[Fic] Story of a Lifetime, part 9.6
Warnings: depression/thoughts of suicide
Part 9: Falling
Chapter 6 of 6
"Two hundred and fifty."
The words, unexpectedly echoing his thoughts, jolted Prowl out of his reverie.
"What did you say?"
The twins looked at him, then at each other.
"The fuel reading." Sunstreaker clarified. "You said we needed a minimum of two-sixty, right? It's at two-fifty."
"Oh."
Sideswipe sat down beside him, swinging his legs idly over the cliff edge.
"You okay? You've been kinda spacy today."
"Just thinking." Prowl tried to dismiss the question, but they knew him too well now.
"About what?"
Decades of working together had made them friends, but just a couple of vorns being stuck here on this nowhere planet had helped them understand each other.
"It's been one point nine seven vorns since we left Plutes-1."
"And?"
And I'm finally legal, he wanted to shout. I'm legally able to fight as an Autobot soldier. I'm finally legally able to choose to be with Jazz. Not to bond under the current military rules but at least to have him, to hold him publicly. To be held by him.
"On the draft schedule, we would be arriving back at the Escaphalion, today." he hedged.
The schedule was not that detailed, although the dates would have been close. In indulgent moments he had dared fantasise of arriving back at the Escaphalion on this orn to find Jazz already there in his quarters, and then...
The erotic detail of that fantasy had lost a good deal of its appeal since Nolan's attack, regardless of the fact that he recalled almost no detail of that violation. In fact, since he could remember so little he fretted occasionally that the memories would resurface at inappropriate times in the future.
In any case, right now he would settle quite happily for Jazz's arms around him.
"You're missing Jazz." Sunstreaker grunted, sitting on his other side.
The statement caught him off-guard, and it was a moment before he could respond.
"Am I that obvious?"
"To us? Yeah." Sideswipe nodded. "To everyone else, I bet you're the same ol'Prowl."
"Hardly that." he murmured, rubbing at his chest absently.
It still hurt, even all this time later. The pain had diminished to a dull ache, but it had never really gone away completely. Perhaps with more time it would but he suspected that this would be a long-term price he was left to pay. A high price for lessons he should have learned long ago: not everyone had the same motives, not everyone could be trusted, not every reaction could be logically predicted.
For awhile he had tried to keep the pain a secret, tried to bluff, but they were in too close proximity for such lies so he had given in.
The twins now knew him far better than Jazz did, he mused sadly.
Even as he thought that Sideswipe wrapped his arms around him, unknowingly proving that truth.
"He'll wait for you." he promised him. "I know he will. You've waited for him, after all."
"And if he hasn't, we'll haul his glitching aft back and make him apologise until you're satisfied." Sunstreaker added. "Which should take, what, a hundred vorns?"
"Two." Sideswipe chipped in.
"Two fifty." Prowl murmured.
They liked that idea, misunderstanding why he had selected that figure, and he let them play with the idea as his gaze focused on the damaged shuttle far below. Had that been movement he had seen down there?
"You know, I'm going to miss this place when we go." Sideswipe announced, getting up and meandering about aimlessly. "We should give it a name, so that it's not just 'that place we crashed'. Ideas?"
"Stupid Barren Rock?"
"How about Paradise VI?"
"Why six?"
"Well isn't there a five somewhere out in the Gurni sector?"
"Wasn't it actually a nice place to be, though? Not like this place, falling apart and not worth scrap."
"Well what would you call it then?"
"Ironhide." Prowl breathed, rising slowly.
"What?" Sideswipe asked blankly. "Didn't know you had it in you to be that mean. I mean he's old, sure, but he's not..."
"Ironhide!" Prowl called, pitching his voice towards the canyon.
And then there was the wonderful feeling of a comm signal connecting to them as a red figure emerged from amongst the rocks far below.
~Bout time we found you. Fraggers've had us searching all over the sector!~
"It's good to see you. All of you." Prime told them, taking the time to grip each of them by the hand.
"I'm somewhat surprised you managed to find us at all, sir." Prowl pointed out. "Given how far out we were."
"We were fairly sure you were still out here somewhere." Broadcast told him. "The Decepticons would have made a point of announcing it if they'd captured you - you were their main target. Based on the comm traffic we intercepted, Megatron wasn't happy you had escaped. Making things worse, the soldiers had gotten a bit excitable and killed Ultra Nolan before Megatron's interrogators could get there so they were not even able to identify why you had gone, or where."
Sideswipe felt a little surge of vindication from his brother and was in complete accordance.
It turned out that shortly after they had fled, the Decepticons had attacked the base. The surviving records showed Viperon had been in acting command and Nolan had been in the brig, though did not explain why. Whatever the reason, no-one had been at their duty posts when the Decepticons had arrived and three troop ships had landed before the first alarms were activated. Most of the crew had been killed; a few had been taken as breeders.
No-one had done so much as send off a distress signal.
By the time Ironhide's team arrived to find out why there had been none of the regular reports there was nothing to find but corpses and destruction.
"Had we known the Decepticons intentions, we would have stayed to assist in the fortifictions." Prowl assured them, appalled.
Optimus waved a hand dismissively.
"No-one doubts that, Prowl. I know you too well to believe you would have fled without putting up a fight. In any case, once we found the log of you leaving we were able to extrapolate your flight path, although the wormhole you glanced off gave us some trouble."
"So that's why we crashed." Sideswipe blurted.
"I told you it wasn't my navigation."
"Well you're still the one who set us on a course for a wormhole!"
"Enough." Prowl ordered quietly, and they subsided.
The expressions on the faces of the others present was priceless.
"You've tamed the twins!" Ironhide gasped.
"Only temporarily, I'm sure." Prowl replied drily, then turned back to Optimus. "I am greatly indebted to them for their assistance."
"Indeed?"
"They have been loyal beyond requirement."
Prime looked at him curiously, but Prowl simply met his gaze evenly and the commander finally nodded.
"I'll be interested in reading your report. For now, we should be off. We're expected at Ovacalix in ten orns. Autobots - roll out."
"What do you want, Sideswipe?" Ratchet demanded, folding his arms and staring at the frontliner.
Sideswipe jumped, having thought he had not been spotted yet. Should he really be doing this? Prowl had asked them not to tell anyone what Nolan had done - asked, not ordered - and they had stayed silent when Prime asked. But surely a medic needed to know?
All three of them had been ordered to have a full examination: standard practice after a crash. But Prowl had been so stubborn in pretending that there was nothing wrong at all even though all three of them knew it wasn't true, and something in the way he had reacted when the subject had come up made Sideswipe wonder if he would find an excuse to avoid a scan that might reveal what he wanted to hide.
"Has... uh... Prowl been by?"
"A groon ago, as scheduled. He is about the only one who ever is on time. Why?"
"Oh, I was just wondering if he was okay."
"Why would he not be?"
"Just... I thought he mightn't be." Sideswipe finished lamely, heading for the door. "Never mind, I must've imagined it."
If a full exam had been done and they had found nothing maybe Prowl was right. Maybe whatever had caused the pain had solved itself. It was reassuring to know that he had not done anything stupid like avoiding the medics.
Relieved, he shucked the last of his concerns and headed off to catch up with some friends. Life was back to normal. Well, at least as normal as the war allowed it to be.
"What are you working on so late?" Wheeljack asked, entering the office and moving around the desk to peer over Ratchet's shoulder. "I thought you said you were having an early night tonight."
"I'll just be a few more clicks." Ratchet promised, distractedly flicking through several files.
Wheeljack watched for a moment, then repeated his question.
"What's got your attention - that all looks normal from what I can see."
"Exactly." Ratchet huffed, shoving his chair back from the desk and glaring at it. "It looks entirely normal."
"So why do you think it isn't?"
"Because Sideswipe took the time to ask if I'd noticed anything wrong."
"These are his scans? Or Sunstreaker's? The values don't look right..."
"No, they're Prowl's."
"Oh. Well, there's a deviation there..."
Ratchet snorted softly, stretching.
"Jack, why don't you leave this to an expert? That deviation's perfectly normal for his specifications. All of it is. He's a bit underfuelled, and I knocked a few dents out of his plating, but apart from that he's in good condition."
"So maybe it was just a Sideswipe prank?" Wheeljack offered.
"I suppose." Ratchet frowned at the screen for a click longer, then growled and turned it off. "Well whatever he's after, he's not getting it. Prowl's fine, and I've got better things to do."
"Sure have." Wheeljack agreed, but noted that the frown remained.
Somehow he thought Prowl would be getting some very focused attention the next time the mech crossed the threshold into the medbay.
Epilogue
"Something happened." Prime mused, joining Prowl on the sofa at one end of the reception room in his private suite. "Something more than you have reported officially."
Prowl had been in here before, though not often. It always bemused him to see that the Prime's quarters were no larger than his own, and yet they were decorated so differently that it felt like being on a different ship entirely. The walls here were covered in an eclectic mix of high art and image captures and street sketches that made the optical systems ache just trying to make sense of them.
He always saw something new in the images there, and today he was transfixed by an image of a dying femme reaching in the direction of the photographer, her body mangled beyond repair. He had seen that image before, but now his gaze was drawn to a detail he had previously overlooked: streaks of purple paint left on her pale yellow chassis.
Hardly likely to be battle damage.
"I would prefer not to discuss it." he responded quietly, turning away from the disturbing sight.
"Sideswipe and Sunstreaker have been curiously silent beyond stating that they back whatever you have already said." Optimus continued, handing him a small cube of energon. "Unusual, given how vocal they generally are."
Plain, military-issue mid-grade. Such a luxury after the time spent on the rock; such a hardship after the delicacies available on Nolan's base.
"Sideswipe did make one comment, however." Optimus continued evenly. "To the effect that Nolan should count himself lucky that the Decepticons got to him before he and his brother did."
The taste was so dull. It restored his energy levels, but he could not say he enjoyed it. Little wonder mechs kept trying to make their own mixes in spite of the high dangers of poisoning and explosion. They had all lost so very much through necessity.
"I have heard rumours that some of the more distant units have become swayed from the cause. That in fact some units have become Neutral in all but name. I am told that when that happens, some mechs choose to misuse the authority they have been given through their rank. Was that the case with Ultra Nolan?"
Prowl's gaze drifted back to the image of the femme. What had happened next? The soldier who had found her must have known he could not save her. Even if he had been a medic, her legs and lower torso were gone and her helm had a hole as large as a fist in her right temple. Perhaps caused by a fist.
"I am concerned, Prowl. I am concerned that something has occurred that has hurt you and that Nolan was at the core of it."
Prowl shuttered his optics briefly.
"If you order me to tell you, sir, I will." he said softly. "If you insist on an answer, I will be compelled to give one. But in all honesty, you do not have the luxury of dwelling on this."
"Luxury?" Optimus echoed, a touch of indignance in his tone.
Prowl looked at his leader directly.
"Knowing the details of this... fiasco... helps no-one. Will it help to know the details of how Nolan attempted to stall our plans at every turn? Will it help to know how petty some of the resistance was? None of this changes the fact that Nolan was an Autobot and died in Decepticon hands, nor that the mechs in his command have been slaughtered or abducted.
"It is true that they should have been more prepared, and that is my failing more than Nolan's in that I permitted the details to interfere with what I knew needed to be done. Had I held firm perhaps it would have been enough to save some of those lives, and that is a lesson I am trying to learn from.
"But the details? Prime, if I believed it would go any way towards preventing another such failure, I would unhesitatingly report every one of those details, regardless of the personal nature of many of them." He stopped, then set his energon down. "The twins are trying to protect my dignity, what little of that there is left, and I am humbled by that show of loyalty. But all of this is simply an aside to the main event.
"I was sent to the Plutes sector to openly investigate a potential safe haven where Neutrals could hide from the enemy. It was to be a decoy from the real plan, and to that extent it was a success. We diverted attention, allowing you to retrieve the femmes and carriers and bondpairs and get them to safety under the protection of Ultra Fortex and Ultra Valori at Luciana.
"The loss of life at Plutes-1 had many causes, but as the ranking officer present it was ultimately my responsibility. All that remains is for you to determine how I should be censured. And to that end, the details of what occurred between Ultra Nolan and myself are irrelevant."
Perhaps the soldier would have tried to help her, tried to carry her to a medic or do some field repairs. Perhaps he had just walked onwards: many battlefields were strewn with the dying, and snipers took advantage of that to pick off anyone who paused to help, so soldiers learned fast not to take risks unless they knew for certain the area was cleared.
Or perhaps he had shot her through the spark and ended her misery. A few vorns ago, he would have thought little of that unpleasant necessity. Now it sounded like a merciful release.
"You speak of relevance." Optimus mused. "And indeed, you are right my friend. This war forces us into expediency when we may wish to be compassionate. So I will ask you only this: are you able to continue in your role as my senior tactician?"
Merciful death. He had thought a lot about suicide in those long orns after the rape, and at times had become nearly convinced that Jazz would forgive him that indulgence. For the first time he truly understood Jazz's previously incomprehensible black moods. Only the presence of the twins had stayed his hand. That and his duty. The knowledge that if he took his own life, Optimus would have no-one to turn to, and the Autobot cause might fail. Taking his own life was selfish; allowing the death of others through his own inaction would be murder.
He had a job to do, and he could do it. Nolan could not take that from him.
"Yes. I am ready to serve to the best of my ability."
"Then there is nothing more to discuss. Welcome back."
A/N: Ratchet's "full" examination would be a physical investigation, he has no reason to think to scan Prowl's spark. Thus he finds nothing. Yet. :)