mini-series on this blog for kicks. general premise and basic idea below the cut!
at the end of the idw-verse, starscream dies activating the talisman, eventually allowing unicron to be felled. he drifts about in infraspace for a while, aiding bumblebee when he can—no one else can see him after all, so starscream mostly wastes his time flitting around a slowly recovering cybertron. he imagines spending the rest of eterinity as a ghostly figure, unseen by all but one. it's a lonely existence no matter how one looks at it, but starscream is used to being alone. so to him, its a bearable life, albeit somewhat boring.
but things could never be so simple. unicron might have been vanquished, but it was only his corporeal form that was banished; after all, his existence as the Destroyer of Worlds is a universal constant. thus, he can never truly die. he exists as a phantom, floating in the phantom remains of the Dead Universe.
but even so, unicron is enraged. his ultimate goal of consuming cybertron and ending the cybertronian race was almost to fruition—how dare mortals attempt to stop him? and not even ones blessed by primus, no—regular fledgling children, who fought desperately against his omniscience. it infuriates him to no end.
but unicron is unable to take his anger out on the living, for he possesses no dominon over them. so he chooses to punish the dead instead.
starscream is wrenched out of infraspace and brought before unicron, limbs clasped in chains wrought from blistering dark matter. unicron grins, harsh and wicked, as he condemns to the cruelest of fates: to live for en eternity, again and again until his very core breaks. a punishment for being the root cause of unicron's failure and eventual demise. there will be no limit, he tells the seeker gleefully, no foreseable end to starscream's tale. there will be only life, eternal, and death that comes suddenly, before things begin anew.
starscream stuggles. he fights. and when all else fails, he begs. he pleads with unicron for mercy, practically beseeching the dark god for a different fate. starscream's life was riddles with lies, with pain and hatred and a viscous, desperate desire for survival. all his grand schemes and vile plots failed in the end. it is only in death that starscream found some sort of peace, and he desperately wants to keep it that way.
but unicron is not megatron, and starscream's begging is not effective in the slightest he finds no mercy in the shriveled chest cavity where a spark should lie—and why should starscream gain any respite after death? it was his fault unicron was in such a dilapidated, miserable state. it is only fitting the seeker pay the price.
when starscream wakes up, it's to the smell of smoke from the burning cities stinging his olfactory. the ceiling is a familiar rusting grey. he's lying flat on his back, the uncomfortable feeling of a patchy berth digging into his wings. starscream's HUD alerts him to a gaping wound in his side, clumsily patched by an ameteur medic's unskilled, unpracticed servos.
he sits up with a start, uncaring of how it jostles his wounds. he glances around the familiar room as dread crawls its way into his throat.
he's in a decepticon medbay. more specifically, he's in hook's medbay, in kaon, four million years in the past. when the war had only just begun and the autobots and decepticons were still fighting for the control of cybertron. when starscream was still second-in-command, air commander, and megatron's right hand. when he was clawing his way to power and getting beaten down for it every other turn. when the decepticons still fought to end functionalism, and the autobots fought to end decepticon tyranny. when the reality of never-ending war hadn't quite settled in, and no cybertronian knew what they were getting into.
and starscream has landed himself in it already. too late to try and abandon the decepticons or change the course of history, and too early to settle on a peaceful cybertron that is four thousand millenia away.
and if he dies again—if something goes awry or he makes a single misstep—it won't end. the cycle will start over again, if unicron's words are to be believed. starscream will have to live through four million years of terror, violence, and mind-shattering brutality, over and over for all eternity.
starscream can't help it. he screams, louder than he ever has before, agony and fear and fury swirling through his lines and spilling out of his vocalizer. and in the back of his helm, curling around his audials, he can hear unicron's haunting, chilling laugh, because starscream is now stuck in the middle of a war he suffered through once already, with no way out.
and his horrid, fresh new hell has only scarcely begun.
Hello, this is a Death Note time loop AU. Light and L are stuck in a loop, it starts with Light’s death in the manga. They are the only ones that remember the loops. After the loops start instead of it ending after both of them are dead it only requires one of them to die to reset. What I talk about at some points will be pretty dark (murder, torture, abuse, etc). Not all in this post (does include some of that already) but this AU in general. Since it will involve a lot on how their mental health declines and along with their already… morally interesting self’s I explore how they behave. This is my warning and I’ll make a warning for each post for this.)
Light and L are stuck in a limbo in terms of the Kira case. If either dies they both reset. It's a spiral of them both sometimes playing the game they did but on a much higher level on some cycles or on sight beating the shit out of eachother. First time and second time is obviously different, third to tenth time they work together, after twenty times it breaks down into the spiral. Once they hit loop fifty is when they finally show more obvious signs of breaking. Light is unavoidably killed by Ryku and L is just doomed by the actions of those around them. The death bells ring for both of them but after Light dies and the first reset happens, they no longer have to wait for the other. No loneliness in being the one alive or the one dead. Locked even further into this relationship of only being able to understand eachother. They are smart but not emotionally so (manipulation isn't the same as emotional intimacy or empathy), the resets make things far worse.
Some resets further down the line L just straight up kidnaps Light (before Kira suspects are even chosen) and keeps him till the death bells ring. Like, this would be one of the more psychologically more dangerous situations during the cycles. Along with Light's 'puppeteering phase' where he keeps using the death note on many loops to make L do things against his will then killing him. Both involve torture of taking the free will and autonomy of the other. Something the really messes with both of them since they crave to be atop things. To be able to understand and move the situation in their favor. In both incidents it’s at a time when both individually have breaking points. Since the other is basically burned out to the extreme due to cycles they can’t even use logic to figure out the why when these things happen. Other people? Sure, easy as pie. Eachother? Nope. Can’t get a read. That similar thought process thing they have has no way of happening when it comes to trying and understanding their own feelings.
They are both immoral and shattered characters. They weren't broken in the begging, just already in many pieces and no one took the proper time with either of them to actually make either of them have some emotionally healthy habits. Born with the need for a little more help and no one helped them. Intelligent children are just assumed to be more mature than their age. Regular children are unfairly expected to understand norms and the world when they’re just basically learning from scratch from everything around them, how do you think adults treat intelligent kids then? Pushing them harder, supporting them less. Light and L I don’t expect to act like everyone else, what I’m saying is that they lack empathy for other people a lot of the time because they weren’t given enough attention when being taught that. Kindness is something they think their both don’t, L with his work and Light with being ‘God’. The perception of kindness is warped. Sorry about that rant, back to the AU.
So, ya. It’s a burning pit of corpses in terms of how it goes down. I can go into more detail on the two incidents but I’d do it on another post if people wanted that.
Misa finds out basically everytime, like more people notice depending on how careless both of the boys are in that loop but Misa just figures it out each time. Rem helps with some of those times but it’s majority of Misa doing the heavy lifting. Why? Misa isn’t dumb and she has great luck. Luck and her general genius she already had when it came to interacting with people. Misa is a lost soul who depends her happiness on other people, I don’t know how she got this unfortunate codependency need from (probably some trauma). Anyway, she wants to help them but…
Light is mad, eventually L is to. It’s a lot of frustration of Misa not being apart of their loops but constantly finding out and doing similar things (aka the solutions she proposes or what she does to help. Reminding her becomes a hard task for them both with how things in their minds start to fall apart and her small comforts are numb since at some point they only feel like the only real people). They are trapped in a way where if they keep coming across something that doesn’t help then it just drives them mad. This would probably lead to a couple loops of them doing something horrible (like criminally so) to Misa and either Rem gets their asses or Misa’s good luck manifesting in another way.
Light and L would at some point do something to eachother (this means during the incidents since I left that vague and whatever other things) or other people like Misa. To highly intelligent people with crumbling sanity, shit morals, and highly messed up feelings/relationships? They are going to do things worse than just killing people. Being killed isn’t the worse thing someone can do to you.
About the real people thing, when you are the only ones that can change and grow? It feels like everyone else is an actor or NPC. While things can change for those around them based on their actions, no one remembers and the only reasons these new things happen is because of how the boys act. This wouldn’t seem super bad since you may be thinking I see L and Light as to people that don’t care. No, they do. They just have a hard time with it. It hurts and they don’t understand why. Their families (or people I’d say are close enough with them to be called family) can’t help, will never change with the, and are growing further from them as they start to lose the memories they had before the loops since it’s getting harder to keep everything in check with how long it’s going on for. Their emotional state also affects their memories. At some points they just huddle together, no crying or speaking. Just cuddling.
The longest they live is on the day Light originally dies, but getting L to the point is hard. Cause after the day he originally dies they had a hard time making plans on his survival. In later loops it’s not as bad.
At the end of the loops, what the ending would be? An end to the loops… I have two/three ideas on that but I’d need to see. I want to better organize the events that would happen, their mental health declines, and some other things. Picking an ending now when I’m still trying to figure out how Light becomes not a sexist? I need my details figured out first!!
Hope whoever reads this long AU idea post enjoys it. Posting more is unsure for me.
