"Open up, Skyfire!"
Jazz in "Attack of the Autobots"

Cliffjumper is like a cat. A backwards cat, that is. Cats tend to land on their feet when they fall. Cliffjumper, on the other hand, tends to land on his head. Now, some Autobots – like, ohhhh…Mirage, for instance – would say that Cliffjumper's landing-on-his-head tendency explains a lot about the little guy, and for some strange reason I tend to think that they aren't too far from the truth.

So it was that I ended up staring in puzzlement at Cliffjumper's feet in the aftermath of…of whatever it was that had knocked over his chair. A very loud bang, it had been, followed by a sympathetic vibration that had shaken the walls and the floor of the Rec Room, subsequently toppling Cliffjumper's chair. Not that that had been difficult to do since Cliffjumper had been leaning dangerously far back in it at the time, with his feet kicked lazily up on the tabletop and his arms folded over his chest, defenseless against gravity. For my part, I quickly ruled out a small and very short earthquake as the culprit when I happened to look past Cliffjumper's feet and caught a fleeting glimpse of something very large and mostly white flash by the open door of the Rec Room.

Skyfire. No other current resident of Autobot Headquarters was that big and that white.

A kind of hazy, vague realization, I think, dawned upon me when I saw Skyfire pass by the open door. Or rather, it was like someone had suddenly hurled an anvil at my head, one with a message attached to it, and it had hit me dead center. I had known that something had been bothering Skyfire for the past…Well, ever since he'd joined us, actually. Even so, it had been hard for me to get a handle on him, hard for me to figure out what he was really like beneath that outer layer of calm, polite affability that he always presented to the world at large. It was difficult for me to tell what made Skyfire tick, what motivated him and what irritated him and so on and so forth. It was bizarre, really, because usually I had everyone I met pegged, psychoanalyzed, and neatly categorized within about three minutes of my introduction to them. I actually prided myself on that, and it was an ability on which Optimus Prime had, I think, come to rely as well. It came in handy sometimes, usually at the most unexpected of times.

Skyfire, though, was just this huge, white enigma, even to me. He could be sort of withdrawn at times. Closed. Guarded, even. Oh, sure, he was always polite, and even outwardly friendly, and he always cheerfully did whatever was asked of him even if what was asked of him was horribly dangerous or just utterly, mind-numbingly boring. But there was…Well, there was this big part of Skyfire, I sensed, that was…that was closed to the public, a part of him that no one could touch, no matter how hard they might try. He put up all sorts of smokescreens around that locked door in his psyche in order to, I suspect, deflect from it any casual curiosity that might wander toward it and start to poke around uninvited. Smokescreens, however, usually didn't work very well with me. If nothing else, I was quite used to dealing with such things from a certain annoyingly closed-mouthed, black-and-white member of "Clan Datsun." Prowl was a veritable master of those things, and with all the practice I'd gotten thanks to dealing with him over the years…Well, let's just say that I was now quite good at seeing right through them.

Except, apparently, with Skyfire, much to my frustration. With Skyfire, even as outwardly friendly as he was, I was fairly certain that he didn't really want people to get close to him. And he was often, amazingly, even less talkative than Prowl could be even at his cozily-withdrawn-into-his-little-protective-shell worst. And it always seemed to me as if, most times, Skyfire's mind was floating somewhere off in the ether, a thousand light years away from his body. I'd often find him sitting somewhere, staring blankly off into the distance, completely absorbed in whatever it was that was flitting through his little head at that particular moment. But when I would alert him to my presence, he'd instantly snap out of his fugue, up would go that wall of amiable politeness, and suddenly I was completely shut out.

Frustrating, it was. Very frustrating.

So cracking the nut that was Skyfire's psyche, had become something of a pet project of mine. And now…Well, given the subject of the rudely interrupted conversation at hand, now I suddenly had a very enticing clue to the puzzle of that mysterious psyche of his. My curiosity was now aroused, and that, for Skyfire, was a very dangerous thing.

I stood up slowly, staring at the door with, I imagine, a perplexed but greatly intrigued frown on my face. At least, Prowl angled a curious yet wearily resigned glance up at me as I stood up. I knew that look of his well, and I knew what Prowl was about to say to me…but I didn't give him the chance. I just barreled toward the open doorway like a bloodhound on the trail of an escaped criminal.

"Be right back, guys!" I sang out merrily over my shoulder as I scooted hastily for the door.

"Or not," I heard Prowl murmur, amused, as I caught a fleeting glimpse of something big and white rounding the corner at the far end of the corridor and hurried to catch up with it.

It didn't take me long. Skyfire was big, but he wasn't especially fast. He was stalking down the long corridor ahead of me, and his stiff posture and loud, stomping strides were shooting off waves of flaming, screaming anger at me. I actually flinched at them, as if they'd physically lashed me, and I paused behind him, watching him, steeling myself.

Anger was never fun to deal with. But, as the unofficial Autobot Morale Officer and as just an All-Around General Nosy Nuisance…Well, lucky me! I was the one who most often got to bear the brunt of everyone else's anger, so I was pretty used to it by now. That didn't mean that I liked dealing with pissed-off people. It just seemed to be my lot in life. So I took a moment to sigh at the large, daunting task that was stomping its way down the corridor ahead of me, heading, apparently, toward Autobot Headquarters' main entrance. But after a moment or two of reluctant hesitation, I dashed down the corridor after Skyfire, caught up with him easily, and casually fell into step next to him, although I had to walk fast to keep up with his longer strides.

"Hiya!" I said with exaggerated cheer, craning my neck to look up at him, which was necessary given the fact that he was half-again as tall as I was. Being around Skyfire, in fact, made me realize what it must be like for a human to hang out with me. I was surprised that Spike didn't have a permanent crick in his neck or something… "Lovely weather we're having lately, isn't it?" I added.

Skyfire's reaction? He completely ignored me. Me! Well, I'm sorry, folks, but nobody ignores Jazz… Scowling, I whacked the side of Skyfire's hip with one fist in order to demand his attention.

"Yo!" I said loudly. "Down here!"

With that, Skyfire halted in his tracks so suddenly that I had to backpedal a few steps when I didn't stop as quickly as he did. He glared down at me, his massive arms folded tightly across his equally-massive chest, his shoulders bunched in anger. There was a fierce scowl plastered to his face that, given his normally placid and benign countenance, seemed utterly out of place on him. He glared at me like that for a few long moments, until I had to fight a strong urge to take a few nervous steps away from him. Finally, though, he spoke.

"What do you want?" Skyfire rumbled demandingly at me. His voice had a dark, angry reverberation to it that I had never heard from him before, and his deeply threatening tone was one that I never would have expected to hear from him and that, frankly, I didn't particularly want to hear again.

So then I did take a few steps away from him, and the vague, sketchy script for the conversation between Skyfire and me that I had mapped out in my head as I'd followed him down the corridor immediately and totally evaporated, as if someone had come along, stuck a straw into my brain, and sucked it out. My jaw moved, I think, but nothing came out. For a long moment, I was at a complete loss for words, which was something that had happened to me maybe two other times in my life.

Meanwhile, Skyfire, after those few moments spent glowering at the speechless me, snorted contemptuously and then continued to stomp his way down the corridor, the heaviness of his angry strides shaking the walls around me. The vibration at least seemed to jar me out of my speechlessness, though.

"Where are you going?" I called plaintively after Skyfire, watching him steadily advance toward Headquarters's main entrance.

"Out!" Skyfire angrily snapped over his shoulder, without breaking his stride. "Away from here. Away from you. All of you."

I stood there for a few long moments after that, frowning deeply as I watched Skyfire walk away, debating what to do. Part of me was advising me to leave Skyfire alone. It was telling me that he'd always seemed to be able to work things out for himself, that I'd never been able to reach him before, and that, as overly-emotional as he seemed to be at the moment, I probably wouldn't be able to reach him now. But another part of me realized that, since Skyfire was overly emotional at the moment, I might actually have better luck breaking through his various defenses.

Decisions, decisions

I stood there in the corridor like an idiot, motionless, while the wheels turned in my head. I stood there for what had to have been five minutes, at least. Several people passed by me, giving me odd looks, but I ignored them. I was too busy trying to decide what to do. I was too busy trying to extrapolate all the possible outcomes of either of the plans that I was debating in my head…

…And then I caught myself, realized what I was doing, and snorted exasperatedly.

Geeeeeez… I thought ruefully. Get out of my freakin' head, Prowl!

And I laughed out loud at that thought, causing Gears, who just happened to be passing by me at that particular moment, to pause and angle a really odd look up at me. Just to annoy him, I gave Gears a stupid grin and a patronizing pat on the head, and then I started to hum a cheerful tune – all of which prompted him to spear me with one of his trademark sour looks. And then I turned…and did what I would have done three months ago – before Prowl's evil, logical, tactical influence, of course – without even thinking about it.

Continuing to hum contentedly to myself, I headed at a leisurely pace toward HQ's main entrance, hoping that Skyfire hadn't decided to fly off somewhere, since I'd never find him if that was the case… Something told me, though, that he wouldn't have flown off. Something was telling me that Skyfire actually wanted to talk to someone about whatever it was that was bothering him, or that at least an unconscious part of him did, anyway. And of course he'd know that if he flew off, none of us Autobots except maybe Swoop – and he wouldn't be much good as a counselor – would be able to touch him… Therefore, I logically deduced that he'd be hanging out somewhere relatively near Headquarters, somewhere far enough away to be considered "away," but not so far away that no one would ever be able to find him…

Sure enough, I found Skyfire not even a quarter of a mile from Headquarters. I took a rueful moment to marvel at the fact that sometimes logic actually worked…and then vowed to myself that I'd never admit to Prowl that I'd ever reached that conclusion. And then I bent to the task at hand, so to speak.

Skyfire had found himself a large, flat rock, and he was sitting on it, as motionless as a statue. He'd drawn up one knee, and he was resting the elbow of one arm against it. He was staring off into the cloudless, late afternoon distance, but I was quite certain that he wasn't actually seeing anything that he appeared to be looking at, even though the mountainous view was quite breathtaking. Skyfire's focus was entirely inward, and it was my self-appointed task to bring outward all of that inward crud that was obviously bothering him so deeply. It was my "job" to get him to air his grievances, no matter how much I might not want to hear them. It was a tall order…but then, tall orders were my specialty. So, I transformed and cautiously approached Skyfire closely enough that he'd have to notice me but not so closely that he could…well, hit me.

And then, without preamble, I quietly said, "I promise I'll go away if you really want me to…but I don't think you really want me to."

Skyfire looked at me as I said that, slowly turning his head towards me, and then narrowing his eyes thoughtfully at me. He didn't say anything to me, but for the moment the walls didn't seem to be going up between us. He wasn't automatically shutting me out, and the anger that had been ruling him seemed to have seeped out of him somehow. The only problem was that the anger appeared to have been replaced by a haunted sadness. And I suddenly felt that it was all up to me to make him feel better. That, along with dealing with angry people, seemed to be my thing, after all.

A thought was insistently nagging at me now, as I looked at Skyfire sitting there looking at me. I'd been working on putting two and two together during my brief search for Skyfire. I had remembered a dogfight over the Arctic between Skyfire and another certain red-and-white jet. I had remembered a few of the words they had exchanged during that dogfight, at least those few that I had been able to make out over the deafening screech of close-range, low-flying jet engines. I had heard the word "friend" in there. I had thought, at the time, that I had been imagining it…but maybe I hadn't been, because suddenly I recalled noticing that, in subsequent encounters, Skyfire and Starscream had completely ignored each other, often flying right past each other as if the other wasn't there, never exchanging a single shot. And of course I recalled who the gang and I had been talking about just a little while ago, when Skyfire had seen fit to erupt into a sudden and completely uncharacteristic fury.

Things were starting, ever so slowly, to come together in my wee little mind.

"This is…This is about Starscream, isn't it?" I asked quietly of Skyfire.

Skyfire was still looking at me when I said that, and his eyes widened in surprise in response to my words. A look almost of alarm crossed his features…and then his mouth twisted, his resulting expression deeply troubled and uncertain. After all that, though, he still didn't say anything to me. Which left talking up to me, as usual. Swear, Skyfire and Prowl had to have been separated at birth or something.

"There, uh… There doesn't seem to be much love lost between you and him…?" I ventured cautiously, half question and half simple observation.

Skyfire continued to regard me with extreme uncertainty… but then his shoulders suddenly slumped and he slowly turned his face away from me, his gaze again settling unseeingly on the horizon in front of him. There was an odd look on his face as he stared at that horizon, too. His expression, just what I could see of it in profile, was half uncertain, half wistful, half confused, half saddened…and that was way too many halves, yeah, but there it was. It was all there. Each emotion played across his face, each warring for dominance but none of them clearly the winner in the end. Skyfire stared at the horizon for what seemed a long time, so long that I had to fight the urge to fill the resulting silence with chatter, as I normally might have done. But finally, just as I was about to say something to him, Skyfire decided to speak up.

And what he said to me…or what he eventually said to me, at least…was certainly an eye-opener.

"On the contrary, Jazz," Skyfire almost whispered, in a voice that was a stark expression of uncomprehending pain. "It appears that far too much love has been lost between Starscream and me. And I just don't… I wish that I understood why."

I was quiet for a moment after Skyfire said that, letting his words and the possible implications of them sink into my little brain. I think I had, at just that moment, an inkling of what he was eventually going to tell me…but at the same time, I wasn't yet ready to believe it.

"You…knew him, then?" I asked carefully before clarifying, "Before, I mean. Like, before the war and all."

Skyfire nodded slowly, his expression preoccupied, as he stared resolutely at the horizon.

"Yes," he eventually said, and for a long moment that was all that he said. Emotions that I couldn't identify flickered across his face before he quietly added in a soft and somewhat detached monotone, "Back then, Starscream and I were scientists, explorers. Not warriors at all. There was nothing to fight about or fight for back then, you see. And, at the time…"

His voice trailed off then, and he drew his one knee tighter into his chest, as if to make himself a smaller target. For the moment, I was content to wait to hear whatever it was that Skyfire was debating whether or not to tell me, confident now that he would tell me. And then, finally, Skyfire drew himself up, squared his shoulders, looked straight at me…and out it came, for better or worse.

"And at the time, I…knew Starscream, yes," Skyfire finished quietly, uncertainly, his voice barely audible, as if he wasn't at all sure that he should be saying what he was saying to me. "I knew all of him…" he pointedly clarified, and there was suddenly a definite warmth to his tone of voice.

"All of him?" I echoed hesitantly, after a moment's thought, after a moment spent wondering if Skyfire really meant what I thought he meant. The pieces of the puzzle were quickly coming together, were rapidly forming the Big Picture. Problem was, I wasn't sure that I was liking that big picture that I was beginning to see at all.

And, as if to confirm that knowledge that was suddenly blooming in my brain – although my brain wasn't sure if it wanted to acknowledge it – Skyfire smiled an almost teasing smile at me, something that surprised me. There was still pain in his eyes, on his face, a deep and inexpressible pain…but his burden, I suspected, was slowly lightening, the more he talked.

Unfortunately, my burden was about to get a whole lot heavier…

"You know what I mean, Jazz," Skyfire said serenely, confidently. "Or at least, given recent events in your own life, you should know what I mean."

My jaw dropped at that. I had suspected that Skyfire was going to say something like that, yes…but I hadn't really expected it. There's a difference there. And of course I knew what he was talking about. I knew the "Joy of Bonding," so to speak, having so recently experienced it myself. But in knowing that joy, I also had an inkling, now, of what the darker flip side of it might be like… And that, of course, was what Skyfire was currently experiencing.

"Ohhhhhhhh, Primus…" was my only response for a long while. In fact, in response to Skyfire's revelation, my knees suddenly decided to give out, so that I found myself ungracefully collapsing to the ground next to his rock. I sat there for quite a while, trying to marshal my reeling thoughts and reactions into something resembling coherence and then trying to come up with words, any words, that I could say to Skyfire. Words were pretty much refusing to come to me, though; I was on a roll with the speechlessness thing. But I did manage, somehow, to stammer out, "You…and Starscream…you were…you are…"

"Bondmates, yes," Skyfire confirmed, his voice steady now, the uncertainty utterly gone. He seemed, in fact, much calmer about all of this than I was, now. "We decided to take that step not long before the…accident…that's separated us for all these years…"

Skyfire continued to speak for a while after that revelation, and some part of my brain was recording what he was saying to me somewhere, for future reference if nothing else. Another part of my brain was even responding to him when a response seemed to be necessary or expected. Most of my brain, however, was just…reeling. All sorts of emotions were tumbling around in it. There was pity and empathy for Skyfire's difficult situation. There was revulsion in there, too…which perhaps wasn't fair of me, I realized, as I listened to Skyfire's words. He obviously knew a very different Starscream than the Starscream that I knew. But overall, "screaming," so to speak, above all of the other emotions suddenly plaguing me, there was just this overwhelming sense of…complete and utter helplessness and a deep sense of foreboding.

Because I knew, of course, what Skyfire would now feel compelled to do. More than that, I totally understood why he would feel that way, too. A couple of months ago, I wouldn't really have understood at all. But now…? Oh, now I understood all too well, and I couldn't help but feel, knowing the Starscream that Skyfire didn't know, that attempting to contact and reason with him would be a monumental waste of effort on Skyfire's part. And, worse, it would be a disappointing and heartbreaking waste of effort, too.

And of course, in the end, when he'd finished pouring out his heart to me, when he'd finished regaling me with tales of a Starscream that I could barely recognize, much less believe was real, Skyfire looked at me. Really looked at me. His gaze was searching, penetrating. He was trying, no doubt, to determine whether or not I was understanding him at all.

"So you see, Jazz," Skyfire concluded sadly as he stared levelly at me, "I cannot be Starscream's enemy. I've tried. I've tried very hard to fit in here, with your Autobots and with your war…but I cannot do it. Your war is not my war, and I want no part of it. Any of it. So I…I can't go on like this. I can't face Starscream across a battlefield and pretend to be happy about it, all the while hoping that no one notices that the mere thought of hurting him tears apart my very spark. I can't do it anymore, Jazz. I need to do what I must do. And what I must do is…is go away from here, away from all of you. I have to find Starscream, and I have to…to reach him. Somehow."

As Skyfire turned his gaze abruptly away from me after that confession, no doubt not at all certain as to how I was going to react to all of his news, I drew in a huge breath, in order to try to center myself, before ever so slowly letting it out.

Did I understand him? On some level, yes. I was bonded now, myself; I could certainly understand the…pull that Skyfire had to be feeling and the confusion – the hurt – that that pull would create for him, given the situation at hand. I could understand that, for him, hurting Starscream would be like hurting himself. But on many other levels, if only because I knew Starscream as he was now, I couldn't begin to understand the whole situation at all.

Yet, Skyfire was obviously in pain, emotional pain at least. Maybe even physical pain, for all I knew. And I had to do whatever I could to make it better. That was, of course, my "job." Sure, it was a self-assigned job…but it was still my job.

Silently, I reached up and over and laid a hand on Skyfire's arm, giving it a few absent pats of encouragement. Surprised, he looked sharply down at his arm, and then he stared intently, questioningly at me.

With way more ease than I felt, I whispered, "I understand, Skyfire. I understand."

Skyfire's expression quickly shifted to one of surprise, which wasn't completely unexpected. Jazz the goofball, the hedonist, the guy who couldn't be serious for more than a few seconds straight, understood him. It must have been quite the shock, I imagined. After all, I was often, ironically, a victim of my own carefree, freewheeling persona. Other people didn't seem to think that I could comprehend – much less care about – more serious things. But I could, and, more importantly, I did. Sometimes, I cared too much for my own sanity's sake, in fact.

"You…do?" was all that Skyfire could say for a moment, meanwhile, blinking dumbly at me. His gaze held mine even as I stood up and absently brushed off the layer of Earth's omnipresent dirt that insistently clung to me. "Really?"

I thought about that for a moment before sighing wearily and answering Skyfire honestly.

"I understand as well as I possibly can, Skyfire. That's about the best I can do right now. At the very least…Well, I can certainly understand the…attachment…that you must be feeling."

Skyfire nodded slightly, thoughtfully.

"I thought that you might understand or else…." he ventured hesitantly.

"…Or else you would never have told me anything," I finished for him, nodding in return. "I know. And…Primus help me, but I'll see what I can do, all right? I mean, you can leave us any time you want, of course. You're free to do so. But I'd think that it would be nice to have a welcoming place to come back to if… Well, if things don't work out exactly as you'd like them to."

Skyfire blinked slowly at me for a moment, uncertain, before he answered, "That…would be nice, indeed, Jazz. But I must confess that I am not certain that I would want everyone to—"

"Oh, I'm not gonna go and blab it to everyone," I assured him, interrupting, knowing what he'd been thinking. My gossipy reputation preceded me, naturally. "Really, I'm not as big of a blabbermouth as people think I am. I am capable of keeping a secret when necessary, you know. So it'll be a strictly 'need to know' thing, all right? In fact, I can think of only one person, really, who will need to know…"

"Optimus Prime," Skyfire said, with a certainty that bordered on…dread?

"Mmmmm-hmmmmm," I answered quietly.

Skyfire made a decidedly unhappy noise after a moment spent thinking about that, and then he announced, "I should be the one to tell him, Jazz. It should not be your responsibility to…to…"

"Run interference?" I supplied when his voice trailed off uncertainly.

"Yes…Yes, exactly that."

I shrugged flippantly at that.

"Aw, don't worry your pretty little head about it, Skyfire" I cajoled, with way more cavalier confidence than I felt. "I'm much more experienced than you are at breaking really freaky news to the ol' Fearless Leader. You just worry about…you, all right?"

Skyfire stared at me – He was thinking, no doubt; I knew the look from dealing with Prowl at his thinky-est – for quite a long while after that, long enough that I had to give in to the need to fidget a bit. My fidgeting apparently broke Skyfire out of his thinking process. Whether that was a good or a bad thing, though, I didn't know.

"All right," Skyfire said slowly, nodding to himself. He was obviously uncertain about the whole idea of confiding his personal situation to Optimus Prime, but he'd apparently decided to trust that I knew best. "And…thank you," he added, with a small but genuinely grateful smile.

I returned the smile and then said, only slightly ruefully, "Don't mention it."

I turned to leave then, but something made me pause just before transforming. I aimed one last concerned glance over my shoulder at Skyfire.

"Don't stay out too long, all right?" I said to him quietly. And, after Skyfire aimed a curious, questioning glance at me, I added, "I'll worry, y'know?"

Skyfire quirked a small, sad smile at me, but then wordlessly returned his gaze to the horizon, toward which the sun was lowering. Satisfied that he'd be all right, at least for the moment, I transformed and hit the road. But I didn't go directly back to Headquarters. Instead, I headed in completely the opposite direction, my destination the closest open highway. Skyfire, after all, wasn't the only one who needed to think for a good long while…