Belated DVD commentary for tainry: "The Fix'd Foot"

[tiamatschild]

Title: The Fix'd Foot
Author: Tiamat's Child
Character: Beachcomber, with Perceptor insisting on making his opinion known.
Word count: 1,444 words
Rating/Warning: G
Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers!
Group/Theme: For the 7minibots community on Livejournal Theme set: The Seven Major Chakras – Prompt: Muladhara (governs stability and survival)
Summary: Perceptor has never been able to get Beachcomber to do anything. Not for his own good, and not for the good of the world.

A link to the orginal story.

The Fix'd Foot

Okay, where to start. Um. The basic conceit of this story is essentially that Perceptor has absolutely no idea what to do with Beachcomber - but that Beachcomber is still a nesecary presence in his life, steady and stable despite being outwardly flighty. Hence the title, which amused me at the time, since it's from a Donne poem that has a strong subtext of advocating for conventional gender roles in romantic relationships - women as steadying force who stay put physically. And that's really not what's going on here.

Yes, I do think I'm funny. In. A sad way. Moving on!

Beachcomber had the unique quality of always being readily found by students and eternally elusive to all faculty save Perceptor, who could barely go two steps without tripping over him.

Beachcomber is a fun teacher, but I wouldn't really want to have to work with him as a colleague.

Usually he couldn't, at any rate. Today, no matter how he looked, he couldn't seem to find the mech at all.

Perceptor poked into Beachcomber's office. No Beachcomber at his desk. No Beachcomber at his lab table. No Beachcomber under his lab table. No Beachcomber in his closet.

He'd resorted to checking the vaulted ceiling when he was interrupted by a gentle "Ahem," from the door. He turned, smiling sheepishly at Moraine, one of the geology students.

Aaaand this is the first time Moraine turns up. She is so called because I needed a geology related name, and on the day I got around to filling in my underlines indicating missing person/place names on my long hand draft, I'd been clambering around the glacial moraine that provides the highest point at the Morton Arboretum. I didn't actually call her Glacial Moraine, because that's just silly, but the associations of the growing conditions produced by glacial moraines, and of the basic impression left by the term, pretty much define her personality. Not that that's well developed here. She's essentially a generic walk on student here, except for an aside at the end of her appearance that kind of. Grew.


"Ah," he said, "Well!"

"He's in your office, Professor," Moraine said.

Perceptor stared at her.

She shrugged. "I thought you must be looking for Professor Beachcomber. He's in your office."

"…May I ask…?"

There was a certain disconcerting self-assuredness about Moraine, a sense that her responses were all for your sake. It made Perceptor just a bit uncomfortable, particularly when she tilted her head at him. "He leaned out to wave to me."

"Ah. Yes. Of course."

Perceptor really hates being shown up. Even unintentionally.

Beachcomber was, in fact, cross-legged on Peceptor's floor. He was looking at nothing, his optics online, the center column of his body straight.

This is not really yoga for TFs mostly because Beachcomber hasn't encountered that spiritual system yet, but he is using embodiment as what is essentially a... meditative tool? Analytic tool? Both? I am not totally sure, I have all kinds of theories about what embodiment and disembodiment mean to TFs, and the extent to which disembodiment is a kind of punishment more equivalent to banishment or social ostracism than imprisonment per-se, although that happens too but uh. They're still a little shaky.

The important thing is that Beachcomber is totally all about the embodiment, no matter how drifty he sometimes looks.

"You're avoiding me," Perceptor said, leaning against his door frame.

"That's unfair," Beachcomber said, quiet and lazy, "I'm waiting for you."

"You know no one can ever find you when you do that," Perceptor told him, and stepped into his office. It was annoying, the way Beachcomber was basically inviting him to loom over him.

Beachcomber is a manipulative little smartass. Autobots don't like being placed into positions that imply or create social disparities, and Perceptor, even here, when he isn't actually an Autobot yet, can be pretty dang sensitive about it. In general, autobots don't like to lead. They don't like to be one up. Perceptor's smart, so he has authority, and sometimes he goes with that particular flow, but like a lot of very smart people, he prefers to avoid seeming to reinforce a hierarchy with himself at the top. V. v. v. bad manners. So yes. Beachcomber knows that. Beachcomber is indeed, being kind of obnoxious.

He sat down on the floor, across from Beachcomber. He was still taller, but at least he wasn't looming.

"Hey," Beachcomber said, with a small, delighted smile, "Good to see you."

*happily makes the smoosh hands*

Perceptor ignored him. "Come with me."

"Aw, Perceptor, do we have to do this again?"

"Yes. We will keep doing it until you agree or I leave."

Beachcomber had taken Perceptor out, a few nights before, to the great height of the upper tower, the astronomy tower, where telescopes came and went, and the winds were strong and clean in the ever chilly air.

I'm going to love that line about the telescopes forever. Transformers give you the best stuff. The astronomy students don't need telescopes, they are the telescopes!

"Look," he'd said, as he spread his arms and turned, slow, careful steps in the narrow space. "See how many people live in our world."

"I know how many there are," Perceptor told him, in the tone of someone who did indeed know, and knew all the necessary calculations to readjust the statistics as necessary, "They need you."

Beachcomber shrugged. "Maybe they do, but they don't need me the way you think."

Wobbly quasi-pacifist is less wobbly this early on.

Perceptor stepped forward and snatched up one of his hands. "Beachcomber," he said, low and urgent, holding him by the hand as if he could hold Beachcomber's mind that way, take him and turn him to Perceptor's way of thinking. "Your lesson plans are a joke, your teamwork is non-existent, your tendency to behave as if publishing requirements do not apply to you is reprehensible, and if I ever let you talk me into another vacation with you I'll have to check myself into a mental institution, but you have a gift. I would never deny that. Use it. Come with me – you know the Decepticons are moving."

Perceptor has a cruuuuush. Man, I love this passage, even though I'd probably write Perceptor's line a little differently now, because it's all about what a pain in the ass Beachcomber is, and Perceptor's simultaneous love of his autonomy and, yes, his general annoying qualities, and the fact that Perceptor is well aware that those qualities are annoying and really wishes Beachcomber would do what he says just once.

Beachcomber squeezed Perceptor's hand gently, and just like that Perceptor could feel any minor control he might have had over the situation simply vanish, glinting off and boiling away. "I know. But I'm not a weapons system engineer – I'm not a soldier, Perceptor. Can you imagine me in an army?"

"Well," Perceptor said, having anticipated this objection, "I can never really picture you as a professor, either, and you manage somehow."

Still love that line. He thought up that joke before hand!

Beachcomber shook his head. "I'm not going with you," he said.

Now Beachcomber shook his head again and said, "Perceptor, I'm not leaving. These are my students. This – The Decepticons can't make me change."

Which is Beachcomber's fundemental issue through out here. He's not going to change. He refuses to change. Beachcomber changes, but on his own terms, and even through those changes he stays the same. He's a dynamic but stable system. Or at least that's his conception of himself, or coming close to his conception of himself. Beachcomber's proud, maybe even prouder than Perceptor, for all he's not the one prickling all over the place here.

"This is not like a funding committee, Beachcomber!" Perceptor said, sharp and frustrated, "Megatron is not going to go away and leave you alone to your rambling and your disordered evaluation systems just because you give him that inscrutable look and offer him a brilliant paper!"
Beachcomber grinned. "You think my papers are brilliant?"

"No, I think they need severe editing."

Still my favorite joke. Beachcomber doesn't need Perceptor's approval, but he'd like it anyway.

"Oh."

"That's not the point!" Perceptor snapped, glaring at Beachcomber's abruptly, exaggeratedly downcast expression. "They'll kill you, you idiot, and anyone else they feel like!"

Beachcomber laughed, the same soft laugh he always laughed whenever he'd manage to provoke Perceptor into raising his voice. "I know they will."

"It's not funny!"

Beachcomber reached out to him, catching his hand loosely with a soft clink. "I know that too."

*more smoosh hands* See, for my id, this is better than passionate five page make outs. I don't even know why. Yay! says my id. And then it says Now It Needs Moar Politics And Also A Few Cliometrical Tables!

No, id, we are sorry. This is still basically slightly brooding slightly shippy relationship and character study gen.


"Your CPU must have been dropped during your construction."

Beachcomber chuckled. "Seems likely."

Perceptor pulled his hand away and stood up. "Come with me."

Beachcomber folded his hands under his chin and shook his head slowly, regretfully. "You know I won't."

It was true. Perceptor did know. Beachcomber always did just as he pleased. There was no swaying him when he'd made up his mind. He was, in that way if no other, rather like the geological systems he studied.

But Perceptor had to try. Which is exactly what I like about this relationship: They're both being themselves, and they both incredibly stubborn, incredibly proud, inordinately clever people who know each other well enough to know what's going to happen when they both go around being themselves. But they believe in playing it out anyway. Also they like each other, annoyance factor aside. "I'm leaving as soon as I finish packing my equipment."

Beachcomber stood and smiled. "I'll help."

"I don't want you to help!"

Petty Perceptor is petty. He really only ever does this with Beachcomber - which is, admittedly, entirely speculation from, like, two lines of canon, but still. It's G1, what can I say? No one has a lot of canon.

"Then I'll watch. I'm going to miss you. Things won't be quite the same without you."

Perceptor turned away. "Do as you will. I've never been able to get you to do anything else, after all."

Beachcomber stepped neatly around Perceptor, quick and light, a typical move from him, he'd never even let Perceptor do something as small as turn his back on him, and smiled up at him. "Of course not – making me do anything other than what I wanted would be very unethical."

TF ethics, I swear my ideas about them get into everything. But I do think that autonomy is both a very complicated and a very complex and deeply fraught topic in TF ethical philosophy, and that there are multiple schools of thought on the subject represented amongst the Autobots and the Decepticons alike - although the Autobots definitely have more dissenters, and I suspect that Beachcomber's view of the subject is... a minority one when viewed in all its nuances. So he can make a multi-layered joke here, about his choices that thwart Perceptor's choices, and Perceptor's respect for him as a legitimate moral actor that Perceptor is unlikely to admit to out loud, and his own dissenting ethical stances, and Perceptor's ethical stances, which are intensely important to him too.

At least that was what was in my head.

Perceptor winced. "There's one upside- at least I won't have to live with your sense of humor."

Yes, the lack of uncomfortably close hitting jokes will definitely be an upside. We believe you, Perceptor. Of course.

"You see? There's a use for every piece of scrap," Beachcomber said, and laughed.




It was a very long time before Perceptor came back to that part of the world. When he did the school was broken, its tower crumbled in, its outbuildings dark and dull, where they were not smashed open. "I'm sorry," Wheeljack said, and put a hand on his shoulder. "I wasn't counting on this when I asked you along."

"I was," Perceptor told him, "But I appreciate the sentiment." He turned his head to smile at his colleague. "Let's salvage what we can. No need to let knowledge go to waste."

My transitions, they are so subtle. Not.

So they did, and Perceptor did an admirable job, he thought, of not becoming overtly melancholy as they sorted through what remained of the databanks and labs. They'd been mostly ransacked, the majority of the data removed or sabotaged, and the labs tossed every which way. There wasn't much to be had, but they took what they could use and carry.

In one of the lowest labs, near the basements that connected to the city's old service tunnels, Perceptor stopped and held up a hand to Wheeljack. He'd heard the soft clink of another set of footsteps in the hall. Wheeljack nodded – he'd heard it too, and they both raised their weapons as they turned to the door.

Perceptor was surprised when whoever was in the hall knocked. A quick set of raps on the doorframe, a bleakly cheery gesture, as if this was still a functioning school, instead of an abandoned ruin.

Of course, sometimes you have to agree with Perceptor: Beachcomber's sense of humor really is kind of appalling. (I can say that, because mine is shamefully similar. Writing through identification? What? Where? La la la.)

"Mind if I come in?" a familiar voice to go with the gesture asked, and the small form of their visitor stepped around the doorjamb.
Perceptor tracked the movement on hard learned reflex.

Man I love that line. "hard learned". Yus. I had so much trouble with that. "hard earned", apart from being a cliche, wasn't really what I meant, and it took me a while to come up with the alternative that really got at what I was trying to convey.

Also, it's a nice economical use of action for emotional effect. Go me!

"I thought it was you," Beachcomber said, as laconic and amused as he had ever been, although there was the lingering dark splash of an energy burn across his shoulder and he held a gun in his hand. "I don't know anyone else who'd use a light cannon to cut open a door."

Wheeljack laughed, though Perceptor was sure that his aim hadn't wavered either.

Perceptor didn't answer. He stared across the broken room at Beachcomber, shockingly but undeniably alive and most distinctly himself. Beachcomber must have made good on that promise to resist the Decepticons however he could think to. That wasn't surprising. What was surprising was that he'd survived the attempt. Such an outcome was statistically improbable.

Oh man oh man oh man I forgot how much I love this passage. I'm iffy on some of the set up for this piece but the emotional punch! It does that well. I still like the juxtaposition of "dark splash" and "energy burn" and the contrast of Beachcomber's manner and his appearance, and Wheeljack's good humor while Perceptor's in shock because he'd honestly expected when he left without Beachcomber that he'd never see him again because one or the other of them was going to die first and yes. I did good. Go me!

Perceptor lowered his gun. "You idiot," he said, "I might have shot you."

No, he's never ever going to admit that he thought Beachcomber was dead. Not in so many words, anyway. Although I think clingy!Perceptor was a notable feature of the next little while.

Beachcomber laughed and stepped towards him over a broken table. "Hey," he said, "It's good to see you." And he smiled his old smile, small and delighted, unshaken by time or hardship or Decepticons, the way he'd always promised to be.

The return of the tables. Dang, I use a lot of tables in this story. I wonder what's with that, I don't think it was conscious. It's probably just my association of tables with hospitality and shared grace, but I really did not realize I was doing it when I wrote it. Well, and then there's other stuff with broken tables and whole tables rattling around in my mental miscellany drawer, but. I don't know. Have to think about that.

Oh, hey, it's just occurred to me that this story is heavily Willa Cather influenced. Antonia and Beachcomber would probably get on like a house afire if they ever met, and of course their essential character tasks are the same - to retain the self in the face of vast opposition and general hardship. I love that archetype. I am a total sucker for that archetype. I really, really, really am.