Flash fic inspired by @thanksjro 's tumblr No Face November challenge Day 15: Whirl + two bonus ideas.
Word Count: 751
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The first thing that strikes Whirl as off is the doorbell of his watch shop.
“Welcome!”
Its synthetic voice, Whirl knows, is that of a war-time drone.
It is not a watchmaker’s greeting system.
The second thing that throws him is what comes walking through the door.
“Well,” Whirl drawls, “if it isn’t the prick himself. Hiya.”
The bot on the other side of his counter (Whirl does not recall him walking up to it) narrows his optics; the red chevrons on his helm tipped askance.
“Excuse me?” He says.
“What. Never heard it said to your face before?” Whirl asks. “Here, I’ll say it again, p--”
Prowl raises a hand, half to stop him, half in self-defense. Ooh. High Command-style verbal beatdown commencing in 3, 2, 1:
“I don’t even know who you are.”
Whirl wants to scoff. Prowl not knowing him of all bots.
But he takes a glance down and there is no Autobrand on his chassis. Pre-war. Of course it is. He’s still in his shop in Polyhex. He sighs.
“Right, I...I mistook you for someone else. Whatever,” Whirl replies. “Uh. What brings you here?”
He can’t tell if the look Prowl gives him is because he’s just asked a stupid question or if it's just residual disbelief from their shaky "introduction." To his credit, he waves it off.
“I’m looking for a chronometer. For my partner,” Prowl explains. “Thinking it might actually help him show up on time.”
Whirl remembers the things he’d say to prospective customers. He tries. But there's no point.
He shouldn’t even be here.
“Partner, huh. Your Conjunx? This a gift?”
Prowl’s optic twitches even while the rest of his face remains one notch below neutral.
“A partner.” He repeats.
“Well ya know what, buddy? I got just the thing,” Whirl says. “Real proud of this one.”
And then quieter, at the thought of parting with one of his first hand-made chronometers:
“I really am.”
He reaches down to lift the lid of the featured tempered-glass box display but it is not his hands that come into view.
Pincers.
Great. He pushes through the contradiction, squeezing the display handle with his claws. Whirl raises the lid.
With his other claw, he pinches the tiny, round chronometer and airlifts it out of its confines. He’s almost got it out when the force of his grip slips. A hideous shriek of metal--identical to the noise of a bot being torn limb from limb--resounds in the shop. The gold plating has crumpled entirely.
Whirl has destroyed the watch.
In a rush of anger, his claws clamp down even harder, crunching the chronometer into meaningless metal, snapping it in two from the hinges.
Prowl says nothing. In fact, he doesn’t even react. He merely looks dead ahead: a cold frame without a spark.
“Just stay here,” Whirl tells him, as if Prowl would disappear. He slips into the backroom: his workshop. Except it isn’t his familiar workshop that welcomes him home the moment he glances up.
It’s his cell in Garrus-1.
The back door of his shop in Polyhex had led him here. Fine. If this is how it’s gonna be, he thinks.
Whirl spins around, targeting systems primed and ready to show him a good place to blast an exit. He stops mid way.
There’s a mirror on the back wall, from floor to ceiling, and when he stares deep into it a pale copper faceplate stares back at him: two gold optics, like the round chronometers in his shop. A mouth with which to scream.
Whirl draws his arm back.
He drives the apex of his claw into the glass and watches that face shatter into nothing. A million fragments, none of which hold the image of him. Whirl reels back for another one: he has no face. Not anymore.
In the distance, Rung calls to him:
“Whirl. It’s alright. You can stop now.”
It always falls apart.
“Whirl.”
He opens his eye.
The presiding psychiatrist aboard the Lost Light simply watches him sit up from his resting position.
Re-experience therapy: find your happy place, and relieve it over and over again, Rung had told him. He looks like he’s about to start apologizing for it.
So Whirl brings himself to his feet, heading for the exit, and ignores the way Rung tries to protest and stop him.
“Don’t worry about it, Eyebrows...” Whirl mutters on his way out.
“I knew it wouldn’t work anyway.”
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Rungian Re-experience Therapy: relive your happiest moment, over and over and over - MTMTE #12
The prints are in from @houseofroulx and they look amazing! Can't wait to start cutting. Thanks so much, dudes!! . Stay tuned for more info about these guys real soon. . . . #noface #tunnelvision #nofacenovember #ciderhouseroulx #void #voidlife #avoidthenoid #annoyedthevoid #houseofroulx #limitededition #illustration #collageart #getweird
