Title: Auld Acquaintance
Prompt: Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?
Notes: For the prowlxjazz December 2010 celebration
Warnings: Character death. Angst. Tissues will be necessary.
Jazz ran through the checklist by rote, long used by now to doing this. Vorns ago, when the Decepticons had killed the mechs on the shuttle run and attacked Autobot City, thereby killing Optimus Prime and a bunch of other mechs, Jazz had been stricken with grief. So many of his friends dead, so many people he loved, gone forever.
Prowl, only living on in his own memory.
Rodimus Prime had turned into a good leader, but had begun to doubt himself before Optimus had been revived. He got over it when Optimus had decided to relinquish the Matrix of Leadership back to Rodimus. Optimus had taken a shuttle and had disappeared. Jazz often wished he'd known that Optimus was going to do that, since he would have like to join him. Instead, he had stayed and become less and less important in the Autobot command structure. Rodimus had his own command team, and Jazz understood that.
When the war was finally over and the Decepticons truly defeated, Jazz had helped restore the planet of Cybertron, working to make it a viable planet again. He had lost his sparkle and joie de vivre during the battle of Autobot City and had never regained it. Any mech or femme that worked with him agreed that Jazz was more than competent, but he did the work and did it well, but his optics were never quite there, as if he were seeing beyond.
Jazz was now old. Vorns and vorns old, he was one of the oldest of mechs still alive. He had outlived and outlasted many mechs, but now, he no longer wished to go on. He'd been dragging himself through life for far too long now, and he was tired. Physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted, ready to move on to the next phase of life, Jazz was preparing to leave. His affairs were in order, his keys and data passed onto his business partner, his furniture sold and the lease on his apartment given up. He'd used some of his money to purchase this old shuttle and was preparing to fly it into the sun Cybertron now orbited.
He'd filed his flight plan, showing that he was taking a pleasure trip to one of the moons. Still by rote, he went through the procedures to be able to lift off. Once cleared, he set course for the moon.
As he flew, he thought. He'd never before had such a wonderful partner as Prowl. Once they had broken the ice between them and started interfacing, it was as if they couldn't get enough of each other.
Jazz smiled to himself, remembering the time they'd been so frantic for each other that they'd interfaced in a small closet, quickly and quietly, before continuing on their way to an officers meeting. Their encounter had lasted less than five Earth minutes, but the glow had carried them through the difficult day they'd had.
He and Prowl had talked about bonding, but then the fateful shuttle run had happened and the light had gone out of Jazz's world when Prowl died. He had no other partners after Prowl. No one was good enough, no one matched up to Prowl's wicked intellect, his wry sense of humor, or his incredible adherence to his duty and honor in the service of the Autobots.
Jazz flew past the moon, his optics fixed on the sun. He ignored the comm, since they were only polite inquiries from the base on the moon, and looked ahead to the dull red of the sun. Once past the moon, he accelerated the shuttle. It responded, pulling away from Cybertron and putting him on a collision course with the sun.
He turned the comm off when the demands became more strident. He passed the orbit of the next planet and corrected his course slightly to aim for the center of the sun. Very quickly he was in the gravity well of the star and couldn't change his processer if he'd wanted to.
Jazz didn't want to; he turned off the pain sensors in his plating, turned down the visor that enhanced and protected his optics, and faced his death with a smile on his face, ready for the next step.
At long last, he'd be with Prowl again.
The end. I'm sorry.