I wanna see your scars
All the skeletons inside
All the pain keeping you alive
And all your imperfections
Are perfect
Perfect in my eyes
Imperfect~ Davey Suicide
The package came a kel later. Jazz sat in the dispensary staring at a wall, as he'd been prone to do since his forced leave. His usual friends had kept a wide berth since he'd almost strangled Blaster leaving him to stare with Prowl's silent presence next to him.
"Hey Prowl, didn't know you had a lover out in sector eight." Blaster tossed the package on the table and sat next to Jazz awkwardly trying to draw him into conversation. The predator in the back of Jazz's processor sensed his fear, the way his optics darted around the room and his foot tapped. Prowl stared at the box with his name written on it in elegant script. Jazz stared at it as well. The shimmering design on the sides was pretty in the light. A perfect box for something special. Blaster sighed when Jazz didn't even pretend to pay attention to him. "You gonna open it?" he asked, rabid curiosity in his optics. Everyone else in the dispensary was also casting furtive looks at the package. Prowl didn't move.
Smokescreen, who had been walking with supreme care around Prowl since his display in the office approached the table. He stopped several steps away, an invisible line he hadn't crossed in septorns holding him back. "Prowl?" he inquired softly.
"What is it?" Blaster asked, tilting his head back and forth, trying to find a careless break somewhere on the pretty package.
"Mercury," Prowl's voice had hardly any volume. Jazz heard it. It echoed in his processor. The shimmering paper caught the light and burned his optics.
Blaster dropped back in his chair. "Someone sent you mercury? They get you confused with Wheeljack? Why'd they ship it like that anyway? You gonna open it or not?"
"No," Prowl said softly. A gentle hand reached out and took the package at last. "I will not open it here. He deserves more peace and dignity than that." He stood and left the quiet table with the box held gently in his arms. Jazz's optics returned to the far wall and the room blurred. Fluid filled his optics as he stared. He got up as well when someone tried to talk to him. He left the room without seeing anything.
oOo
Prowl opened the door but didn't step aside. "Jazz," he said softly.
"Let me see him." Prowl stared at him, his optics dark. He didn't move and Jazz held his ground. "Let me see my soldier," he said quietly. Prowl's wings dipped and didn't rise again when he stepped aside. The door slid shut as soon as he was in and Prowl led him to the small shrine with its flickering light. Heaviness permeated the air around the polished stones and for a moment Jazz felt like he might need to ask permission again to see Mercury's remains. But Prowl kneeled and lifted the lid of the box with two hands.
The rest of Mercury was no doubt already in a smelter and while these packages were painful at least they got something back. Jazz was certain it would have been more painful to know all of him had been tossed like scrap and garbage. This part at least would be treated with kindness. He kneeled next to Prowl and reached out to Mercury's black optics but didn't touch. The cut along his neck was neat and surgical, Jazz didn't think Shockwave was capable of being messy, but the rest of his head was hardly recognizable. Acid burns destroyed one optic, flame burns bubbled paint, and deep slices ran down where his main lines would have attached. His mouth hung partway open in a silent scream.
He pulled his hand back with a harsh intake. Prowl replaced the lid with the same care he had lifted it and a warm wing draped over Jazz's shoulders. Prowl wrapped his arms around him like he did at night when the nightmares were too much. Jazz whimpered and held him too tight feeling the deep cracks running through his spark. Prowl's wings rose blocking the limited light in the room and keeping him in shadow. Closing his optics he pressed his head against Prowl's chest and let the cracks break him apart.
oOo
By the time he thrashed himself awake he was on the floor breathing hard trying to remember if he was in a safe house or a cell. The faint smell of spice finally registered and he lifted his head. Nothing hid in the corners or shadows of Prowl's dark room. Dropping his forehead to the floor for a moment he got his breathing under control. When he was no longer on the brink of hyperventilating he pushed himself to his feet with weak numb arms. His legs shook as he walked around to the other side of Prowl's berth.
The box was gone. He stared at the empty space like he could still see an imprint of it. He could see Mercury's face in the shifting light on the floor. Dark scarred optics staring back at him. In the next flicker he saw Mercury's open mouth screaming, screaming, screaming.
Jerking back his hand dropped to his hip where his stone was stored. Numb fingers found its familiar shape. He stared at the pretty blue-grey figure. At first glance it looked just like the six Prowl had but his practiced optic could see the differences. His was wider, what might have been wings spreading over its shoulders that tapered down at where legs would be before flaring out at the base. The black one Prowl handled the most was thinner, there were no soft curves that made it easy for holding. Something about it seemed…sharp.
His optics went back to the blank space and he tightened his hand on his stone for a long moment before setting it in front of Prowl's shrine and backing out of the flickering circle of light. He hadn't realized how accustomed to the stone's weight he had become until it was no longer on him. The vacuum caused by its absence felt like it would turn him inside out, but he didn't retrieve it. Sliding down against the wall he shuttered his optics and clenched his teeth. Wrapping his arms around his legs he held himself together as nightmares clawed at him.
oOo
He woke with a short scream, jerking his head up and slamming it against the wall. "Jazz," Prowl's gentle hands steadied his head. "I thought you would message me when you woke," he said when Jazz's breathing was steadier.
Jazz shook his head. "You got work, I'm not gonna get in the way of that."
"You are never in the way, Jazz."
He sighed and rested his head on Prowl's shoulder. "I just…needed some time but I didn't…I didn't want to be really alone." The absence of his stone made him curl closer to Prowl. He felt colder without it, the crisp air of Prowl's room was now almost frigid. Behind Prowl, he could see his little stone on the floor in front of Prowl's altar. He knew Prowl had seen it too, it was impossible to miss lying there as out of place as a smudge on Sunstreaker's armor.
"This is not your usual need for quiet space," Prowl said softly. Jazz pulled back and rubbed his optics. Prowl stood and took two steps to his altar and lit his small bowl of leaves. The aroma was powerful at first, almost overwhelming, but when the smoke became only a thin stream it began tapering.
"Are you ever…" Jazz whispered. "Do you ever get scared that they'll be mad at you? That you'll frag it up too many times and they won't talk to you anymore?" Prowl didn't pick up his out of place stone or even the lovely black one he most often held, but the white-gold stone from the bottom that didn't seem to have a straight line on it. It was soft curves and rounded edges, the opposite of the sharp black stone.
"No," he said softly. "Time has no meaning for Them. They existed before and They will exist after, but that doesn't make Them without flaw." He brushed his thumb across the stone before putting it back. He picked up Jazz's stone and kneeled in front of him. "Their mistakes may be spread across the stars and eons, but They have long memories. It would be cruel for Them to expect perfection from we who are still so young." Gentle hands coaxed him forward until he was pressed against Prowl in a familiar embrace. His joints clicked as he relaxed against Prowl's solid frame. "That is why They guide us." Jazz took his stone back.
oOo
"Is everything stable?" Jazz asked as they walked to the officer meeting the next morning. He ached from his heels to the tips of his horns.
"As we can make it," Prowl murmured. It was a massive breach of protocol to discuss what was going on with XOps in the hall, no matter how vague they kept it, but grief was quickly turning to guilt the longer Jazz thought about Mercury. He should have been in Prowl's office all orn working to stabilize the assignments that had been hinging on Mercury's success and instead he'd glitched out and curled on the floor like a sparkling. "Jazz," Prowl said, "Solaris is not going to react kindly to you tearing yourself up about yesterorn." Jazz looked at the floor until they reached the door and then lifted his chin but couldn't find it in him to swagger in as he usually did.
Already in the room, Solaris sat with his feet on the table reclined in his chair sipping his morning ration. Ratchet's optic twitched and Ironhide glowered at the old Poly. "What," Ratchet said with eerie calmness when Jazz walked in, "are you doing here? Part of your leave is an absence from duties, you have no reason to even walk by this room. What are you doing here?"
"I missed your charmin' attitude and Ironhide's smiling face," Jazz replied with more venom than necessary. Solaris lifted an optic ridge and Jazz tried to loosen his shoulders. His only saving grace was that Smokescreen wasn't an officer. He was pretty sure he still couldn't be in a room with the two doctors without denting one of them.
"There is no reason for the third-in-command to become a complete recluse because of a medical leave," Prowl said with a bite Jazz wasn't used to hearing in his soft voice. "He will be reinstated soon enough and I would rather we not have to spend an entire meeting bringing him back into the fold when we have things of greater importance to discuss." He sat down in his usual seat left of Solaris and Jazz sat on Solaris' right.
Red Alert was one of the last in, a disgruntled look on his face as his optics jumped around the room. A spark arced between his horns. "Looks like a bad one," Blaster muttered across the table from Jazz. Prowl's optics watched the security director for a full ten seconds before he got up without a word and took the red and grey mech back into the hall.
"Paranoia glitch?" Solaris asked no one in particular.
Jazz nodded. "Has its perks, but some pretty bad downsides."
"Good informants, though, if you can get through the glitchy. Can't lie," Solaris added. Jazz glanced at the door while he thought about that and nodded.
"Good point."
"Are you two done discussing how useful Red Alert's serious medical condition is?" Ratchet snapped.
Solaris laughed. "Have you ever thought about how useful his serious medical condition is? I just walked onto your ship a kel ago and not one of you has even tried to access my service record." He pointed at the door. "He has though, he's looked at it, cross-referenced it and dug as deep as he can into it to make sure I'm not working both sides of this war." Jazz blinked and looked at the other officers.
"You seriously just let him walk in to the officer meetings without vetting him?" He scrubbed his face with both hands. "You just…let some strange mech who showed up one orn sit in on these meetings lower officers in this fraggin' army aren't privy to…just let him wander in here with the fragging Prime." A slightly hysterical laugh left him. "He's armed. He's got enough knives to put two in each of our sparks and a fully charged blaster and you just let him walk in here with the leader of this pit forsaken army without even verifying his name."
"Prowl told me to leave the weapons in my quarters for the first couple meetings," Solaris said. "Probably should've kept on that," he mused glancing at the door.
"But I walk in here on a medical leave and you got all kinds of questions for me." Jazz put his head in his hands. "You mechs glitch me, you really do."
"I'm beginning to think it wasn't the job that put you on leave, it was this mess," Solaris said.
Ironhide growled and Blaster gave him a deadly look but the door opened before the situation could devolve and Prowl walked in with Red Alert sticking close behind him. He still watched all of the officers and especially Solaris but the panicky look was gone. "Shall we begin?" he asked softly. He stepped away from Red Alert but kept one wing against his arm while scrolled through his datpad to the orn's agenda.
"Yes we can," Ratchet snapped. "You tell Bluestreak to get his aft down to medbay, he missed his firewall patch."
The wing against Red Alert's arm twitched. "He received his firewall upgrade from First Aid before he departed," Prowl said. "As I thought you had relegated those mundane tasks to your apprentice and to Hoist while you supervised repairs and transferring our wounded back onboard." Ratchet narrowed his optics but didn't argue. A dull pain in his molars alerted him that he had his jaw clenched tight enough to make his face ache.
He messaged Prowl. Why didn't you tell me Blue was out?
It doesn't pertain to anything happening in XOps.
Jazz gave him a hard look out the corner of his optic but Prowl was on to the civil unrest in a distant colony. Solaris already looked bored and Jazz was pretty sure he had less than a kel to get himself together before the impromptu desk job put Solaris on medical leave, too.
oOo
A/N: Just as a heads up, the next few chapters are why I chose to rate this fic M. So, you know, hug some kittens or something.
And, I'm so glad someone got my science joke in Chp. 1! Thank you Jazzilyn Hall
Thank you for reading/reviewing/following/favoriting!
