Author's note: This was originally published in December 2015 on AO3, and was written for the Yuletide exchange.
Breakdown was terrified.
Not that this was an unusual state of affairs. Breakdown spent the vast majority of his time being terrified of one thing or another — the Autobots, Lord Megatron, Soundwave's deployers who might be watching him, practically anything in his vicinity. But right now, Breakdown was more terrified than usual, because right now, he had an actual reason to be. Specifically the Autobot he recognized as one of their top Special Operations agents, who was currently standing not twenty feet away from the pile of rubble that had been an Iaconian wall Breakdown was hiding behind, apparently trying to figure out where that noise he'd just heard was coming from.
"I know you're there," Jazz said quietly. Breakdown managed to keep himself from actually responding, but his engine revved quietly, and he fought down the urge to transform and bolt. "You can come out. Even if you're a Decepticon, I promise I won't hurt you," Jazz continued.
Breakdown thought frantically. Maybe the Autobot was lying, and he did intend to kill him. But clearly he knew Breakdown was there, so just continuing to hide wouldn't help; the Autobot would just kill him anyway if he wanted to. And there was nowhere he could run easily. His best bet really was to hope the Autobot was being truthful.
He stepped out from behind the wall, holding his blaster tightly. "Okay, Autobot," he said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. "Here I am."
Jazz smiled. "I recognize you. Breakdown, right? The scout."
Breakdown stared at him. This was new. Why did Jazz know who he was? "Um. Yes." He could feel himself shaking; his blaster wobbled visibly. The Autobot had to know he was scared.
"Calm down, mech," Jazz said, putting his hands up to show that there was nothing in them. "I said I wouldn't hurt you. You're fine, I promise. I just want to talk. You can put down the blaster."
There was no way Breakdown could hit Jazz at this point; he was shaking too much. Not breaking eye contact, he transformed his blaster back into a hand. "Okay," he said, trying to project confidence and ignore the fact that just by talking, the Autobot had gotten him to reveal himself and put his gun away. "What did you want to talk about?"
Jazz smiled cheerfully. "You, actually. Why are you with the Decepticons?"
Breakdown blinked. "What?"
Jazz began moving, circling him like a predator. Breakdown turned to keep eye contact with him. "You heard me, mech," Jazz said. "Why are you with the Decepticons? You're bright. You're good at what you do. You don't need to put up with the infighting and Megatron's temper; you could come join the Autobots any sol. We'd love to have you." He smiled.
Breakdown could feel his frame heating up. Decepticons didn't hand out compliments often, and to have this Autobot giving him so many was a novel experience. He quite liked having his ego stroked, apparently.
But he did have actual reasons for joining the Decepticons, regardless of how good at flattery this Autobot was. "I used to be a manual laborer," Breakdown said quietly, breaking eye contact to stare at the ground, "back before the war. I wasn't in the mines, I was in construction work. But I always knew how my life was going to go. It was going to be exactly the same, forever and ever, strut-breaking labor for barely enough money to feed myself, day in and day out until I offlined, unless I got so badly injured I couldn't work. Then I would starve." He looked up again, meeting Jazz's eyes. "The Decepticons promised me a future. Something more than I was given. Something better. The Autobots can't give me that."
Jazz nodded. "I understand where you're coming from. But I think Cybertron's changed. It's different now. We're different now. We're - all Cybertronians are - changing. Even if we win, Cybertron isn't going to be the same as it was. I think the Autobots are a lot more like you than you think."
Breakdown stared at him suspiciously. On the one hand, what he was saying made sense. Both sides were struggling just to survive now, and Cybertron was well beyond the point of disaster. But on the other hand, the Autobots were still led by a Council-chosen Prime. They were mostly upper-caste bots, who stood only to gain from the reinstitution of the caste system.
"You don't have to decide now," Jazz said brightly. "I can give you my comm frequency, and if you decide you want to talk to us, you can always ping me." Before Breakdown could say anything, Jazz sent him the frequency by databurst. Breakdown automatically filed it away without even thinking about it.
The Autobot dropped into altmode and sped away, moving much faster than Breakdown would have expected. Within moments, he was out of sight in the debris field.
Breakdown didn't mention the incident in his report to Soundwave, and Soundwave never indicated that he was aware it had happened. After a few weeks, Breakdown decided that he probably just didn't know. If Soundwave knew, he'd have somehow conveyed this fact to Breakdown relatively quickly; there was no point in having dirt on someone who didn't know you had it. Besides, after all, there was only one Laserbeak. Maybe Soundwave hadn't seen him and Jazz at all.
That was when he started really considering what Jazz had said.
Breakdown knew, with an absolute certainty, that he believed in the Decepticon cause of freedom and equality for all. While he hadn't had the same revolutionary fire as Megatron, and they'd never interacted before the war, his words rang true. Cybertronian society had been broken in a way that no amount of carefully chosen words could fix; the only repair method available to them had been violent revolution. Breakdown had joined the Decepticons almost as soon as he was aware of their existence, and plenty of his manual labor castemates had done the same.
But at the same time, Jazz's point that Cybertron as a whole had changed was true. The Decepticons had effectively won, by some standards - Cybertronian society had been permanently and radically altered, and there was no saying what exactly it had become or would become. But the war was far from over. After the contamination of the Core, both sides were struggling desperately to find a way to get off-planet, and rumor held that the Autobots had their own spaceship and enough energon to launch it.
Breakdown had heard whispers of an "Project Nemesis" that was somehow related to developing a ship for the Decepticons to leave Cybertron, but never anything official; even if it were true, he wouldn't have any way of knowing. Low-ranking scouts didn't hear much about High Command's most secret plans. It seemed pretty impractical, really. The Ark had been retrofitted from an old cargo transport, but he was pretty sure the Decepticons didn't have anything big enough to retrofit like that.
Besides, if Jazz himself was being sent to talk to Breakdown, the Autobots must think he was something pretty special. Anyone whose recruitment Soundwave or Starscream was personally involved in would have to be very important, and he was pretty sure Jazz was about as important to the Autobots as Starscream was to the Decepticons. Important and special enough to be allowed to come off-planet with them, perhaps. Certainly he wasn't that important to the Decepticons.
At that point, he started really examining the comm frequency Jazz had given him. It seemed to be a valid comm frequency. The ID information embedded in it matched Jazz reasonably well. It probably wasn't Jazz's only frequency, or even his primary one, but it was entirely possible that Breakdown had an actual comm frequency for the head of Autobot Intelligence.
Not turning this over, or at least deleting it, was probably treason. Not that anyone in High Command would really have serious trouble finding a way to communicate with Jazz, if the need arose, but having it and not volunteering the fact implied that he intended to use it. Unless he could point to orders directly from Soundwave or Megatron telling him to do that, he was dead if anyone found out.
He waited until he was out on another mission before trying it. He was scouting out the area around the Sea of Rust again, looking for another source of energon like the one Shockwave had found. He'd already reported the mission as unsuccessful; it was too dark for the shuttle to get out there now, so he was going to be retrieved the next morning. But now he was a few hundred miles from any other Cybertronian, and Primus knew Soundwave couldn't be tracking him given how Starscream was breathing down his neck, and he was feeling a bit braver than he usually did. If he was ever going to call Jazz, now would be the best time.
The connection established itself with a faint click. Breakdown froze at even that faint noise, not so much out of fear of the sound itself as what it represented. He'd actually taken the great leap. He had commed the head of Autobot Intelligence. He was dead metal if another Decepticon ever found out.
[Hi!] Jazz said cheerfully from the other end of the comm line, and Breakdown nearly transformed to bolt.
[Hi,] he managed to force out through a vocalizer that had suddenly locked up. [I've been thinking about what you said.]
Breakdown could practically hear Jazz smiling from the other side of the comm line. [Really? That's wonderful!]
[But I don't want to be an Autobot,] Breakdown said hastily.
[I understand,] Jazz said smoothly. [What have you been thinking about, then? Must have been something, or you wouldn't have decided to comm me.]
[You… you said something about being able to work with the Autobots. I liked the sound of that. I… wouldn't mind doing that.] It didn't seem like a good time to mention the Ark. Not yet. If they really were willing to bring him along, Jazz would tell him about it when the time came.
[All right,] Jazz said. [We can do that.]
[What do you want me to do for you?] Breakdown asked.
[Nothing too major,] Jazz said. [I'm not asking you to betray the Decepticon cause or anything, of course. But I'm sure you come by information occasionally that would be useful to us.]
Breakdown thought for a moment. [Probably, yeah,] he said nervously, looking around him. He was still surrounded by a barren wasteland; in the distance, little bits of rust drifted in the breeze. [I'm just a scout, though. Nobody really tells me anything.]
[That's okay,] Jazz said. [You're a Decepticon scout. Anything you can tell us is already valuable.]
[What do you want to know?] Breakdown asked.
[Well, for starters,] Jazz said, [what do you know about what Shockwave's up to?]
Breakdown cycled his vents sharply and settled onto the ground. [A bit. Not much, really. He's found this old building of some sort - something from a really long time ago. There's some sort of ancient technology in it, but I don't know what or how much or what it does. It's right next to a lake of raw Energon, and this tower complex of some sort that he built. He gets deliveries of raw materials every so often, but I'm never really involved in that, except occasionally loading stuff into the shuttles when I don't have any other assignments.]
[Really,] Jazz said with interest. [What kind of raw materials?]
Breakdown got very little recharge that night. Jazz seemed interested in even the slightest bits of information, no matter how inconsequential or unhelpful they seemed - anything Breakdown could remember about what was being shipped here and there, recon missions through Autobot-controlled Iacon, and especially information about what Shockwave was up to.
"You okay?" the pilot of the tiny shuttle asked, staring at him as he tripped over his own feet on the loading ramp.
Breakdown smiled. "Yeah. Fine. Didn't get much recharge last night, that's all."
The pilot edged away from him. "Whatever. I don't want to hear about it. Just strap in for the flight back, it's gonna be kind of rough."