See Pt 0 for the full contents

Fandom: Transformers Bayverse ('verse)
Author: and
Pairing: Jazz/Prowl, Jazz/Others
Rating: PG-13
Codes: Het, Slash, Death, Torture, Supernatural
Summary: Jazz may have been pronounced permanently deactivated after Mission City, but neither he nor Primus are much on him staying that way.


Full Circle 3: The Oldest Child of Primus


"You have been a long time in coming home."

The voice is deep, rich, caring ... it almost reminds me of Guardian Prime. There are days I miss that old bucket of bolts. But this is Primus, the light in my spark that tries so very hard to contain the darkness the Unmaker gifted me with. My life would be so much simpler without my adoptive carrier.

"I'm not home and you know it," I hear myself growl, more than a little surprised that the accent I've cultured in the latest phase of my life, that I insert into my speech when I'm particularly fragged off is missing completely.

"Then I welcome half of you home."

An answer for everything, the fragger.

"My home is..." a hiss of pain stops me, even though without a body I shouldn't feel pain, or anything really. I am dead. I shouldn't be here. I should be before the Unmaker ready to step into oblivion. "My home is with Prowl."

"It was not so long ago you said the same of Prima. You said it also of Baritone, Lark, Stardust and Anchor, who are longing for their bonded."

"Right," I can't help the shudder that disrupts the delicate control I've maintained over my spark since leaving Cybertron. The darkness Prowl has done so much to temper erupts, lashing out and I feel everything reverse, only this time it doesn't hurt. A moment of startled panic and the light is encased in darkness, shadowing everything, consuming what is around me.

Relief washes through me.

"Yes, you can eventually gain enough power to escape. You also know that if you leave with that much darkness, your bond with Prowl will shatter fully. He will no longer be yours. He will no longer wait for you."

"Try me," I feel the hiss of defiance, the rage.

It's odd really, watching all this as a third party. I'm doing it, I'm fighting Primus, I'm the darkness trying to consume everything as my creator does. Yet I'm also back from it, aware of far more than my own spark and its reactions.

Can my orn get any more slagged up?

Gentle laughter is the response to my defiance. "Your home is with Prowl, and yet you defy the very one who sent him to you, and who sent all those who came before. You know why you are so attracted to the light. You long to be free of my brother, to be your own agent and no longer a tool. Unlike him with his slaves, I give my children freedom to make their own destiny. You act as though you are so thoroughly in control, but he has controlled you from the beginning. You are a puppet, Jazz."

I want to deny it, deny Him, but I've known the truth of His words for a long time. As trapped as I feel when I'm bonded and the light side of my spark takes control, what self-determination I have then is honest, it's not driven by the powers outside of me. Not that I can tell anyway.

The pain lashes through me and this time I can place it. A strand of my spark being pulled out. Unlike bonding, no ... no, it's exactly like bonding, only I'm fighting it.

Is Primus honestly trying to bond to me?

Against a mech I'd stand a good chance of being the victor, of winning this duel to oblivion, but against Primus?

I fight, I extinguish. I submit, it's worse.

The presence attempts to sooth the pain, which is its own agony.

"Do not fight it. Every spark I have created is bonded to me in its purest form, and finds complete freedom there. I am able to give you the freedom you desire, but he must be removed from you first, or you will continue to be his puppet when the light is no longer in control. Bonding with those I send you, it will take the lifetime of entire galaxies to give you what you seek. In my hands, it can be accomplished in less time than it took for Megatron to tear you in two."

I tremble. Still too attuned to having a body, I think of how my frame would react to what is happening. How my chest plates are torn open, neural stops disabled, all my carefully crafted programs to survive any torture gone. I'm stripped down even further than moments after my birth.

Even for the light I desperately want to surrender to, to welcome this, I can't.

I simply can't. Jazz didn't exist without the darkness I was created for. I'm not ready to give myself up yet. Not ready to give Prowl up, not even for what is being promised.

I never understood until this moment how true my words on bonding were.

Prowl is my everything.

Absently I wonder how I can think so clearly when I'm in such agony, feeling my spark taken apart strand by strand.

Are you feeling this, my Prowl? I can feel you.

It is clear that Primus knows my every thought in this place.

"Prowl would wish you free. Is that not, ultimately, why he bonded with you, so that in binding yourself you gained your freedom? You will always be Jazz. Just Jazz unfettered and uncontrolled. Every spark has picks up darkness when it journeys away from me. When it returns to me, the darkness is not shed, but instead is rewoven into light. The strands of light I give back to you are simply the darkness I have taken away, touched by my own light and the light of those within me. The Jazz he attempted to create was never truly his own. He cannot create. I gave you the spark that he tainted and marred. You have always come from me, whether you wish to or not. It does not have to be so painful, my child. It is the darkness that pains you, not me."

"I need the darkness ... to protect ... him."

I'm not sure how I get the words out where I can hear them over the screaming of my spark. I honestly believed spark-rape and forced bonding were the worst pain in existence.

They have nothing on this.

I've never unraveled a spark before. Not like this at least. I only consumed them.

Suddenly it stops and I hear my sobs of relief. No one has drawn that sound from me. Nothing has come this close to breaking me.

But I've never fought a god before.

"I will not do this to you unwillingly. It must be your choice. The pain is my brother's last hold on you. He is trying to control and force you, not I, just as he makes caring for and bonding with others an agony for you. Until there is more light than darkness in you, and you can fight him off on your own accord, it must be done the other way. I give you your freedom. You may return if you wish, my child."

"I..."

I 'feel' myself on my knees, gasping and trembling, open and without shields before Him. He can take anything from me like this, I have nothing in me to stop it.

And He just opens the door?

I should be wary. I should be careful. I know this, and I can't care.

Only one thing exists, the fragile filament of Prowl's life force that hasn't given up on me.

"Will he know me?" I keep my head down, my submission absolute. I know I'm going back. I will be with my Prowl again. I just want to know how much it will take for him to accept me back.

"I have removed more darkness from you than all of your bondmates combined, but it is not yet enough for you to cast my brother from you. Not yet, though you will find it far more difficult to no longer care when you return."

A distant light appears, with same spectrum as Earth's sun.

"He will still know you. Everything he has given your spark is still there, and everything you have given him is still within him. He would do anything for you. He would give his own spark to my brother if it were asked of him, simply to have you back. It is fortunate my brother does not have that ability. I only ask that you relay a few messages for me, though I will not force you to do so."

"I will deliver them," I hear my voice, still gasping as I reel from this. I will do as I am bid too, perfectly. I can't help that I still fear Him like no other, not even His brother the Unmaker.

Oblivion holds no terrors.

Eternity, the past, those hold so many I never want to face.

"Deliver the messages to the doorway I will send you through. He will know what to do with them," the voice that is equal parts terrifying and gentle explains.

"You will tell the doorway that all that has happened, even the destruction of the Allspark, will only lead to something more beautiful, something new and wonderful. My child, the Prime should never regret making Earth his new home. He should not look back. Cybertron is the past, the organic children I have adopted and the children of Cybertron will make something new, something that has never been before, but has been foreseen from the beginning. There is no mechanoid and organic. All are one."

I shudder, badly unsettled by it, but then I nod in understanding and commit every detail of the message to memory.

"The other message is for the doorway alone. He is one of those whom I have adopted, who will return to me if he chooses to when his short days are done. Tell him that should he wish to remain a doorway, a conduit to my wisdom and the wisdom of the ancients, he will ask the matrix bearer to claim him, and that the guardian and the matrix bearer may share him. To be claimed by one, both, or neither are all choices full of both pain and hope for him. None of the choices before him are wrong or right, though I delight in the link between my dimension and his own. Being the doorway will at times be a heavy weight for such a small one to bear."

Though I am normally the riddle-maker, it is confounding message to me. I nod again and commit the exact phrasing to memory to be delivered to the doorway.

The golden light grows brighter and my bond with Prowl pulses a little stronger with the gateway between opens fully.

"Is there anything else ... My Lord?" I am not even sure why I say it, nor do I care. I am going home, out of this nightmare of an existence, back to my bonded. I would give far more without question or regret for that.

Laughter greets my confusion, my question and the title given. "I do believe my brother might regret the day he ever swept you into his web, my child. The final message is simple. Plenty of organic energy for your spark while it strengthens and awaits your bonded. Waking you before he arrives would be unwise for all of them, and especially for you."

One last nod and I follow the only thing that has a stronger hold on my desires than I do.

A gentle but unyielding force diverts me from my path, away from where I want to go, to Prowl, and for the first time I truly lash out, not with the darkness, but with the light.

"Back to your body," Primus gently insists, instantly making me obey, even against my wish.

Then power is all around me, drowning me and I absolutely revel in it until I comprehend awareness and sentience within it; echoes of the instantly recognizable spark signatures of four of the six previous Primes.

No, I don't want that. That is trouble. Always trouble.

Then a vaguely familiar presence is before me and I pause, feeling it become aware of me, its attention suddenly riveted on me.

~Take me to Jazz,~ I hear it say.

I am already settling back into the mindset I had alive, judging if this is friend or foe, bringing my shields and skills to the fore to be anything I need to be.

~Do you wish to come back?~ Doorway asks.

I can't help it. I laugh. ~Wishin' don't have much ta do with it. Ah going ta come back! Primus 'imself couldn't stop meh, not that th' old slagger wants ta. Says ah'm disturbing th' peace; that'd come back one way'r 'nother, as Jazz or as someone new. So open that door. Ah'm comin' back to mah bonded, mah cadre, mah home.~

~Then come back, friend. The door is open.~

~Primus send messages, Doorway,~ I repeat exactly what I've been told to, flawlessly down to the inflection. As I do, I sift through the memories of the ridiculously unshielded presence for what has become of my cadre, and erupt in a fractional moment of panic.

~Ah need mah Prowl.~ I whisper to Doorway, and see that it senses my desperate need to remain unaware until Prowl comes.

~We'll do that,~ Doorway promises, and the same kind of feeling that Prime and Primus give with their word envelopes me until I relax and slip into true mortal oblivion as soon as I recognize my own spark chamber and settle there.