(fixed spelling errors I had missed)
Hey guys, finally found some inspiration to write a quick oneshot. Yes i'm still working on MJ, I'm just going through a major personality/identity/what the frack do I want to do with my life crisis and I just needed to write and post something before I went nuts.
So, this is what happened.
Oh and if Neon finds this, no it's not the FF we've been talking about. This is me going batty.
It was an odd sensation.
Building up in the base of my tanks, tightening around my spark like a vice and making it hard to properly cycle air. Like a massive weight had been dropped on my shoulders.
It made no sense as I was used to pressure.
After all, almost half a million Autobot solders depended on me every orn to get them though the next battle. The Prime himself depended on me to help him lead this massive army in our fight against the Decepticons.
Everyone depended on me to keep a straight helm, to lead them.
They would never admit it though.
Never.
Most hated me.
Despised me for being so 'cold' and the words 'sparkless' and 'cruel' were floating around the base constantly.
They didn't understand though.
They didn't understand my need for the explainable, for the logically sound. For constant assurance that my world wasn't falling to pieces around me.
But they don't know what all goes on in my processor.
The numbers and facts flying by at speeds that would fragment any other mech.
Voices and plans and ideas all jumbled together and threating to drive me mad in this dying world that we fight to keep.
That Prime fights for.
Optimus Prime.
Our great and powerful leader.
The mech I swore to follow until my spark failed and I joined the hundreds of thousands that had already died for him and his beliefs.
I watched from the sidelines how this war crushed the once young and awkward mech that had suddenly been forced to carry the power of the Matrix.
How he swayed and stumbled under the crushing weight of leadership and I did all I could to relive that massive weight.
Myself, Ironhide, Ratchet, Ultra Magnus, Jazz, we all carried part of that weight and that's what made us so much more powerful than the Decepticons. We supported Prime with every beat of our sparks.
We would give out lives for him just as he would give his life for any one of us.
And as much as he stumbled, he never broke.
He was always there, cheering us on and encouraging us, all of us, to fight another day.
But then he turned to me and asked for strategies.
And I gave them to him.
Spent joors and joors pouring over the latest intel combined with what we already knew about the Decepticons and I made plan after plan after plan and everyone expected me to be there on the comms, calling out orders and winning yet another battle.
Prime didn't really run the army.
He was a figure head. The mech everyone looked up to as a god that could do no wrong.
But I knew who really ran the army.
They don't realise just how lost they would be without me.
My battle computers had advanced far more than they ever should have and I thrived on the thrill of a mystery. It was a part of me and the satisfaction of putting one criminal after the other behind bars was a high that I couldn't get off of.
My fellow Enforcers called me a genius. Once I had a mech in my sights, he was as good as charged. But after a while genius turned to obsessive, and obsessive turned to ruthless. My ethnic coding, that I had reinforced to control my own urge to explain everything, kept me from ever cross that fine line in the ground that would corrupt me from a ruthless hunter, to a killer. But others didn't see it that way.
Back then I didn't care.
I worked alone.
Racing after the slightest hint of a trail and they let me. I nearly got myself terminated for following leads that others said didn't even exist.
But then the war came and I knew that the new Prime, young and naive as he was, would need all the help he could get against the rising, dangerous force that his brother led in a plague across Cybertron.
He saw what I am capable of and I saw what he was capable of doing.
I accepted his request to act as his Head of Tactical, and eventually, his Second in Command.
We depended on each other, relying on each other's strength to keep going as the entire planet dissolved into war.
But things got worse.
And he had to distance himself in order to keep from being swallowed by the grief that was starting to consume us all after Megatron's devastating attack against the youth sectors.
Prime held firm. I always knew he would.
But more and more of the weight, of the blame was starting to bear down on me.
Mechs from all over the planet demanded answered from the still young Prime and in return, he turned to me.
They all did.
Whether they knew it or not, they depended on the very mech they ridiculed and despised every orn.
My battle computers are what have kept the Deceptions from already overrunning the planet. If it wasn't for me, we'd already be in chains or smelted down into scrap metal.
But all they see are their friend and family that I couldn't bring back.
They would never blame Prime. Never.
But the emotionless, logic driven battle computer who stayed locked away in his office for joors at a time?
They blamed him.
Blamed me.
And they hated me.
The other officers at least had the decency to not say what I, and everyone else, knows when a mission goes sour and the already overworked and exhausted medics are flooded with more dead and dying.
They hate me more than the solders I sent to die.
They were the ones left to clean up my failed mess in the form of bodies strew across miles of battle field or quietly leaking away in a medbay while they tried to save some poor mech's spark.
I felt the burning glares Ratchet shot me after three orns of having his frame soaked in the energon of his friends and colleagues.
His biting, pain, and stress filled words come back to me, feeling like a slap to the face.
"You could have done better, there didn't need to be so many wounded! They ain't just numbers Prowl, they're living breathing mechs and I if you had any kind of a spark you'd realise that!"
What he didn't know was that I had already calculated that the death toll could have – would have, been tripled if I had done it any other way.
He'd apologised.
And I'd accepted it.
But I never forget anything.
The words, pictures, voices just build up and scream all the louder.
The names and faces are the worse though.
Ratchet is wrong.
I know the designation of every mech and femme that died under Autobot colors. Every designation is seared in the back of my helm, and always there as a reminder of just how many times I've failed.
And it builds up.
A massive weight on my spark that I can't share with anyone.
I had always worked alone.
"You must be the loneliest mech out there Prowl." Ratchet had said one orn.
And he was right.
Praxus had nearly destroyed me.
I had clung to the belief like a sparkling that Megatron would spare the massive neutral city-state.
But he had leveled it.
He had burned the city to the ground.
That horribly night, the voices were louder, screaming to be heard over the flood of numbers and plans and the 'if I had just done this then Praxus would still be standing.'
I refused to accept that I couldn't have saved my home from this damn war. That I had missed something that would have spared the city.
My greatest failure.
Everyone waited for me to break. To shatter into a millions pieces like the precious Crystal Gardens and finally shut down.
But I didn't dare.
They needed me too much.
So I stood alone and swore that Praxus would never happen again. That Megatron would not take this planet.
But the pressure.
Building up in the base of my tanks, tightening around my spark like a vice and making it hard to properly cycle air kept getting worse.
Consuming me in a dark shadow that I didn't even try to get away from.
Loneliness.
I was so alone.
Everyone leaned on Prime and he leaned on me.
But who was I supposed to lean on when the voices screamed at me for failing them and the images of Praxus flashed across my vison like some horror show.
Who could I depend on.
I heard him first.
The soft sounds and deep resonating tones of an old Praxian song coming from the dark shadows of the recoom.
A song that I hadn't heard in metacycles.
"Ya look lonely Prowl." Jazz said quietly, his visor slowly becoming visible in the near pitch black room. It took a moment longer before my optics had adjusted enough that I could make out his silver frame lounging in a chair with his peds propped up on the table.
I didn't respond immediately but I felt my doorwings droop an inch.
Jazz huffed, shaking his helm and reached for a glass bottle on the table by his peds. He tipped the bottle to his lips, taking a swig of the deep blue liquid before setting the bottle on the table and swallowing. He gestured vaguely at the chair across from him.
"Got some good stuff." He said as I took the offered chair and he quietly dropped his peds to the floor, sliding the half full bottle closer to me. "Chase tah monster's away fo' ah while."
I accepted it, taking a long pull at the strong stuff, the liquid bringing down my throat as I swallowed and handed it back to Jazz who took another swig.
"Ow's about ya tell me ya monsters and Ah'll tell ya mine?" He asked, sliding the bottle back across the table. I caught the glass, watching the way the dark liquid sloshed inside the bottle.
I knew what Jazz was capable of.
I knew what that mech saw and did as head of Special Ops. We both took risks with other mech's lives and it hurt Jazz just as much as it hurt me when intel that he had gather proved to be the cause of the latest casualties.
He was also the closest thing to family I had.
He was a brother to me. Harassing me when I forgot to refuel and always managing to pull me out of the worst of my dark moods.
In return, I did the same for him.
In a sad, ironic way, the war that had taken everything from everyone, had nearly cost me my sanity, had given me the one thing I never truly had.
A friend.
"Deal." I replied quietly.
Sorry for any missed spelling/ grammar issues, I literally just typed and posted. I'll go over it again at a saner time of night and I can actually focuses.
And for crying out loud its not slash, I just love their "odd" friendship they have and I cant wait to dive into it later on in MJ. Hopefully I'll get the next chapter out but for now... eh. We'll see what happens.
Hope you guys liked it,
Read and Review. Love you guys and thanks for sticking with me.