{crashing down}
Title: Boundless (3/?) read part one read part two
Rating: PG 13
Warnings: some violence, character death(s), implied smut
Summary: AU. The lines between your spark and mine- they bend and twist, warp and curve, age and change- never breaking, never ending.
Pairings: Prowl/Jazz
part three
Anyone looking into their apartment would have realized it was inhabited by more than one person.
The walls were white and the floor a somber grey, the way they had been when the building was built- stern, hardly inviting. But looking up, the ceiling was streaked with different colors, random brushstrokes that didn’t fit with the stark walls. There was a standard energon dispenser set into the wall, with a counter and cabinets on each side. The counter on the left was bare, and the cabinets all latched shut; the one on the right had a stack of mismatched cubes and a partially disassembled holographic projector, and one of the cabinets was missing a door.
There was a standard issue table in the center of the room, but the chairs were thickly padded; there was a screen displaying both the daily news and a list of songs on the wall. In the berthroom, there was a double berth attached at the head to the wall- the left wall had a built-in desk and wall to wall shelving full of datapads, while the right had shelves and cabinets attached at seemingly random places.
Anyone who stopped by in the evening- or what was like it on Cybertron, where there was no sun- would have found what seemed to be two separate lives that merely happened to exist it in the same place.
It did not seem possible that two mechs so different would ever intersect except by necessity or accident.
And yet they did.
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The Autobot brig was one place Jazz hadn’t ever bothered to scope out, either here on the Ark or on any base in Kyron 5. He’d never been caught before, and he’d never seen a reason to check out the prison before- not when there were supplies to steal and ships to crash.
But when he came online, he knew exactly where he was. The cramped space, bizarrely enough painted a nauseating shade of orange, was solid metal on three sides and energy bars on the fourth; there was a dim light set into the ceiling above him, bright enough to let him appreciate the awful orange but dim enough that he didn’t feel like a lab specimen. His wrists were cuffed in front of him, and he was lying on the hard floor.
Leaving his visor dark, Jazz looked at the bars and saw that there was a guard. The red mech stared at him, probably waiting for him to wake up. The silver Decepticon was fairly certain that he was due for an interrogation. He ran a diagnostic and found himself in good shape, even if his weapons were disabled. His spark had stopped hurting, although he could still feel pressure there, as if his chamber had shrunk.
What could the Autobots’ do to him? Feeling good about his prospects, Jazz let his visor light up. The guard noticed he was awake, and called in another bot. It was one Jazz recognized from his brief perusal of the personnel files. The Decepticons didn’t really have the information Jazz wanted on most of the bots- there were plenty of weapons specs and lists of abilities, but no information about, say, their personalities or their relationships. However, Ironhide had a reputation for being a one-mech army, so his file was particularly detailed.
Ironhide was not someone Jazz wanted to be killed by- those cannons were to be avoided at all costs.
“Huh. You’re Ironhide, right? Figured you’d be taller.” On the other hand, he was needed alive for an interrogation.
“Why, you-” Ironhide controlled himself and switched a portion of the energy bars so the red mech could haul Jazz out. Ironhide seized him by the cuffs and proceeded to roughly drag him down the hallway, passing cells on all sides, to a heavy steel door at the end of the hall. Presumably that was the interrogation room.
“Here you go, con. Enjoy.” Ironhide hoped Prowl gave him Pit- from what had happened earlier, he guessed the two had some past history, and Ironhide was betting that it was unpleasant.
The door slid open, the lights inside turned up enough to force Jazz to recalibrate, and Ironhide shoved him inside.
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Prowl waited for Jazz to orient himself.
It had been so long since they’d seen each other, or so it felt. Seeing how familiar Jazz looked had bothered him more than he cared to admit- Prowl was in a new body, had changed since those idyllic days on Cybertron, and had imagined the same for Jazz.
Then again, Jazz was suspected of raiding Kyron 5, stealing seven Autobot ships, breaking undetected into the Ark, and was probably responsible for the deaths of at least thirty soldiers. The mech he had known would never have engaged in such wanton destruction.
He let Jazz’s optics adjust to the light- it took a few seconds. He watched the blue visor darken as it tried to block out the light. Jazz’s posture stiffened as his sight cleared and he got a good look at Prowl’s face. Had he recognized Prowl?
Hesitantly, the tactician reached out with his spark, pushing for a response.
“You.” Jazz’s voice was cold with fury. “You’re not real!”
And he lunged. Prowl barely had time to bring up his hands before Jazz slammed into him, knocking him back against the wall. The cuffs should have severely limited his mobility, but that didn’t stop him from pressing the bar between the cuffs directly against prowl’s neck, crushing down on the vocalizer.
“Arg…ah…Jazz…” Prowl tried to force out a sentence, but what emerged was mangled and static-filled. He tried to force Jazz off, but couldn’t.
“You’re not real, you’re not real, there’s no way you could possibly be-your face-you look just like him and you make my spark hurt-and you can’t be real-” Jazz was babbling. He knew that he should stop talking, but the black mech he was trying to kill was wearing his dead sparkmate’s face, was making his spark jump in his chest.
“Don’t.” Prowl managed. His claws were cutting into Jazz’s sides, but the silver mech didn’t seem to notice the owudns or the energon dripping out onto the floor.
“Die.” Jazz growled. He was so close to Prowl now that their chests were touching; he could actually hear Prowl’s energon pump pounding in his chest. “You’re-not-real.”
With a primary energon line disrupted, Prowl’s optics were the first thing to go. They started to flicker and then dim as they ran out of power. Jazz watched- he wanted to see this- this thing die-
-he wondered if this was how it had looked when his sparkmate died-
With a jerk, Jazz abruptly jumped back. Prowl didn’t even stagger, though he was fighting blind; he reached out and seized Jazz by the arm, keeping him from retreating.
“I’m here.” Prowl’s voice cracked as his vocalizer started to snap back into palce. “I’m here, Jazz. This is real.”
“It isn’t.” Jazz whimpered, and the break in his voice hit Prowl like a physical blow. “You died.”
“I didn’t.”
“I don’t believe you.” Jazz started to lunge at him again, but all his control had fled; his attack was predictable, sloppy and Prowl easily restrained him, slamming him into the wall. How could he reason with him?
Their chests touched again and this time, undistracted by Jazz crushing his neck, Prowl felt it. His spark chamber vibrated, almost imperceptibly, barely causing a blip in his sensors. But it was enough.
He was processing faster than he had ever before, faster than he had in the most heated of battles, and yet time had slowed. No matter how quickly he understood, no matter how rapidly he assembled the pieces, it took forever, every nanosecond too long.
“You thought that I died. You found the frame. You’re wearing my chamber around yours.”
“How do you know that?”
“Spark harmonics.” Prowl replied. “My spark recognizes the chamber.”
Jazz reached up to clutch at his chest; the silver mech could feel the vibrations.
“…I couldn’t feel you. I would have felt you if you were alive! Besides, how the frag could you have even replaced your-”
Shockwave’s experiments. The ones they had assumed were about bonding. All they had known was that they were about sparks…and the irreplaceability of the original spark chamber was one of those medical mysteries mechs had been trying to solve for as long as their species had existed. If spark chambers could be replaced, it would mean that mechs who had previously been doomed would be saved. It would give the side that discovered it an advantage.
“Somehow he did.” Prowl whispered. “But he damaged the bond.” He let it sink in. “I called you, Jazz. From the moment I awoke in my new frame I called you.”
“I couldn’t hear you.” Jazz said dumbly. His processor had stopped working; the thought ‘Prowl is alive’ ran on repeat in his mind, a persistent ache made of longing and guilt and pain blocked out every complexity. There was nothing but the simple fact that here he was. “All I did was hurt.”
“Jazz.” Prowl detected the Autobots waiting just outside the door; any moment they would enter. He desperately searched for something to say, anything to prolong this instant. Jazz was still giving him that broken shell-shocked look, and the energon on his hands was forgotten, everything was forgotten as some long-dormant subroutine reminded him just whom he was with.
“I didn’t mean for you to die,” Jazz started in a small voice, and then the floors flew open.
“Thought we’d help you out with the interrogation.” Ironhide growled. He spun a cannon menacingly.
Prowl reach up, slid his fingers into a gap in the plating on Jazz’s neck, and tugged. Jazz’s optics flickered, and he collapsed, offline.
:Does he really deserve your protection?: Ratchet asked, over the comm so that Ironhide and the other guards wouldn’t hear. He reached out for Jazz’s limp frame, and Prowl shoved Jazz into the medic’s grasp.
“I don’t know.” The tactician admitted aloud, ashamed, and overcome by the fight between his spark and his sense, he fled.
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They met in the middle.
Prowl wanted to live uptown, near the offices; Jazz wanted to live downtown in the shadier areas where he always had. They argued about it for weeks; Jazz didn’t want to live near the rich and away from his clients, while Prowl refused to live anywhere where he had to pay a protection fee to the reigning gang.
They found a place in the middle class apartments near the Youth Sectors. They were surrounded by bonded couples raising sparklings, and small businesses; it was close to Prowl’s office and far enough from the worst part of town that Jazz could control where and when he met his clients without alienating them. It was close enough for Jazz to invite over friends and far enough for Prowl to enjoy his solitude.
It seemed a little lonely, moving on to the next part of their lives; as they looked around the empty apartment, still the white and grey that was standard in any low-rent place, they held hands. There was so little space, and they would have to share it for the rest of their days, or at least the rest of their lease.
“So.” Jazz had said. “What should we do first?”
“Test the power lines and the plumbing.” Prowl ahd replied. Jazz could imagine the mental checklist he’d made, could see him already planning the practicalities of life together. “Then…furniture…”
Jazz stroked the edge of one doorwing. “Plenty of time for business later, don’t you think?”
“We should get it done now.” There was no force behind the words as Jazz embraced him from behind; Prowl leaned into his touch, feeling the tension bleed out of him.
“We can do it later.” Jazz whispered. “Wanna christen the berth?”
“It’s only a single.” Prowl protested weakly. “We have to have it…replaced…”There were clever fingers sliding over his hip and down his thigh now, and Prowl forgot the end of his argument.
“We’ll just have be real close, won’t we,” Jazz pushed him towards the berthroom, and Prowl let himself be dragged alone; Jazz was right, business could wait.
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Rating: PG 13
Warnings: some violence, character death(s), implied smut
Summary: AU. The lines between your spark and mine- they bend and twist, warp and curve, age and change- never breaking, never ending.
Pairings: Prowl/Jazz
part three
Anyone looking into their apartment would have realized it was inhabited by more than one person.
The walls were white and the floor a somber grey, the way they had been when the building was built- stern, hardly inviting. But looking up, the ceiling was streaked with different colors, random brushstrokes that didn’t fit with the stark walls. There was a standard energon dispenser set into the wall, with a counter and cabinets on each side. The counter on the left was bare, and the cabinets all latched shut; the one on the right had a stack of mismatched cubes and a partially disassembled holographic projector, and one of the cabinets was missing a door.
There was a standard issue table in the center of the room, but the chairs were thickly padded; there was a screen displaying both the daily news and a list of songs on the wall. In the berthroom, there was a double berth attached at the head to the wall- the left wall had a built-in desk and wall to wall shelving full of datapads, while the right had shelves and cabinets attached at seemingly random places.
Anyone who stopped by in the evening- or what was like it on Cybertron, where there was no sun- would have found what seemed to be two separate lives that merely happened to exist it in the same place.
It did not seem possible that two mechs so different would ever intersect except by necessity or accident.
And yet they did.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Autobot brig was one place Jazz hadn’t ever bothered to scope out, either here on the Ark or on any base in Kyron 5. He’d never been caught before, and he’d never seen a reason to check out the prison before- not when there were supplies to steal and ships to crash.
But when he came online, he knew exactly where he was. The cramped space, bizarrely enough painted a nauseating shade of orange, was solid metal on three sides and energy bars on the fourth; there was a dim light set into the ceiling above him, bright enough to let him appreciate the awful orange but dim enough that he didn’t feel like a lab specimen. His wrists were cuffed in front of him, and he was lying on the hard floor.
Leaving his visor dark, Jazz looked at the bars and saw that there was a guard. The red mech stared at him, probably waiting for him to wake up. The silver Decepticon was fairly certain that he was due for an interrogation. He ran a diagnostic and found himself in good shape, even if his weapons were disabled. His spark had stopped hurting, although he could still feel pressure there, as if his chamber had shrunk.
What could the Autobots’ do to him? Feeling good about his prospects, Jazz let his visor light up. The guard noticed he was awake, and called in another bot. It was one Jazz recognized from his brief perusal of the personnel files. The Decepticons didn’t really have the information Jazz wanted on most of the bots- there were plenty of weapons specs and lists of abilities, but no information about, say, their personalities or their relationships. However, Ironhide had a reputation for being a one-mech army, so his file was particularly detailed.
Ironhide was not someone Jazz wanted to be killed by- those cannons were to be avoided at all costs.
“Huh. You’re Ironhide, right? Figured you’d be taller.” On the other hand, he was needed alive for an interrogation.
“Why, you-” Ironhide controlled himself and switched a portion of the energy bars so the red mech could haul Jazz out. Ironhide seized him by the cuffs and proceeded to roughly drag him down the hallway, passing cells on all sides, to a heavy steel door at the end of the hall. Presumably that was the interrogation room.
“Here you go, con. Enjoy.” Ironhide hoped Prowl gave him Pit- from what had happened earlier, he guessed the two had some past history, and Ironhide was betting that it was unpleasant.
The door slid open, the lights inside turned up enough to force Jazz to recalibrate, and Ironhide shoved him inside.
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Prowl waited for Jazz to orient himself.
It had been so long since they’d seen each other, or so it felt. Seeing how familiar Jazz looked had bothered him more than he cared to admit- Prowl was in a new body, had changed since those idyllic days on Cybertron, and had imagined the same for Jazz.
Then again, Jazz was suspected of raiding Kyron 5, stealing seven Autobot ships, breaking undetected into the Ark, and was probably responsible for the deaths of at least thirty soldiers. The mech he had known would never have engaged in such wanton destruction.
He let Jazz’s optics adjust to the light- it took a few seconds. He watched the blue visor darken as it tried to block out the light. Jazz’s posture stiffened as his sight cleared and he got a good look at Prowl’s face. Had he recognized Prowl?
Hesitantly, the tactician reached out with his spark, pushing for a response.
“You.” Jazz’s voice was cold with fury. “You’re not real!”
And he lunged. Prowl barely had time to bring up his hands before Jazz slammed into him, knocking him back against the wall. The cuffs should have severely limited his mobility, but that didn’t stop him from pressing the bar between the cuffs directly against prowl’s neck, crushing down on the vocalizer.
“Arg…ah…Jazz…” Prowl tried to force out a sentence, but what emerged was mangled and static-filled. He tried to force Jazz off, but couldn’t.
“You’re not real, you’re not real, there’s no way you could possibly be-your face-you look just like him and you make my spark hurt-and you can’t be real-” Jazz was babbling. He knew that he should stop talking, but the black mech he was trying to kill was wearing his dead sparkmate’s face, was making his spark jump in his chest.
“Don’t.” Prowl managed. His claws were cutting into Jazz’s sides, but the silver mech didn’t seem to notice the owudns or the energon dripping out onto the floor.
“Die.” Jazz growled. He was so close to Prowl now that their chests were touching; he could actually hear Prowl’s energon pump pounding in his chest. “You’re-not-real.”
With a primary energon line disrupted, Prowl’s optics were the first thing to go. They started to flicker and then dim as they ran out of power. Jazz watched- he wanted to see this- this thing die-
-he wondered if this was how it had looked when his sparkmate died-
With a jerk, Jazz abruptly jumped back. Prowl didn’t even stagger, though he was fighting blind; he reached out and seized Jazz by the arm, keeping him from retreating.
“I’m here.” Prowl’s voice cracked as his vocalizer started to snap back into palce. “I’m here, Jazz. This is real.”
“It isn’t.” Jazz whimpered, and the break in his voice hit Prowl like a physical blow. “You died.”
“I didn’t.”
“I don’t believe you.” Jazz started to lunge at him again, but all his control had fled; his attack was predictable, sloppy and Prowl easily restrained him, slamming him into the wall. How could he reason with him?
Their chests touched again and this time, undistracted by Jazz crushing his neck, Prowl felt it. His spark chamber vibrated, almost imperceptibly, barely causing a blip in his sensors. But it was enough.
He was processing faster than he had ever before, faster than he had in the most heated of battles, and yet time had slowed. No matter how quickly he understood, no matter how rapidly he assembled the pieces, it took forever, every nanosecond too long.
“You thought that I died. You found the frame. You’re wearing my chamber around yours.”
“How do you know that?”
“Spark harmonics.” Prowl replied. “My spark recognizes the chamber.”
Jazz reached up to clutch at his chest; the silver mech could feel the vibrations.
“…I couldn’t feel you. I would have felt you if you were alive! Besides, how the frag could you have even replaced your-”
Shockwave’s experiments. The ones they had assumed were about bonding. All they had known was that they were about sparks…and the irreplaceability of the original spark chamber was one of those medical mysteries mechs had been trying to solve for as long as their species had existed. If spark chambers could be replaced, it would mean that mechs who had previously been doomed would be saved. It would give the side that discovered it an advantage.
“Somehow he did.” Prowl whispered. “But he damaged the bond.” He let it sink in. “I called you, Jazz. From the moment I awoke in my new frame I called you.”
“I couldn’t hear you.” Jazz said dumbly. His processor had stopped working; the thought ‘Prowl is alive’ ran on repeat in his mind, a persistent ache made of longing and guilt and pain blocked out every complexity. There was nothing but the simple fact that here he was. “All I did was hurt.”
“Jazz.” Prowl detected the Autobots waiting just outside the door; any moment they would enter. He desperately searched for something to say, anything to prolong this instant. Jazz was still giving him that broken shell-shocked look, and the energon on his hands was forgotten, everything was forgotten as some long-dormant subroutine reminded him just whom he was with.
“I didn’t mean for you to die,” Jazz started in a small voice, and then the floors flew open.
“Thought we’d help you out with the interrogation.” Ironhide growled. He spun a cannon menacingly.
Prowl reach up, slid his fingers into a gap in the plating on Jazz’s neck, and tugged. Jazz’s optics flickered, and he collapsed, offline.
:Does he really deserve your protection?: Ratchet asked, over the comm so that Ironhide and the other guards wouldn’t hear. He reached out for Jazz’s limp frame, and Prowl shoved Jazz into the medic’s grasp.
“I don’t know.” The tactician admitted aloud, ashamed, and overcome by the fight between his spark and his sense, he fled.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They met in the middle.
Prowl wanted to live uptown, near the offices; Jazz wanted to live downtown in the shadier areas where he always had. They argued about it for weeks; Jazz didn’t want to live near the rich and away from his clients, while Prowl refused to live anywhere where he had to pay a protection fee to the reigning gang.
They found a place in the middle class apartments near the Youth Sectors. They were surrounded by bonded couples raising sparklings, and small businesses; it was close to Prowl’s office and far enough from the worst part of town that Jazz could control where and when he met his clients without alienating them. It was close enough for Jazz to invite over friends and far enough for Prowl to enjoy his solitude.
It seemed a little lonely, moving on to the next part of their lives; as they looked around the empty apartment, still the white and grey that was standard in any low-rent place, they held hands. There was so little space, and they would have to share it for the rest of their days, or at least the rest of their lease.
“So.” Jazz had said. “What should we do first?”
“Test the power lines and the plumbing.” Prowl ahd replied. Jazz could imagine the mental checklist he’d made, could see him already planning the practicalities of life together. “Then…furniture…”
Jazz stroked the edge of one doorwing. “Plenty of time for business later, don’t you think?”
“We should get it done now.” There was no force behind the words as Jazz embraced him from behind; Prowl leaned into his touch, feeling the tension bleed out of him.
“We can do it later.” Jazz whispered. “Wanna christen the berth?”
“It’s only a single.” Prowl protested weakly. “We have to have it…replaced…”There were clever fingers sliding over his hip and down his thigh now, and Prowl forgot the end of his argument.
“We’ll just have be real close, won’t we,” Jazz pushed him towards the berthroom, and Prowl let himself be dragged alone; Jazz was right, business could wait.
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