Remembering
It was one of those quiet days when nothing in particular was happening at the Ark. Wheeljack was happily tinkering with one of his non-explosive inventions, Ratchet was blissfully enjoying an injury-free day, and Jazz was down in the Armoury cleaning his gun.
Jazz quite liked his gun. It was small and had a nice weight to it, with the added bonus of being able to be disassembled into several pieces of innocent-looking metal that could be easily concealed, which was very useful in the black and white's line of work.
He had just finished scrubbing off the carbon from around the muzzle of the gun when Sideswipe wandered in.
"Hey Jazz, howzit?" Sideswipe asked.
"Can't complain." Jazz replied as he picked up a cloth and a jar of polish from beside him and set them on the table. "You?"
"Nuthin' big."
Sideswipe pawed through the shelves for a minute or two, picking up a couple of ammo cells and a missile before coming over to sit opposite Jazz and start disassembling his own gun for cleaning. They worked in companionable silence for a while before Sideswipe noticed a double line of notches cut into the barrel of Jazz's gun. Now that the gun had been polished they were starkly visible against the pale metal as dark lines where the polish had sunk into the cuts.
"Hey, nice kill count Jazz." The Lamborghini commented, mentally tallying up the lines.
"They ain't kills." Jazz replied with uncharacteristic bluntness.
"Then what are they?" Sideswipe queried, head tilted to one side in confusion.
"Memories."
"Like…?"
Jazz sighed; set down the cloth he had been using and looked at the other mech. He knew that Sideswipe wasn't going to let this slide. "People." He answered.
"People?"
"Yeah, people." Jazz pointed to the first cut on the gun. "That's fer m' creator. This one," he indicated a deeper line, "is fer Prime. An' these two here," Jazz moved his finger to a pair of cuts close together, "are fer you an' yer bro'. They help me remember."
"But why?" Sideswipe asked. "I never thought you had a memory problem."
"I don't." Jazz answered. "It's just, I have trouble connectin' names t' faces. I'm an audio-orientated kind a mech. I remember people's voices an' stuff better than I do their faces. Carvin' lines on ma gun helps me t' remember."
"Oh, ok." Sideswipe returned to cleaning his gun.
"Y' ain't gonna tell anyone about this, are ya?" Jazz asked, slightly apprehensive. But his concern proved to be unfounded.
"Tell them what?" Sideswipe asked with a teasing wink. Jazz laughed, and both mechs returned to their work.
Fin