Unfinished Business - part 1/2
Title: Unfinished Business
Verse: Movie-verse
Rating: T
Genre: angst, supernatural
Warnings: post-DotM (spoilers!), character death, eventual Prowl/Jazz
Characters: Prowl, Jazz, Optimus Prime, Ratchet, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker
Summary:
The war took many mechs to the Well with their lives' ambitions unfulfilled. Few had the strength and determination to see their goals brought to a conclusion.
Disclaimer: Characters and situations are used without permission, and belong to Hasbro and their original copyright holders. This story is written for the pleasure and not for profit.
Note: This was originally going to be another short one shot for my anthology "Stronger Together" on ff.net. It grew to a point where it was lengthy even for a two-shot, so gets its own post. I'm posting both chapters and their epilogue at once.
Part One
The silences were Prowl's first clue.
They weren't anything overt, nothing the tactician could call others on, even if Ratchet hadn't insisted he take his first half-orn on Earth off-duty to rest and recuperate. To a certain extent they were even to be expected. The Earth-native humans of NEST, and some of the unfamiliar Autobots on the base's roster, were naturally wary of Prime's newly-arrived Second-in-Command. Prowl would have been surprised if hehadn't been the subject of uncertain and speculative looks.
It was the wary expressions he got from his fellow officers - Ratchet and Optimus Prime most of all - that troubled him. Conversations stopped as he approached; unintelligible, half-heard whispers followed him. Only innocent expressions met his questioning gaze, the few times he'd let himself show a mild reaction.
Perhaps there was a good reason. He might even learn it when Ratchet yielded sufficiently to release the medical locks barring him from the NEST database. As it stood though, Prowl couldn't be sure.
The tactician held his door-wings high and wide as he walked across the concrete floor of the main NEST hangar. His footfalls rang sharply against the hard surface, their echoes reflecting back to him from the sparse interior and metal walls. Standing beside the command gantry, his conversation with Lennox apparently forgotten, or at least set aside until Prowl had come and gone, Ratchet watched him. Sharp optics checked the volume and concentration of the ration Prowl fetched, and he felt medical scanners play across his door-wings as he turned to walk away. He ignored the medic with dignity, tilting his helm in a nod to the human major on the gantry and feeling an odd comfort when Lennox, at least, acknowledged his courtesy with a sketchy wave of his own.
The floor grew grittier underfoot as he approached the main hangar doors, this world's all-pervasive dust carried in on tires and pedes, or just drifting into the confined space on the breeze. Devoid of other stimulus, Prowl analysed the silicates and carbon grains grating beneath his weight with the same automatic routines that monitored the humans and Autobots around him. The moving pool of stillness he carried with him deepened as he passed a few of the mechs, gathered to socialize by the hangar door. He didn't stop, as if by moving constantly onwards, he could escape the silent walls that had closed around him.
Part of him, the illogical part that he'd given into so completely not long ago, and which his tactical processor urged him to ignore, half-expected to hear a musical voice call his name, to feel a servo reach out and draw him back into the circle of light.
Stepping out into the chill night air, looking up at constellations that were still jarring and unfamiliar, Prowl tried not to let his reaction show when the expected call never came. As his door-wings slumped behind him, he knew he'd failed. He knew, too, that in all the vorns since he bade his friend farewell, he'd never missed Jazz more.
The electric-blue mini-bot should have been Prowl's second clue, if he'd only recognized it as such.
At least… electric-blue was the closest the Autobot tactician could readily come to describing the strange quality of light and colour that first caught his notice. The mech glistened in the evening light of Prowl's fourth day on Earth, his frame marked out in highlights and shadows, a peculiar glow emanating from his plating. It could almost have been a reflection of the slowly-rising moon, except that there was an energy to the shimmer, an animation Prowl didn't perceive in the cool moonlight.
Prowl's first thought, that the glow must be akin to the Cherenkov emission that accompanied high radioactivity, was belied by the mini-bot's casual stride and the lack of concern from the vulnerable organics he passed. His next - some form of phosphorescence or fluorescence - might address the how but did nothing to address the fundamental why.
This world seemed to have brought out the Autobots' long-suppressed preference for bright display paint - perhaps in unconscious defence against the garish colours of the organic life, or maybe in emulation of it, given the catastrophic loses they'd endured here. Either way, Optimus Prime's red and blue flames and Ratchet's frankly unflattering yellow-green had come as something of a shock, and as a striking contrast to the black and silver that Prowl had chosen for himself. Even taking the prevailing trend into account though, this seemed to take the usual personalization of their frames to a somewhat ludicrous extreme.
It also didn't explain how three Earth-days could pass before Prowl encountered so striking a mech.
Prowl squinted past the luminescence, trying to match the mini-bot's frame to the crew roster. Optimus, bowing to Ratchet's demands, had restricted Prowl's database access to the most basic list of names for now, but even so there were relatively few mechs he wouldn't… recognise…
Prowl's mental process tailed off. For a moment, his processor played an old memory file over the output of his optics, painting the armour in brilliant red, matching the stomping progress to a pugnacious attitude and an indomitable determination.
The mech rounded a corner of NEST's main hangar, disappearing from view. Standing alone in the growing darkness, his door-wings trembling in the cool breeze, Prowl gazed after him. If there was a match to this minibot's identity on the list he'd been given, it wasn't obvious. It was a strain not to dive into the database to search one out. He was fully conscious of Ratchet's likely reaction if he was caught trying to work before medically approved. The temptation was there regardless regardless. Part of him dearly wished to know what he was in for; another part dreaded the discovery. Was it possible, he wondered, for one mech to resemble another as much in spark as in frame? If so, if this Autobot was anything like the abrasive minibot who'd sworn to fight the Decepticons until his spark extinguished, and had done just that, then Prowl had his work cut out for him.
He suspected the natives of this world weren't ready for another Cliffjumper.
It was as he left his assigned quarters on the fifth Earth-day that Prowl confirmed once and for all that something was being kept from him. Although, he considered, neither Ratchet nor Optimus Prime could be considered entirely blameless in his discovery.
"He's uneasy." Prime's rumble wasn't meant to carry, and Prowl hadn't meant to approach his friends and comrades unnoticed, but neither mech could help their nature. Echoes distorted the deep voice, the sound wave bouncing off the steel walls of NEST's hangar, and into the residential complex. Prowl picked out the words with the ease of one who'd spent long vorns listening to his Prime's commands, his door-wings angling to focus on the vibrations through instinct alone. "I believe he has noticed something."
"How is that possible?" There was a whirr of Ratchet's saw-blade, its lazy spinning a frustrated reaction rather than an aggressive one. "Anyway, we can't tell him. Not yet. He needs rest, not more stress, Optimus. You saw him when he landed. I've not seen him looking that tired and run down for vorns. Not since the last time Jazz…"
Ratchet stopped, his vents choking out an audible cough, and Prowl stopped too, remaining in the residential corridor a few klicks longer than he'd intended to, rather than stepping out into sight in the main hangar.
Ratchet and Optimus knew, as no one else did in these latter days of the war, that Jazz and Prowl were one another's last reminders of a time and a life now gone. They'd witnessed enough of the pair's long association to see the pattern - that Prowl tended to pay less attention to his own needs when Jazz was assigned elsewhere, and that Jazz's reckless tendencies came to the fore without Prowl's presence to hold him in check.
The thought, the guilt that he hadn't been there, stalled Prowl's vents. He shuddered, grieving anew.
Optimus and Ratchet didn't know, they couldn't, that a short few orns before, the tactician had been in near-optimal condition. The mere anticipation of his oldest friend's reaction had been enough to keep Prowl well-fuelled and rested through their long vorns of searching. His friends had no idea that Prowl's exhausted state resulted entirely from the news he'd encountered on reaching this system's perimeter beacons. His weary landing five days before was just the last step in a shift in his world-view… one so painful and intense that he'd lingered for orns in a cold, distant orbit around this world's primary, trying to adjust to it before making his presence known.
Until Prowl himself understood his spark-deep horror on learning of Jazz's loss - above and beyond the shock of losing Ironhide, losing Que, and so many others - he had no intention of sharing it.
"By rights I should be keeping him off-duty for a dozen orns, not just half of one! If it wasn't for - " For the second time, Ratchet's voice broke off mid-sentence, and this time Prowl felt the tingle of medical sensors and knew his presence had been noticed at last. He stepped out into the hangar with the same quiet grace that had carried him so close. He tried not to remember how much of his now-instinctive stealth he'd learnt from his departed friend.
"Optimus," he acknowledged softly, moving to his Prime's side. The larger mech's optics searched his faceplates, and for a few micro-klicks, Prowl thought his wait might be at an end. He should have known better than to expect his Prime to yield. Optimus Prime's expression shut down, mirroring the wariness of Ratchet's. The Prime nodded a greeting. One large hand reached out to squeeze Prowl's shoulder, but there was no revelation to come, none of the explanation the tactician craved.
"You are well, old friend?"
Despite everything, the question provoked a wry smile. Optimus knew him better than that. Prime's optics twinkled in recognition of his folly even before Prowl spoke.
"I have to confess that I find enforced inactivity somewhat tiresome."
"Two more days." Ratchet's arms were crossed over his bumper, the finger-servos of one hand playing against the other forearm. "At least." There was no compromise in the medic's posture, only determination and a hint of the compassion the irascible mech was always so careful to hide. Ratchet's expression softened, and Prowl realised that his door-wings had slumped a little without his conscious volition. "I'm not insisting for the sake of it, you know." He glanced at Prime, a sigh escaping him as he went on. "Your tactical processor is already overclocking, and I want it to calm down before we catch you up on things."
Prowl raised a brow-ridge, his own arms crossing in unconscious imitation. "And it doesn't occur to you that my tactical algorithms might be eased by a full and thorough understanding of our current circumstances?"
This time Ratchet's snort was more amused than regretful. Prime's optics, too, danced with a good humour his Second-in-Command couldn't explain.
"Believe me, Prowl. There is nothing about life on this crazy planet that's going to make your life any easier."
It was on the sixth day of his medical leave that Prowl broke Ratchet's proscription, despite all his good intentions. Not for the first time in their long association, it took Sideswipe to break his resolve. Sideswipe… and Sunstreaker.
His days were starting to fall into a pattern now, driven by this planet's rapid rotation and the quick heartbeats of its natives. His new-found habit of touring the base's roads in the afternoon sun was purely a practical one, of course - nothing to do with the soothing, comforting properties of Sol's warm yellow light.
It was essential that he learn the lie of the land, become familiar with base routine and accustomed to his new alt-mode in advance of battle. It was important too that the base complement grow accustomed to his presence, and ready to accept his commands. His tours brought him into contact with mechs and men he'd seldom encounter otherwise, although the mystery blue mini-bot remained infuriatingly elusive.
Despite the work-oriented justification for his excursions, it helped that Ratchet thoroughly approved. Prowl's internal energy reserves were recovering well, boosted by the regular infusion of solar power, and the satisfied nods from Ratchet gave his victim hope of soon escaping the medic's overprotective concern.
This day was no different, except that he decided to reverse his usual route. The dirt was dry and crisp under his tires as he set out along the back-road from the hangar, towards the rise that lay to their north. With the adjustment to his schedule, he might just traverse the shallow valley beyond before the afternoon shadows lengthened across it. Prowl coasted through the afternoon sun, comfortable in the utility of his actions, even if physical comfort eluded him.
The sun was warm, true, but this world's ever-present dust, thrown up by his passage, settled around him and coated his frame. He paused on the ridge to open and close his doors in a vain attempt to shake the grimy coating free and ease the tingling resonance in his door-wings. Not for the first time, he wondered when he'd get to experience the intense, apparently acid-free, rainfall mentioned so frequently by this world's media. As alarming as the concept initially sounded, just now a cleansing shower would be very welcome.
Then he looked down into the dip beyond, and any thought of his own discomfort vanished.
His first reaction on encountering Sunstreaker racing his brother across the dirt, was one of pure relief. The Sideswipe Prowl remembered was little more than a youngling, jubilant and playful, even when thrown into the heart of battle. The Sideswipe who now, unthinkably, formed part of Prime's officer corps, was an older and grimmer mech. The youthful light in his optics had dimmed, his once-plentiful laughter now rare and often bitter. He was still Sideswipe - still impulsive, still eager for battle, a skilled warrior and deceptively quick-minded - but something, dramatic and traumatic, had changed the mech almost beyond recognition.
That change in the silver frontliner had concerned Prowl more than he'd realized, and the only explanation his tactical processor could suggest left him aching inside. He hadn't had the spark to ask, not yet. Not with his own loss still so raw and new.
To see Sunstreaker racing his twin brother relieved a fear he hadn't dared give voice.
The moment passed. Confusion washed away his relief, and a furrow creased Prowl's brow-ridge as he gazed down at the racing vehicles. He'd been here a half-orn, walked through the Autobot ranks, spoken - albeit briefly - to Sideswipe and seen him train, and all the time without catching sight of the mech's twin? That would have been inconceivable, even if the arrogant mech had still been sporting his usual golden armour. With Sunstreaker clad in the same blue phosphorescence as the strangely-familiar mini-bot - a mech Prowl had yet to meet in person - it was beyond reason.
Sunstreaker gleamed in the first rays of the morning sun. His lines seemed to be sketched out in shadows and light, the beauty of his shell made into something otherworldly, almost ethereal, by the glow that emanated from it. It suited him, somehow, as if he might be the only mech in existence with the style to carry off the look… and yet it was wrong. The frontliner Prowl knew would never agree to share his colour-scheme with another, or to exchange his classic golden sheen for something so garish.
Prowl stared. It was impossible, utterly impossible, that he could have overlooked a blue-white Sunstreaker until now. The evidence of his own optical sensors insisted otherwise.
Sideswipe braked, slewing slightly to bring his forward sensors to bear on the ridge. Prowl backed off, letting the rise of the land hide the twins from sight. He couldn't have said why, only that he was gripped by a sudden certainty: he was intruding on something he wasn't meant to see.
He rocked on his tyres, unsure how to proceed. Should he reroute his excursion? He had no reason to do so, and yet…
Prowl was still considering his options when Sideswipe topped the ridge alone. The silver Corvette Stingray halted, looking down on Prowl's new alt-form, for several long klicks before the sound of transformation filled the air.
Prowl transformed in turn, shrugging plating into place and wincing as his door-wings shifted through the still-unfamiliar sequence.
"Hey." Sideswipe's greeting was awkward, his hesitation in addressing someone who'd been his superior for many more vorns than he'd been a fellow officer natural. "I wasn't expecting to see you here."
"Sideswipe…" By rights, Prowl should have responded with similar small talk, tried to ease the tension in the situation, even in response to so weak an opening gambit. Instead the question escaped from him - driven in equal parts by confusion and uncertainty: "Why is Sunstreaker not listed on the personnel roster of this division?"
He might have slapped the mech. Sideswipe's helm snapped back. His swords slid out of their arm sockets, his entire frame becoming tense and defensive. Startled, Prowl found himself bracing. Wary, he watched as Sideswipe's optics dilated, and as the swordsmech struggled to get a hold of his emotions.
"Why isn't Sunstreaker on the roster?" Sideswipe repeated, far too quietly, far too calmly. "For a very good reason." His optics dimmed, the blades sliding back into their sheaths. "There was a battle. Almost twenty vorns ago. A battle so insignificant it doesn't have a name." Sideswipe spun on his heel, turning his face away. He paused, bright sunlight reflecting from his metallic shell, but not hiding his bitter snarl. "My brother offlined, Prowl. So if you're looking to dump guard duty on his aft, I guess you'll just have to count him out."
Sideswipe transformed and peeled away in one swift movement. Dust hung in the air, choking off the warmth of the sun and swathing Prowl in shadow. An angry mech left behind him one mired in the deepest bewilderment, each alone with their guilt and loss.
"You know Ratchet will have your plating if he catches you."
Prime's voice startled Prowl, enough so that he jumped on his tyres, his armoured shell rattling around him. Optimus gazed down at his alt-mode tactician with considering optics. To anyone else, Prowl was simply parked on the concrete apron outside the hangar, enjoying the sunlight after his drive. Only Optimus Prime seemed to have realised his Second had another reason for lurking within wireless range of their centre of operations.
The NEST database was alien to Prowl, but it gave an easy access route into the far more familiar the Autobot mainframe it was built upon. The tactician had dived into the data-space with abandon, using his own security codes where Prime had activated them, and Jazz's hacks where conventional access was barred or too slow. He'd had the base personnel files in his grasp within klicks, scanning them for the mech… no, two mechs… who logic dictated had to be there. He was still trying to process the results of his search when Optimus Prime sought him out.
If Prowl could have avoided transforming, he would have done so. Prime knew him too well, could read the agitation and uncertainty in his frame almost as well as Jazz had. Staying in alt-mode would be unforgivably rude for that very reason. Prowl shifted form with reluctance. He took his time, letting the sequence work out some of his restless energy, and kept his optics downcast for fear of what they revealed. He heard and sensed Prime's vents falter nonetheless, and the large mech's engine throbbed a deeper note of concern.
"Prowl…" Prime's voice drew Prowl's gaze up against his will. There was a considering look on Optimus's face, and his optics were bright with worry. "I encountered Sideswipe a few breems ago."
It was as much invitation as statement. Optimus was probing, trying to determine whether there was a problem, or perhaps giving Prowl an opportunity to voice the one he knew existed. Prowl hesitated, far from sure himself what to say.
"Prime…"
Alarms split the air. Warnings scrolled through the communications system of both Autobots, alerts and status updates flooding the network in a flurry of ordered chaos. Inside the hangar, human shouts and running footsteps echoed and re-echoed. All around, Autobot engines kicked into higher gear, readying for battle.
Optimus Prime transformed and peeled out without hesitation, calling orders as he went. Prowl backed to one side, clearing the hangar doors, painfully aware that he was off the battle roster. His weapons systems were in optimal condition, of course; not even Ratchet questioned that prioritisation this late in the war. On the other hand, he wasn't briefed on the situation. His knowledge of human tactics was limited to a few joors of watching the NEST teams train, and the distorted lens of their broadcast media. At best he'd be of limited help. At worst, given his overall physical state and already strained tactical processor, he'd be a liability to his own side.
Not, it would appear, that his fighting skills were actually needed.
The Decepticons stranded on Earth by the collapse of their Chicago beachhead were a disordered and leaderless rabble. For this loose coalition of three mechs to attack NEST's home base seemed suicidal, and perhaps that was precisely what it was: evidence of a madness fuelled by hunger, despair and the desire for revenge.
Their motivation was irrelevant. The startled perimeter guards engaged one ground-format. Two made it past, the sheer unexpected audacity of their strike allowing it to penetrate NEST territory. Both were rapidly intercepted, by human squads and Autobot forces acting in fascinating unison.
At least, Prowl realised as he transformed, the cohort led by Prime worked as a smoothly-oiled team. Sideswipe's though…
Prowl had seen the front-line swordsmech fight more times than he could count, and seen him train here on Earth. The warrior he watched now, the one who waved his human support back and leapt onto his adversary with a snarl, wasn't the skilled mech he knew. Sideswipe was angry, almost to the point of abandoning reason. And that, Prowl knew, was likely his fault and his alone.
The human unit and junior Autobots assigned to Sideswipe could do no more than watch, shifting their positions as the vicious hand-to-hand fight went on, afraid to fire into the melee but readying their weapons for any chance of a clear shot. They were all too aware, as Prowl was, that their young officer was tiring. The Decepticon easily out-matched him in size, and probably mass and power too. A blow from a jagged energon blade cut deep into Sideswipe's silver plating; another, from a fist almost as large as Sideswipe's head, had to have rattled his processor.
Still, the Autobot wouldn't fall back.
Prowl threw the briefest of glances around him. Prime and Lennox were fully engaged with a behemoth even larger than Sideswipe's opponent. Ratchet was nowhere in sight, and the chances of the warrior listening to anyone else were slim in the extreme.
Hacking the inter-unit com system was not difficult for the tactician, whose tendrils of code already stretched into the base network. Picking his moment was harder.
"Be ready," his soft voice whispered into the ears of the mechs and men around the vicious fight.
Their timing had to be perfect. So did his.
"Sideswipe! Down!"
Sideswipe flattened himself to the floor, his frame obeying the barked order before his processor had time to contest it. The Decepticon's sword swung wildly, slicing through the volume Sideswipe's chest-plate had occupied micro-klicks before. The big mechanism swayed, unbalanced, and then the aggressor was lost, caught in the dazzling crossfire of a dozen heavy-gauge weapons.
Prowl's door-wings slumped in relief. Sideswipe was dust-coated. Energon, seeping from his breached armour plates, carved tracks through the grime. But he was alive.
Not that the mech himself seemed to appreciate that. His expression as he clambered to his feet was one of deep frustration. Angry optics searched out the source of the unwelcome intervention… and widened.
"Prowl!"
Sideswipe's expression, and the cry in another, fear-strained voice, were all the warning the tactician had. The full weight of a mech crashed into him, slamming him to the ground, and a moment later the shriek of a missile cut through the air where he'd stood. It exploded against the hangar wall with enough force to send Prowl tumbling across the dirt, at the mercy of the shockwave and the expanding, turbulent cloud it dragged behind it.
The mech who'd saved his life tumbled too, the eerie, blue-white glow of his armour a dramatic contrast to the yellow-red fireball against which it was silhouetted. Prowl's entire frame tingled from contact with the other mech, brief as it had been, his plating burning hot and cold at the same time and prickling with an unnatural energy. His audio sensors shrieked with feedback from the blast, but echoed too with his own name, shouted in musical tones he'd never thought to hear again.
Prowl stared, optics shocked and dilated with disbelief, into a blue visor and a worried expression. He felt his tactical processor heat beyond tolerances, his algorithms looping as they strained to separate fantasy from reality. Conflicting certainties competed for precedence, leaving him trying to process the impossible.
The helm tilted to one side. A too-familiar, lop-sided grin spread across faceplates that seemed constructed entirely from shadows and brilliant, electric-blue highlights.
"Hey there, Prowler," Jazz said, and Prowl's world went black.
"Don't try to move."
Prowl's audio receptors were the first system he was consciously aware of. The sounds he detected carried meaning - he was sure of that. His free-wheeling memory algorithms tagged them with the image of a gruff face and a vague sense of concern.
"Prowl? Can you hear me?"
His systems throbbed on a low note… or perhaps his processor was simply underclocking enough to affect his time and frequency perception?
Yes. The tactician felt unreasonably smug at reaching a solid conclusion. Yes, he knew this feeling. After a lifetime of battle and the strains of a fine-tuned processor, he had more than a passing acquaintance with waking under the influence of powerful sedatives.
His optics onlined, their passive gaze resting on the ceiling directly above him. He didn't bother to move them. The gruff-voice-person might trigger a hazy unease but Prowl also associated him with these episodes, and knew he was entirely safe in the mech's hands. As long as the non-native sedative programmes held sway in his systems there was little point in trying to move, and no motivation whatsoever to do so. The medical codes were fighting a losing battle against his tactical algorithms, in any case. They'd collapse under the onslaught soon enough.
"Prowl?"
The small part of Prowl that cared had a blurred inkling that sooner or later, embarrassment would chase away his comfortable ennui, but honestly, for the moment, that threat had no power over him. Not yet. A pop-up message from his tactical processor, and Prowl's processor kicked up a notch. At least one of the sedatives had been analysed and countered, he realised, and with that realisation came at least the suggestion that this might be a good thing. If he could just think clearly…
"Prowler?"
Different voice. Prowl's head rolled to one side without conscious instruction, his unfocussed optics searching for something… someone…
The frame, once a polished silver, now gleamed with quite a different radiance. It seemed to flicker, to glisten as if illuminated by a cold flame, somewhere just out of sight. The mech was difficult to look at directly, disorientating to Prowl's lagging optics. He sat on a berth beside the tactician's, knees drawn up to his chest-plates, and his helm resting on them. Small movements left steaks of afterglow behind them, and the mech was never entirely still, had never been still in his entire existence. Slender finials tapered to points either side of a sculpted helm. Between them, the blue-white shimmer framed a visor lit with a much deeper, warmer hue.
Prowl's processor shrieked. His frame heated, trying to dissipate the waste energy as his logical systems tried and failed to accommodate the output from his optics.
Someone moved beside him, brushing the side of his helm, and a moment later, new lines of code streamed through his systems like a cold wave. He shuddered, forced back into the uncaring haze in which thinking felt like trying to wade through a turgid, congealed oil-bath.
"Prowl, listen to me. That's the last sedative you don't already have counter-coding for. If you can stop yourself destroying it too fast, this is going to be easier on all of us."
Gruff-voice-safe-person… Ratchet… was talking again. Prowl didn't comprehend at first. And then his processor supplied a second name… Jazz… and he stopped trying.
"Prowl? Are you hearing any of this?"
Blue-white faceplates, clearer by the second now, tilted to one side. One corner of their slender lips quirked upwards into a small, serious smile. "Best answer him, Prowler. Y' know Ratch gets tetchy when you ain't payin' him no mind."
"Ratchet?" Prowl didn't take his optics from the impossible sight. His voice wavered in his own audios, still deeper than usual, and unsteady.
"Now you choose to listen? Do you have any idea how many joors I've spent defragging your systems?"
"Ratchet," Prowl repeated, rebooting his optics. Their output remained unchanged. He shook his head, trying to clear it. "I need to be taken off duty."
Something smacked the side of his helm. Prowl turned quickly, cycling his sensors in shock and disbelief. Ratchet scowled down at him, the hand that slapped him still raised. "You were off-duty, you slagger. Didn't stop you crashing harder than I've seen for deca-vorns."
The blow had been gentle, but it helped nonetheless, activating Prowl's top-level self-defence programming and boosting power to his tactical algorithms. Another layer of the sedatives crumbled under the assault. Prowl's vision finally cleared, the rumble of his own spark-beat no longer a distressing, low-pitched dirge.
"Prowl, stop it! Kill your adaptive defences. Now!"
More alert than he had been since he first woke, aware of the rising conflicts in his logic circuits, Prowl obeyed the command. He was immediately glad he had as the conflict eased. He felt comfortable now, as if cushioned on the surface of a lubricant bath now rather than trying to force his way through it. He turned back to the third mech in the room and felt the structure of his world tremble despite the tranquiliser codes in his systems.
Ratchet muttered under his breath, skirting the edge of the med-berth until he was once again in Prowl's line of sight. Prowl looked from the medic to Jazz and back again. He vented a sigh, feeling cool air ease his overheating systems, and spoke with an entirely artificial calm.
"I can see dead people."
Quite why that remark provoked near-identical smirks from both Ratchet and Jazz, Prowl would never know. The medic cleared his vents in a cough, raising a hand to hide the expression, and shook his head.
"Well, obviously. Though Primus knows why." Ratchet spun on his pedes, a finger stabbing out in the direction of Jazz. The saboteur's spectre froze, half-way through the act of pushing himself off the berth. "You! Sit!"
"C'mon, Ratch! Y'know leanin' 'gainst things is easier than sittin'."
"As if that makes any sense!" Ratchet huffed air through his vents. "Lean then, just don't overdo it."
Prowl's processor churned, trying to accommodate what he was witnessing. It was several micro-klicks before he gave in to the enticing whispers of the sedative programming and stopped fighting. Ratchet had spoken to Jazz, and that was as much permission as the dazed tactician needed.
"You look tired," he observed, concerned despite everything. Despite the constant, inescapable knowledge that Jazz was beyond physical distress.
"Yeah." Jazz eased himself off the berth and leaned against it with a shrug. "Interactin' with things like that? Guess it kinda takes a lot outta me." The ghost grinned, and the expression was spark-breakingly familiar. "Lit'rally!"
Prowl couldn't help it. He smiled back and, for the first time since he first heard the news that shook his world, the expression was completely genuine.
"It began, as so many things did, with Mission City." Optimus Prime didn't shudder as he spoke the words, but Prowl noticed the stillness - the cost of that deliberate effort not to react. Ratchet flinched. Jazz looked distant, slender claws ghosting over his mid-riff as his face twisted in remembered pain.
Prowl felt his spark twist, his grief still raw and close to the surface, despite the sight of his friend on the berth beside him. Ratchet had allowed the tactician to sit, easing him up and checking he was stable before releasing him. Prowl accepted the fussing without protest. His optics and his attention remained fixed to the eerie shimmer of Jazz's frame, only straying for micro-klicks at a time. The half-breem it had taken for Ratchet to settle and Optimus to join them wasn't nearly long enough to come to terms with the vision in front of him.
Optimus vented a soft sigh, showing his friends and officers a weariness he wouldn't reveal to any other Cybertronian.
"Jazz has always been one of the most alive, most determined mechs I've known. Finding his broken frame on the battlefield was almost as difficult as accepting the loss of the All-Spark." He glanced sidelong at his lieutenant's ghostly form, his optics sad but fond. "It shouldn't have surprised me to learn he did not go quietly."
Jazz managed a grin, but to Prowl's experienced optics there was an uneasy tension in his posture. Despite his protest, the blue-white mech had settled back onto the berth. He truly did seem weary, although how that was possible Prowl had no idea. The… ghost?... spectre?... Jazz… shook his head. "There were too much I hadn't done, y'know? Too many things... things I hadn't said. Primus might be callin' me home, and a mech can't 'xactly say no t' the Big Guy, but that didn't mean I hadta shout hurrah, or that I wasn't gonna let 'im know how I felt."
Ratchet rolled his optics, and Prowl felt a smile tug at the corner of his lip-plates, his door-wings hitching a little higher. It was all-too-easy to imagine Jazz berating their creator-god. His amusement, though, was moderated by confusion. The saboteur could hardly have been the first in their long war to die angry and unprepared. Optimus read the question on his faceplates.
"It was a unique time and place." Prime leaned back against Ratchet's desk, his optics, like Prowl's, resting on Jazz. "Everything pivoted on the ending of the Mission City battle - for Cybertronian and human alike. If Lord Primus was ever close by, grieving his children's fall, it was on that day. The power of the All-Spark was released from its physical constraints even as Jazz's spark… guttered."
Ratchet flinched again. The sharp plates of his external armour flared, the unconscious spinning of his wrist-saw drawing a rumble of comfort from their Prime.
"I couldn't do anything. Jazz slipped away just as I got to him. I couldn't…." The medic's fists clenched at his sides. His vents cycled hard and his optics dimmed for a moment before brightening.
Ratchet uncurled his finger-servos with visible effort and nodded towards the silver-blue mech. "Best we can work out, this one was right there, bridging the way to the Well, pleading with Primus and the All-Spark and anyone who would listen, when the All-Spark's energy was looking for a way back to the Source. It jumped right through him and burned a kind of, ah, conduit on its way to the Well…" He waved a hand vaguely, as if trying to frame something that had never had a physical shape in the first place. "…A rift."
Optimus Prime nodded. The big mech glanced at Prowl and then turned back to the quiet spectre. Jazz seemed subdued, shaken by the account of his own demise. The silver-blue form glanced up, meeting Prime's optics for a moment and nodding an acknowledgement of the comfort he saw there, as Optimus picked up the explanation.
"The humans noticed it first. Lennox's men started reporting 'poltergeist activity'."
Prime paused, giving his sedated tactician time to connect to the base network and locate the definition. Prowl's door-wings flared in surprise. The word itself was unfamiliar, the meaning far less so than he anticipated.
"An unpredictable spirit, prone to sudden noises or moving objects unasked, sometimes with helpful intent, sometimes at random and sometimes for mischievous effect." Prowl raised a brow ridge as he finished his recitation, his optics steady.
Sitting at their focus, Jazz's expression was torn between indignation and amusement.
"I resent the assumptions you're makin', mech."
Prowl's arms folded, his gaze unflinching.
"But do you refute them?"
Ratchet snorted. His plating settled. The tension he'd shown while talking of Mission City eased from his frame.
"Guilty as charged," the medic smirked, one finger-servo stabbing in Jazz's direction. "Took a couple of months for the nuisance to show himself, but he's been around ever since."
Prowl cycled his optics. The sedative haze was still keeping him afloat on a calm sea, but the waves were building. His voice came out dryer than he intended - not precisely disbelieving, but flat with shock.
"And now the legions of the Cybertronian dead walk the green hills of Earth?"
Jazz laughed, the sound rich and musical as he too relaxed.
"Nah. It's harsh t'say it, but it's kinda been a tough few kilovorns. Most folks ain't too sorry t'see the back of all this." Jazz's waving servos took in not just the medical bay, but the world beyond and the eons of warfare that had brought their species to the brink of extinction. "Y'know what I mean? They did their bit and now they're okay to rest up an' move on, an' be one with the Well of Sparks 'till the Big Guy sends them for another go 'round. Ain't many as awkward as me."
Ratchet's muttered "Thank Primus!" earned him a smirk from Jazz. The saboteur shrugged.
"Just a few of us with… well, unfinished business."
The hesitation was uncharacteristic. The barest suggestion of a frown creased Prowl's brow as he looked at his friend. Then the sedatives did their work and broke the processing chain that unsettled him, leaving only a tremor in his door-wings and a mild dissatisfaction in its wake. He tried to focus.
"Sunstreaker?"
"I noticed y' noticin' Sides' anger issues." Jazz met his optics, a sombre glint in his visor. "Having Sunny back like this - it ain't the same, not really, but it's helpin'."
"Cliffjumper?"
That got another chuckle. Jazz shook his head and Ratchet scowled.
"We knew the mech was determined to see the end this war." The medic cycled his optics and vents. "Fighting it single-handed, if necessary. I don't think we realised just how serious he was."
"Lord Primus has his reasons." Optimus Prime's deep rumble was full of tolerant humour. "It is, perhaps, harder for some than for others to find peace."
Prowl cycled his optics, blinking away the question of the mini-bot for another day. There was another mech, short in stature but lithe and graceful beyond Cliffjumper's dreams, that occupied his thoughts.
"And I'm sure you are grateful, Optimus, for Jazz's unfailing commitment to the Autobot cause."
If Prowl had been free of the sedatives, if his processor had been clocking at full speed and his tactical algorithms unconstrained, he might have followed up on the strange expression that passed across Jazz's face. He could count the times he had seen the mech visibly embarrassed, uncertain and - most rare of all - shy, on his servos, despite their vorns of acquaintance. To see all three emotions at once writ clear across the spectre's faceplates made Prowl's tanks churn in a way he couldn't explain.
Even under the influence of Ratchet's medical codes, Prowl struggled to find words of comfort, or at least acknowledgement. His servo lifted in unconscious effort, half-extended towards a flickering frame he was far from sure he could touch.
"Optimus? Ratchet?" A new voice shattered the moment. Prowl's servo dropped back to the berth as Colonel William Lennox entered the room, head tilted back to crane up at his colleagues. "Any news on… Oh! Prowl." Lennox grinned, and Prowl's door-wings readily detected the anxiety markers coming off the organic, and the way the man's muscle tension eased at the sight of him. "Good to see you up! We were all sort of worried when you got caught in that missile blast."
"The blast…" Prowl repeated, uncertain.
"That's your cover story." The familiar grin was back on Jazz's face, his head cocked to one side as he looked down at the human. "No need t' let the younglings know it was me screwin' with your processor, right?"
Ratchet vented a quiet, irritated sigh. Optimus didn't react, his faceplates turned away from the ghostly saboteur. Lennox didn't even seem to notice. The human's eyes slid straight past the berth where Jazz sat without pausing. Prowl startled, his expression asking a question he didn't date put into words. The grin faded a little, a melancholy note drifting into Jazz's voice.
"Nah, he can't hear me. Can't see me either, or the others. Like I said, it ain't the same. No one's in on the fun, 'cept the mechs at Mission City and the ones who got a blast of matrixy-goodness in Egypt. And you."
"Prowl's fine." Ratchet spoke across Jazz without looking at him, the art of ignoring the saboteur in public obviously long since perfected. "I'm keeping him off the roster another half-orn though."
"But… why?" Prowl spoke to Jazz rather than to his medic, the sedative coding still in his system making the two conversations impossible to separate.
Optimus Prime had no such problem. The big mech's optics twinkled as he glanced around the room, taking in both the wandering spark of his lieutenant and the valued comrade oblivious to Jazz's presence.
"The reasons of Lord Primus are unknowable to common mechs - as are those of Ratchet. Some things happen simply because they must."