Remembrance, Pt. 3
Title: Remembrance
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: God, NOT THAT SONG!
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 2 | Part 4
Pachelbel's Canon in D echoed - very loudly - off the walls of my quarters, its deftly interweaving strains flowing all around me, soothing, smooth, joyous, sweet...bittersweet. It was Claire, after all, who was the first violin of the string quartet playing the piece. I could still recall as if it had happened just yesterday cajoling Blaster into attending Claire's concert - As it turned out, it had been her final one, I suddenly realized with a stab of pain - and recording for me this particular piece, as it was my favorite of them all. Classical music wasn't exactly Blaster's stock in trade, but he'd finally agreed, grudgingly, to attend...and afterwards even he had deemed the canon "suh-weeet." And I had often found myself playing the recording over and over in the days that stretched between Claire's death and her funeral and now, as well, in the endless expanse of time that seemed to loom dolefully in front of me, now that she was buried and irrevocably gone...
I hadn't been there when they had taken Claire off life support. I didn't, in fact, see her at all after the medics at the scene of the accident had pulled her from my arms and taken her away. For one thing, I'd had to spend a few days in the medical bay, enduring Ratchet's and then Optimus Prime's endless subtle and not-so-subtle attempts to persuade me to talk about what had happened on the night of Claire's accident. It was a subject that I avoided either by abruptly and clumsily changing the subject or simply and directly insisting that there wasn't anything to discuss, much to Ratchet's frustration.
But besides that... I just...couldn't see Claire. I knew what would've happened if I'd made the journey to the hospital while she'd languished there, brain dead and on full life support, while arrangements were made to donate her undamaged internal organs. Had I gone to the hospital, I would have been confronted with that all-but-dead Claire...a Claire whose premature death I considered entirely my responsibility. It was a somewhat irrational feeling, a part of my mind naggingly insisted -- the logical and eminently calm, cool, and dependable part. It was what the humans had termed "survivor guilt," that calm part of me knew. Nonetheless, irrational or not, the sense of overwhelming guilt was there, and I couldn't imagine the possibility of dealing with it in public, of facing head-on my failure...and, as a result, possibly breaking down in public. I refused to do that. Not like that. Not again...
Eventually, Jazz had told me that the physicians had turned off the machines that had supported her mockery of a life and that she had officially passed away peacefully minutes afterwards. And that was quite enough for me. In fact, it was more than enough. Because, to me, Claire had already died a week before that...and it was something that still weighed heavily upon me...
After my release from the medical bay, I had spent the few days between that day and Claire's funeral ensconced in my quarters, thinking, remembering, grieving...and, to be truthful, hiding from everything and everyone. The only person that I had made an effort to see during that time was Chip Chase, in order to express my sympathies...and to convey my apologies. He had looked at me with sorrowful gratitude at the former and with an askance curiosity at the latter, but I hadn't elaborated. I couldn't. I had found that I couldn't say much to Chip after all, despite my best intentions. When all was said and done, he reminded me too much of Claire...
The day of Claire's funeral had dawned depressingly and cruelly beautiful. The air had been unseasonably warm for mid-March in the northwest. Birds sang in spite of the solemnity of the occasion. The sky had been a cloudless and impossibly lovely shade of blue, and the bright sunlight had been mockingly cheerful as we, the mourners of Claire Chase - her family, her human friends, and almost the whole complement of Autobots - had gathered at her gravesite. We had listened to the drone of the priest as he had pronounced the benedictions designed to speed Claire's soul on its way to heaven. We had watched as her coffin was lowered into the ground with a heavy, ponderous finality before we had all of us trickled away, leaving Claire in a cold and forever isolated peace.
I had been the last to leave. I had hung back, making sure that everyone else had gone before I knelt to leave a single red rose on top her coffin, before it was buried. And, as well, I murmured the farewell to Claire that I had been too stunned to utter as she had laid dying in my arms. It really hadn't made me feel any better about the situation, though. She was, after all, still dead. There was nothing I could do about that fact now. And so much had been left unsaid while she'd been alive, I realized. There was so much that I should have told her...
That knowledge had preyed on my thoughts as I'd returned to Autobot Headquarters, opting out of the subdued post-funeral reception that Claire's family had organized. I couldn't bear the thought of attending, of bearing the wondering stares that no doubt would have been leveled at me, as they had been every time during those rare occasions that I had ventured out of my quarters before Claire's funeral. So I returned to Autobot Headquarters, to the neutral, undisturbed sanctity of my quarters, and there I remained for...quite a long time, indeed.
A few days passed in a dreary progression of uniform bleakness. Mostly, I sat and did little but think and wallow in memories, listening to the music that Claire and I both loved. I kept expecting someone - Optimus Prime, at least - to show up on my doorstep, to try to cajole me out of my funk, or at least to give me something to do to take my mind off Claire's death. Had I known about the buzz that was quietly, stealthily threading its way through the corridors of Autobot Headquarters concerning Claire and the idea that Wheeljack and Chip had concocted - or, rather, resurrected - to attempt to preserve her... Well, I might not have been surprised that I'd been left alone and unconsulted. As it was, though, the eventual news came as a complete surprise to me...
And Jazz, of course, was the one who delivered it, interrupting the 154th time that I'd played Pachelbel's Canon since Claire's funeral...
I had been playing it so loudly, in fact, that I never heard Jazz's request for admittance to my quarters. I'd been sitting at my empty desk, slouching in my chair, eyes closed, drowning in memories, some pleasant, some...not. I didn't hear Jazz ring the door chime. I didn't hear him pound worriedly on the door when the chime failed to rouse a response from me. I didn't even hear the door slide open as Jazz used a security override to gain access. I had no idea, even, that he was there until the music stopped in mid-phrase and something simultaneously tapped me lightly on the shoulder.
I bolted immediately upright with an involuntary but strangled yelp as the present and its stifling reality hit me upside the head, abruptly dissipating the hazy memories in which I'd once again been drifting. My gaze darted frantically around the room for a few moments before it finally settled on Jazz, who was standing next to me, his arms folded across his chest and his expression half baffled and half concerned.
"What's wrong?" I asked of him as he continued simply to stare at me with the oddest expression on his face.
"Nothing," he replied after a beat. "And everything. Are you all right?" I opened my mouth to reply, but he spoke over me, "Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. 'I'm fine.' Y'know... You tend to be a very bad liar, Prowl."
"It's-"
"'-Not a lie,'" Jazz snorted, finishing my thought out of long practice as he abruptly plopped himself on the corner of my desk as if he owned it. "Yeah, I know. I mean, surely there's a logical reason why you've spent the last nine days holed up in here, listening to ol' Pachelbel..."
"You've kept count? I'm touched," I said archly, with a small smile...and it was the first smile I'd attempted since Claire had died. Trust Jazz.
However, something was bothering Jazz, obviously, for the comment evoked not a flicker of humor in him in return.
"Look," he said, his voice suddenly and uncharacteristically quiet, not to mention quite...grave, "we need to talk, Prowl."
"Jazz, I don't want to talk about th-"
"Oh, I'm not even gonna try to make you talk about that night. Primus forbid that you should have to talk about that night. No, Prowl. We need to talk about what's going on right now." He jerked his chin over his shoulder toward the door. "Out there. Like, as we speak, even..." he added.
"Why?" I asked, frowning in puzzlement and tilting my head to the side to look up at him. "What's going on?"
Jazz was silent for a moment. He frowned, gathering his thoughts, I suppose. I leaned back in my chair and waited for him to answer, regarding him quizzically while my fingers dug themselves nervously into the armrest. Then, suddenly restless, Jazz launched himself to his feet and began to pace around my spartan quarters.
"What's wrong, Jazz?" I finally prompted when he simply paced for quite a few long moments, saying nothing - which was decidedly un-Jazz-like, to say the least. I felt a vague sense of unease begin to nibble on the outskirts of my thoughts. After all, when something bothered Jazz to the point of putting a damper on his perpetually cheerful outlook on life, I knew that something had to be very wrong, indeed. "Jazz?" I prompted yet again.
He stopped pacing abruptly, turned to face me with his hands draped behind his back, as if he was reporting at parade rest to a superior and not to...well, not just to me. And still he hesitated.
"Jazz?" I prompted once more as he fidgeted, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, and then brought his arms forward to cross them, shield-like, over his chest.
"I guess there's just no easy way to say it..." he said, his gaze downcast, avoiding mine.
"Say what?" I demanded, beginning to become just the slightest bit exasperated, and not in the normal way that I often became exasperated with Jazz when his methods of going about doing things violently conflicted with my own.
Jazz took a huge breath, let it out, and then lifted his chin to look squarely at me before dropping his bomb.
"Do you remember...oh, 'bout fourteen or fifteen years ago now...when Spike had that...accident?" he asked pointedly.
And for a long moment after Jazz asked that question, I sat very still, my mind reeling. Oh, I remembered that incident all too well! Injuring Spike had been Megatron's idea of a distraction to cover a retreat. Spike might very well have died as a result of it all if not for some...intervention...from Wheeljack, who hatched the questionable idea to implant Spike's mind temporarily into a robotic body. It was a procedure that hadn't been entirely successful...
And I knew exactly what Jazz was implying now, of course, and my mind was suddenly a whirl of conflicting emotions. A brief spark of hope flared somewhere in my mind, only to be doused by a tidal wave of uncertainty. Was this what I wanted? More importantly, was this something that Claire would have wanted? And, if so...The procedure had been a flawed process before...Would it be so still, and would Claire pay the price? With Spike, there had been a fail-safe, the knowledge that his cybernetic existence was but temporary. There would be no such reprieve for Claire.
Very slowly, very carefully, I sat up straight in my chair, folded my arms on the desktop in front of me, and regarded Jazz with something that I hoped vaguely resembled calm.
"They're...going to do that to Claire?" I clarified, rather unnecessarily. "Transfer her memories and personality into..."
Jazz nodded once, crisply.
"That seems to be the plan, yeah," he said as my voice trailed off. "I didn't really pay attention to all the technobabble, but Chip and Wheeljack were spewing phrases like 'engrammatic templates' and 'cortical matrices' at each other. Apparently, they were able to copy those...things, whatever they are...from Claire's brain before she...died. Don't ask me how..."
"And they're going to transfer them to-"
"-A Transformer brain and body, yeah. One that has the alternate form of a...Mazda Miata, I think Ratchet said."
I smiled slightly, fondly, at that.
"She always wanted one of those," I said, more to myself than anyone else, my voice barely above a whisper. "A bright yellow one."
Jazz's mouth twisted in a half-smile.
"Well, now she's getting one, in a way... It's under construction now." He paused then, stared at me for a long moment in frank appraisal, his head tilted inquisitively to the side, his visor narrowed slightly, searchingly. "Are you... Are you all right with this, Prowl?" he finally, quietly asked.
"All right with it?" I asked in a dazed sort of way. And then I blinked, opened my mouth to answer that of course I was all right with it. But then I closed it again, as I realized that perhaps I wasn't...
True, a part of me...a large part of me...was overjoyed at the news. Because it meant that Claire would be alive again, that she had cheated death, and that I hadn't failed to protect her, to save her. And yet...and yet... How could I be sure that this was what Claire would want? Who were we to make this decision for her? Would she even remember being Claire? Would she remember everything? Would she remember...me? And if so, would she blame me for all that had happened to her...?
My internal war of sudden indecision must have been quite visible on my face, for Jazz suddenly grimaced, nodded knowingly, and announced, "Yep! I thought as much..."
Somewhat dazed, my thoughts spinning in a hundred different conflicting directions, I pushed myself up out of my chair and to my feet, and then paced restlessly around the room. It was an activity that kept my body busy while my mind careened out of control. Jazz watched me expectantly.
"When...?" I asked as I paced, as I tried to collect my thoughts into a nice neat pile so that I could more easily sift through them. "When is this supposed to happen?"
Jazz shrugged.
"Dunno," he said. "The body doesn't need all that much more work, though, and that's the only hold-up. Everything else is set to go. Wheeljack's been working overtime," he added, his face twisted in a way that was neither a smile nor frown but an uncertain middle ground between the two.
There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the sound of my footsteps as I paced the confines of my quarters, but Jazz finally broke it by asking, "So... Do you want to tell me about it or not, Prowl?"
"About...what?" I asked blankly, halting in my pacing and frowning, in response to which Jazz blew out an exasperated breath and aimed a glance heavenward.
"'About what?' he asks?" he asked imploringly of the ceiling before leveling his intent stare on me again. "What happened that night? I mean, I know it's bothering you. Everyone knows it's bothering you. It's why everyone else has left you alone. It's why no one else would come here to tell you about this. They're sorta afraid to. They were gonna just let you find out for yourself when you eventually poked your head out of your shell. Surprise, surprise! But I couldn't do that to you. 'Sides, I don't have to, 'cuz I know how to deal with you."
"Oh really?" I asked archly.
"Yup," he replied with a bright and insufferable grin. "Loads of pestering. Works every time. So talk. Or I'll just keep pestering you some more. Keeping that stuff all bottled up inside doesn't do ya any good, you know."
I shook my head, reluctant to my core, and yet...Well, Jazz and I had known and worked with each other a long time, and I knew that, despite his gregarious and somewhat gossipy nature, he was also very perceptive, very empathetic...and, unfortunately, very persistent. I sighed wearily.
"There isn't much to tell, Jazz," I found myself saying and, to my shock, it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. "Her car was rear-ended by a pick-up truck which subsequently pushed her into me. I pulled her out of her car before it exploded, but she still died of massive internal and head injuries. What more is there to say?"
"True," Jazz said with a matter-of-fact nod, then added, "So then why do you blame yourself for something that was out of your hands?"
It was a question that brought me up short.
"What... What makes you think that I blame myself?" I asked carefully.
Jazz snorted softly and then smiled tolerantly, tiredly at me.
"One...It's the only reason I can think of that you'd be hiding away from the world in here, as if you're afraid someone might find out your terrible guilty little secret and then rub your face in it. Two...You said so yourself."
I scowled at that for a long moment...and then remembered the damning words that I'd said just before I'd lost consciousness at the scene of the accident. And it's my fault, Jazz. I could do anything to stop it... I had said...
"Why do you keep blaming yourself for this, Prowl?" Jazz persisted, while I inwardly cursed myself. Jazz's face was creased in a curious frown. "It was an accident, man," he said, his voice full of confusion. "They happen."
I nodded slowly, thoughtfully...
"Yes...I know. They seem to happen to many people that I...care for. But this one was one that I could have...that I should have prevented."
Jazz frowned at that.
"Oh?" he asked. "How so?"
I couldn't believe that I was talking about this...and yet there I was, suddenly babbling away, as if a dam had burst. Jazz tended to have that effect on me, I'm afraid. His tendency to be talkative was contagious, I suppose. So I resumed my pacing, talking as I walked, if only to spare myself having to look at Jazz's face while I did so.
"I saw the truck coming, Jazz," I found myself saying, my voice a quiet, flat, careful monotone. "I sat there and watched it weave closer and closer to Claire's car. And I watched her not moving out of the way. To this day, I wonder if she even saw it coming before the very last second... But instead of doing something about the situation, I just... I just sat there. In reality, it all happened so quickly, took maybe thirty seconds at the most. Yet, while I was watching it happen... It was like every second was drawn out into an hour, an hour in which I knew that I should have been doing something. Yet I...just couldn't. I couldn't make myself move or transform or...anything. It was like I was frozen. I just sat there and watched it all happen when I could have done at least two things to prevent it...and Claire died because of it. She died because of my mistake, my...hesitation. I'm sure she has to know that... I'm sure that, now, if she remembers it at all...she'll blame me..."
Jazz frowned, shook his head, folded his arms across his chest, and then regarded me with an odd expression on his face, his head tilted to one side.
"Well," he said matter-of-factly, after a moment's thoughtful consideration. "We'll just have to see what she thinks about that, won't we?"
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: God, NOT THAT SONG!
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 2 | Part 4
Pachelbel's Canon in D echoed - very loudly - off the walls of my quarters, its deftly interweaving strains flowing all around me, soothing, smooth, joyous, sweet...bittersweet. It was Claire, after all, who was the first violin of the string quartet playing the piece. I could still recall as if it had happened just yesterday cajoling Blaster into attending Claire's concert - As it turned out, it had been her final one, I suddenly realized with a stab of pain - and recording for me this particular piece, as it was my favorite of them all. Classical music wasn't exactly Blaster's stock in trade, but he'd finally agreed, grudgingly, to attend...and afterwards even he had deemed the canon "suh-weeet." And I had often found myself playing the recording over and over in the days that stretched between Claire's death and her funeral and now, as well, in the endless expanse of time that seemed to loom dolefully in front of me, now that she was buried and irrevocably gone...
I hadn't been there when they had taken Claire off life support. I didn't, in fact, see her at all after the medics at the scene of the accident had pulled her from my arms and taken her away. For one thing, I'd had to spend a few days in the medical bay, enduring Ratchet's and then Optimus Prime's endless subtle and not-so-subtle attempts to persuade me to talk about what had happened on the night of Claire's accident. It was a subject that I avoided either by abruptly and clumsily changing the subject or simply and directly insisting that there wasn't anything to discuss, much to Ratchet's frustration.
But besides that... I just...couldn't see Claire. I knew what would've happened if I'd made the journey to the hospital while she'd languished there, brain dead and on full life support, while arrangements were made to donate her undamaged internal organs. Had I gone to the hospital, I would have been confronted with that all-but-dead Claire...a Claire whose premature death I considered entirely my responsibility. It was a somewhat irrational feeling, a part of my mind naggingly insisted -- the logical and eminently calm, cool, and dependable part. It was what the humans had termed "survivor guilt," that calm part of me knew. Nonetheless, irrational or not, the sense of overwhelming guilt was there, and I couldn't imagine the possibility of dealing with it in public, of facing head-on my failure...and, as a result, possibly breaking down in public. I refused to do that. Not like that. Not again...
Eventually, Jazz had told me that the physicians had turned off the machines that had supported her mockery of a life and that she had officially passed away peacefully minutes afterwards. And that was quite enough for me. In fact, it was more than enough. Because, to me, Claire had already died a week before that...and it was something that still weighed heavily upon me...
After my release from the medical bay, I had spent the few days between that day and Claire's funeral ensconced in my quarters, thinking, remembering, grieving...and, to be truthful, hiding from everything and everyone. The only person that I had made an effort to see during that time was Chip Chase, in order to express my sympathies...and to convey my apologies. He had looked at me with sorrowful gratitude at the former and with an askance curiosity at the latter, but I hadn't elaborated. I couldn't. I had found that I couldn't say much to Chip after all, despite my best intentions. When all was said and done, he reminded me too much of Claire...
The day of Claire's funeral had dawned depressingly and cruelly beautiful. The air had been unseasonably warm for mid-March in the northwest. Birds sang in spite of the solemnity of the occasion. The sky had been a cloudless and impossibly lovely shade of blue, and the bright sunlight had been mockingly cheerful as we, the mourners of Claire Chase - her family, her human friends, and almost the whole complement of Autobots - had gathered at her gravesite. We had listened to the drone of the priest as he had pronounced the benedictions designed to speed Claire's soul on its way to heaven. We had watched as her coffin was lowered into the ground with a heavy, ponderous finality before we had all of us trickled away, leaving Claire in a cold and forever isolated peace.
I had been the last to leave. I had hung back, making sure that everyone else had gone before I knelt to leave a single red rose on top her coffin, before it was buried. And, as well, I murmured the farewell to Claire that I had been too stunned to utter as she had laid dying in my arms. It really hadn't made me feel any better about the situation, though. She was, after all, still dead. There was nothing I could do about that fact now. And so much had been left unsaid while she'd been alive, I realized. There was so much that I should have told her...
That knowledge had preyed on my thoughts as I'd returned to Autobot Headquarters, opting out of the subdued post-funeral reception that Claire's family had organized. I couldn't bear the thought of attending, of bearing the wondering stares that no doubt would have been leveled at me, as they had been every time during those rare occasions that I had ventured out of my quarters before Claire's funeral. So I returned to Autobot Headquarters, to the neutral, undisturbed sanctity of my quarters, and there I remained for...quite a long time, indeed.
A few days passed in a dreary progression of uniform bleakness. Mostly, I sat and did little but think and wallow in memories, listening to the music that Claire and I both loved. I kept expecting someone - Optimus Prime, at least - to show up on my doorstep, to try to cajole me out of my funk, or at least to give me something to do to take my mind off Claire's death. Had I known about the buzz that was quietly, stealthily threading its way through the corridors of Autobot Headquarters concerning Claire and the idea that Wheeljack and Chip had concocted - or, rather, resurrected - to attempt to preserve her... Well, I might not have been surprised that I'd been left alone and unconsulted. As it was, though, the eventual news came as a complete surprise to me...
And Jazz, of course, was the one who delivered it, interrupting the 154th time that I'd played Pachelbel's Canon since Claire's funeral...
I had been playing it so loudly, in fact, that I never heard Jazz's request for admittance to my quarters. I'd been sitting at my empty desk, slouching in my chair, eyes closed, drowning in memories, some pleasant, some...not. I didn't hear Jazz ring the door chime. I didn't hear him pound worriedly on the door when the chime failed to rouse a response from me. I didn't even hear the door slide open as Jazz used a security override to gain access. I had no idea, even, that he was there until the music stopped in mid-phrase and something simultaneously tapped me lightly on the shoulder.
I bolted immediately upright with an involuntary but strangled yelp as the present and its stifling reality hit me upside the head, abruptly dissipating the hazy memories in which I'd once again been drifting. My gaze darted frantically around the room for a few moments before it finally settled on Jazz, who was standing next to me, his arms folded across his chest and his expression half baffled and half concerned.
"What's wrong?" I asked of him as he continued simply to stare at me with the oddest expression on his face.
"Nothing," he replied after a beat. "And everything. Are you all right?" I opened my mouth to reply, but he spoke over me, "Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. 'I'm fine.' Y'know... You tend to be a very bad liar, Prowl."
"It's-"
"'-Not a lie,'" Jazz snorted, finishing my thought out of long practice as he abruptly plopped himself on the corner of my desk as if he owned it. "Yeah, I know. I mean, surely there's a logical reason why you've spent the last nine days holed up in here, listening to ol' Pachelbel..."
"You've kept count? I'm touched," I said archly, with a small smile...and it was the first smile I'd attempted since Claire had died. Trust Jazz.
However, something was bothering Jazz, obviously, for the comment evoked not a flicker of humor in him in return.
"Look," he said, his voice suddenly and uncharacteristically quiet, not to mention quite...grave, "we need to talk, Prowl."
"Jazz, I don't want to talk about th-"
"Oh, I'm not even gonna try to make you talk about that night. Primus forbid that you should have to talk about that night. No, Prowl. We need to talk about what's going on right now." He jerked his chin over his shoulder toward the door. "Out there. Like, as we speak, even..." he added.
"Why?" I asked, frowning in puzzlement and tilting my head to the side to look up at him. "What's going on?"
Jazz was silent for a moment. He frowned, gathering his thoughts, I suppose. I leaned back in my chair and waited for him to answer, regarding him quizzically while my fingers dug themselves nervously into the armrest. Then, suddenly restless, Jazz launched himself to his feet and began to pace around my spartan quarters.
"What's wrong, Jazz?" I finally prompted when he simply paced for quite a few long moments, saying nothing - which was decidedly un-Jazz-like, to say the least. I felt a vague sense of unease begin to nibble on the outskirts of my thoughts. After all, when something bothered Jazz to the point of putting a damper on his perpetually cheerful outlook on life, I knew that something had to be very wrong, indeed. "Jazz?" I prompted yet again.
He stopped pacing abruptly, turned to face me with his hands draped behind his back, as if he was reporting at parade rest to a superior and not to...well, not just to me. And still he hesitated.
"Jazz?" I prompted once more as he fidgeted, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, and then brought his arms forward to cross them, shield-like, over his chest.
"I guess there's just no easy way to say it..." he said, his gaze downcast, avoiding mine.
"Say what?" I demanded, beginning to become just the slightest bit exasperated, and not in the normal way that I often became exasperated with Jazz when his methods of going about doing things violently conflicted with my own.
Jazz took a huge breath, let it out, and then lifted his chin to look squarely at me before dropping his bomb.
"Do you remember...oh, 'bout fourteen or fifteen years ago now...when Spike had that...accident?" he asked pointedly.
And for a long moment after Jazz asked that question, I sat very still, my mind reeling. Oh, I remembered that incident all too well! Injuring Spike had been Megatron's idea of a distraction to cover a retreat. Spike might very well have died as a result of it all if not for some...intervention...from Wheeljack, who hatched the questionable idea to implant Spike's mind temporarily into a robotic body. It was a procedure that hadn't been entirely successful...
And I knew exactly what Jazz was implying now, of course, and my mind was suddenly a whirl of conflicting emotions. A brief spark of hope flared somewhere in my mind, only to be doused by a tidal wave of uncertainty. Was this what I wanted? More importantly, was this something that Claire would have wanted? And, if so...The procedure had been a flawed process before...Would it be so still, and would Claire pay the price? With Spike, there had been a fail-safe, the knowledge that his cybernetic existence was but temporary. There would be no such reprieve for Claire.
Very slowly, very carefully, I sat up straight in my chair, folded my arms on the desktop in front of me, and regarded Jazz with something that I hoped vaguely resembled calm.
"They're...going to do that to Claire?" I clarified, rather unnecessarily. "Transfer her memories and personality into..."
Jazz nodded once, crisply.
"That seems to be the plan, yeah," he said as my voice trailed off. "I didn't really pay attention to all the technobabble, but Chip and Wheeljack were spewing phrases like 'engrammatic templates' and 'cortical matrices' at each other. Apparently, they were able to copy those...things, whatever they are...from Claire's brain before she...died. Don't ask me how..."
"And they're going to transfer them to-"
"-A Transformer brain and body, yeah. One that has the alternate form of a...Mazda Miata, I think Ratchet said."
I smiled slightly, fondly, at that.
"She always wanted one of those," I said, more to myself than anyone else, my voice barely above a whisper. "A bright yellow one."
Jazz's mouth twisted in a half-smile.
"Well, now she's getting one, in a way... It's under construction now." He paused then, stared at me for a long moment in frank appraisal, his head tilted inquisitively to the side, his visor narrowed slightly, searchingly. "Are you... Are you all right with this, Prowl?" he finally, quietly asked.
"All right with it?" I asked in a dazed sort of way. And then I blinked, opened my mouth to answer that of course I was all right with it. But then I closed it again, as I realized that perhaps I wasn't...
True, a part of me...a large part of me...was overjoyed at the news. Because it meant that Claire would be alive again, that she had cheated death, and that I hadn't failed to protect her, to save her. And yet...and yet... How could I be sure that this was what Claire would want? Who were we to make this decision for her? Would she even remember being Claire? Would she remember everything? Would she remember...me? And if so, would she blame me for all that had happened to her...?
My internal war of sudden indecision must have been quite visible on my face, for Jazz suddenly grimaced, nodded knowingly, and announced, "Yep! I thought as much..."
Somewhat dazed, my thoughts spinning in a hundred different conflicting directions, I pushed myself up out of my chair and to my feet, and then paced restlessly around the room. It was an activity that kept my body busy while my mind careened out of control. Jazz watched me expectantly.
"When...?" I asked as I paced, as I tried to collect my thoughts into a nice neat pile so that I could more easily sift through them. "When is this supposed to happen?"
Jazz shrugged.
"Dunno," he said. "The body doesn't need all that much more work, though, and that's the only hold-up. Everything else is set to go. Wheeljack's been working overtime," he added, his face twisted in a way that was neither a smile nor frown but an uncertain middle ground between the two.
There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the sound of my footsteps as I paced the confines of my quarters, but Jazz finally broke it by asking, "So... Do you want to tell me about it or not, Prowl?"
"About...what?" I asked blankly, halting in my pacing and frowning, in response to which Jazz blew out an exasperated breath and aimed a glance heavenward.
"'About what?' he asks?" he asked imploringly of the ceiling before leveling his intent stare on me again. "What happened that night? I mean, I know it's bothering you. Everyone knows it's bothering you. It's why everyone else has left you alone. It's why no one else would come here to tell you about this. They're sorta afraid to. They were gonna just let you find out for yourself when you eventually poked your head out of your shell. Surprise, surprise! But I couldn't do that to you. 'Sides, I don't have to, 'cuz I know how to deal with you."
"Oh really?" I asked archly.
"Yup," he replied with a bright and insufferable grin. "Loads of pestering. Works every time. So talk. Or I'll just keep pestering you some more. Keeping that stuff all bottled up inside doesn't do ya any good, you know."
I shook my head, reluctant to my core, and yet...Well, Jazz and I had known and worked with each other a long time, and I knew that, despite his gregarious and somewhat gossipy nature, he was also very perceptive, very empathetic...and, unfortunately, very persistent. I sighed wearily.
"There isn't much to tell, Jazz," I found myself saying and, to my shock, it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. "Her car was rear-ended by a pick-up truck which subsequently pushed her into me. I pulled her out of her car before it exploded, but she still died of massive internal and head injuries. What more is there to say?"
"True," Jazz said with a matter-of-fact nod, then added, "So then why do you blame yourself for something that was out of your hands?"
It was a question that brought me up short.
"What... What makes you think that I blame myself?" I asked carefully.
Jazz snorted softly and then smiled tolerantly, tiredly at me.
"One...It's the only reason I can think of that you'd be hiding away from the world in here, as if you're afraid someone might find out your terrible guilty little secret and then rub your face in it. Two...You said so yourself."
I scowled at that for a long moment...and then remembered the damning words that I'd said just before I'd lost consciousness at the scene of the accident. And it's my fault, Jazz. I could do anything to stop it... I had said...
"Why do you keep blaming yourself for this, Prowl?" Jazz persisted, while I inwardly cursed myself. Jazz's face was creased in a curious frown. "It was an accident, man," he said, his voice full of confusion. "They happen."
I nodded slowly, thoughtfully...
"Yes...I know. They seem to happen to many people that I...care for. But this one was one that I could have...that I should have prevented."
Jazz frowned at that.
"Oh?" he asked. "How so?"
I couldn't believe that I was talking about this...and yet there I was, suddenly babbling away, as if a dam had burst. Jazz tended to have that effect on me, I'm afraid. His tendency to be talkative was contagious, I suppose. So I resumed my pacing, talking as I walked, if only to spare myself having to look at Jazz's face while I did so.
"I saw the truck coming, Jazz," I found myself saying, my voice a quiet, flat, careful monotone. "I sat there and watched it weave closer and closer to Claire's car. And I watched her not moving out of the way. To this day, I wonder if she even saw it coming before the very last second... But instead of doing something about the situation, I just... I just sat there. In reality, it all happened so quickly, took maybe thirty seconds at the most. Yet, while I was watching it happen... It was like every second was drawn out into an hour, an hour in which I knew that I should have been doing something. Yet I...just couldn't. I couldn't make myself move or transform or...anything. It was like I was frozen. I just sat there and watched it all happen when I could have done at least two things to prevent it...and Claire died because of it. She died because of my mistake, my...hesitation. I'm sure she has to know that... I'm sure that, now, if she remembers it at all...she'll blame me..."
Jazz frowned, shook his head, folded his arms across his chest, and then regarded me with an odd expression on his face, his head tilted to one side.
"Well," he said matter-of-factly, after a moment's thoughtful consideration. "We'll just have to see what she thinks about that, won't we?"