Remembrance, Pt. 2
Title: Remembrance
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Moderately-graphic descriptions of the effect of car-crash-physics on a human body. Death. Mild cursing. Also, Vivaldi. The third movement of this, specifically.
Main Character(s): Prowl, Sunfall the Dreaded OC, Jazz
Genre: Big-time Angst
Summary: In the wake of tragedy, Prowl wallows in guilt and Sunfall is confused as all get-out.
The other parts: Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4
"I’M GONNA KILL HIM!"
The words, yelled at the top of a female voice, echoed down the corridor. They heralded Claire Chase’s arrival in the Control Room of Autobot Headquarters even before she stomped into the cavernous room with impressively loud footsteps. She regarded the other current occupant of the Control Room and I with a prodigious scowl for a moment, her fists planted firmly on her hips, her back stiff with outrage.
And then she growled at us, with not a hint of joking in her voice, "Do either of you guys have a spare arc welder on you or something?"
I exchanged a befuddled look with Jazz.
"That’d be Ratchet’s department, I think," Jazz answered fliply before I could say anything. "And if it’s Ironhide you’re plannin’ to kill, I think Ratch might just hold him down for ya..."
Suppressing a long-suffering sigh, I elbowed Jazz as he dissolved into a self-amused chortle. Instead, I focused my attention on Claire. Jazz’s customary good humor had actually managed to ease the scowl that marred her young face, something that I knew wasn’t easy to do. Claire was nothing if not stubborn about holding on to outrage.
"What’s wrong, Claire?" I asked of her calmly. Calmness and clarity of thought were useful in any situation, after all…but when dealing with an angry Claire Chase, it was doubly true.
"I’m freakin’ stuck here, that’s what’s wrong!" Claire rather unhelpfully elaborated. Then she took a deep breath and further explained, "I took my car down to the garage a few days ago, OK? Sunstreaker drove me home since, you know, it was pretty much all his fault that it was all, like, shot to hell, anyway. And at the time he promised me - He swore to Primus, even! - that he’d take me down to pick it up tonight when it was finished, so that I could pay for it before the garage closed for the night. So I went to the effort of wangling a ride here this afternoon from Spike, who graciously went totally out of his way to pick me up on his way in…"
"But?" Jazz prompted as Claire paused to take a breath. "Why do I sense a big ol’ ‘but’ coming on?"
"But it’s going to rain tonight!" Claire suddenly announced, perfectly and eerily mimicking the indignantly wheedling tone of voice that Sunstreaker used whenever he didn’t particularly want to do something for reasons of vanity. Jazz erupted into a gale of hearty guffaws as Claire stalked in a tight, angry circle, her arms folded tightly over her chest as she fumed. After pausing for a second to glare ferociously at Jazz’s mirth, she ranted, "God forbid that His Royal Beautifulness should do anything to tarnish that nice shiny patina of his, you know. And the creep didn’t even have the guts to tell me in person! No, he sent his poor brother in like some sort of sacrificial lamb. And I’ve got that audition tonight and everything! And everyone else is going to be busy during that little, teeny window of time between my car being done and being able to pick it up with just enough time to get to the concert hall for auditions. God! Mark my words, guys, when I get my hands on him, Sunstreaker is seriously dead meat. If he’s worried about a few rain spots…"
"Claire, calm down," I interjected as she paused and gathered her breath to continue her tirade.
She looked up at me then, her eyes wide and her expression somehow…wounded, as if I’d betrayed her by not sharing her outrage.
"Calm down? CALM DOWN?" she demanded. "Jeeeesus, Prowl! I’m up for the Oregon Symphony tonight! Quite a step up from the local chamber orchestra, you know. You think I’m going to calm down and accept the fact that I won’t get in - yet again! - just because Mr. I’m So Gorgeous is afraid of a little freakin’ water?"
I suppressed an exasperated sigh as I elaborated, "I just meant that I’ll take you down."
Claire blinked a few times at me, taken aback, while Jazz shot me an odd look, one of…disbelief.
"But…You’ve got-" Jazz began to protest.
"So I’ll be a little late," I interrupted with a casual shrug.
"You? Late?" Jazz stared at me in vast puzzlement for a moment, a thoughtful expression dominating his face for half a second…and then he angled a glance down at Claire, a jaunty grin neatly splitting his face in half. "’Scuse me. I’m gonna go pester Ratchet now. He’s just gonna love hearing that Prowl here’s flippin’ out." And he paused dramatically before adding, "Again."
I gave Jazz’s retreating back a long, withering glare as he left the room and then looked down at Claire who was still staring up at me, her brown eyes narrowed now in a curious combination of gratitude and puzzlement.
"Are you sure about this?" she asked tentatively. "I mean, Optimus’ll probably drop-kick your ass for-"
"He’ll get over it," I assured her with a confident, nonchalant shrug, although my audios were already ringing in anticipation of Optimus’ wrath.
"Well…um, thanks, then," Claire was saying, smiling beatifically up at me. "I really do appreciate it, Prowl."
"For you, Claire?" I said, smiling down at her myself in return. "No problem at all."
* * * * * *
My windshield wipers beat a steady, catchy rhythm as I drove carefully into swirling, patchy fog and driving rain, blazing a trail for Claire behind me. The weatherman hadn’t been joking when he’d warned on the five-o-clock news that tonight was going to be a wash-out. The visibility wasn’t helped by the fact that it was ten PM on a Friday night and there was a lot of traffic on the streets of Portland, even in the miserable weather. More traffic meant more blinding headlights blaring away into the gloom. When the sheets of rain were combined with neon signs and the light from shopping centers, movie theaters, and fast food restaurants, the result of all of the reflected glare was that you couldn’t see much more than five feet in front of yourself. Behind me, Claire was ferociously tailgating me, hanging about two feet off my back bumper, but I didn’t care. I knew, after all, that she could see far less well than I could.
Still, the rain and the general gloom couldn’t seem to dampen Claire’s spirits as we headed back toward her apartment building. I had insisted upon seeing her safely there, given the weather. But the audition had gone so well that she was still giddy with relief. Even now, the communications pick-up that Wheeljack had installed in her car was transmitting to me her happy humming. And I, of course, was equally happy for her. Tonight, she hadn’t succumbed to the nervousness that usually plagued her at auditions, that had in the past sabotaged all of her efforts to break into the symphony…
I had decided to accompany Claire to the auditions rather than return to Autobot Headquarters, where I was supposed to be. I had made that decision for several reasons. The main reason was that I knew of Claire’s tendency toward nerves at auditions. When she was playing in a group, she was fine. When she was playing by herself or for me, just for fun, she was equally fine. But in an audition situation, she often froze. She had once told me that she felt totally alone in such situations, and then her nerves took over. So I told her that this time I’d go to the audition and she could imagine that she was playing just for me. So I had wedged myself into the concert hall and settled myself into an aisle, blithely ignoring the puzzled stares of the other auditioners and the people who’d accompanied them.
The audition piece for this year was a Vivaldi violin concerto, one that was technically difficult, but one that I knew Claire loved to play and, more importantly, I knew that she could play it extremely well. Still, she had as usual succumbed to self-doubt as we’d walked into the concert hall, worrying over things that I knew that she could handle with ease if only she’d relax. So I attempted to convince her to relax. We passed the time between our arrival and her turn to audition quietly, Claire sitting cross-legged and tense a couple of steps above me in the aisle, leaning forward to rest her chin comfortably on my shoulder so that we could talk without disturbing the general silence of the hall, other than the music that the auditioners played. And, though I tried to keep the whispered conversation focused more on inconsequential things, Claire was nervous and evading my efforts to persuade her to relax. She spent much of the time before her turn to audition commenting on how good everyone else was and how she couldn’t hope to compare, while I spent most of the time trying to convince her otherwise, pointing out small mistakes that other auditioners had made. My efforts didn’t seem to mollify her, however.
And when it was finally Claire’s turn, she had approached the stage as if it was a gallows, her stride hesitant, her shoulders bunched in familiar trepidation. After she had climbed the steps and moved to stand in the middle of the stage, looking forlorn before she raised her violin to her shoulder, she looked right at me. I gave her a wink and a small, encouraging smile and a thumbs-up. And for some reason, with that gesture, her nervousness seemed to evaporate. And at her cue to begin, she took a deep breath, raised her violin, rested the bow lightly against the strings for a moment…and then she played. And the music simply spilled out of her, dulcet, sweet, and flowing through brilliant highs, mellow lows, and complicated, rushing phrases with her customary, breathtaking, natural ease.
Which was the second reason that I had chosen to accompany Claire to her audition; I simply loved to listen to her play. When we Autobots had awakened on Earth after a four-million-year sleep, some of us had been instantly taken with Earth’s then-current pop culture, with everything that had been happening right then in 1984. And most of the others continued to be mired in the present and there they seemed quite content to remain. But I…I had been quite taken with the past, with the classics - Old history, old philosophy…and especially old music. So much had happened while I had slept on the humans’ planet, and I wanted to know it all. And I was much more curious about humanity’s past than its present and future. So while some of the others - like Jazz, of course - drowned themselves in the here-and-now, I found myself drawn to what had been, to the old, in particular to music from the late 17th century, what the humans called Baroque. There was a rigid, mathematical precision to it, a certain logical progression, and yet at the same time it often managed to evoke an intense emotional response from the listener. That was a combination that resonated very comfortably with me. Jazz was always trying to foist modern human music upon me, but I would have none of it, almost from the very beginning.
And then Claire had come along, not long after our revival on Earth, appearing one day in Autobot Headquarters out of the blue, alongside of Chip. When we had met her, she had been only seven years old…but she had already been taking violin lessons for several years and even at such a young age, she was already very good. And, of course, she had only improved with age. Many of the Autobots - including me, of course - had attended her very first concert with the local chamber orchestra, when she had been all of twelve years old. It was an informal, open-air, summer evening affair. She could hardly be seen up on the stage, a tiny figure mired in the mediocre ranks of the second violin section…but she had not stayed in the mediocre ranks for long.
A shared interest in the same type of music - an interest, I might add, that was rare in one of her age - had precipitated an odd sort of friendship between us. It was a friendship that had only become stronger and closer through the years, as Claire grew through her turbulent teenage years and into womanhood. So I had watched as she had steadily worked her way through the ranks of the chamber orchestra, breaking into the first violins and eventually working her way to second-chair, just a step below concertmaster…and now here she was, trying to break into the state symphony. I was so proud of her, and I very much wanted her to succeed. So, besides the fact that I loved to listen to her play, I had simply decided tonight that if my being there at the audition in any way helped Claire to realize her dream… Well, then I was going to be there for her, whether Optimus Prime liked it or not.
And, of course, that was the third reason I’d decided to go to the audition with Claire. I was supposed to have been at Autobot Headquarters this evening for a strategy session with Optimus Prime, some of the other Autobots, and some U.S. Army representatives. Optimus would not have been at all happy with me, had I been late. And, applying a twisted sort of logic to the situation, I had simply deduced that being even later - missing the thing entirely, in fact - would further delay having to listen to our fearless leader’s wrath. I’d even turned off my comm so that no one could reach me…
It amazed me, really, this sudden…wayward attitude of mine. I had never been what anyone, by any stretch of their imagination, would call a rebel. But Claire had needed me. That took precedence over the wheedling, whining, sniveling U.S. Army, as far as I was concerned. I’d had quite enough of them over the years. Optimus would… Well, he wouldn’t really understand, no. I’m not sure that any Autobot could really understand the relationship that had slowly evolved over the years between Claire and I. But he - and everyone else - could simply deal with it, as far as I was concerned. I had decided that I had a right to enjoy myself for once in my life. I hadn’t enjoyed myself for a very long time, really. And I enjoyed being with Claire. And I especially enjoyed listening to her play.
Closing my eyes as Claire played up on the stage, I envisioned the last time I had heard her play the very same piece that was flowing out of her violin now. It had been up at the lake, back in the fall, before the cold, damp embrace of a northwestern winter had settled in. And it had been one of those amazingly crisp late October days, when the sky overhead was a deep, crystal blue warmed by a yellow sun unimpeded by cloud cover. There was no wind, and the air was crisp, fresh, but not at all cold. The lake was perfectly calm with the lack of wind, reflecting the cloudless sky as well as it would have had it been a giant mirror rather than an expanse of water. I was lying on my back, hands cradling the back of my head, staring up at the sky, utterly relaxed, as if I had not a care in the world. And at that time, I hadn’t had any…or, at least, I had temporarily forgotten them all, if I’d had any. I’d had one leg bent and Claire had been leaning her back comfortably against it, creating a warm spot, as she played a solo from the very same concerto that she was playing now...
The memory faded as Claire finished playing and lowered her violin from her shoulder, her eyes closed for a moment after she finished, as the echo of the final notes of the piece bounced off the walls of the concert hall and faded slowly. There was a brief silence…and then, as one, the hundred-or-so current occupants of the concert hall began to applaud quietly. Only a few had managed to rouse the other jaded auditioners to applause, but Claire had managed to do so, and the unexpected sound of it made her eyes snap open in surprise. She flushed momentarily, then grinned and sketched a hasty, nervous bow. The musical director thanked her for braving the awful weather to audition - and there was a note of approval in his voice, I noticed, that hadn’t been there for many of the others who’d auditioned. She nodded, thanked him with a wide grin, and then virtually floated toward the stage steps.
She’d fairly bounced down from the stage. And she hadn’t stopped babbling, humming, laughing, singing, or whistling since then. Even the foul weather couldn’t drown her spirits. She’d actually laughed and jumped with both feet into rain puddles like a child as she'd ran to her car…
"You really didn’t have to stay for the auditions, you know," Claire suddenly said now, her voice snapping me back to the present moment and managing to drown out the sound of the torrential sheets of rain that pounded against me.
"You know I love to listen to you play," I immediately transmitted back to her. "Besides, it, uh-"
"-delayed the 'Wrath of Optimus Prime' for a few more hours," Claire finished for me with a low, knowing chuckle. "He’s gonna weld you to the wall for missing that meeting, you know. I mean, he’d’ve probably forgiven a bit of lateness, but to totally blow him off like that…? Woo! You are so in for it, my boy. I’ve been a decidedly evil influence on you, haven’t I?"
"Evil? You? Nooooo…" I replied with an answering chuckle. And then a yelp from my scanners diverted my attention, and I noticed that, just ahead of me, the right lane of the road was flooded out. If Claire hit it - or even if I hit it - it’d be very easy to go careening out of control. "Whoa! Look out," I warned as I quickly swerved into the other lane to avoid the flood. Claire deftly followed the trail that I blazed, thankful, no doubt, that her car was a small and maneuverable Ford Escort. It didn’t much like the rain, from what I’d been able to gather of Claire’s infrequent complaints during the trip from the concert hall to her apartment, but at least it could handle such sudden shifts in vector and velocity better than a larger, more cumbersome vehicle could have. And as I glided to a stop at the red light in front of me a few dozen meters after that, Claire’s Escort did the same.
"Man, rain sucks," Claire sighed over the comm as her car halted behind me.
"Tell me about it!" I answered. After all, along with the omnipresent dirt and dust that wreaked havoc with delicate internal systems, Earth’s weather - especially the wetter incarnations of it - was a nuisance that required a certain period of adjustment.
I said something else inconsequential then…and was puzzled when Claire didn’t answer.
"Claire? Hello?" I prompted after a moment…but then I noticed what she had no doubt already noticed.
Behind her, a wild light was flailing, approaching Claire’s car much too quickly. A car…a truck, actually, judging by the height of the lights…was weaving, fish-tailing its way inexorably toward Claire’s car, obviously quite out of control, perhaps having hit that flood that Claire and I had both managed to miss. Time seemed to slow as I watched it approach. I called Claire’s name again and again, desperately this time, trying to get her attention, to make her aware that she needed to move. But my words went ignored as, I imagined, Claire stared with deer-in-the-headlights horror into her rear view mirror and I sat there, completely and frustratingly numbed. It vaguely occurred to me that I should do something. Like transform and divert the oncoming vehicle if I could. Like heroically shield fragile Claire with my far less fragile body, at least.
But there was suddenly no time… No time at all.
And then there were the sounds. Claire’s last word was my name, murmured, whispered as softly as one would say a private prayer. And then there was the screeching of tires against wet, slick asphalt. And then there was a sort of brittle, hollow crunch punctuated by an abortive scream that ripped itself out of Claire’s throat and speared me with an overwhelming and soul-rending sense of guilt. And then, a split-second later, there was a mighty and terrible jolt as the front end of Claire’s car mashed itself with a vengeance into me…
* * * * * * *
Transforming was nothing less than pure hell. One of the two…or three…or four…I’d lost count…cars that had hit me when Claire’s car had shoved me helplessly into the intersection and on-coming traffic had bashed in my right front wheel rim, making it difficult and supremely painful to wrench my shoulder back and into place. And my legs, where Claire’s car had rammed into me… They were screaming at me, and aftershocks of that impact and the others were still ramming their insistent way through my infrastructure, leaving a lingering trail of pain in their wake. I consciously put it aside for the moment, though, and managed to complete a pitifully slow and decidedly shaky transformation. And then I pushed myself up onto my one good hand and my knees in order to take stock of the situation.
Several cars, at least, had hit me, but their operators, from what I could tell, appeared to be all right. One of them was already stalking around his bashed-in BMW, oblivious to the rain and everything else, screaming enraged obscenities into a cellular phone. The other bystanders were, for the most part, gawking mutely at me, their eyes huge as saucers. I don’t know if they were in shock because I was an Autobot or what…but at the moment I really didn’t care.
Because I had finally, dazedly turned my head so that I could see Claire’s car. Or what was left of it, anyway. And a vague intimation of panic began to gnaw hungrily at the edges of my still-dulled senses as I surveyed the wreckage. What had once been a small Ford automobile - small, nothing flashy, but perfectly adequate for Claire’s purposes - was now a twisted, unidentifiable mass of metal, glass, and fiberglass. It had been violently crushed between the pick-up truck that had hit it and me, and it had folded and refolded and twisted in on itself in protest. The pick-up truck that had rammed Claire had ridden up over the trunk of the car. Its front tires were resting where the back window of Claire’s car had been. And its cab was empty. I had no idea where the driver was…and I didn’t care at all because at that moment I spotted Claire.
If transforming had hurt, moving was even more torturous, but now I hardly felt the pain. Panic had pushed it firmly aside. It would hit me later, I knew, and life would not be pleasant when it did. But for the moment…I could see that Claire was still in her car, slumped and unmoving over the steering wheel…and small flickers of flame were visible under the bashed-in hood of the car. It took a moment or two for their significance to smash its way through my swirling, dazed, fuzzy thoughts. But when it did, my mind was suddenly jolted clear…and I was suddenly desperate. In the distance, I heard sirens approaching. Rescue crews, no doubt, were converging upon the scene of the accident. But they wouldn’t arrive in time. Not before those small, perversely cheerful sparks became a raging, all-consuming inferno, at any rate.
I knew what I had to do.
Walking was out of the question. My legs, I knew, were too badly damaged for that. But I could still crawl after a fashion, gingerly favoring my severely bashed-in right shoulder. In that manner, I slowly, laboriously crossed the stretch of wet asphalt between my position and what was left of Claire’s car. The torturous journey seemed to take forever, and by the time that I reached Claire, the disparate, small flames had coalesced into a larger fire that intermittently licked angrily out from underneath the accordion-folded hood of her car, hissing malevolently and smoking noxiously in the dampness.
I considered the problem. Claire was still in the car, quite obviously unconscious. I tried the door handle, knowing that it was, no doubt, not going to work and I wasn’t disappointed when it didn’t. All other options exhausted and time running very short, I knew what I had to do. So, steeling myself, I braced my injured right arm against the car for leverage, hissing and wincing in pain that I couldn’t quite shove aside this time, and then with desperate strength I pushed with my left hand against the roof support on the driver’s side of Claire’s car. Metal squealed in protest. The windshield of the car splintered and shattered with a hollow pop, and the roof support rent neatly in two so that I could then roll back a corner of the roof of the car like the lid of a sardine can. And after hastily ripping apart the remains of the dashboard, which had unmercifully ground itself into Claire’s chest and abdomen, pinning her to her seat like an insect in an entomologist’s collection, I could finally pull Claire free.
And I did so with seconds to spare. I pulled her limp, unresisting body from the wreckage of her car as carefully as haste allowed and shuffled awkwardly backwards away from it, so that I was huddled in the middle of the street. Just after I had accomplished that, the fire finally found the fuel line that fed the engine of Claire’s car. What was left of the car and the pick-up truck sitting atop it subsequently exploded with a mighty, reverberating whoomp that echoed and re-echoed for long moments off the surrounding buildings, shattering a few windows in neighboring storefronts. I cradled Claire’s comparatively small body in my arms, shielding her as random bits of her car and the pick-up rained in what under other circumstances might have been a comical manner from the heavens. And when it was over, I was finally able to look at her.
She was alive… She was breathing, at least, though very shallowly. Her chest had been crushed by the steering wheel of her car, as the dashboard had been shoved back into her body when her car had collided with me. The only reason that I could tell that she was breathing at all was that I could hear a distinct rattling, gurgling wheeze that was emanating from her throat. And her heart was beating, too, frantically slamming away in what was left of her chest. I could feel its rapid, thready pulsing through Claire’s back, against my arm, as her heart fluttered like a panicked butterfly, trying desperately to keep her alive. And the blood…Primus below, there was so much of it… I could feel its thick, sticky warmth oozing over my legs as it flowed from her various injuries, beginning to pool darkly around me. I could smell the tang of its constituent iron in the air, even above the reek of the guttering vehicle fire. And it was mixing, I suddenly noticed, with the energon that was oozing out of me from somewhere, as well...
As if to try to distract myself, I tried to find where the blood was coming from, in the vague, distant hope that I could somehow stop its flow. But it seemed to be coming from everywhere; the damage to Claire’s body was quite obviously much too extreme for me to be able to do anything about it. One of her legs was a twisted, torn-up mess. The long bone in her thigh had broken and both of its jagged ends had ripped themselves out of her flesh, peeking out from below the hem of her skirt and glittering an alien, blood-smeared white in the firelight. Blood was spurting like a macabre fountain out of the resulting, pulpy tear in her leg, in gouts timed to the frantic beat of her heart. And a dark, malevolently glistening patch that I didn’t want to think about was spreading across her abdomen…
I tried my voice in order to distract myself from a dawning, awful knowledge...
"Claire?" I croaked, my voice as broken as her body.
Amazingly, her eyes opened, but there was no recognition in them, no focus, no hint of awareness at all. The unseeing pupils of her eyes, barely discernible from the deep brown irises, were unequally dilated, and her eyes seemed huge and liquid and helpless in her pale face. It was a face that was eerily lit and that had been given some semblance of misleading animation by the dancing light of the fire that was ravenously consuming the remains of her car. As horribly damaged as the rest of her body was, her face was curiously untouched, almost…peaceful. Her lips were parted slightly as she struggled for breath, and a thin, steady stream of blood flowed out from them. If only because it gave me something to do, I tried to wipe it away, only to have it replaced by still more, at which time I realized the futility of the effort and focused my attention elsewhere.
Some time during the course of the crash, some of her hair had freed itself from the long, hip-length brown braid that ran down her back, and the errant strands had fallen into her face. Gently, I smoothed them back…only to discover an indentation in the back of her head that certainly wasn’t supposed to be there… And as I gingerly felt around the jagged edges of the wound, as I felt the gritty pieces of bone clinging to my fingers and the mushy, yielding mass beneath the injury, I recoiled from it in dawning, visceral horror.
"No," I murmured. It was more than a denial; it was a prayer. "Oh Primus…God… Please…No."
It was a horror that savagely smashed its way through the dull, dream-like, detached fugue in which I had been floating since the accident, a fugue that had been cushioning and damping the shock and pain and sorrow that were swirling in my subconscious. Because I suddenly knew that, whatever her other injuries were, that three-inch hole in the back of Claire’s head was likely her death warrant. And that knowledge chewed at my very being, cruelly wrenching away a part of me that had only just begun to reawaken, thanks to Claire, after millennia of a troubled, restless slumber. Suddenly, I wished with my entire being that I had the humans’ ability to sob and wail like an infant…
Because I had seen enough death in my time to know that the specter of it was hanging over Claire, all menacing and greedy. I knew from painful experience that, any second now, it would snatch her from my arms with a gleeful, possessive cackle and that, along with it, it would snatch away a large part of my own soul. The sirens in the distance were closer now, yes, but I somehow knew that they were still too far away…
Much too far away…
And just moments later, I looked up through the sheets of rain that poured from the heavens, as if the humans’ God shared in my sorrow. As I spotted the pulsing red glow of the lights and heard in a very distant, detached way the wail of the sirens warbling above the thunder in the distance, I also felt Claire’s heartbeat weakening… Slowing… Fading…until it was suddenly gone. A final breath rattled its way through her ruined chest before it fell a final time, and her eyes, only half open now, dulled, lost the vital spark that was Claire Chase. I couldn’t bear to look at them so, ever so gently, I closed them.
And I knew, of course, that she was gone.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to rage. I wanted to bemoan her fate…my fate. I wanted to yell at, to throttle Primus, or God, or whatever other deity I could get my hands on… And I wanted to demand to know...why. Why her? Why me? But I did none of that. As usual, when faced with an emotional crisis that loomed over me in overwhelming menace, I retreated into myself. I sat huddled in the middle of the street, surrounded by humans that I didn’t see, with rain pouring down my face, the drops looking, no doubt, like the tears that I couldn’t shed because I wasn’t human. I sat as still and as outwardly emotionless as a statue while I battled inwardly to push aside the all-consuming hurt, both emotional and physical. I knew that if I did anything else, that if I didn’t hide deep within myself, then I would break down right there, right then…and I lived in fear of that. So as the human medics approached me warily and then gently relieved me of my lifeless burden…as they fussed briefly over her shattered body and shouted at one another and then hurriedly loaded her into the back of an ambulance…as the ambulance screamed off with flashing red and white lights that briefly illuminated the dismal night…I simply sat and watched it all happen with rigidly enforced detachment.
It was a detachment that almost shattered when a hand alighted on my good left shoulder a few minutes later and Jazz suddenly knelt next to me, deep concern etched into every square millimeter of his normally-jovial face.
"Prowl?" he ventured tentatively after a moment, after I didn’t so much as acknowledge his presence. And then he shook me lightly for effect when I didn’t respond even to that and added, "Prowl, you OK?"
"I’m fine," I lied, but my voice sounded to me as if it belonged to someone else. I was, after all, screaming and raging inside, but that voice was nothing if not calm, level, and so very, very…detached.
Jazz looked doubtful at that but chose to let it slide for the moment, apparently. And then Ratchet materialized from nowhere and knelt at my other side, hissing quietly but without his customary outraged ranting at my physical condition. He was, beneath his bluster, amazingly empathetic, after all…
I distantly heard the high-pitched warble of a medscanner as Jazz explained, "Red Alert heard on the police radio about an accident with an Autobot involved. You were the only one we couldn’t reach, so we logically deduced that it had to be you. We got here as qu-"
"She’s gone, Jazz," I interrupted Jazz’s steady stream chatter in the same hollow, flat, detached voice. "Claire. She’s dead."
I saw, as if from far away, Jazz and Ratchet exchange a deeply concerned glance.
"Naw, man," Jazz said after a moment, with false, enforced cheer and an encouraging squeeze of my shoulder. "She’s a bit banged-up, sure, but I’m sure the docs will work their magic on her and she’ll be just f-"
I turned my head - slowly, painfully, for it was ringing suddenly - so that I was looking Jazz squarely in the eye, and I announced levelly, interrupting Jazz’s admirable attempt at reassurance, "You’re wrong, Jazz. I felt it. I felt her die. She’s gone. She died in my arms. Just as everyone who’s ever gotten close to me has…died…"
I paused to gain control again, both emotionally and physically. I was trying to corral the pain that was running rampant throughout my entire body, now that my attentions were focused more on controlling my emotions than the pain. I was also trying to bat aside the blackness that suddenly seemed to be swooping down upon me. Jazz stared dumbly at me, at a loss for words for once in his life, while the world suddenly spun sickeningly around me.
But before I finally - and perhaps mercifully - passed out, I whispered, my voice shaking despite my best efforts, "And it’s my fault, Jazz. I couldn’t do anything to stop it…"
The very last thing I heard as I collapsed sideways toward Jazz and he caught me before I smacked into the ground was Jazz murmuring softly, regretfully, "Oh, man, Prowl…I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry."
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Moderately-graphic descriptions of the effect of car-crash-physics on a human body. Death. Mild cursing. Also, Vivaldi. The third movement of this, specifically.
Main Character(s): Prowl, Sunfall the Dreaded OC, Jazz
Genre: Big-time Angst
Summary: In the wake of tragedy, Prowl wallows in guilt and Sunfall is confused as all get-out.
The other parts: Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4
"I’M GONNA KILL HIM!"
The words, yelled at the top of a female voice, echoed down the corridor. They heralded Claire Chase’s arrival in the Control Room of Autobot Headquarters even before she stomped into the cavernous room with impressively loud footsteps. She regarded the other current occupant of the Control Room and I with a prodigious scowl for a moment, her fists planted firmly on her hips, her back stiff with outrage.
And then she growled at us, with not a hint of joking in her voice, "Do either of you guys have a spare arc welder on you or something?"
I exchanged a befuddled look with Jazz.
"That’d be Ratchet’s department, I think," Jazz answered fliply before I could say anything. "And if it’s Ironhide you’re plannin’ to kill, I think Ratch might just hold him down for ya..."
Suppressing a long-suffering sigh, I elbowed Jazz as he dissolved into a self-amused chortle. Instead, I focused my attention on Claire. Jazz’s customary good humor had actually managed to ease the scowl that marred her young face, something that I knew wasn’t easy to do. Claire was nothing if not stubborn about holding on to outrage.
"What’s wrong, Claire?" I asked of her calmly. Calmness and clarity of thought were useful in any situation, after all…but when dealing with an angry Claire Chase, it was doubly true.
"I’m freakin’ stuck here, that’s what’s wrong!" Claire rather unhelpfully elaborated. Then she took a deep breath and further explained, "I took my car down to the garage a few days ago, OK? Sunstreaker drove me home since, you know, it was pretty much all his fault that it was all, like, shot to hell, anyway. And at the time he promised me - He swore to Primus, even! - that he’d take me down to pick it up tonight when it was finished, so that I could pay for it before the garage closed for the night. So I went to the effort of wangling a ride here this afternoon from Spike, who graciously went totally out of his way to pick me up on his way in…"
"But?" Jazz prompted as Claire paused to take a breath. "Why do I sense a big ol’ ‘but’ coming on?"
"But it’s going to rain tonight!" Claire suddenly announced, perfectly and eerily mimicking the indignantly wheedling tone of voice that Sunstreaker used whenever he didn’t particularly want to do something for reasons of vanity. Jazz erupted into a gale of hearty guffaws as Claire stalked in a tight, angry circle, her arms folded tightly over her chest as she fumed. After pausing for a second to glare ferociously at Jazz’s mirth, she ranted, "God forbid that His Royal Beautifulness should do anything to tarnish that nice shiny patina of his, you know. And the creep didn’t even have the guts to tell me in person! No, he sent his poor brother in like some sort of sacrificial lamb. And I’ve got that audition tonight and everything! And everyone else is going to be busy during that little, teeny window of time between my car being done and being able to pick it up with just enough time to get to the concert hall for auditions. God! Mark my words, guys, when I get my hands on him, Sunstreaker is seriously dead meat. If he’s worried about a few rain spots…"
"Claire, calm down," I interjected as she paused and gathered her breath to continue her tirade.
She looked up at me then, her eyes wide and her expression somehow…wounded, as if I’d betrayed her by not sharing her outrage.
"Calm down? CALM DOWN?" she demanded. "Jeeeesus, Prowl! I’m up for the Oregon Symphony tonight! Quite a step up from the local chamber orchestra, you know. You think I’m going to calm down and accept the fact that I won’t get in - yet again! - just because Mr. I’m So Gorgeous is afraid of a little freakin’ water?"
I suppressed an exasperated sigh as I elaborated, "I just meant that I’ll take you down."
Claire blinked a few times at me, taken aback, while Jazz shot me an odd look, one of…disbelief.
"But…You’ve got-" Jazz began to protest.
"So I’ll be a little late," I interrupted with a casual shrug.
"You? Late?" Jazz stared at me in vast puzzlement for a moment, a thoughtful expression dominating his face for half a second…and then he angled a glance down at Claire, a jaunty grin neatly splitting his face in half. "’Scuse me. I’m gonna go pester Ratchet now. He’s just gonna love hearing that Prowl here’s flippin’ out." And he paused dramatically before adding, "Again."
I gave Jazz’s retreating back a long, withering glare as he left the room and then looked down at Claire who was still staring up at me, her brown eyes narrowed now in a curious combination of gratitude and puzzlement.
"Are you sure about this?" she asked tentatively. "I mean, Optimus’ll probably drop-kick your ass for-"
"He’ll get over it," I assured her with a confident, nonchalant shrug, although my audios were already ringing in anticipation of Optimus’ wrath.
"Well…um, thanks, then," Claire was saying, smiling beatifically up at me. "I really do appreciate it, Prowl."
"For you, Claire?" I said, smiling down at her myself in return. "No problem at all."
* * * * * *
My windshield wipers beat a steady, catchy rhythm as I drove carefully into swirling, patchy fog and driving rain, blazing a trail for Claire behind me. The weatherman hadn’t been joking when he’d warned on the five-o-clock news that tonight was going to be a wash-out. The visibility wasn’t helped by the fact that it was ten PM on a Friday night and there was a lot of traffic on the streets of Portland, even in the miserable weather. More traffic meant more blinding headlights blaring away into the gloom. When the sheets of rain were combined with neon signs and the light from shopping centers, movie theaters, and fast food restaurants, the result of all of the reflected glare was that you couldn’t see much more than five feet in front of yourself. Behind me, Claire was ferociously tailgating me, hanging about two feet off my back bumper, but I didn’t care. I knew, after all, that she could see far less well than I could.
Still, the rain and the general gloom couldn’t seem to dampen Claire’s spirits as we headed back toward her apartment building. I had insisted upon seeing her safely there, given the weather. But the audition had gone so well that she was still giddy with relief. Even now, the communications pick-up that Wheeljack had installed in her car was transmitting to me her happy humming. And I, of course, was equally happy for her. Tonight, she hadn’t succumbed to the nervousness that usually plagued her at auditions, that had in the past sabotaged all of her efforts to break into the symphony…
I had decided to accompany Claire to the auditions rather than return to Autobot Headquarters, where I was supposed to be. I had made that decision for several reasons. The main reason was that I knew of Claire’s tendency toward nerves at auditions. When she was playing in a group, she was fine. When she was playing by herself or for me, just for fun, she was equally fine. But in an audition situation, she often froze. She had once told me that she felt totally alone in such situations, and then her nerves took over. So I told her that this time I’d go to the audition and she could imagine that she was playing just for me. So I had wedged myself into the concert hall and settled myself into an aisle, blithely ignoring the puzzled stares of the other auditioners and the people who’d accompanied them.
The audition piece for this year was a Vivaldi violin concerto, one that was technically difficult, but one that I knew Claire loved to play and, more importantly, I knew that she could play it extremely well. Still, she had as usual succumbed to self-doubt as we’d walked into the concert hall, worrying over things that I knew that she could handle with ease if only she’d relax. So I attempted to convince her to relax. We passed the time between our arrival and her turn to audition quietly, Claire sitting cross-legged and tense a couple of steps above me in the aisle, leaning forward to rest her chin comfortably on my shoulder so that we could talk without disturbing the general silence of the hall, other than the music that the auditioners played. And, though I tried to keep the whispered conversation focused more on inconsequential things, Claire was nervous and evading my efforts to persuade her to relax. She spent much of the time before her turn to audition commenting on how good everyone else was and how she couldn’t hope to compare, while I spent most of the time trying to convince her otherwise, pointing out small mistakes that other auditioners had made. My efforts didn’t seem to mollify her, however.
And when it was finally Claire’s turn, she had approached the stage as if it was a gallows, her stride hesitant, her shoulders bunched in familiar trepidation. After she had climbed the steps and moved to stand in the middle of the stage, looking forlorn before she raised her violin to her shoulder, she looked right at me. I gave her a wink and a small, encouraging smile and a thumbs-up. And for some reason, with that gesture, her nervousness seemed to evaporate. And at her cue to begin, she took a deep breath, raised her violin, rested the bow lightly against the strings for a moment…and then she played. And the music simply spilled out of her, dulcet, sweet, and flowing through brilliant highs, mellow lows, and complicated, rushing phrases with her customary, breathtaking, natural ease.
Which was the second reason that I had chosen to accompany Claire to her audition; I simply loved to listen to her play. When we Autobots had awakened on Earth after a four-million-year sleep, some of us had been instantly taken with Earth’s then-current pop culture, with everything that had been happening right then in 1984. And most of the others continued to be mired in the present and there they seemed quite content to remain. But I…I had been quite taken with the past, with the classics - Old history, old philosophy…and especially old music. So much had happened while I had slept on the humans’ planet, and I wanted to know it all. And I was much more curious about humanity’s past than its present and future. So while some of the others - like Jazz, of course - drowned themselves in the here-and-now, I found myself drawn to what had been, to the old, in particular to music from the late 17th century, what the humans called Baroque. There was a rigid, mathematical precision to it, a certain logical progression, and yet at the same time it often managed to evoke an intense emotional response from the listener. That was a combination that resonated very comfortably with me. Jazz was always trying to foist modern human music upon me, but I would have none of it, almost from the very beginning.
And then Claire had come along, not long after our revival on Earth, appearing one day in Autobot Headquarters out of the blue, alongside of Chip. When we had met her, she had been only seven years old…but she had already been taking violin lessons for several years and even at such a young age, she was already very good. And, of course, she had only improved with age. Many of the Autobots - including me, of course - had attended her very first concert with the local chamber orchestra, when she had been all of twelve years old. It was an informal, open-air, summer evening affair. She could hardly be seen up on the stage, a tiny figure mired in the mediocre ranks of the second violin section…but she had not stayed in the mediocre ranks for long.
A shared interest in the same type of music - an interest, I might add, that was rare in one of her age - had precipitated an odd sort of friendship between us. It was a friendship that had only become stronger and closer through the years, as Claire grew through her turbulent teenage years and into womanhood. So I had watched as she had steadily worked her way through the ranks of the chamber orchestra, breaking into the first violins and eventually working her way to second-chair, just a step below concertmaster…and now here she was, trying to break into the state symphony. I was so proud of her, and I very much wanted her to succeed. So, besides the fact that I loved to listen to her play, I had simply decided tonight that if my being there at the audition in any way helped Claire to realize her dream… Well, then I was going to be there for her, whether Optimus Prime liked it or not.
And, of course, that was the third reason I’d decided to go to the audition with Claire. I was supposed to have been at Autobot Headquarters this evening for a strategy session with Optimus Prime, some of the other Autobots, and some U.S. Army representatives. Optimus would not have been at all happy with me, had I been late. And, applying a twisted sort of logic to the situation, I had simply deduced that being even later - missing the thing entirely, in fact - would further delay having to listen to our fearless leader’s wrath. I’d even turned off my comm so that no one could reach me…
It amazed me, really, this sudden…wayward attitude of mine. I had never been what anyone, by any stretch of their imagination, would call a rebel. But Claire had needed me. That took precedence over the wheedling, whining, sniveling U.S. Army, as far as I was concerned. I’d had quite enough of them over the years. Optimus would… Well, he wouldn’t really understand, no. I’m not sure that any Autobot could really understand the relationship that had slowly evolved over the years between Claire and I. But he - and everyone else - could simply deal with it, as far as I was concerned. I had decided that I had a right to enjoy myself for once in my life. I hadn’t enjoyed myself for a very long time, really. And I enjoyed being with Claire. And I especially enjoyed listening to her play.
Closing my eyes as Claire played up on the stage, I envisioned the last time I had heard her play the very same piece that was flowing out of her violin now. It had been up at the lake, back in the fall, before the cold, damp embrace of a northwestern winter had settled in. And it had been one of those amazingly crisp late October days, when the sky overhead was a deep, crystal blue warmed by a yellow sun unimpeded by cloud cover. There was no wind, and the air was crisp, fresh, but not at all cold. The lake was perfectly calm with the lack of wind, reflecting the cloudless sky as well as it would have had it been a giant mirror rather than an expanse of water. I was lying on my back, hands cradling the back of my head, staring up at the sky, utterly relaxed, as if I had not a care in the world. And at that time, I hadn’t had any…or, at least, I had temporarily forgotten them all, if I’d had any. I’d had one leg bent and Claire had been leaning her back comfortably against it, creating a warm spot, as she played a solo from the very same concerto that she was playing now...
The memory faded as Claire finished playing and lowered her violin from her shoulder, her eyes closed for a moment after she finished, as the echo of the final notes of the piece bounced off the walls of the concert hall and faded slowly. There was a brief silence…and then, as one, the hundred-or-so current occupants of the concert hall began to applaud quietly. Only a few had managed to rouse the other jaded auditioners to applause, but Claire had managed to do so, and the unexpected sound of it made her eyes snap open in surprise. She flushed momentarily, then grinned and sketched a hasty, nervous bow. The musical director thanked her for braving the awful weather to audition - and there was a note of approval in his voice, I noticed, that hadn’t been there for many of the others who’d auditioned. She nodded, thanked him with a wide grin, and then virtually floated toward the stage steps.
She’d fairly bounced down from the stage. And she hadn’t stopped babbling, humming, laughing, singing, or whistling since then. Even the foul weather couldn’t drown her spirits. She’d actually laughed and jumped with both feet into rain puddles like a child as she'd ran to her car…
"You really didn’t have to stay for the auditions, you know," Claire suddenly said now, her voice snapping me back to the present moment and managing to drown out the sound of the torrential sheets of rain that pounded against me.
"You know I love to listen to you play," I immediately transmitted back to her. "Besides, it, uh-"
"-delayed the 'Wrath of Optimus Prime' for a few more hours," Claire finished for me with a low, knowing chuckle. "He’s gonna weld you to the wall for missing that meeting, you know. I mean, he’d’ve probably forgiven a bit of lateness, but to totally blow him off like that…? Woo! You are so in for it, my boy. I’ve been a decidedly evil influence on you, haven’t I?"
"Evil? You? Nooooo…" I replied with an answering chuckle. And then a yelp from my scanners diverted my attention, and I noticed that, just ahead of me, the right lane of the road was flooded out. If Claire hit it - or even if I hit it - it’d be very easy to go careening out of control. "Whoa! Look out," I warned as I quickly swerved into the other lane to avoid the flood. Claire deftly followed the trail that I blazed, thankful, no doubt, that her car was a small and maneuverable Ford Escort. It didn’t much like the rain, from what I’d been able to gather of Claire’s infrequent complaints during the trip from the concert hall to her apartment, but at least it could handle such sudden shifts in vector and velocity better than a larger, more cumbersome vehicle could have. And as I glided to a stop at the red light in front of me a few dozen meters after that, Claire’s Escort did the same.
"Man, rain sucks," Claire sighed over the comm as her car halted behind me.
"Tell me about it!" I answered. After all, along with the omnipresent dirt and dust that wreaked havoc with delicate internal systems, Earth’s weather - especially the wetter incarnations of it - was a nuisance that required a certain period of adjustment.
I said something else inconsequential then…and was puzzled when Claire didn’t answer.
"Claire? Hello?" I prompted after a moment…but then I noticed what she had no doubt already noticed.
Behind her, a wild light was flailing, approaching Claire’s car much too quickly. A car…a truck, actually, judging by the height of the lights…was weaving, fish-tailing its way inexorably toward Claire’s car, obviously quite out of control, perhaps having hit that flood that Claire and I had both managed to miss. Time seemed to slow as I watched it approach. I called Claire’s name again and again, desperately this time, trying to get her attention, to make her aware that she needed to move. But my words went ignored as, I imagined, Claire stared with deer-in-the-headlights horror into her rear view mirror and I sat there, completely and frustratingly numbed. It vaguely occurred to me that I should do something. Like transform and divert the oncoming vehicle if I could. Like heroically shield fragile Claire with my far less fragile body, at least.
But there was suddenly no time… No time at all.
And then there were the sounds. Claire’s last word was my name, murmured, whispered as softly as one would say a private prayer. And then there was the screeching of tires against wet, slick asphalt. And then there was a sort of brittle, hollow crunch punctuated by an abortive scream that ripped itself out of Claire’s throat and speared me with an overwhelming and soul-rending sense of guilt. And then, a split-second later, there was a mighty and terrible jolt as the front end of Claire’s car mashed itself with a vengeance into me…
* * * * * * *
Transforming was nothing less than pure hell. One of the two…or three…or four…I’d lost count…cars that had hit me when Claire’s car had shoved me helplessly into the intersection and on-coming traffic had bashed in my right front wheel rim, making it difficult and supremely painful to wrench my shoulder back and into place. And my legs, where Claire’s car had rammed into me… They were screaming at me, and aftershocks of that impact and the others were still ramming their insistent way through my infrastructure, leaving a lingering trail of pain in their wake. I consciously put it aside for the moment, though, and managed to complete a pitifully slow and decidedly shaky transformation. And then I pushed myself up onto my one good hand and my knees in order to take stock of the situation.
Several cars, at least, had hit me, but their operators, from what I could tell, appeared to be all right. One of them was already stalking around his bashed-in BMW, oblivious to the rain and everything else, screaming enraged obscenities into a cellular phone. The other bystanders were, for the most part, gawking mutely at me, their eyes huge as saucers. I don’t know if they were in shock because I was an Autobot or what…but at the moment I really didn’t care.
Because I had finally, dazedly turned my head so that I could see Claire’s car. Or what was left of it, anyway. And a vague intimation of panic began to gnaw hungrily at the edges of my still-dulled senses as I surveyed the wreckage. What had once been a small Ford automobile - small, nothing flashy, but perfectly adequate for Claire’s purposes - was now a twisted, unidentifiable mass of metal, glass, and fiberglass. It had been violently crushed between the pick-up truck that had hit it and me, and it had folded and refolded and twisted in on itself in protest. The pick-up truck that had rammed Claire had ridden up over the trunk of the car. Its front tires were resting where the back window of Claire’s car had been. And its cab was empty. I had no idea where the driver was…and I didn’t care at all because at that moment I spotted Claire.
If transforming had hurt, moving was even more torturous, but now I hardly felt the pain. Panic had pushed it firmly aside. It would hit me later, I knew, and life would not be pleasant when it did. But for the moment…I could see that Claire was still in her car, slumped and unmoving over the steering wheel…and small flickers of flame were visible under the bashed-in hood of the car. It took a moment or two for their significance to smash its way through my swirling, dazed, fuzzy thoughts. But when it did, my mind was suddenly jolted clear…and I was suddenly desperate. In the distance, I heard sirens approaching. Rescue crews, no doubt, were converging upon the scene of the accident. But they wouldn’t arrive in time. Not before those small, perversely cheerful sparks became a raging, all-consuming inferno, at any rate.
I knew what I had to do.
Walking was out of the question. My legs, I knew, were too badly damaged for that. But I could still crawl after a fashion, gingerly favoring my severely bashed-in right shoulder. In that manner, I slowly, laboriously crossed the stretch of wet asphalt between my position and what was left of Claire’s car. The torturous journey seemed to take forever, and by the time that I reached Claire, the disparate, small flames had coalesced into a larger fire that intermittently licked angrily out from underneath the accordion-folded hood of her car, hissing malevolently and smoking noxiously in the dampness.
I considered the problem. Claire was still in the car, quite obviously unconscious. I tried the door handle, knowing that it was, no doubt, not going to work and I wasn’t disappointed when it didn’t. All other options exhausted and time running very short, I knew what I had to do. So, steeling myself, I braced my injured right arm against the car for leverage, hissing and wincing in pain that I couldn’t quite shove aside this time, and then with desperate strength I pushed with my left hand against the roof support on the driver’s side of Claire’s car. Metal squealed in protest. The windshield of the car splintered and shattered with a hollow pop, and the roof support rent neatly in two so that I could then roll back a corner of the roof of the car like the lid of a sardine can. And after hastily ripping apart the remains of the dashboard, which had unmercifully ground itself into Claire’s chest and abdomen, pinning her to her seat like an insect in an entomologist’s collection, I could finally pull Claire free.
And I did so with seconds to spare. I pulled her limp, unresisting body from the wreckage of her car as carefully as haste allowed and shuffled awkwardly backwards away from it, so that I was huddled in the middle of the street. Just after I had accomplished that, the fire finally found the fuel line that fed the engine of Claire’s car. What was left of the car and the pick-up truck sitting atop it subsequently exploded with a mighty, reverberating whoomp that echoed and re-echoed for long moments off the surrounding buildings, shattering a few windows in neighboring storefronts. I cradled Claire’s comparatively small body in my arms, shielding her as random bits of her car and the pick-up rained in what under other circumstances might have been a comical manner from the heavens. And when it was over, I was finally able to look at her.
She was alive… She was breathing, at least, though very shallowly. Her chest had been crushed by the steering wheel of her car, as the dashboard had been shoved back into her body when her car had collided with me. The only reason that I could tell that she was breathing at all was that I could hear a distinct rattling, gurgling wheeze that was emanating from her throat. And her heart was beating, too, frantically slamming away in what was left of her chest. I could feel its rapid, thready pulsing through Claire’s back, against my arm, as her heart fluttered like a panicked butterfly, trying desperately to keep her alive. And the blood…Primus below, there was so much of it… I could feel its thick, sticky warmth oozing over my legs as it flowed from her various injuries, beginning to pool darkly around me. I could smell the tang of its constituent iron in the air, even above the reek of the guttering vehicle fire. And it was mixing, I suddenly noticed, with the energon that was oozing out of me from somewhere, as well...
As if to try to distract myself, I tried to find where the blood was coming from, in the vague, distant hope that I could somehow stop its flow. But it seemed to be coming from everywhere; the damage to Claire’s body was quite obviously much too extreme for me to be able to do anything about it. One of her legs was a twisted, torn-up mess. The long bone in her thigh had broken and both of its jagged ends had ripped themselves out of her flesh, peeking out from below the hem of her skirt and glittering an alien, blood-smeared white in the firelight. Blood was spurting like a macabre fountain out of the resulting, pulpy tear in her leg, in gouts timed to the frantic beat of her heart. And a dark, malevolently glistening patch that I didn’t want to think about was spreading across her abdomen…
I tried my voice in order to distract myself from a dawning, awful knowledge...
"Claire?" I croaked, my voice as broken as her body.
Amazingly, her eyes opened, but there was no recognition in them, no focus, no hint of awareness at all. The unseeing pupils of her eyes, barely discernible from the deep brown irises, were unequally dilated, and her eyes seemed huge and liquid and helpless in her pale face. It was a face that was eerily lit and that had been given some semblance of misleading animation by the dancing light of the fire that was ravenously consuming the remains of her car. As horribly damaged as the rest of her body was, her face was curiously untouched, almost…peaceful. Her lips were parted slightly as she struggled for breath, and a thin, steady stream of blood flowed out from them. If only because it gave me something to do, I tried to wipe it away, only to have it replaced by still more, at which time I realized the futility of the effort and focused my attention elsewhere.
Some time during the course of the crash, some of her hair had freed itself from the long, hip-length brown braid that ran down her back, and the errant strands had fallen into her face. Gently, I smoothed them back…only to discover an indentation in the back of her head that certainly wasn’t supposed to be there… And as I gingerly felt around the jagged edges of the wound, as I felt the gritty pieces of bone clinging to my fingers and the mushy, yielding mass beneath the injury, I recoiled from it in dawning, visceral horror.
"No," I murmured. It was more than a denial; it was a prayer. "Oh Primus…God… Please…No."
It was a horror that savagely smashed its way through the dull, dream-like, detached fugue in which I had been floating since the accident, a fugue that had been cushioning and damping the shock and pain and sorrow that were swirling in my subconscious. Because I suddenly knew that, whatever her other injuries were, that three-inch hole in the back of Claire’s head was likely her death warrant. And that knowledge chewed at my very being, cruelly wrenching away a part of me that had only just begun to reawaken, thanks to Claire, after millennia of a troubled, restless slumber. Suddenly, I wished with my entire being that I had the humans’ ability to sob and wail like an infant…
Because I had seen enough death in my time to know that the specter of it was hanging over Claire, all menacing and greedy. I knew from painful experience that, any second now, it would snatch her from my arms with a gleeful, possessive cackle and that, along with it, it would snatch away a large part of my own soul. The sirens in the distance were closer now, yes, but I somehow knew that they were still too far away…
Much too far away…
And just moments later, I looked up through the sheets of rain that poured from the heavens, as if the humans’ God shared in my sorrow. As I spotted the pulsing red glow of the lights and heard in a very distant, detached way the wail of the sirens warbling above the thunder in the distance, I also felt Claire’s heartbeat weakening… Slowing… Fading…until it was suddenly gone. A final breath rattled its way through her ruined chest before it fell a final time, and her eyes, only half open now, dulled, lost the vital spark that was Claire Chase. I couldn’t bear to look at them so, ever so gently, I closed them.
And I knew, of course, that she was gone.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to rage. I wanted to bemoan her fate…my fate. I wanted to yell at, to throttle Primus, or God, or whatever other deity I could get my hands on… And I wanted to demand to know...why. Why her? Why me? But I did none of that. As usual, when faced with an emotional crisis that loomed over me in overwhelming menace, I retreated into myself. I sat huddled in the middle of the street, surrounded by humans that I didn’t see, with rain pouring down my face, the drops looking, no doubt, like the tears that I couldn’t shed because I wasn’t human. I sat as still and as outwardly emotionless as a statue while I battled inwardly to push aside the all-consuming hurt, both emotional and physical. I knew that if I did anything else, that if I didn’t hide deep within myself, then I would break down right there, right then…and I lived in fear of that. So as the human medics approached me warily and then gently relieved me of my lifeless burden…as they fussed briefly over her shattered body and shouted at one another and then hurriedly loaded her into the back of an ambulance…as the ambulance screamed off with flashing red and white lights that briefly illuminated the dismal night…I simply sat and watched it all happen with rigidly enforced detachment.
It was a detachment that almost shattered when a hand alighted on my good left shoulder a few minutes later and Jazz suddenly knelt next to me, deep concern etched into every square millimeter of his normally-jovial face.
"Prowl?" he ventured tentatively after a moment, after I didn’t so much as acknowledge his presence. And then he shook me lightly for effect when I didn’t respond even to that and added, "Prowl, you OK?"
"I’m fine," I lied, but my voice sounded to me as if it belonged to someone else. I was, after all, screaming and raging inside, but that voice was nothing if not calm, level, and so very, very…detached.
Jazz looked doubtful at that but chose to let it slide for the moment, apparently. And then Ratchet materialized from nowhere and knelt at my other side, hissing quietly but without his customary outraged ranting at my physical condition. He was, beneath his bluster, amazingly empathetic, after all…
I distantly heard the high-pitched warble of a medscanner as Jazz explained, "Red Alert heard on the police radio about an accident with an Autobot involved. You were the only one we couldn’t reach, so we logically deduced that it had to be you. We got here as qu-"
"She’s gone, Jazz," I interrupted Jazz’s steady stream chatter in the same hollow, flat, detached voice. "Claire. She’s dead."
I saw, as if from far away, Jazz and Ratchet exchange a deeply concerned glance.
"Naw, man," Jazz said after a moment, with false, enforced cheer and an encouraging squeeze of my shoulder. "She’s a bit banged-up, sure, but I’m sure the docs will work their magic on her and she’ll be just f-"
I turned my head - slowly, painfully, for it was ringing suddenly - so that I was looking Jazz squarely in the eye, and I announced levelly, interrupting Jazz’s admirable attempt at reassurance, "You’re wrong, Jazz. I felt it. I felt her die. She’s gone. She died in my arms. Just as everyone who’s ever gotten close to me has…died…"
I paused to gain control again, both emotionally and physically. I was trying to corral the pain that was running rampant throughout my entire body, now that my attentions were focused more on controlling my emotions than the pain. I was also trying to bat aside the blackness that suddenly seemed to be swooping down upon me. Jazz stared dumbly at me, at a loss for words for once in his life, while the world suddenly spun sickeningly around me.
But before I finally - and perhaps mercifully - passed out, I whispered, my voice shaking despite my best efforts, "And it’s my fault, Jazz. I couldn’t do anything to stop it…"
The very last thing I heard as I collapsed sideways toward Jazz and he caught me before I smacked into the ground was Jazz murmuring softly, regretfully, "Oh, man, Prowl…I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry."