A/N: This is they story for Hope. With thanks to my wonderful beta reader RumbleStrip
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Memory awakens hope. It is the beautiful task of advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus open the doors of hope. – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
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The sun had long since set blood red and baleful, what little warmth it had imparted to the world had leached away leaving a damp, cable-aching cold in its place. A lazy wind, which blew through you rather than take the trouble to go around, swirled round the rocks where Jazz sat gazing disconsolately out across the landscape.
"Bleak isn't it?" Prowl broke the silence that had held since they'd arrived.
"Yeah," Jazz replied absently, then shooting a sideways look at the ghostly pale form of his friend he continued "Ya know, ya didn't hav' ta stick ya neck in the noose."
"I beg your pardon?" Prowl asked.
"It's not really ya fault." Jazz clarified "Ya had no way of knowin' that I'd take that remark o' yours as the inspiration for a piece o' big league mischief. Let alone that I'd catch Prime in it by mistake."
"He was really rather … peeved, wasn't he?" Prowl's voice rippled with amusement "I want to see the twins' faces when they come down to the brig during their interior patrol tomorrow and find us there."
Jazz grinned in the dark; he could imagine the various reactions to Prowl's admission of guilt in regards to his latest prank. Poor Red would simply offline in shock.
"Besides I have a confession to make." Prowl's voice sounded sheepish.
"A confession?" Jazz repeated, the last time Prowl had used that word in that tone of voice they'd just finished recovering the main database from fragments of shattered memory bubbles and Prowl had confessed that he might just have left Wheeljack's latest explosive gadget in the room.
"Yes, um, you see I very deliberately phrased things the way I did, knowing full well how you'd take it, and I did make sure that a certain sharp eyed security officer over looked several unusual parcels." Prowl was staring down at his feet, an 'I'm so dead' look in his optics "And, um, well I might just be responsible for a certain matrix bearer walking down a certain corridor at a certain moment in time."
"You set me up." Jazz finished flatly, "You slagging glitch, you set me up."
"Yes." Prowl said in a small voice.
"But why, having taken so much trouble ta do it, and do it with out tipping me off I might add, stick ya' neck in the noose?" Jazz asked.
"I would hardly classify myself as an innocent bystander," Prowl replied "besides we need to talk, and I figured that a quiet night in the brig was the only place we wouldn't be disturbed."
"Instead we're stuck with being out here on night watch and then we get to spend a day in the brig." Jazz reminded the tactician.
"Yes, sorry about that." Prowl apologised "I didn't think Prime would be quite so angry."
Jazz went back to staring at the volcanic landscape, fitfully illuminated as the moon shone through breaks in the clouds that were scudding overhead.
"Wadda ya want to talk about that you though a night in the brig was the best place?" Jazz enquired.
Prowl's voice was strangely hesitant "You um, you don't seem too happy these days and I was wondering if I could help?"
Jazz's vents made a moaning whistle as he cycled a chamber full of air, he thought he'd hid his melancholy from the rest of the Ark. Trust it to be Prowl who'd see through his act. He slumped on to the ground and leaned back against the rock he'd been sitting on. Truthfully he wasn't sure where this fit of depression had come from, but it had clung to him like a thick suffocating cloud, dulling his senses and disturbing his recharge, even his music, something that had never failed to make him feel good had lost its charm.
"I don't know Prowl," Jazz whispered, "I, I think I've finally lost hope that the war will ever end or that I'll ever see home again."
Prowl looked intently at the saboteur, Jazz's body language all to clearly gave away the spark crushing hopelessness he was feeling, and his usually melodic voice had gone flat. Processor racing he conjured and discarded many ways to offer Jazz the hope he'd lost, then suddenly a simple solution announced its self and Prowl smiled. He walked over and sat down by Jazz.
"Do you know what my best memories of Cybertron are?" Prowl enquired, sliding a door wing behind Jazz's roof.
Jazz started at that, but after a moment rolled sideways and curled up against Prowl's hood, sheltered slightly from the wind by the forward curving wing and comforted by the arm Prowl slid round his waist.
"No." Jazz murmured into Prowl's shoulder "tell me?"
Prowl smiled at the top of Jazz's helmet, "Getting lost in the central archives."
Jazz stared at Prowl for several seconds before starting to snicker, "Yo…y…you got lost?"
"Yes," Prowl replied "I got lost. Not, I add, by any fault of mine. I was tasked with looking up some very old trial transcripts and, well let's just leave it at the archives internal teleport system was a bit scrambled."
Jazz let his head rest back on Prowl's hood and listened as he began to describe his adventures in the far reaches of the admittedly vast archive. As the tactician carried on with the tale, describing the splendour of the building, the graceful high windows that had let light come streaming in and the mellow, hushed and genteel atmosphere, Jazz found himself beginning to relax. Some of the tale Jazz would swear his spark on being made up solely for the purpose of making him laugh, no way was he going to believe that any of the ladders or reference stations had evolved into sentient life, let alone formed hunter-gather societies capable of chasing down any mech unfortunate to come across them.
Slowly, imperceptibly the dark suffocating cloud that had shrouded him began to dissipate and he recalled his own cherished memories of Cybertron before the war, of racing across the vast free plains, of running wild with his fellow gang members through the dark and twisted labyrinth of back streets, just one step ahead of the law.
The clouds had blown away leaving the moon crisp and bright to cast her light over the landscape by the time Prowl brought his story to a close. Jazz looked out over the landscape and found that it wasn't as bleak as he had first thought. Even here in the hard bare volcanic landscape life fought and thrived, Jazz felt a small trickle of hope returning to his spark.
"Prowl, do you think we'll ever be able to restore Cybertron to what it was?" Jazz posed the question tentatively.
"No." Prowl's answer was firm and immediate.
"Oh." Jazz felt the hope begin to curl up and fade
"We will build it up further than that." Prowl's optics burned fiercely with the strength of his conviction "All we've learnt here on Earth, the good and the bad. The new perspective we've gained from humanity and any help humanity is prepared to give will help us avoid the mistakes we made in the past and one day, one day Jazz, Cybertron will rise from the ashes more beautiful than before."
The small twig of hope that had lodge in Jazz's spark began to grow and blossom at Prowl's passionate declaration and Jazz felt the last traces of despair burn to nothing at the fire in Prowl's voice.
Pushing himself off the Datsun, Jazz rolled to his feet and gave Prowl the full force of his trademark smile "Thanks, I think ya really did know what I needed right now." He checked his chronometer "um Prowl?"
"Yes." Prowl was still sat on the ground looking up at Jazz, a curious expression on his face at Jazz's tone.
"How fast do ya think ya could high tail it back ta ark?" Jazz asked, the sense of urgency in his voice brought Prowl to his feet.
"Twenty minutes, why?" Prowl was looking rather nervously at Jazz.
"Well" Jazz drawled "we're about thirty minutes late for a date wit' ta brig."
"Primus!" Prowl yelped scrambling down the rock pile after Jazz and throwing himself into his alt mode "we'd better hope Prime's in a slightly forgiving mood."