Title: Love and Convictions

Author: Dragon of Dispair (dragonofdispair)

Continuity: Bayverse

Rating: T

Characters/Pairing: Bluestreak / Prowl

Warnings: Violence.

Summary: For Bluestreak, it wasn't love at first sight.

Note: Sidestory to Without a Cause and In Search of a Cause.

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For Bluestreak, it wasn't love at first sight.

Well for one, when he first saw Prowl, he wasn't even going by Prowl. Praxus was falling; the Decepticons were destroying everything, killing everyone and Bluestreak was holed up in a tiny little building with too-thin walls to withstand much more. But he refused to give up his home so easily. He was sniping everything that came close, determined to take as many of the fraggers down with him as he could.

He could hear them massed around the corner, afraid to come too near; too many of them to go away. They were gathering enough of them to rush his position, take him down before he could shoot them all.

It was a good plan, he acknowledged grudgingly. That was how you took down a sniper who didn't have backup, who was too close in for distance to be his shield.

Then his IFF pinged that someone new was nearby: Praxan Foreign Affairs, military division. Bluestreak didn't even care about the designation at that point. Didn't even think that it was strange for a Foreign Affairs mech to be here, since very few of them were ever stationed in Praxus for long.

All he cared about was that he was Praxan Home Defense Corps and the other was Praxan Foreign Affairs and that meant friendly and this new mech, whoever he was, was broadcasting targeting data. He latched onto it and fired.

The new bot broadcasted an all clear signal a breem later and Bluestreak crept out of his makeshift bunker to meet his rescuer.

Red optics met red optics. Made military. They were the same make, the same model and both had significant after-factory modifications. But where Bluestreak's sensor panels couldn't help but twitch at every spat of too-close gunfire, this newcomer's were calmly scanning their surroundings. Experienced, poised, confident despite the chaos of the ongoing battle around them. And wounded. One of his electro batons was still extended from his arm and ready, but his other hand was held to his chest as though to keep wires and energon from spilling out of a puncture there.

"Are you okay?" This stranger had saved his life. Bluestreak wasn't a medic, but he had the basic first aid field programming all military-made mechs did.

"Fine," the stranger's voice was low and smooth and growly. An officer's voice, more suited to barking out commands on the battlefield than Bluestreak's could ever be. "It'll seal in a klick. I've picked up the signals of a few more survivors. We need to hurry if we're going to get to them."

He was Foreign Affairs; Bluestreak was Home Defense. He had no right to give Bluestreak any orders. They were not part of the same chain of command. But this was a situation Bluestreak had not been programmed or trained for - walls down, position overrun, the city is burning - was he really going to argue chains of command with an officer who obviously had some idea of what to do?

No. "Yes, Sir."

The other's red optics blinked, as though surprised it had been that easy, then he flicked his sensor panels in acceptance and confirmation. "Once we rendezvous with them, we'll find a defensible position where we can hold out until the Autobots arrive to drive them off."

Bluestreak's sensors flicked in displeasure of relying on the Autobots to save them; Praxus was Neutral… supposedly. Right now it was being torn to shreds by Decepticons and he supposed that meant he'd joined the Autobots by default. "Yes, Sir." The other turned away, towards the signals he'd detected, and Bluestreak called out to him. "My name's Bluestreak." Hits What I Target was a sniper's name; designation and service record all rolled up into a singe word.

Red optics blinked at him for a long moment. "Mine's Frostdown," he finally growled. Descends Like a Spear of Ice was a melee fighter's name, and a strange one for an officer, with no connotations for skill at command, but it wasn't Bluestreak's place to question. Perhaps it had been a battlefield promotion that had stuck and he hadn't been given a new name yet. Perhaps he hadn't been promoted, but this situation was revealing new depths to a spark that had only been a melee grunt before now.

The headed deeper into the city and into the fray.

Frostdown's wounds pained him, Bluestreak could see. He winced and shuddered in pain, but refused to let Bluestreak look at them until he staggered and leaned against a nearby wall. Bluestreak helped lower him to the ground and he pulled his clawed hand away to let the sniper look. It wasn't bad, just a couple of plates of armor torn off and he quickly re-soldered the sparking wires with the emergency repair kit in his subspace. Frostdown refused help up when the sniper was done, growling at the pain and the worried hovering. He braced his hands flat against the ground and levered himself to standing, growling out, "We need to hurry."

"Yes, Sir," Bluestreak whispered, but his optics were on the ground where Frostdown had been sitting, spilled energon puddling where it had seeped out while his wounds were seen to.

Bluestreak was good at calculating shapes and angles. He had to be. And the armor panel laying on the ground exactly matched the wound he'd just treated. It looked like it had been clawed off, but they were a ways from where Frostdown had engaged the Decepticons. There was no reason for the armor piece to be here. He picked it up and looked at it. Silver on one side, where the chorma nanites didn't cover, matte black on the other.

With a purple Decepticon symbol etched prominently over the piece. His optics widened, and he looked at Frostdown's retreating back. He had to move soon, make a decision. Sensor panels meant the other mech was watching, even with his optics turned away.

Frosdown had saved his life - had killed Decepticons to save his life. It was an easy decision. Bluestreak subspaced the piece of armor and hurried to catch up to the black and white mech.

That was how Bluestreak met Prowl.

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Search In Stealth was a much better name for a frontline tactician and an officer. It fit him, much more than the name Frostdown had.

They joined the Autobots together. It wasn't what Bluestreak would have chosen (he'd rather have Praxus back but it was gonegonegone…) and it obviously wasn't what Prowl would ha- HAD chosen, but fate is a fickle mech and he just had to trust the Primus knew what he was doing.

He stayed with Prowl, even as the other survivors of Praxus scattered, some leaving to join up with the few, ultimately doomed still-neutral enclaves, others joining the Autobots and lending their skills, not to a Cause, but to revenge for their fallen city. Even those who had stood with Bluestreak while they defended Prowl from the torture and execution due to him as a Decepticon prisoner, left as soon as their rescuer was placed on parole as a defector. They couldn't really understand why Bluestreak stayed with one of those who'd orchestrated the destruction of their home.

But Bluestreak had sworn it, in that interrogation cell, to Jazz (Joy In Chaos? It fit him): He saved my life. I'm not leaving him. And so he didn't, even though it meant that his weapons were disabled just like Prowl's were, for those vorns he remained on parole. Even though it meant he was an outcast, just like Prowl was.

That was fine, though. He didn't really want to be friends with the Autobots much anyway. Or well… he did but it wasn't happening. He was a military-make surrounded by civilians who'd chosen to fight. He didn't fit, anymore than Prowl did, even if Bluestreak had never been their enemy. As it was, there were many Autobots who resented that Bluestreak had stayed neutral with Praxus until it fell. But what was he supposed to have done? Go AWOL and abandon his city as a war was brewing? Sure, Praxus had finally fallen, and there hadn't been much Bluestreak had been able to do about it, but he wasn't going to abandon his post.

Besides, as a neutral city, Praxus had been subjected to the propaganda from both sides, and from where he'd stood "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" and "If Prime and his senate are going to program us for war, force us to be warriors, we will MAKE WAR" sounded pretty much the same, when you stripped them down to their basic glyphs: We're willing to fight for freedom.

Prowl was different. Prowl was also a military-make and he understood. Even if Prowl had decided to abandon his post he understood why Bluestreak had not. He had the same values, the same loyalties. Prowl's decision to join the Decepticons may have been one Bluestreak could never have considered, but it had been made under the same aegis of military values programmed into Bluestreak. He hadn't been fighting for himself, but for Frostdown and hundreds of other sparks not suited for the military that Prowl had been forced to order to their deaths because they'd been placed in military frames. Bluestreak had stayed in Praxus because he was loyal to the citizens; Prowl had joined the Decepticons because he was loyal to those under his command.

How could he respect the Autobots around him who derided both choices and disloyal to Cybertron? To Prime? As though Optimus Prime had some sort of Primus-given right to dictate who and what we were loyal to.

Especially when they refused to respect him. His name was Bluestreak. It means Hits What I Target. He earned that name, and yet these disrespectful civilians masquerading as warriors kept calling him simply Blue, like he was … was some sort of new-built right out of the factory who wasn't going to survive his first battle. On one level he could understand it. Civilains chose their names for whims, and easily adopted the names bestowed upon them by others. Nicknames were a sign of affection, or of grudging acceptance. But… Prowl ("Prowl! Not Prowler, not Prowlie, not Prowlage. Not Prowligator! Notfragging Sparkless, you glitches! Call him Prowl!") never called him anything but the name he'd earned.

For that, Prowl learned to listen to the constant stream of words Bluestreak heaped on him, and to turn the white noise into a conversation that held back the silence his companion couldn't stand. For that, Bluestreak learned to listen to how the black and white spoke, to pay more attention to the glyph modifiers than to the glyphs themselves. Prowl had a dry wit and a processor for probabilities, statistics and analysis that quite frankly amazed Bluestreak, his own programmed more for velocity and angles and split second targeting.

It was respect, and it placed them alone, an island of two red-opticked military builds awash in a sea of blue-opticked civilians pretending to make war.

It wasn't love.

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Their sparks saw the beauty of war. The harsh light of laser fire and explosions, the sweet song of gunfire and dying screams. Bluestreak had loved the gentle tranquility of the crystal gardens of Praxus, but combat made his spark pulse in excitement. As a sniper he often saw the battle only through the lens of a long-range targeting feed, but the tang of burning electronics, so like the scent of a lover on the edge of overload, was just as powerful through the constant feeds of targeting data as it had been the day Praxus fell.

Combat was literally what Bluestreak and Prowl had been built for. Their frames withstood the rigors of war better than the civilians around them. It wasn't unusual for the two of them to be the last standing with scratches, dents and torn wires. Minor seeps of energon and other fluids while their comrades writhed on the ground, bleeding out as medics triaged and decided who would live and who would die. Prowl was often accused of letting the other Autobots take hits for him, Decepticon coward who cared for nothing but his own survival, but the after-action reports, compiled from a hundred cameras and a thousand optics, such that every mech and their positions were accounted for, always vindicated him.

Because Prowl was the first into the fray and the last out. He took hits that would drop a mech twice his size and pursued his targets, heedless of size or relative armament, with a single-minded calculated fury that frightened his allies, even as it rallied them. All the while he transmitted, transmitted, transmitted. Targeting data flowed from his position and he, well, prowled, through the rain of gunfire, lasers and missiles that converged on his position as a result.

He was beautiful.

He was war incarnate, and Bluestreak had been made for war. He saw beauty in the pure destructive potential realized. So when Prowl stood up strait in the fields of the fallen, his armor stained with energon and pockmarked with scars, when one fleck of fluid on his faceplates succumbed to gravity and ran down until it perched on the edge of his lips, when a gunmetal grey glossa darted out to catch the drop before it could fall… When a strange, dreamy look flashed through burning red optics at the taste of his own scorched energon…

Observing this vision of grand, sensual ferocity, Bluestreak could not even feel embarrassment as his spark did something as utterly cliche and sappy as skip a beat.

It was after a thousand vorns of lies and truths, all stripped to bare spark-wounds. Insults and defenses and comforting twitches of sensor panels no one else could read. After ten thousand battles that made his spark quicken and his systems overheat … that is when Bluestreak fell in love.

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(fini)

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Inspired by one of the bunnies on the TFBunnyFarm. Interested in which one, head over to this story on AO3 (dragonofdispair) for the link.