overall warnings: oddness and supernatural implications
further warnings for this story: non-graphic slash
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Were-Cars Diptych Six: Partner
Story Two: To Search in Stealth
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Prowl gazed at the destruction of Praxis. Spires of debris reached to the sky. Around him, the Autobots dug through the wreckage. Occasionally they found a survivor, but too often they found only dull, lifeless shells. Prowl directed their efforts, his processor effortlessly calculating where debris had fallen in ways that there was a chance a survivor had whether the destruction intact, and where they would find only corpses.
His logic simulator provided him with other information as well. He walked by a destroyed building and instantly had the directions, the speeds, and the models of the weapons of the were-jets that had destroyed it - including that one of the jets had tampered with the power capacitor to increase the power of his pulse cannon. Dangerous that, especially for a were-jet. Tampering with a power capacitor increased the chance of the weapon overloading by thirty-eight percent in were-cars, and by fifty-three percent in were-jets. Another building's door was smashed in and he knew the mass of the tank that had assaulted it. He directed the searchers to the building the jets had taken down and told them not to bother with the one the tank had assaulted. There was a chance the were-jets hadn't penetrated into any basements the building may have, while the tank would have searched the building as he destroyed it.
He did not share his comrades' elation when a single battered survivor with a severely stressed cooling system was pulled out of the intact basement he'd predicted was there. Nor did he share in their sorrow when the corpse of the survivor's bondmate was pulled out. She'd died of energy deprivation. The medics were reporting no such thing wrong with the survivor - seventy-three percent chance the femme had given her bondmate her energy via their secondary networking cords.
They moved on.
As the hours wore on, they ceased pulling live mechs from the wreckage entirely, more and more having died of energy deprivation rather than injuries. Prowl called a halt. Many of the Autobots protested, but most were of his Track and backed down without further prompting. Thirty-three percent chance that those not part of his Track would sneak back to search the rubble without orders.
Illogical. But there was also very little Prowl could logically do to stop them from doing so.
He went to the medics to get their reports on the survivors and what supplies they would need to repair them. After that he was going to Supply to ensure Medical had those supplies.
That night everything he should have felt came crashing onto him all at once. Why? Why? Why? There was no shielding himself from the question this time.
His spark answered only with sorrow and rage.
No one dared investigate the crashes and shrieks coming from Prowl's temporary quarters.
The next day, the Autobots resumed the search, this time with the knowledge that they would only be finding sparkless shells. Prowl once again stalked the ruins, flat emotionless optics taking in the piles of debris and directing their forces in the recovery and keeping everyone away from ruins too unstable to search.
He felt nothing. Nothing as they pulled yet another corpse from where it had been buried. Nothing as the priest sent the spark to the Well of All Sparks. Nothing as he looked in the darkened optics. Nothing as he ordered it join the other bodies in Supply, to be taken apart and salvaged for the living. Only the spark chambers of these mechs would be interred. They needed the parts. These dead mechs did not.
Logical.
The others muttered, but there was no arguing with Prowl's cold assessment.
Grumblings grew louder over the course of the day, as mechs tired of obeying Prowl's dictates of logic. His Track grumbled, but subsided when faced with the flat threat of their First's gaze and the flick of a sensor panel. Other Autobots were not so easily silenced. They grumbled but until they refused an order there was nothing he could do.
They obeyed, that day. The chance that mechs would start protesting more than vocally would go up to sixty percent tomorrow.
Prowl could not feel dread any more than he could feel anything else while his logic simulator was running, but he knew what would be coming. His logic could analyze emotion as he could anything else, especially in mechs he knew. And he knew himself better than he knew anyone else. He knew what he'd be feeling as soon as he switched the logic simulator off. If nothing else, he had the memory of the previous night to extrapolate from. He hesitated, taking refuge in emotionless logic for as long as he could.
"You can't keep it on forever." Prowl didn't even turn. He was incapable of true surprise and the fist vibration of the mech's voice had told him there was no threat here. He took a moment to calculate how Jazz could have gotten here, and how he could have gotten into the Autobots' camp unnoticed, but then deliberately put it aside as a useless calculation. Jazz defied logic in all ways, coming and going according to no laws except his own. Prowl had learned to expect him to be there, even when there was every reason to believe he would be somewhere else. Even when he thought he knew exactly where he actually was.
"I know." After exactly twelve hours, seventeen minutes, three minutes, and fourteen milliseconds, the logic simulator would crash his processor and put him in the care of the medics. "At most I can run the logic simulator for another two hours and three minutes."
Jazz hissed. Prowl felt his energy field come within Prowl's sensing range, but could not hear the silver mech approach. He turned and flicked his sensor panels up. He was incapable of mercy, of understanding that such things were not necessary with Jazz, who understood this and easily tilted his head. Minimal submission, but enough to satisfy the cold logic that would tolerate no insubordination from a member of his Track, no matter how unorthodox a member he was.
Ritual over, Jazz stepped forward again. "You're going t' turn it if off now?"
"I was contemplating the merits of doing so when you interrupted."
A rueful chuckle. "Don't blame you for hesitating. Heard about the tantrum you threw last night - it's all over camp."
"I had figured it would be." Numbers and calculations flittered through he processor as he was momentarily distracted by the probabilities of who was talking to whom about his "tantrum".
Jazz took another step forward. "C'mon Prowl. You and I both know its time t' come back t' us."
"I know." Still he hesitated. Jazz stood very close to him now; closer than Prowl would let any other were-car stand in such a vulnerable moment. Even Sunstreaker would be driven away from him right now, and Sunstreaker did not submit, ever. There might be a fight, which even Prowl's logic simulator could not guarentee him a victory, if Sunstreaker tried being this familiar with his First. Not so with Jazz.
Fearlessly Jazz wrapped his arms around Prowl, and even the cold, untrusting logic let him. The smaller were-car was too short to lean up and whisper into Prowl's audio, but the intimacy was there. "You know I won't let you fall."
"I know," and with that Prowl knelt to bring himself down to below Jazz's height. It was his last act before he surrendered to the storm of emotions he hadn't felt when digging out bodies.
Disgust was met with assurances that he'd made the right choice. Rage was met with shared rage. Sorrow met with shared sorrow. Grief with shared grief. Curses with soothing words and sobs with support. Despair with promises of justice - justice the two of them would bring against Megatron, alone if they had to, but they weren't alone. And that all encompassing, damning question of why, why, why, was met only with crooning comfort and the sorrowful assurance that life was not fair, not logical, and would that he could make the world follow Prowl's ideals, Jazz was certain the entire world would be better for it, but that was not life, was not the will of Primus and so they lived on a flawed world.
And finally, long in the night, when Prowl's storm of emotion finally, finally, focused on the mech holding him with lust and a desire to forget, if only for a single shining moment of joy, was met with love.
After a frantic stimulation of their bodies and their energy fields - Jazz was sensitive to audial stimulus, Prowl to Jazz's wonderful magnetics - they connected their networking cables into each other's receiving ports. Jazz, generous Jazz, gave him that moment of joy and more. He gave Prowl the simple pleasure of the interface, and the more complex pleasure of understanding. The storm subsided.
And so Prowl turned to the shadows in his partner's spark. At first Jazz shied away, shielding him from the sights, the sounds, the deeds, the choices he was faced with in Decepticon territory. Tonight is for you, Prowl.
Generous Jazz, his beautiful Dancer. Prowl sighed certainty into their connection. I will not take without giving.
And so, like the growth of crystals in the mineral rich acid puddles left after a rainstorm, Jazz let him examine all that he was.
Jazz's nightmares were met with comfort. What he saw in Decepticon territory, Prowl could only hold him and croon comfort to him. Each choice, each failure, was examined, judged and Jazz knew with Prowl's certainty that he too had made the right choices. And the lingering pain of Redline's death that would never completely fade, Prowl only held in his spark as closely as Jazz did, a shared burden.
The word went unsaid between them, a shared thought that twisted and twinned around itself over their connected processors. Silent, for there were those who levied the accusation of treason against anyone who spoke Kaonex, never mind that this word had been one never used by the Decepticons: Partner.
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End: To Search In Stealth
End: Diptych Six