Hi- first one-shot, inspired by Nickelback, How You Remind Me. Featuring Jazz and Barricade, 2007verse. Angst, more than drama here. Hope you like it.
Edit- 17/5/2011- mostly cosmetic damage, added the odd word here and there so some bits I missed before now actually make sense. Let's face it, they were needed.
Pain. Instant, wrenching pain that he couldn't block if he tried.
It was nothing compared to the spark ache he'd been living with, for millennia now. And as he felt his wires and struts strain to stay connected, knowing he probably wouldn't survive, but he'd given the Autobots precious time to regroup, he was glad. The ache would stop. And the memories would finally let him be.
Jazz, first lieutenant of Optimus Prime's Autobot division, offlined his optics for the last time as Megatron tore him in half.
His spark was something that Barricade played little attention to. All it did was cloud the CPU and there was always the thrice damned ache that no firewall could block off like he did the rest of his emotions. It made him overly logical among his fellow decepticons, made him stick out from the general crowd. His consequential lack of battle lust often meant he was one of the last to the killing fields, be they on Cybertron, Earth or any unimportant speck in between; many of his comrades accused him of cowardice, but those who mattered knew the truth so he wasn't normally punished for it.
But the pain- this pain- it broke through every wall he'd set up around his feelings. It tore down every defence and left him skidding to a halt on the highway. Horns blared and angry voices yelled at his holoform but Barricade ignored them in favour of sudden introspection.
Jazz was here. On Earth, in the very city he was travelling to. And by the feel of it, in great pain.
He set off once more, tires squealing as he picked up speed, pinpointing his mate's location as he drove. The battle was no longer his destination; all that mattered in his newly emotional state was getting to Jazz before it was too late, and the pain that he had cursed for millennia faded to black static.
Pain. Cold. Thirst. Warmth?
Pulses, soothing and warm. Slight stinging pain, but forgotten in the rush of sensation that followed the injection of energon directly into his lines. Spark fluttering, but slower and slower, regulating itself to the other that was pulsing softly.
The other was here. His spark was singing, and telling his CPU something to the effect of, why didn't you get yourself torn in half sooner? It brought him back to you.
Unfortunately, that woke his recovering CPU up properly, and he onlined his optics in a hurry, furious that he should have to do so. He had been prepared, he was good and ready to go into the night. How dare this mech in particular take that choice from him?
It appeared the Mustang remembered something of their parting; there was a healthy space between the two of them. Almost excessive, Jazz would admit in the privacy of his mind. He trusted himself not to try and kill the other, when he was still feeling like so much slag. Of course, Barricade knew him better than any other mech alive. Some dark part of his processor wondered if the decepticon knew him better than he knew himself.
They sat (or stood, in Barricade's case) in silence for several minutes, before he couldn't take it anymore. "How dare ya?" Jazz hissed. The quiet sound carried easily across the room.
An elegant brow lifted. "How dare I?" he said. "Ah, yes. How dare I stop my bond mate from dying at the hands of a mech far larger and stronger than he is. How dare I even think to patch up his wounds, feed him back to strength. How dare I save your ungrateful spark, lover." A sardonic grin curved one side of his mouth.
The first indication he was in fact tied down was that he couldn't leap to his feet and tear Barricade's spark out. Frag it. The mech did still know him. All the while he was stuttering, trying to yell past the anger screwing up his vocals. "You! Ya jus'... I didn' ask for this! Ya can feel tha', at least!" Jazz finally got out.
Oh, could he feel that. The fury in his mate's spark was stereotypical of a decepticon, not an autobot. "Your anger shouldn't be with me, lover. But I suppose you can hardly yell at yourself, so go ahead, shout away at me if you can speak well enough around your rage." Barricade crossed his arms and sat back, waiting for the Solstice to tire himself out.
The reverse psychology was successful. Jazz held himself silent, refusing to do as he suggested.
"Then I'll have my say, if you don't mind?" Jazz glared in response. "I think a list, and some explanations are due first. Let's start with you, lover, and work our way forwards from there: you hate yourself for that glorious moment of weakness that started everything. You hate that you couldn't stop me defecting from the Autobots. You hate that you can't let me go, and that you would have mourned me all those years ago had you aimed a little higher. You hate your current existence because you couldn't stop me from saving you, and death seems preferable to owing me anything. And finally, you love to hate me, because beneath the hate, you love me still. Despite it all. Or is that because of it all? Could you love me if I were any other way, lover mine?" Barricade was on his feet by the end of his little speech but his voice never strayed from the conversational tone he had adopted. The words had been building up inside him for so long, it was hard to reign himself in again.
Jazz's gaze never wavered. He had stopped glaring when his bond mate's words struck too close to the truth to ignore, but now Barricade was faced with blue optics that looked like they might break down any second, or simply flood with the energon his pump so desperately needed.
And then it started. First one drop, then another, and a third from the other optic. And it wasn't Jazz who was crying.
Barricade looked away when he couldn't hold the other's gaze any longer. Intimately connected as they were, he felt the small surge of triumph from Jazz's spark, just as he had felt the pain when he was torn apart, the contentment when he was still offline, the fear and fury when he woke up, the anger and hate when he was yelling at Barricade and the worst feeling of the lot, the undeniable love that occupied the smallest corner of his consciousness, boxed up and closed off to his rational thought. Ironically enough, it reminded Barricade of that Jazz from before their bonding, who wouldn't admit to his love and was certainly disinclined to act on it, right up until he, then called Prowl, called him on it in a crowd of then-friends.
Jazz felt despair from Barricade, despair and sorrow and self-deprecation and bitterness. He refused to acknowledge the love that was always there, just like he had refused to when they were together and hadn't been blocking each other because of some argument or spat.
He smirked when his decepticon bond mate couldn't hold his optics, with him tied down and virtually helpless.
"Looks like your cube needs refilling," Barricade said suddenly. Jazz remembered the stinging sensation from his half-conscious moments, and noticed the needle and tube plugged into the main energon line in his arm. And thus, an opportunity, enough of one to ignore the obvious change of topic and potential unhealed wound that he could hurt the Mustang with.
So what did a special ops agent of either side do when they had to keep their captor's attention elsewhere? "Could ya feed it ta me, from the cube? I wanna get the line from ma arm, feels itchy." Jazz murmured, looking anywhere but at Barricade, playing the upset and bitter mech. His ploy worked, but not quite how he was expecting. Jazz's head shot up from his put on floor inspection when the other mech straddled his lap, energon cube in hand.
A part of their closeness was that Barricade always could tell when he was up to something. It hurt that the Pontiac refused to acknowledge it, and how close they could have been, should have been. He had to throw the other mech as off-balance as possible; he would not let the mech escape before they had talked. Barricade placed one arm around Jazz's shoulders, claws tickling the mech's audio. "Be careful what you say here, lover," he said softly in the other. "Especially when your spark says something else entirely."
And Jazz's spark was singing again, prompted by the closeness of his mate's spark, singing like the vocals he was granted his name for. Barricade's spark was singing with him, a descant melody that fit his as well as it had in the Golden Age...
With a rough jerk, Barricade used his free hand to disengage the IV line, and drag them both back to the present, away from the good, and painful memories.
Jazz turned his face so they were nose to nose. It made him feel at less of a disadvantage. "I have ya directly in ma sights. What else do I need ta be careful of?" He laughed in Barricade's face, only inches away. The whole situation was like something he could only have dreamed of, crazy as it was.
"Here," Barricade held up the cube, taking a small sip before offering it to his bond mate. "Drink up." The perceived order would rile Jazz up even more, hopefully.
Jazz drank slowly, never taking his optics off Barricade's face. To do so would be to fall into his game, whatever he was playing.
The cube was taken away. "Game, Jazz? You were never a game to me." His stresses implied that the inverse, however, was true, and red optics bored into the Solstice's blue ones.
Jazz refused to shiver, and he sure as pit refused to ask for the rest of the cube, no matter how much he might have liked it. "Don' tell me ya gettin' no amusemen' from this. I can feel it when ya lie." He was ever defiant. And he had the needle of the IV in the lock to his statis cuffs. The situation was looking up, if he could keep his distraction going. Although truthfully, he was unsure of how much of the situation at that moment was of his own design.
Barricade sighed. It wasn't worth the torment of being this close to his mate again. He got up from the mech's lap, stating exactly what was on his CPU. "I can't understand how you know me, can read me so well, yet not know me and misunderstand everything." His tone had changed, and he hated that. It was now forlorn, lost; what about the righteous anger this mech could summon in him?
"An' I don' understand how ya can know me, know exactly what I'm capable of, an' leave a 'get outta gaol free' needle within ma reach." With a final click, his cuffs snapped open and Jazz sprang to his feet at last, in a defensive stance lest Barricade decide to beat him back into submission.
The Mustang felt the confusion coming off the smaller Solstice in waves when he didn't move, but for smiling. The amusement was fleeting to his spark-break, however; it was only one more sign on an ever-growing list that they were no longer right for each other. "How can you think I'd hurt you physically after everything I've done to put you back together?" Desperate to get the sadness out of his voice, he forced himself to smirk. "May I be as bold to say, how dare you think that of me?" Better.
The thought unspoken yet realised by both was that it would be exactly what Jazz would do were he in Barricade's position. It was the ironic crux of the matter: the 'lying' Decepticon in love with the 'noble' Autobot, and the Autobot who would kill the other if he could. Barricade had stayed away from Jazz since he had defected. He knew Jazz, after all. Love was nothing to duty.
It didn't hurt anymore, knowing that his bond mate would kill him if he saw him. Barricade knew he couldn't kill Jazz, or even fight him, even without his emotions getting in the way. That was the end of the matter as far as he was concerned. Stay out of the other's way, and the uncomfortable (and for him, possibly fatal) situation would never arise.
Except, Jazz had nearly killed himself standing up to Megatron. Had nearly died, with only Barricade's spark keeping him alive. How could Barricade let him go when he could have saved him? When his spark was telling him to never let the mech go? His spark railed at losing him whether to death or mutual hate, despite the logic of his CPU that knew they were no longer right for each other. Barricade shook his head. He would need to sort his emotions out again, when this was over.
"I would've let ya die," Jazz moaned, unintentionally echoing his bonded's thoughts. "Why can' ya let me die?" He leapt out of his stance suddenly, shoving aside Barricade's hasty block with one arm and clawing down the side of his face with the other. "I hate you!" he screamed.
Barricade grabbed Jazz's wrists and held them behind the silver mech's back, a sad parody of an embrace. It was deliberate; mental anguish and pain would grieve the Solstice far longer than anything else. He bent his head down to whisper in the other mech's audio, making it as personal as he could with them still being separate beings. "But I don't hate you. Not yet. Maybe not ever."
The closeness was a mistake. Barricade couldn't, didn't want to stop himself before he brought their lips together as suddenly as Jazz had attacked him. The surprised noise was all the Solstice could make before he found himself being kissed by the mech who had broken his spark so long ago. He refused to return the affection, and it only took seconds for the Mustang gave up. He pulled back and looked down on Jazz from his greater height. Energon lines ran from his wound onto Jazz's helmet.
Barricade's expression had gone neutral. "Hm, lover. One day, maybe, if you keep acting as you do." He drew his hands up to Jazz's forearms and disabled his primary weaponry with a few clever twists of his fingers. Then he released his bond mate, and pushed him back across the room.
Jazz stumbled but kept his footing. "Maybe? Maybe what?" He circled his wrists, trying to ease the energon flow back into them.
That next smile wasn't sad, or loving, or even sardonic. Jazz guessed Barricade could sense his fear, and perversely hoped it amused him as much as the Mustang's weakness had amused Jazz earlier. He had to strain to hear Barricade's words; he spoke so quietly, as though it were a revelation.
"Maybe one day I'll hate you more than I love you. Maybe I'll hate you because I love you." He paused. "That would be a nice, how do the humans say, full circle, for us." He was tired of this conversation, of enduring the hatred from his bond mate, and went to leave, job done. Jazz was alive, and he could work on re-building his emotional barriers with his most hated question answered.
"But-" Jazz stopped himself before he said anything he'd regret. More than he regretted already, at least. "Ya jus' gonna leave like that?" His spark cried out what he wouldn't say, how could he just leave like that? After everything they'd done, and hadn't done, how could he walk away? What made him able to just walk out of the door when Jazz had to finish it somehow, needed a final ending to the sorry story of their life?
At the doorway, Barricade glanced back. His optics burned in the low light. "Oh, poor lover mine. Don't forget: I was always what you made me." It was the police cruiser's parting shot; he transformed and sped into the night.
Jazz was left speaking to an empty room. His tears fell, safe and unnoticed now the other was gone. "How can I?" He finally yelled to the bare walls, "When this is how you remind me?"
