Author's Note: This story takes place in Foxbear's "Blood and Energon" AU and contains spoilers for chapters 32 and following of Caro Transmutata Metallo, but no prior knowledge of that work is required to enjoy this one (though certain ironies are more poignant in the larger context). Many thanks to Foxbear for the context beta and flurrybird for the "I-haven't-read-CTM-yet" beta. Any errors or infelicities which remain are wholly my own. Any events not described or depicted in Foxbear's work should not be considered binding on the "Blood and Energon" canon — except possibly the description of Prowl's apartment ...
TRIGGER WARNINGS: depiction of personal boundary violations (actual and contemplated); depiction of acute and post-traumatic stress reactions; non-graphic discussion of intimate assault; non-graphic discussion and depiction of child abuse (perceived) and endangerment (actual).
Don't play what's there; play what's not there.
I always listen to what I can leave out.
— Miles Davis
The enforcer parked in vehicle mode in the loading zone of Prowl's apartment house no longer drew much attention from the locals, but Jazz offered her a genial wave as he transformed. When she didn't so much as flicker her lights at him in response, he rolled his optics, but resisted the urge to slap her bumper on his way to the front door. The officer, along with her partner in the alley behind the building, was just doing her job — conspicuous token of the Praxian Enforcer Corps' commitment to protecting its own. Jazz had found four blind spots in their surveillance without taxing his ingenuity, but since all were covered by his own resources, he withheld his critique. Prowl was as secure as any victim of an unidentified assailant of undetermined motives could be.
Turning away from the officer's camera, Jazz pulled a face. He'd been no more successful than the locals in unraveling the mystery of Prowl's abduction. The investigation had stalled at the starting line for lack of evidence: forensic analysis had provided no leads and Prowl's injuries voided his witness. He remembered entering the warehouse and coming upon the reprogrammer, but nothing else. By chance or design, the damage to his cortex had disrupted the transfer of engrams from short- to long-term storage. He might eventually recover fragments of the experience from the bit bucket, but nobody was putting serious credits on that. One dead end after another, and a felon still rolling free.
Jazz's frown deepened as the unmistakable pulse of a scan washed over his frame. Without looking back he waved again at the patrolbot, digits crooked in a rude gesture. In the absence of other — Pit, any! — suspects, it was hardly surprising that the outsider who'd worked so closely with the victim — the big, bad Cultural Investigator — would get the predacon's share of distrust. It still rankled, though. Jazz's superiors had refused on principle to authorize his psychogalvanometric examination (not that I couldn't have beaten it if I needed to, Jazz mused, sourly smug), which had served to confirm his guilt in the processors of the conspiracy-minded. And with the assault of a model patrolmech on the heel-struts of his partner's murder and his mentor's ouster, the suggestion of conspiracy was ... difficult to avoid.
Oh, bots, you have no idea.
Jazz tapped Prowl's comm code into the annunciator and after a moment a one-way link hummed to life. "Yes?" squawked the low-fi speaker beneath the blank screen.
Jazz grinned at the pickup. "Heya, Prowler. Got a tick to talk?"
The ensuing pause extended long enough to suggest hesitation; then the entry buzzed open. Jazz sauntered between the frosted sliding panels, noting the scars in the well-polished floor and the genteel wheeze of the front door's hydraulics. Prowl's neighborhood at a glance: a little worn in the treads, but waxed to a respectable shine — not to poor to paint, but definitely too proud to galvanize. The only game going in the back room of the corner oil house was sets; the mesh artist next door specialized in guild badges and memorial marks. Even younglings and drones kept off the crystal beds in the park. A modest, well-regulated place. Seemly. Safe.
Ha.
Prowl's apartment was located on the fifth floor of the six-story building, but Jazz ignored the lift in the lobby, making instead for the stairs on the far side of the central atrium. The architecture was pure early Golden Age: a ring of hexagonal prisms in literal and unimaginative defiance of Quintessan design norms. Faded red pennons and slowly rotating mobiles hung from the white cross-beams springing from level to level beneath the atrium's crystal-paned roof. Jazz nodded amiably at an elderly grounder parked in a bar of sunlight gleaming on the marbleized tiles and ignored the dubious glare he received in return. He hadn't visited Prowl at home before, though he'd scouted the building not long after his arrival in Praxus. Like most bots Jazz met in his professional capacity, the enforcer had been guarded about his personal life and chary of his opinions. He'd accompanied Jazz to every cabaret, club and oil house that had caught Jazz's fancy without ever expressing a preference of his own. And when Jazz had finally played the guest-in-your-city card to force the other mech's servo, Prowl had led him on a tour of Praxus's toniest sights, his deferential manner belied only by the sly cant of his doorwings.
You can drag me right 'round the Triskaidecagon again, mech, if it'll give you another chuckle.
Jazz leaped lightly up the stairs, avoiding the depression worn in the center of each tread, and slipped through the fifth-floor fire door into an arcade overlooking the atrium. Prowl's apartment was immediately to the left, one of seven one-room dwellings on this level. A common washrack occupied the space on the other side of the stairwell; a few shabby but comfortable-looking chairs and (hexagonal, of course) occasional tables in the elevator lobby denoted a shared parlor. Reflexively Jazz committed the layout to memory before pressing the old-fashioned buzzer beside Prowl's door.
The panel slid open just far enough to reveal Prowl's helm and a portion of his chassis. "Investigator," he said.
"Prowl!" Jazz replied heartily — too heartily, he realized, chagrined, and throttled his enthusiasm back a notch. "How's it hummin'?"
"I am well," Prowl said. "And you?"
Jazz leaned his right shoulder-guard against the doorframe. "Can't complain," he said. "C'n I come in?"
Prowl made no answer and his field, held close, gave nothing away. Jazz remained propped against the door, smiling, but slid one pede forward to block the track. Catching sight of the movement, Prowl frowned, then stepped back and permitted the panel to open wide. Jazz flickered his visor in a wink and swaggered across the threshold, squelching an unaccustomed pang of self-consciousness. If he didn't want me here, he could've pretended he wasn't home.
He took in Prowl's dwelling in a single glance: off-white walls and dark tiles; a pair of low-backed chairs and a table before the room's single, floor-to-ceiling window, its privacy screen set to milky translucence; the handle of a fold-away berth protruding from one wall and a desk flanked by shelves crammed with disks and chips against another; a closet to the right of the entrance and cupboards and counter to the left, past a tiny household shrine with the inevitable pot of living crystals, these in various shades of gray. Mourning colors. Jazz turned quickly to face Prowl, but not before his processors registered the uneven arrangement of holos above the desk — Prowl with his Guardian, with a group of young cadremates, with his cadet class — and supplied the missing element.
Tumbler.
"Is this a professional call, Investigator?" Prowl asked tonelessly, gesturing Jazz to a seat.
Jazz shook his helm. "Nah, mech," he said, taking the offered chair — too large for him, but Praxus wasn't built for minibots. "Just haven't seen ya since the medics cut ya loose." Too soon, in Jazz's opinion, backed by the expostulations of at least one member of the Enforcers' clinic's nursing staff, according to the notes he'd hacked, but the medic-of-record had insisted despite Prowl's ongoing pathology. "Thought I'd catch ya drivin' a desk at the precinct, but they told me you're still out injured."
Prowl's doorwings twitched as he settled into the other chair. "I am recovering. I must be certified fit to return to duty."
"That's always the trick, ain't' it?" Jazz said, not without sympathy. Enforced sick leave had long been his own particular pocket of the Pit, which he'd begun to imagine as a kind of medcenter. The last time he'd been hurt badly enough to be admitted, he'd literally been climbing the walls of the ward by the end of the third cycle, and the ruckus the Office of Cultural Investigation had raised when they'd discovered he'd forged his own discharge orders had been epic even by Jazz's standards. "Lemme know if y' need a wheel greased t' get things rollin'."
"That won't be necessary," Prowl answered, his posture ramrod straight, doorwings all but at formal attention. "Thank you for your concern."
It was hard not to take the mech's affect personally, to slouch down in his own chair and dump his pedes on the table and toss Liegian darts at random until he hit a sensor. But Jazz had read enough of Prowl's medical files to know that it wasn't personal, that his stint on that damned reprogrammer had corrupted the code that handled communications between his emotional and ratiocinative processes. Those portions of his cortex no longer worked in harmony; the best they could manage now (and possibly ever) was counterpoint. He means what he says, Jazz reminded himself. Listen to the words, not the silence between 'em. "What are friends for?" he said. "So, what'cha been up to?"
"I have been exercising at the precinct gymnasium, as directed by my medic," Prowl replied. His doorwings dipped, then flared again as he added, "I have also been studying for the sergeant's exam."
"Sure, sure," Jazz agreed. One of the peculiarities of Praxus's Enforcer Corps was its insistence that every recruit, regardless of programming, start in street patrol. Nobody transferred out until they passed for sergeant, which put an extremely mixed bag of functions on the street. The patrollers made it work, but it seemed a big waste of time and talent to Jazz. What good was served by forcing Prowl, one of Prima's natural tacticians, to spend a megacycle directing traffic and citing bots for parking violations? The quicker he got his stripes and his assignment to Tactical, the better for him and the Corps. "And?"
Prowl blinked. "I do not follow."
Jazz blinked himself behind his visor and sat up straighter. "And what else?" he asked, taking careful note of Prowl's frame language and what little activity he could discern in the other mech's field. "All work an' no play makes Solus a dull femme, y' know." He suppressed an answering flare of satisfaction at the dull crackle of affront from Prowl's field — there's life in the old drone yet! — and pressed on. "Been out for a can of oil lately?"
"I have not," Prowl said.
"Signed up for the city's fullstasis tournament again? Registration don't close 'til the end of the cycle."
"I have not," Prowl said.
"Taken in a concert? Gone for a walk in the Gardens?" Jazz asked, hiding his burgeoning dismay. I should've come back earlier. I should've wired my last report to Iacon and let 'em ping for my presence ... But Prowl had been on the mend and Jazz had needed to get Senator Proteus off his spinal strut, damn him. "Got yourself hooked on that new holodrama about th' gladiator an' th' medic?"
"I have not."
"Primus dammit, Prowl, what have ya been doin' besides study an' exercise?" Jazz exploded, leaning forward to poke Prowl in the chassis with an outstretched digit. "Sittin' here in the dark with your systems on standby?"
"I have n— "
Jazz interrupted him, guilt and anxiety as potent as engex in his tanks. "You even keepin' up with the crime reports for your neighborhood association?" he demanded. "Showin' up to the meetings? Takin' shifts at that crèche — "
Prowl's vocalizer emitted a brief, meaningless warble and his field erupted into a nova of pain that struck Jazz like a physical blow before it dissipated into the ether. The enforcer's optics darkened, shuttering; his frame listed to one side and Jazz jumped up to prevent Prowl from falling from his chair.
He'd known about this, too, from the medics' notes, though he'd never seen it before. Not only were Prowl's rational and emotional centers no longer communicating properly, but any critical conflict between them threw an exception his runtime systems could no longer catch. Instead, the thread that caused the error was forced to terminate, leading to "a brief interruption of higher processing function," in the sterile jargon of the wire crispers. Like this, Jazz thought, gently righting Prowl's frame. Primus.
The medics couldn't fix the problem; they weren't even sure what the initial attack on Prowl's cortex had been intended to do. Prowl had been alone in the clandestine lab when the first responders had arrived and they'd been occupied with getting him off the machine online, not sussing out the details of its programming. Worse, they'd been unable to breach its security lockout, so they'd simply yanked the plug and cut the wires to the backup battery. What that hadn't fragged up had been slagged when the Enforcers' forensic specialists had rebooted the device; its spectacular suicide-by-startup had been the talk of the precinct for shifts afterward. Eavesdropping on the gossip, Jazz had offered his adversary a chilly salute, one covert operative to another. Gonna have to teach me that one when we meet, my mech.
But they hadn't met (yet) and all the important questions remained unanswered: who had abducted Prowl? why? what had they been trying to do to him? The fragger had intended some specific outcome, Jazz was sure, even if the process hadn't completed as designed. The pattern of damage was too specific, spiraling out from Prowl's empathic centers via the routines governing interpersonal relations. The phrase "medically induced psychopathy" had turned up just once in the neurologist's case notes, but that had been enough to freeze the energon in Jazz's lines. He'd met his share of social deviants, but only one true psychopath: Sidecutter, a "recruiter" for the Crystal Pit who specialized in enticing barely emancipated younglings into that glittering sump. Other bots were nothing but drones to him, automata he could reprogram to his bosses' vile specifications. Jazz shuddered to imagine Prowl's potent intellect similarly stripped of its conscience, his tactical genius unfettered by compassion. Say someone wanted a weapon that could think ...
But if that had been what they wanted, they hadn't gotten it, small consolation though that was to their victim. Instead, they'd left him with a programming kink that triggered a seizure whenever Prowl felt something too strongly, like the loss of a brother-in-arms. Jazz kicked himself for letting his own emotions get the better of him. He'd come here as a friend, not an investigator, but somehow he'd ended up interrogating Prowl instead of chatting with him. Who can't leave his work at the office now? Not to mention that a friend wouldn't have taxed a mourning mech with avoiding the places he'd gone with his murdered partner, much less that partner's lost sparkling. Sorry, he thought, giving Prowl's shoulder-guard an awkward squeeze. Sorry, mech.
Prowl's optics unshuttered as his central processor rebooted, and Jazz hastily withdrew his servo. "You back with me, Prowl?" he asked.
Prowl nodded, bending forward to place his forearms on his thighs. His doorwings described a rapid, fluttering arc Jazz recognized as a search for input, then stilled. "You see," he said as he straightened, "why I am still on medical leave."
Jazz couldn't tell whether Prowl's remark was motivated by discomfiture or gallows humor or what; the mech wasn't even tagging his words with contextual glyphs. "From drivin' a beat, sure," he replied cautiously, "but desk duty?"
"I am a patrol officer," Prowl explained, his tone uncomfortably close to the monotonous matter-of-factness of an information kiosk. "Administrative and support positions are filled by those ranked sergeant and above, or by civilian contractors."
"That's — " Jazz checked himself on the brink of another rant; no point in favoring Prowl with his opinions on over-regulated bureaucracies. "All right, it is what it is. So you gotta make sergeant before they'll find ya somethin' t' do?"
Prowl folded his servos and contemplated them. "Not ... exactly."
"Then what?" Jazz plunked himself down on the edge of his seat, his field pulsing unevenly as he restrained it from expanding to make contact with Prowl's. "C'mon, Prowler, spill! Let me help — "
"It is nothing with which you can help," Prowl said flatly.
"Says who?" Jazz retorted, frowning as an unpleasant hypothesis suggested itself. "They're not tryin' to — t' push ya out, are they?" To rid themselves of an embarrassment or a danger to others — or an associate of the meddlesome OCI agent they couldn't touch. "You could file a medical discrimination claim; I know an advocate who'd take your case in a sparkbeat — "
"No." Prowl lifted his helm to meet Jazz's gaze. "I have no one to blame for my current circumstances but myself."
Jazz surged forward, covering Prowl's servos with his own and gripping hard. "Not yourself," he growled, low and rough and fierce. "Never yourself. It's all on the slagger who did this to you."
Prowl jerked away, frame and field drawing inward as if in preparation for a transformation, and Jazz immediately let him go. "Sorry!" he yelped, digits splayed wide. "I didn' mean to — my bad — sorry!"
Doorwings pressed flat against his dorsal plating, Prowl crossed his arms over his chassis. "Apology accepted," he said, and for all he thought he knew the mech, Jazz could not have sworn whether he meant it.
They sat in strained silence, Jazz finding himself at an uncharacteristic loss for words. He was dismally conscious of how tenuous his relationship with Prowl was — how briefly they had known each other and how little beside each day's work and a drink or two afterward they had shared. Jazz made casual friends easily: dance partners, gaming buddies — and sources, too, of course, because the easiest way to hack someone's cortex was to convince them you could be trusted with their secrets. But true friends, fast friends, always-got-your-back-in-a-scrap friends, those he could number on the digits of one servo: Ricochet from his cadre back in Polyhex, old Diorussus down in the underground ... and maybe, hopefully, Prowl, enforcer of Praxus. If an agent of the law could be friends with a double-dealer and a spy — if Prowl could find room in his spark after Tumbler for ... someone else.
"I jus' wanna help," Jazz said, abruptly desperate to the fill the stillness as if it were a chasm yawning at his pedes. "You're a good mech, Prowl. You deserve better than — all this." His left servo took in their surroundings with a vague gesture, careful to avoid the other bot's personal space.
Prowl vented a barely audible sigh of atmosphere. "'Use every mech after his desert,'" he murmured, "'and who shall escape punishment?'"
Jazz rolled his optics. "Not what I meant," he said, bizarrely heartened by this sententious remark. "You're savvy an' decent an' loyal. They're fools t' throw ya away 'cause of a ... glitch in your systems."
"No one is throwing me away," Prowl said, the tips of his doorwings lifting to peer past his shoulder-guards like shy minicons. "The medics tell me that with time and discipline I can develop habits of thought that will minimize the number of critical exceptions I experience." His glance sought the doorside shrine, then returned to Jazz. "But ..."
Jazz held very still. "But?"
"But I cannot — focus. Not enough to write the — the necessary routines." Prowl uncrossed and recrossed his arms, but Jazz merely nodded, letting no hint of his concern leak into his own frame language. "I've tried, but every time it triggers ... something."
Jazz stiffened, threat-assessment protocols blooming in his HUD. "An executable?" he asked sharply. Between them, the reprogrammer and the paramedics had annihilated Prowl's firewalls, leaving him with the passive protection of the comm-cortex barrier as his only defense against malware. The wire crispers had scanned him for infections and reinstalled a basic antiviral suite, of course, but if they'd missed some fragment of malicious coding — if Prowl's glitch concealed a slowly replicating worm or a logic bomb —
But Prowl was shaking his helm. "A resonance," he answered, optics unfocusing as his attention turned inward. "Disarray, pain ... agitation. Alarm. Loss of control. Stop. Stop!" he shouted, startling Jazz to his pedes. "Parameter violation, error, error, stack overrun, make it stop, make it stop make it stop make it stop — !"
"Prowl!" Jazz shouted, pulling out a data cable and readying a comm to Praxus's emergency services line. But before he could pop open one of Prowl's wrist ports, the mech glitched, toppling helm-first from his chair as his frame locked up. Jazz caught him by the shoulder-guards, but Prowl's greater mass bore them both to the floor, and it was all Jazz could do to prevent the impact from cracking Prowl's chevron.
Uneasy quiet descended. Jazz cradled Prowl's helm against his chassis, one servo hovering indecisively above the enforcer's central data port. Not an executable, Prowl had said. No evidence of residual malware, the medics had written. No engrams of the assault, either, but maybe ... a disassociated emotional impression? Jazz winced. He knew more about memory modification than he'd ever mention in casual conversation, including how to properly erase a file from someone's cortex. Deleting the record of events without also expunging the associated sensory and emotional data? That was a novice's mistake. At best you left behind the substrate for a nasty neurosis — at worst, a foundation on which to reconstruct what had been lost. I could fix this, Jazz thought, digits clicking together nervously. It would be the work of a microcycle to strip the offending data from Prowl's cortex — maybe a few more to cover his tracks so that the medics couldn't detect what he'd done. Or he could anchor the resonance more firmly in Prowl's psyche, increasing his distress when it triggered, but also the odds that he'd recall the face of his assailant — his weirdly inconsistent assailant, who committed his crimes like a tyro and covered his tracks like a pro. Jazz stroked the seams of the plate that protected Prowl's data port, probing for its release. None o' this makes sense. Th' more I learn, th' less I know ...
Prowl's fans kicked on as he rebooted and Jazz drew back, loath to interfere. The enforcer onlined more slowly this time, optics hidden behind their shutters, doorwings reluctantly opening to access the local datanet. Mesh to mesh as they were, Jazz could feel the agitated spicules in Prowl's field and the convulsive chittering of his microplates. His servos spasmed, clutching at Jazz's frame, and Jazz braced him as Prowl laboriously dragged his chassis upright. His respirations were erratic and shallow and his fans began to whine with the effort of cooling his internals. "Easy, Prowl, easy," Jazz crooned, opening his own ducts wide and venting stertorously to give the other mech a rhythm to match. "With me, now. That's good ..."
Prowl's chin bumped the crown of Jazz's helm. "None of this is good," he whispered. "I can't even reinstall my own firewalls. I'm not fit for duty."
Pity kindled in Jazz's spark. "Oh, mech," he breathed, field expanding in a wave of warmth. But Prowl immediately broke contact, damping his own field and shoving himself away from Jazz. The edge of one doorwing smacked into the chair behind him, but Prowl didn't utter a sound as he hauled himself back into his seat, a renewed hitch in his vents the only testament to the smart.
Jazz let him go, cursing himself for a fool. What the slag had he been thinking? He couldn't "fix" Prowl like a flat tire — and if he'd tried, he might have made himself an accessory after the fact, shattering Prowl's sanity for good and all. The mech had recoiled from the press of Jazz's servos and the brush of his field; who but an idiot or a sadist would have tried to cable up to someone that skittish? The energon in Jazz's tanks seemed to curdle now at the thought of making the connection, of socketing his cable into the very port some other fragger had used to hitch Prowl to the reprogrammer —
Oh, Primus, I'm gonna purge!
Jazz spent a frantic and unpleasant few nanocycles convincing his alimentary system not to throw itself into reverse. Prowl, meanwhile, neither moved nor spoke, sitting in his chair with his helm in his servos, optics shuttered and comms locked down, as if ignoring Jazz might make him go away. Well, that ain't happenin', Jazz thought truculently. He'd help mine this mess, so he was by Solus going to help smelt it.
Yeah? How?
Jazz ground his denta. Any intervention that required a processor-to-processor link was right out, obviously, whether mediated wirelessly or by cable. Down, tanks. That didn't leave a whole lot of options, unfortunately. And Prowl was right: he'd never get his job back unless he could maintain his own security architecture. Like every other agency that policed Cybertron, the Praxian Enforcer Corps supplied its employees with proprietary firewalling and IDS, but none of that was set-and-forget. Jazz was constantly tweaking his OCI-issued protocols, not to mention the SIEM system he'd developed on his own. If Prowl couldn't even bring himself to install the street patrol's defensive package — well, he'd be done. Medically discharged. Still more vulnerable than when he'd first been attacked ...
No way. It ain't gonna come to that.
All right, then, if Jazz couldn't solve Prowl's problems for him, what could he do? Help him help himself, maybe? Like, talk him through rebuilding his firewalls? Jazz brightened. He'd had the gift of gab ever since his first language download — elder or youngling, senator or street-cleaner, he could strike up a conversation with anybody. And even when the medics had been keeping Prowl in a low-stimulus environment, he'd always onlined his audials when Jazz snuck in for a chat behind the nursing staff's backs. If he'll still listen, Jazz thought, the pieces of a solution beginning to mesh together in his mind like the parts of a canon, then I've got somethin' to say.
"I used to have a problem with focus, myself," he began, soft and slow, as if he were thinking out loud. "Always tryin' to multitask, never lettin' one process complete before spawnin' two more." He smiled reminiscently without having to force it; those had been good times, back when he was a youngling. "Dizzy as a cybercat in a room full o' lasers, that was me, 'til my caretaker taught me a work song."
Prowl made no reply, but Jazz let the nanocycles tick by — three, four, five — until at last the other mech asked, "Work song?"
"Yeah," Jazz replied, holding his elation in check. Point to the platinum vocalizer! "Navvies use 'em, an' miners an' teamsters — anybody who's gotta keep time to get the job done."
Prowl lifted his head to turn his slackly puzzled glance on Jazz. "Why not simply synch their chronometers?"
That's right; think about it. "Because it's not just about synchrony," Jazz said, hoisting himself back into his chair to get their optics closer to a level. "It's about solidarity. Workin' together, buildin' somethin' together, lookin' out for each other, trustin' your mates to hit their marks so you can hit yours." There was more to it than that, of course: the power of music to lift the singers' sparks and bind them together, of melody to create harmony, but Jazz wasn't sure Prowl would have understood that even before his injury. "My caretaker, Emery, he said to me, 'Jazz,' he said, 'there's enough buzzin' in your helm to busy three bots, so you're gonna be my team.' That's when he taught me my first work song." And then, seeing that he still had Prowl's attention, Jazz began to sing.
I'm drinkin' to fill my hollow leg, hollow leg, hollow leg.
I'm drinkin' to fill my hollow leg and then I'll power down.
Power down, power down, power down, power down.
Prowl sat up as Jazz lilted through the simple tune, digits snapping out the time. Prowl's own servos settled palms down on his thighs and he regarded Jazz with an unnervingly judicial air. "Call and response," Jazz explained when he reached the end of the verse. "The team leader, the caller, sets the theme an' his team answers back with th' echo. Nothin' to it," he finished lamely and turned an incipient grimace into a grin.
"And your ... caretaker ... taught you this?" Prowl asked.
"Yep," Jazz said, every sensor trained discreetly on Prowl's frame, alert for the subtlest of microexpressions.
"Did it truly help?"
The mech's kinesics were the next thing to a closed door, but at least he was still asking questions. Jazz leaned back in his chair and rested his pedes on the table. Just tellin' a story, here. "Well, it wasn't magic," he replied, "but it did help me focus when I had to." Not that he'd ever learned to keep his mind on one thing at a time, of course; even his training as a cultural investigator hadn't curtailed his distractibility so much as weaponized it. "My caretakers sure appreciated it when my lessons and chores started getting done." Jazz's grin tilted. "Sometimes even when they were supposed to."
Prowl's digits slowly curled into his palms as he listened, the only external sign of what Jazz guessed was an almighty internal struggle. C'mon, Prowler, work with me! The enforcer's gaze remained fixed on Jazz, but he couldn't have said whether Prowl was looking at him or at some vision unfolding in the air between them. He crossed his arms behind his helm, venting easily, as if nothing rode on Prowl's response but the counters of a sparkling's game.
It was the toughest bluff he'd ever run.
Prowl's servos clenched abruptly into fists. "Will you — " he blurted, then paused, and Jazz's vents stilled; he couldn't help it — "will you teach me?"
Jazz nodded in lieu of crowing in triumph and sat up. Don't tally your credits before you cash out, now, he warned himself as he snapped out a four-count with his left servo. They were just beginning. "I'm drinkin' to fill my hollow leg — "
"Hollow leg, hollow leg," Prowl responded, only a little behind the beat and mostly in tune.
Jazz gave him a thumbs-up with his free servo and continued, "I'm drinkin' to fill my hollow leg an' then I'll power down."
"Power down, power down —" Prowl's voice joined Jazz's on the chorus, and his spark lifted to hear it, tentative and thin though it was — "power down, power down."
Nobody was going to drop a recording contract on Prowl, whisking him away to a life of luxury and the adulation of a billion fans, but training the reediness out of his vocalizer wasn't the point of the exercise. "Haul those ties an' lay that rail," Jazz sang, clapping out the time now and turning his gaze pointedly to Prowl's servos.
"Lay that rail, lay that rail," Prowl replied. His browplates ruckled, then rose as his optics widened. He hesitated, but Jazz glowered implacably until Prowl at last lifted his servos and matched Jazz beat for beat. "Power down, power down," they sang together, and if Prowl's voice cracked a bit, well, Jazz wasn't going to roast him for it. Just stay with me, mech. Never mind what the neighbors'll think. "Drive that spike and true that line," he sang, and Prowl stayed with him, as steady as a metronome despite his discomposure.
Jazz led them through a few more verses, keeping track of Prowl's doorwings as they gradually unfolded into a neutral posture. His field was still held too close to read, but Jazz could see no point in drawing things out. Either this'll work or it won't, he thought, and sang, "I'm gonna write one line o' code— "
Prowl's doorwings hitched and flattened again and his servos fumbled the beat. "Line of code, line of code?" he answered, a hiss of static limning the notes with uncertainty.
Jazz clapped on, his own frame as relaxed as he could hold it. "I'm gonna write one line o' code," he sang, twining the words with subtle glyphs of encouragement and support, "an' then I'll power down."
Prowl's voice joined his right on cue, but barely louder now than the dull clank of their palms. Jazz resisted the urge to increase his own volume to compensate — a smooth performance wasn't the point of this session, either. Then Prowl's optics sought his, staring at him with the intensity of a sniper or a bot drowning in a vat of oil, and Jazz's paint all but blistered under the scrutiny. "Build that wall up, course by course," he sang, using every shred of self-discipline he possessed to keep from blenching. This ain't an interrogation — and even if it had been, the enforcer couldn't actually see through him. Prowl's glance alone would never penetrate the blocks and blinds that guarded Jazz's memory files or break the encryption on the one engram above all others that Jazz had hidden from him.
"Team lead to all units: who's got sensors on the target?"
"Lead, unit alpha — target has entered the tertiary beltway from the mid-ring ramp and is heading west toward the bridges."
"Alpha, this is gamma heading east from the upper-ring exit; we can pincer him — "
"Alpha and gamma, stay cool; he's got that sparkling on board."
"Teach your Guardian, lead. We got this."
Who'd have thought to find an anti-government conspiracy in stodgy, conservative, law-abiding Praxus? Nobody outside a holoseries that always pinned the crime on the least likely suspect, that's who — Jazz included. His opinion of the place had crept up a notch once he'd realized his bosses weren't indulging another one of Senator Proteus's paranoid fantasies. But the Praxian conspirators had turned out to be fanatics, cranks who thought they had a direct line to Primus, and they rejected the government's authority only to substitute their god's. Sure, they never physically harmed their sparklings, but ("— an' then I'll power down —") you didn't have to lay a digit on someone to frag them up inside. Unhealthy attachments, antisocial pedagogy, ideological alienation, differential association — the full list of abuses was as long as a gestalt's arm, but Jazz had stopped reading after thought control, his tachometer redlining.
"Lead, alpha: target's velocity increasing. Scrap, I think he made me!"
"Alpha, fall back. Let gamma pick him up."
"Negative, lead; he can't outrun me. Gamma, take capture station for a tactical ram."
"Copy that, alpha."
"Alpha, I repeat: fall back!"
"Relax, 'lead,' and let the pros work. Moving into position alongside target; executing in three, two, one — holy slag!"
No, a Guardian who mistreated — and endangered! — his charge was no fit caretaker, never mind how attached to each other they seemed. They had to be separated for the bitlet's own good. By any means necessary, Jazz's sealed orders read, and he'd worked for OCI long enough to know what that meant. He couldn't argue that he hadn't signed up for the dirty work, either — he'd heard every unsavory whisper about the Senate's cultural investigators long before they'd recruited him. But they'd been his ticket out of Polyhex and his passcode to a world of concerts and dance clubs and recording libraries that had surpassed his wildest imaginings. He enjoyed being in the field, too, matching wits with his adversaries and outmaneuvering them on their own ground. And if some of his assignments left a sour residue in his intakes, well, life wasn't all sunshine and energon treats, even for good little mechs who followed the rules. Look at Prowl (" — power down, power down — "), as steel-true as a bot out of the ballads of the Age of Primes. If the Powers-That-Supposedly-Were couldn't protect him, why should Jazz care what happened to a criminal?
"Alpha, what's your status? Alpha! Gamma, report!"
"Target — target pulled a energon-runner's turn, lead — a full one-eighty — and slammed alpha into the retaining wall! I'm gonna assist — "
"Negative, gamma! Get after the target!"
"What the Pit — ?!"
"Alpha's spark signal's strong; highway patrol'll take care of him. Follow the target, gamma. Beta, you're with him; delta, with me. Simmer down, now, mechs — don't play this turbofox's game — "
"Like scrap!"
No, Jazz couldn't afford to care, not when he had his professional reputation to salvage. The retrieval had been glitched from start to finish, but Jazz was damned if he'd take more than his fair share of the blame for it. Nothing he'd said or done had tipped off the target — that had been the mech's own commanding officer, smelt him. And OCI itself had denied Jazz's request for his usual support crew, instead hiring some hot-shot local contractors who didn't know Jazz from Maccadam and treated him like his armor hadn't hardened yet. He'd had to fight for control of the mission at every turn, finally hacking into the traffic-control system to herd the target and his pursuers off the highways and down into an industrial district ...
"Lead, gamma: target has transformed and is proceeding north in base mode."
"Copy that, gamma. We're on course to intercept. Can you confirm the presence of the sparkling?"
"Confirmed, lead. Ha, he's made a wrong turn — satnav shows a blind alley. We've got you now, fragger — gah! S-slag!"
"Lead, beta! Gamma's down; repeat, gamma down! Target shot him!"
"Get him out of there, beta, and call for medevac."
"Lead, t-target's climbing ... 'mergency ladder —"
"I've got sensors on target, gamma. Beta, you keep him online 'til the medics get here. Delta, cover me."
Only one way things could end after that, on a rooftop with nowhere to run and a sparkling wailing too loud to hide — a sparkling who'd clung to his Guardian's frame with all the magnetic force his servos could generate, feedback shredding his screams as Jazz pried his digits free one by one from the graying plates. He hadn't known any better, after all. A medtech from Youngling Protective Services had sedated the bitlet for transport, but by then nothing could scrub the audio file of that anguished keening from Jazz's cortex. "Slow and steady wins the race," he sang, refusing to let the tune bend into a minor key despite all the irony dragging it down. He'd gone looking for a quick wipe the very night after turning the sparkling over to YPS and thought he'd found it at the bottom of a cube, overcharging his systems to blissful oblivion. But the file was still playing when he came online again, a demonic lick accompanied by the pounding bass of a Pit-spawned helmache, and he'd realized there was no escaping what he'd done.
Any of it.
"Weapons offline, Tumbler! This is your last warning! Hand over the sparkling an' nobody else has to get hurt!"
"Power down, power down," Prowl sang with him, rushing the tempo a bit now, but Jazz let it go without comment. Nobody has to get hurt — what a lie that had been, and he bet Tumbler had known it, too. Between them they'd run a tab of deceit that neither could pay; then the other mech had skipped out, leaving Jazz to foot the bill. He'd have foisted the reckoning for Tumbler's death onto some deserving low-functioner, orders be damned, if it would've brought Prowl any comfort, but Prowl wanted justice, not vengeance. Wanted truth, like he always did. And that I can't give you. No, if he ever admitted that Tumbler had been offlined at his servos while resisting arrest, he'd also have to explain why the Senate had ordered that arrest — inform Prowl that his partner, the bot he'd trusted to guard his back — his friend — was a cultist who'd abducted a sparkling from its crèche with the connivance, if not the outright assistance, of the Corps' commander. And that would break you for sure, Jazz thought, holding Prowl's desperate gaze as if the mech's life really did depend on it. I can't do that to you, not on top of everything else I've done. Not now. Not ever.
"Raise the bridge an' close the gate," he sang, and "Close the gate, close the gate," Prowl echoed, his fans droning out an off-key accompaniment. His doorwings had spread wide, whether in aid of what was grinding away in his processor or not, Jazz couldn't say. Prowl was still rushing the beat no matter how often Jazz applied the brakes in the call, and his helm and chassis were bent forward as if to cut through a strong wind. Hang in there, mech, Jazz thought, closing down the commline that tried to open as he did so. Don't overdo it, whatever it is you're doin'.
Prowl blinked at him, almost as if he'd heard the unspoken caution, and after a moment his frame relaxed, straightening and settling. Jazz tilted his helm in silent inquiry and Prowl nodded. Weighing the slight tremors in the enforcer's struts against the clarity of his optics, Jazz diagnosed fatigue and low fuel. Time to wrap this up. "I'm drinkin' to fill my hollow leg," he sang again, this time with a gently teasing glyph set: ~high-grade~ / ~hard work's reward~ / ~end of shift somewhere~.
"Hollow leg, hollow leg," Prowl replied, once more in time, and added unexpectedly: ~mid-grade~ / ~restricted intake~ / ~medical order~.
Well, paint me pink! Jazz thought, a slow smile curling his lip-plates. "I'm drinkin' to fill my hollow leg an' then I'll power down," he sang, adding in his turn: ~tasteless~ / ~joyless~ / ~TRAGEDY~.
Prowl rose to his pedes, unobtrusively grasping the head of his chair until he was sure of his balance. "Power down, power down," he sang with Jazz as he crossed to the cupboards, "power down, power down." He withdrew a cube of energon marked with the insignia of a local pharmacy and returned to his seat while Jazz drummed a brief coda on his vambraces to bring the song to an end.
They regarded each other in silence for a moment; then Prowl broke the seal on his cube. "I would offer you some," he said as he did so, "but I gather this particular grade is not to your taste."
"Ain't that the truth," Jazz replied with mock solemnity, observing with satisfaction how Prowl's grip on the cube firmed as he drained it. Low fuel, check — easily remedied. If only his other ailments could be cured with a drink, or a drink and a song ... Jazz snorted to himself. If wishes were wings, we'd all be Seekers.
He tentatively extended his field and was neither surprised nor disappointed when Prowl didn't respond. Not much disappointed, anyway. They'd come a step today, but only a step; Prowl had a lot of walking to do before he'd be able to drive again. He wasn't even sure what Prowl had accomplished — maybe nothing more than a start at archiving that troublesome resonance. Next up: get him outta this apartment, Jazz thought, tasking a subprocessor with inventing plausible errands and considering which of Prowl's colleagues could be persuaded to perform a periodic extraction when Jazz was inevitably called back to Iacon.
Prowl turned the empty cube in his servos, his gaze abstracted. His posture was composed again and his plating still except for a twitch at one side of his mouth, as if a smile were playing seek-and-find there. Jazz couldn't contain himself any longer; he stretched out a leg and tapped Prowl's pede with his own. Startled, Prowl looked down, then up, straight into Jazz's smirk. The corners of his own lip-plates lifted in apparently reflexive answer, like a newspark imitating the expressions of its caregiver, but his optics were wide and wondering, or relieved. A little bit of wonder and a whole lot of relief, Jazz judged, and his smile stretched wider. "Better now?" he asked.
"Yes ... " Prowl replied, an edge of question in his voice, as if he wasn't sure he believed it. Jazz cocked a browplate at him, grin fading a little, and Prowl's digits tightened on his cube. Then he set it down on the table with a decisive click. "Yes," he said. "Thank you, Jazz."
Jazz's spark swelled, supercharging his field — or maybe it only felt like he'd gone nova, since Prowl didn't flinch or withdraw. "Any time, mech," he said when he was sure his vocalizer wouldn't spit static. ~Promise.~ "Any time."
Notes: A tactical ram (also known as a PIT maneuver) is "a pursuit tactic by which a pursuing car can force a fleeing car to abruptly turn sideways, causing the driver to lose control and stop" (cf. Wikipedia); an energon-runner's turn is, of course, the Cybertronian equivalent of a bootleg turn. "Hollow Leg" also has a Terran counterpart by David Lewis. I first learned of work songs from the documentary Gandy Dancers by Barry Dornfeld and Maggie Holtzberg-Call, which can be found online and which I heartily recommend.