The Reason for Faith
Title: The Reason for Faith
Author: Mirage Shinkiro
Rating: T
Warnings: mech/mech kissing, a.k.a. intimacy between androgynous and nonsexually reproducing but male-“pronoun’d” ‘bots.
Disclaimer: Transformers is the property of Hasbro, and although I wish I could make money off the TF franchise so I could be independently wealthy, I am not. Alas, I remain poor and am just borrowing the lovely robots.
Summary: G1, pre-Earth. Prowl has lost faith in everything, including the Autobot cause and Primus. Can Jazz help him?
A/N, explanation: For the PxJ Community Sept. Anniversary Challenge. Prompt: reason to believe, day 21. Happy anniversary, PxJ!
The idea of Prowl as a priest is used in memory of Kittenrina. Although I wasn’t her personal friend, I’ll still honor her memory by paying homage to her unusual idea from “Cold and Broken Hallelujah.” The evolution of the Transformers comes to you via Asher119’s closing essay for “Unintended,” which is an amazingly detailed look at the topic and is used by permission.
A/N, time: Orn=day.
Thank you to pl2363 for beta reading. Thank you to Asher119 for beta reading and for giving me the idea, plot, setting, theme, and source of inspiration! :) Thanks also to everyone who reads and reviews!
The Reason for Faith
Prowl stared at the horizon, despondent. Blackness spread over the asteroid the Autobots were using as a temporary base, casting the fortress in utter darkness. They were on the largest asteroid trapped in orbit around one of Tau Ceti’s gas giants, working against Megatron and his new base on the neighboring M-class planet. It disgusted Prowl that their civil war had expanded far beyond Cybertron and what had once been their solar system.
“War,” Prowl hissed to himself. “Death, fighting, more death.” For three millennia now, nonstop. Being a military tactician, and most recently also the SIC, was so far away from his sparklinghood dreams and desires it was laughable. He would have never imagined his life would have turned out this way.
Before the war, Prowl had been a priest serving in the grand temple in Praxus. However, when Praxus had fallen, he had lost his belief in Primus, feeling certain that if a benevolent God did exist, he would not allow two million mechs and femmes to be slaughtered and an entire city and its culture lost. Traumatized and angry, Prowl had turned his back on his God, entering the Autobot Academy to study the art of war and trading his priestly emblems for a battle computer.
Now, though, he had a much worse problem.
No hope.
This morning, when he had awakened from recharge, Prowl had come to a sudden, horrible conclusion: If there were no benevolent God guiding the development of his race, overseeing them, and giving them purpose, then life was useless. He might as well kill himself and be done with it.
And that assumption entirely came down to logic.
When he’d been a sparkling, science had taught Prowl that silicon-based life forms had arisen on Cybertron through the process of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Prowl didn’t care at all about the mechanisms behind his physical existence and never had. But he had realized that if there were no Primus behind creation, initiating the explosion that started the universe, granting the Cybertronian race sentience, and overseeing their further development, then all Prowl’s desires for establishing justice, defending the lower caste, and fighting for peace were nothing more than academic, theoretical exercises. Prowl had realized earlier that orn, with sudden deep horror, that his definition of justice and rightness would be entirely based on his own personal opinions and wouldn’t be backed by any higher authority. The only law that would exist in the universe would be natural selection - that is, survival of the fittest.
And that would make the Decepticons right.
Just like the sun had set, so had Prowl’s spirits sunk. His logic had carried him to a single, unshakeable conclusion: The Decepticons were the strongest, the fittest, the best equipped for their now burnt-out planet. The Autobots were fighting to save the weak, those who deserved to die and be taken out of the sparkcode pool. They were fighting for the equality of those earmarked by nature for destruction. They were fighting nature itself. And their definitions of justice and honor, which were based on valuing and defending peace, community, cooperation, and the lower caste, were based on self-centered, self-validating, egocentric claims to some amorphous “goodness.”
Prowl violently rejected that thought.
He had to believe in ultimate justice. He had to believe in the value of peace, to believe that this war could be finished one orn and peace could be restored. For his entire life, Prowl had been a champion of peace, and as both a youngling and an adult, he had worked in troubled communities to mend rifts, build bridges, and help ‘bots better their lives. He’d fought against unfair laws and spearheaded local efforts to get better legislation passed. Even after the fall of Praxus, he’d joined the Autobots with the clear goal of returning justice and peace to Cybertron.
But what authority, what belief system, or what God gave his values weight? No matter how much Prowl fought his thought process, all his questions were unavoidable. How could he claim his values and beliefs were the answer to Cybertron’s problems and better than mass violence, death, and destruction? How could he claim to know truth?
The answer was deceptively simple: Primus.
Prowl sighed, irritated and exhausted. “Help,” he muttered, the one-word prayer the first he’d attempted in vorns.
Footsteps rang on the steel staircase; someone was climbing the parapet where he sat. Unless it was a sentry, the only mech it could be was Jazz. Prowl glanced at the stairs and found his suspicion was correct. A blue visor glowed in the darkness, and the base’s lights reflected off Jazz’s white paint.
“Hey, love.” Jazz walked up to him. “What’cha doin’ up here?”
“Thinking.” One of the things Prowl loved about Jazz was his easy faith. To Jazz, Primus’ existence was a simple ‘of course,’ and he trusted that good would ultimately win over evil, that justice and peace were natural results of belief and faith. For Jazz, it seemed easy.
“What’s on yer mind?” Jazz asked, settling beside him close enough for their armor to touch.
“Primus and the nature of the universe,” Prowl replied with some irony. It sounded so grandiose, but it was true.
Jazz slipped an arm around his waist, hugging him. “Yer agonizin’ over that again? I’m sorry, babe.”
Leaning into the embrace, Prowl sighed. “I’m tired of being torn over this. Honestly, Jazz, I’m exhausted. The existence of evil was a problem when I believed in Primus. Now that I don’t believe in Primus, it’s an even bigger problem. How can I even say there are a ‘good’ and an ‘evil’ if all I claim as truth is the faceless force of nature choosing the strong over the weak? There’s no ‘good’ in that, no justice, no love, and certainly no peace. It’s like everything I value is unanchored and meaningless.”
Jazz hugged him closer. “Well, I gotta agree with ya there. Ya are unanchored.” He reached up, cupping Prowl’s cheek and turning his face until their gazes met. “Wanna know a secret?”
“I guess.” Prowl felt depressed enough to not care either way.
A small smile bent up Jazz’s lips. “Ya already have yer answer.” The smile faded as Jazz grew grim. “Depression’s been runnin’ rampant through the troops, but yer still here fightin’. Every orn ya pour all yer spark into championin’ justice and rights, keepin’ the ‘Cons from wipin’ out innocents, and stoppin’ their march of destruction. Ya fight, but yer goal is ultimately peace. How? How do ya get up in the mornin’ and keep goin’ no matter how many losses we’ve had or how badly our battle went?”
Prowl snorted, anger and desperation warring within him and making his tanks burn. “Good question.”
Jazz moved his hand to Prowl’s chest. “Because ya know that Primus exists and that all yer efforts - how did ya priestly types used to put it? - ‘manifest his greatest desires for our planet and species.’”
Coolant pooled in Prowl’s optics as his processor overheated from his surging emotions. “How can you be so sure of what I’m not?”
“Because I see yer spark.” Jazz cupped his cheek once more, leaning in and brushing his lips over Prowl’s. “Stop overanalyzing everything with that battle computer of yers and just listen to yer spark.”
Taking Jazz’s advice, Prowl offlined his optics and reached into his own spark. The life inside him, which part of him still insisted was a piece of Primus, seemed to pulse and vibrate. With that hum of life-force, Prowl reached outward, searching for the God he’d followed so easily as a sparkling.
I’m still here, a voice seemed to reply. I’m not going anywhere. I never have and never will. In the darkest moment of your life, I was there. I’ll never abandon you. A rush of love seemed to fill Prowl’s spark along with the words.
The tears escaped Prowl’s optics and ran down his cheeks. He felt relief, a sense of purpose, a reason to hope. And he felt love. Love for Primus, for himself, for Jazz, for the Autobot army, for the innocent civilians, and even for the Decepticons. In that moment, instead of hating the Decepticons for destroying his city, Prowl pitied them for their misguided natures.
That said, he could not stand by idly and let them destroy more cities.
Warm lips brushed his cheek, kissing away his tears. “Yer not alone,” Jazz whispered against his plating. “I’ll stand by ya forever and so will Primus. Promise.” He kissed down Prowl’s cheekseam, then over to his lips, mouthing them gently.
Leaving his optics offline, Prowl gave himself to the kiss, surrendering to Jazz’s love willingly. He caught Jazz’s lower lip between his own, sucking gently until Jazz’s glossa teased his mouth open. Prowl moaned faintly as their glossa met and caressed, and he wrapped Jazz in his arms, pulling him halfway onto his lap. He stroked up the expanse of Jazz’s canopy as Jazz rubbed the underside of one doorwing, pulling moans from them both.
With difficulty, they parted, panting air through their vents to cool their internals. Passion arose easily in him for Jazz. When Prowl onlined his optics, he found that the sun had risen over the asteroid’s horizon, casting a mix of crimson and golden rays across their armor and the base’s parapets. He smiled at Jazz, who gave him an answering smile.
“A sign of hope?” Prowl asked ruefully, the symbolism not lost on him.
“Every night has its dawn,” Jazz replied, grin widening.
Maybe even for Cybertron, Prowl thought, gazing at the sunrise. Perhaps one orn their planet could be reborn.
Author: Mirage Shinkiro
Rating: T
Warnings: mech/mech kissing, a.k.a. intimacy between androgynous and nonsexually reproducing but male-“pronoun’d” ‘bots.
Disclaimer: Transformers is the property of Hasbro, and although I wish I could make money off the TF franchise so I could be independently wealthy, I am not. Alas, I remain poor and am just borrowing the lovely robots.
Summary: G1, pre-Earth. Prowl has lost faith in everything, including the Autobot cause and Primus. Can Jazz help him?
A/N, explanation: For the PxJ Community Sept. Anniversary Challenge. Prompt: reason to believe, day 21. Happy anniversary, PxJ!
The idea of Prowl as a priest is used in memory of Kittenrina. Although I wasn’t her personal friend, I’ll still honor her memory by paying homage to her unusual idea from “Cold and Broken Hallelujah.” The evolution of the Transformers comes to you via Asher119’s closing essay for “Unintended,” which is an amazingly detailed look at the topic and is used by permission.
A/N, time: Orn=day.
Thank you to pl2363 for beta reading. Thank you to Asher119 for beta reading and for giving me the idea, plot, setting, theme, and source of inspiration! :) Thanks also to everyone who reads and reviews!
The Reason for Faith
Prowl stared at the horizon, despondent. Blackness spread over the asteroid the Autobots were using as a temporary base, casting the fortress in utter darkness. They were on the largest asteroid trapped in orbit around one of Tau Ceti’s gas giants, working against Megatron and his new base on the neighboring M-class planet. It disgusted Prowl that their civil war had expanded far beyond Cybertron and what had once been their solar system.
“War,” Prowl hissed to himself. “Death, fighting, more death.” For three millennia now, nonstop. Being a military tactician, and most recently also the SIC, was so far away from his sparklinghood dreams and desires it was laughable. He would have never imagined his life would have turned out this way.
Before the war, Prowl had been a priest serving in the grand temple in Praxus. However, when Praxus had fallen, he had lost his belief in Primus, feeling certain that if a benevolent God did exist, he would not allow two million mechs and femmes to be slaughtered and an entire city and its culture lost. Traumatized and angry, Prowl had turned his back on his God, entering the Autobot Academy to study the art of war and trading his priestly emblems for a battle computer.
Now, though, he had a much worse problem.
No hope.
This morning, when he had awakened from recharge, Prowl had come to a sudden, horrible conclusion: If there were no benevolent God guiding the development of his race, overseeing them, and giving them purpose, then life was useless. He might as well kill himself and be done with it.
And that assumption entirely came down to logic.
When he’d been a sparkling, science had taught Prowl that silicon-based life forms had arisen on Cybertron through the process of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Prowl didn’t care at all about the mechanisms behind his physical existence and never had. But he had realized that if there were no Primus behind creation, initiating the explosion that started the universe, granting the Cybertronian race sentience, and overseeing their further development, then all Prowl’s desires for establishing justice, defending the lower caste, and fighting for peace were nothing more than academic, theoretical exercises. Prowl had realized earlier that orn, with sudden deep horror, that his definition of justice and rightness would be entirely based on his own personal opinions and wouldn’t be backed by any higher authority. The only law that would exist in the universe would be natural selection - that is, survival of the fittest.
And that would make the Decepticons right.
Just like the sun had set, so had Prowl’s spirits sunk. His logic had carried him to a single, unshakeable conclusion: The Decepticons were the strongest, the fittest, the best equipped for their now burnt-out planet. The Autobots were fighting to save the weak, those who deserved to die and be taken out of the sparkcode pool. They were fighting for the equality of those earmarked by nature for destruction. They were fighting nature itself. And their definitions of justice and honor, which were based on valuing and defending peace, community, cooperation, and the lower caste, were based on self-centered, self-validating, egocentric claims to some amorphous “goodness.”
Prowl violently rejected that thought.
He had to believe in ultimate justice. He had to believe in the value of peace, to believe that this war could be finished one orn and peace could be restored. For his entire life, Prowl had been a champion of peace, and as both a youngling and an adult, he had worked in troubled communities to mend rifts, build bridges, and help ‘bots better their lives. He’d fought against unfair laws and spearheaded local efforts to get better legislation passed. Even after the fall of Praxus, he’d joined the Autobots with the clear goal of returning justice and peace to Cybertron.
But what authority, what belief system, or what God gave his values weight? No matter how much Prowl fought his thought process, all his questions were unavoidable. How could he claim his values and beliefs were the answer to Cybertron’s problems and better than mass violence, death, and destruction? How could he claim to know truth?
The answer was deceptively simple: Primus.
Prowl sighed, irritated and exhausted. “Help,” he muttered, the one-word prayer the first he’d attempted in vorns.
Footsteps rang on the steel staircase; someone was climbing the parapet where he sat. Unless it was a sentry, the only mech it could be was Jazz. Prowl glanced at the stairs and found his suspicion was correct. A blue visor glowed in the darkness, and the base’s lights reflected off Jazz’s white paint.
“Hey, love.” Jazz walked up to him. “What’cha doin’ up here?”
“Thinking.” One of the things Prowl loved about Jazz was his easy faith. To Jazz, Primus’ existence was a simple ‘of course,’ and he trusted that good would ultimately win over evil, that justice and peace were natural results of belief and faith. For Jazz, it seemed easy.
“What’s on yer mind?” Jazz asked, settling beside him close enough for their armor to touch.
“Primus and the nature of the universe,” Prowl replied with some irony. It sounded so grandiose, but it was true.
Jazz slipped an arm around his waist, hugging him. “Yer agonizin’ over that again? I’m sorry, babe.”
Leaning into the embrace, Prowl sighed. “I’m tired of being torn over this. Honestly, Jazz, I’m exhausted. The existence of evil was a problem when I believed in Primus. Now that I don’t believe in Primus, it’s an even bigger problem. How can I even say there are a ‘good’ and an ‘evil’ if all I claim as truth is the faceless force of nature choosing the strong over the weak? There’s no ‘good’ in that, no justice, no love, and certainly no peace. It’s like everything I value is unanchored and meaningless.”
Jazz hugged him closer. “Well, I gotta agree with ya there. Ya are unanchored.” He reached up, cupping Prowl’s cheek and turning his face until their gazes met. “Wanna know a secret?”
“I guess.” Prowl felt depressed enough to not care either way.
A small smile bent up Jazz’s lips. “Ya already have yer answer.” The smile faded as Jazz grew grim. “Depression’s been runnin’ rampant through the troops, but yer still here fightin’. Every orn ya pour all yer spark into championin’ justice and rights, keepin’ the ‘Cons from wipin’ out innocents, and stoppin’ their march of destruction. Ya fight, but yer goal is ultimately peace. How? How do ya get up in the mornin’ and keep goin’ no matter how many losses we’ve had or how badly our battle went?”
Prowl snorted, anger and desperation warring within him and making his tanks burn. “Good question.”
Jazz moved his hand to Prowl’s chest. “Because ya know that Primus exists and that all yer efforts - how did ya priestly types used to put it? - ‘manifest his greatest desires for our planet and species.’”
Coolant pooled in Prowl’s optics as his processor overheated from his surging emotions. “How can you be so sure of what I’m not?”
“Because I see yer spark.” Jazz cupped his cheek once more, leaning in and brushing his lips over Prowl’s. “Stop overanalyzing everything with that battle computer of yers and just listen to yer spark.”
Taking Jazz’s advice, Prowl offlined his optics and reached into his own spark. The life inside him, which part of him still insisted was a piece of Primus, seemed to pulse and vibrate. With that hum of life-force, Prowl reached outward, searching for the God he’d followed so easily as a sparkling.
I’m still here, a voice seemed to reply. I’m not going anywhere. I never have and never will. In the darkest moment of your life, I was there. I’ll never abandon you. A rush of love seemed to fill Prowl’s spark along with the words.
The tears escaped Prowl’s optics and ran down his cheeks. He felt relief, a sense of purpose, a reason to hope. And he felt love. Love for Primus, for himself, for Jazz, for the Autobot army, for the innocent civilians, and even for the Decepticons. In that moment, instead of hating the Decepticons for destroying his city, Prowl pitied them for their misguided natures.
That said, he could not stand by idly and let them destroy more cities.
Warm lips brushed his cheek, kissing away his tears. “Yer not alone,” Jazz whispered against his plating. “I’ll stand by ya forever and so will Primus. Promise.” He kissed down Prowl’s cheekseam, then over to his lips, mouthing them gently.
Leaving his optics offline, Prowl gave himself to the kiss, surrendering to Jazz’s love willingly. He caught Jazz’s lower lip between his own, sucking gently until Jazz’s glossa teased his mouth open. Prowl moaned faintly as their glossa met and caressed, and he wrapped Jazz in his arms, pulling him halfway onto his lap. He stroked up the expanse of Jazz’s canopy as Jazz rubbed the underside of one doorwing, pulling moans from them both.
With difficulty, they parted, panting air through their vents to cool their internals. Passion arose easily in him for Jazz. When Prowl onlined his optics, he found that the sun had risen over the asteroid’s horizon, casting a mix of crimson and golden rays across their armor and the base’s parapets. He smiled at Jazz, who gave him an answering smile.
“A sign of hope?” Prowl asked ruefully, the symbolism not lost on him.
“Every night has its dawn,” Jazz replied, grin widening.
Maybe even for Cybertron, Prowl thought, gazing at the sunrise. Perhaps one orn their planet could be reborn.