Been a couple of months, huh? I know it's been a while, and that's been bothering the hell out of me. Life's been hard and only getting harder. I really had to fight for this chapter, because it did not want to come out at all. And, by the end of it, I still think it's trying to spite me a little. I cannot wait for the end of my university year in a couple of months, if I don't die before then. Mostly, I just hope everyone enjoys this chapter, basks in the relief that Where You and I Collide is not dead (it's just hibernating), and you are all so overjoyed that you all leave reviews expressing your undying love for this story. 8D
My most sincere thanks to the reviewers of the last chapter: Optimus Bob, renegadewriter8, Peacewish, Sideslip, White Aster, CNightJoy, Wanderling, VyxenSkye, Wind of the Dawn, FunkyFish1991, Shantastic, SimpleRhapsody, DemonSurfer, evilbunny777, Camfield, Faecat, TransformersLover95, Nightblooming Orchid, Darkeyes17, Phoebe Turner, Yuro-Faita911, Pruhana, SwedishDragon, Prowls-little-angel, Daklog73, smoking caramels, Midnight Marquis, luirina, obsessivesyndrome, Kida Bridger, Fianna9, DitzyMusicLover, Wise Crack Idiots, femme4jack, A Lurker, Jessie07, StarscreamII, Uniasus, Xenophobic Doll, TTFan, Starrie Wolf, Psyche102, Gentle Kit, RevielleWolfie, and JetStorm the Sparkling.
Special thanks to Lecidre, who happens to be in the process of amazing me with all her reviews on all the chapters I've been posting over the months. My mind is officially blown.
Chapter 35
The pain of ice accumulating in their joints and the nausea induced from the EM fields were nothing compared to the tension mounting in the two bots who were currently scaling down a sheer cliff. The surface was slick with ice; every foothold threatened to crumble under their weight. It was a long way down to the bottom, disappearing into a foreboding murk of darkness below. The only sound made between them was their grunting from the effort of hauling their heavy frames down a wall of death-traps, fingers burning as they clutched futilely to slick crevices, feet slipping on crumbling cracks.
It had taken nearly three joors of quiet reconnaissance to find an area suitable enough for scaling down. Shockwave had predictably possessed the foresight to choose a location whose access was limited. The deeper section of the gorge he had concealed his lair in was surrounded on all sides by sheer metal cliff, ensconced amongst a labyrinth of natural twisting canyons whose walls were warped from time. Main access appeared to be through airships only, requiring vertical lift-off and descent to come and go. Neither Jazz nor Prowl were foolhardy enough to attempt scaling the gorge from where they first discovered Shockwave's base. No doubt the Decepticon had the area wired for motion, sound, and energy signatures.
There was a high chance that simply approaching the base as close as they did had alerted their quarry to their presence.
Nevertheless, Jazz pressed on with a determination that bordered on psychotic. He had searched through the dark for anything that might lead him down into the deeper pit.
For the entirety of the three joors, Prowl had stayed as close as he physically could. He stayed with Jazz as much for his own protection as for his partner's. Whatever sort of hallucination Jazz had suffered during his wild chase through the storm, it seemed to have brought out a mild madness in him. The familiar and haunting disconnect with reality that Prowl recognized from his first few orns of knowing Jazz in Straxis. It was there in the glint of his optics, the way he moved; how the physical world seemed to barely register for him, passing him by like a shade. If he felt the cutting of ice forming in his joints, he gave no hint. Nor did he show further discomfort from the pole's hostile environment. Prowl did not sense outright malevolence in his partner, but instead he sensed the possessed need Jazz now suffered to win whatever game he thought he was playing with Shockwave.
Jazz's determination had brought them to their current predicament, hanging over an abyss some distance away from Shockwave's base. One wrong move would send them plummeting to their deaths.
Prowl fixed his gaze ahead, calculating every nook and cranny he contemplated placing his fingers in. What was the density of the metal? The state of decomposition and instability? The thickness of the ice covering it? He took comfort in the numbers that sped through his processor. A cold comfort, iced over much like the rest of his current situation. His nausea and vertigo had not abated, but instead seemed to throb inside him. Every sudden movement brought about a dizzying, terrifying moment when he thought he was falling to his death. Under normal circumstances, he was not afraid of heights. However, in this special case, the moment he looked down he knew it would be his undoing.
And Primus, did he despise himself for the weakness.
What use was he in this kind of environment? The poles were foreign to him, damaging even with EM shielding in place. Instead of being Jazz's partner, Prowl had become parasitic. He was forced to rely on Jazz's knowledge of the poles to make it through without succumbing to the elements. Prowl was in such a state of vulnerability that he depended solely on Jazz's protection. There was no tactical advantage in possessing a partner of inferior ability. He was a liability. A terrible, worthless liability that could easily get them both killed.
A noise below his feet announced that a hold Jazz had been attempting to use crumbled before he could brace his full weight on it. The saboteur cursed quietly, scrabbling for a new purchase on the slick cliff.
Prowl wished he could cycle air through his vents to clear his head, taunted by the fact that he had to remain airlocked. He focused on the numbers in his head instead. The more he stuck with his most basic programs, the less he suffered in the rest of his frame. The notch to his left held an eighty-seven percent chance of holding his weight; he took it and moved downward. The foothold to his right was sixty-seven percent likely to brace his weight, but crumbled after having three-quarters of his weight braced on it. He sucked in a sharp drag of air, his spark flickering frantically in his chest while his tanks roiled emptily. His leg kicked out, finding another hold with a higher chance of supporting him. This time it held.
"Hey," Jazz called from below. "How are ya holdin' up?"
It was the first full sentence Jazz had used in three joors, and was also the first set of words which acknowledged Prowl's presence in a conscious manner. All previous mutterings had been self-directed and erratic. Prowl made the mistake of looking down at his partner, immediately hit with the consequences of doing something so stupid. He saw the dark stretch of distance awning below them, and no matter how desperately his logic centre fought to recognize the true measurable depth of the pit, his other senses rebelled with a violent fit of vertigo. His visual perception of the world took a sickening flop, rippling, and then whirling in a manner that made his empty tanks roil with a vengeance. If it were not for the automatic locking sequence he induced in all his motor functions, he would have fallen from the wall and already be on his way to a horrible death.
Somewhere below Prowl's feet, a flicker of white glittered in the dark.
"Prowler?"
"I am coping," Prowl replied stiffly.
Silence settled heavily, pregnant for a moment as it felt as if Jazz would say something else. The words never came. Jazz looked down, dashing out the light of his visor, followed by the sound of him resuming his careful trek down the wall.
Prowl clung to his position for a while longer. He waited until the worst of his vertigo faded, and then eased himself down in a far more careful manner than before. His invested in the numbers that flashed through his mind were among one of the few things which kept him focused enough to stay on course. The tension wires in his arms and legs began to feel as if they were made from silicon rather than tensile steel. His joints burned with fatigue. His processor pounded which a chronic headache that had not gone away since entering the boundaries of the pole, becoming worse the longer he stayed.
A gentle pair of hands slid across his armour, bracing his weight at his waist.
"You're almost ta the bottom," Jazz murmured.
Prowl revved weakly, and then almost immediately choked the noise to silence. For one, they could not afford any extra audible noise beyond necessary communication; inter-cranial communication was limited due to Prowl's inability to handle himself in heavy EM conditions. There also was a part of Prowl disgusted by his weakness and was determined to maintain his stoicism. He had been the one to insist on coming on this mission and he would be damned if he was the cause of this mission's failure. A moment of spite for himself nearly had him shaking off Jazz's hands. Common sense reminded him at the last astrosecond that if he shook off Jazz's hands, it was likely he would shake himself off the wall and cause unnecessary noise.
A moment later, the tips of Prowl's feet scraped the ground. He detached from the jagged holding that dug brutally into his fingers; his knees tapped the ground quietly as he knelt. The trembling in his frame from exertion could not be helped, nor could the steady pounding in his head. Prowl did not have the luxury of cycling air to help settle his churning insides, fearing the cold would do more damage. He remained on the ground until he was certain he was stable. By the time he was on his feet again, Jazz had moved a short distance away.
"Jazz?" Prowl murmured hoarsely.
Jazz's silhouette was a faded smudge of gloom. The darkness enveloping him was heavy, seeming to possess a physical quality that shifted in time to the subtle jerk the saboteur gave to acknowledge his designation being called. If Prowl had not been watching the saboteur out of the corner of his optic, he would have lost him completely. To lose Jazz now would be life-threatening for Prowl, and it seemed the sole responsibility of the tactician to keep up with Jazz. Jazz's normal mindset did not tend toward helpfulness, and his current unusual state seemed even less inclined.
Prowl watched his partner stare into nothingness. It was disturbing to think that Jazz might have been able to discern something from the darkness that Prowl could not fathom. The darkness shifted as Jazz crouched, shifting his claws through the frozen debris that littered the ground. He stood up again, walked a short distance down the uneven natural corridor, and then walked back. A strip of white light floating eerily detached in the murk marked Jazz's progress back to Prowl.
There was no reasonable explanation for the prickling feeling of unease which made its way down Prowl's armour. As soon as Jazz was near enough, Prowl reached for him. His long fingers stiffly encircled the saboteur's wrist, briefly surprised by the coldness that radiated from the silver armour. Taking into account the low ambient temperature, Jazz was much colder than he should have been; a dangerously low external temperature which should have indicated plummeting internal temperatures. His lubricants should have started freezing in his lines by now.
It was as if all the energy that would have been used to keep Jazz alive had been diverted elsewhere.
Fumbling for something to say, Prowl settled on the obvious. "You are freezing."
Jazz stared down at the hand that held him and did not seem to recognize it. Behind his visor, his optics flickered as a thousand thoughts whirled by in tandem. His demeanour remained haunted and disconnected, suffering a bout of vagueness until Prowl's hand tightened fractionally around him. His frame jerked, tensing. Suddenly the world came back into focus. His thoughts settled and the mild madness abated long enough to focus on Prowl's faceplate. Blurred details came back into focus, recognition flickering in his optics.
"Ah don't feel cold," Jazz said absently. "Ah don't feel anything at all."
Prowl tugged the mech closer, shuddering as a blast of frigid air blew off the silver bot. "Are you alright?"
"Of course Ah am." He shook his head. His shackled hand tried to tug away to no avail. Prowl was not ready to release him. "Ya may or may not believe meh, but something's wrong."
"I can see that," Prowl said, gaze narrowing on his companion.
"Not with meh. Ah said Ah'm fine." Jazz shifted, again testing the grip on his wrist. Prowl's hand remained like a shackle. He frowned, disliking the mild confinement. "Something else is wrong. Ya know, out there." His chin jerked out in a vague direction.
"What do you mean?" Prowl asked, squinting out into the same darkness which Jazz seemed able to read so well. There did not appear to be any outright signs that something was 'wrong'.
"Ah don't know what Ah mean," Jazz replied distantly, his head turning as he spoke. He stared most intently at all the dark spaces which appeared categorically darker than all the others. He stared as if he could really see something that wasn't there to regular optics.
"Please try to explain it to me," Prowl urged. "I do not want to be blindsides down here. Any insight you can offer would be appreciated."
Jazz's gaze wandered back to Prowl. "It's the same as when Ah look at a bot and know exactly what makes them tick. My master..." he fumbled, shaking his head. "That hallucination Ah chased, it reminded meh that Ah've been wasting mah time looking without really seeing. Now Ah'm seeing. Ah know something is wrong, but Ah can't tell what."
Prowl did not say anything, but instead watched Jazz closely. He could see the madness that lurked in Jazz's mind, glinting in the light of his visor. The madness that had always been there, from the first moment that they had met. The madness would always be there, no matter how changed Jazz had become since he had left Straxis. Prowl knew that his partner's particular brand of madness was a part of what made him so effective at everything he did. It was something that Prowl did not understand, and, if he was completely honest with himself, he knew he would never understand it.
But...
Jazz shifted, tugging on his still-shackled wrist. "Ya wouldn't have followed meh down here if ya didn't trust meh."
"I trust you more than I care to say," Prowl admitted quietly. "But what happens if I let go of you again? I know you will go back to being how you were before; you might forget about me and go running off on your own. You might freeze, or worse- Shockwave might find you." He looked down at his fist as it circled Jazz's wrist. "What will happen if I let you go?"
"I don't know," Jazz breathed, sounding eager and breathless. So long as Prowl held him, he was anchored. But the moment Prowl no longer held him in place... "Let meh go and we'll both find out."
Prowl felt his chest churn uneasily, but it was not from EM-induced nausea. "And if you run? If you forget me?"
A smirk appeared in the light of Jazz's visor, in the way he tilted his head. "Ah could never forget ya. Even back there-" he nodded upwards toward the cliff, "you were in the back of mah mind. Ah went first down the cliff so that if ya fell, Ah'd catch ya. You're not so easy ta forget."
Prowl's fingers loosened, but did not release completely.
Jazz could see the uncertainty that clouded his partner's gaze. In fact, he could see everything. He could see Prowl standing in front of him in the gloom, and then he could see more. See deeper. See things he didn't yet understand. He saw things he did understand, like the fear, and the self-deprecation. Wariness, pain, exhaustion, and anger. Prowl's need to trust at war with the logic that dictated nearly all aspects of his life.
"You trust meh, Prowl," Jazz said softly, coaxingly. "Trust meh enough ta let meh go." His free hand came up to rest on the hand that gripped him. Prowl's armour was not nearly as cold as Jazz's, but it trembled nonetheless. "Even if Ah do run, Ah'll only run fast enough so that ya can catch meh in the end. Ya caught meh once and ya can do it again."
Prowl found his fingers unhinging, his hand falling back to his side.
"Thank you," Jazz sighed.
Prowl nodded, observing the immediate change that came over his partner at the loss of their connection. Jazz's visored expression began to cloud as his thoughts scattered. The look of recognition faded. His madness came back, drawing him off into a world of his own that Prowl seemed able to touch but never comprehend. Jazz was at his most dangerous like this, devoid of the developed conscience that had grown on him, but there was no outright malice about him. Amoral, but he wasn't out to hurt anyone for fun.
The distance that came between them as saboteur stepped away seemed like an insurmountable chasm. A rush of empty air blew between them. Every line in the silver mech's frame tensed; his gaze swung elsewhere, seeing things that were invisible to all else but him. Prowl was all but forgotten. He suffered a moment of intense fear, thinking his trust had been for nothing if his partner dashed off. As always, Jazz managed to surprise him.
"Come on," the saboteur murmured without looking back. "We have ta go."
Prowl startled for a moment, and then managed to lurch forward. Jazz was already several steps ahead, near-invisible as he slunk in the shadows. He was as silent as a shadow, more graceful than any creature Cybertron had ever beheld. Prowl was shamefully not as graceful, forced to brace himself against the nearest walls and inch his way along. His equilibrium refused to steady. Every time his feet stumbled, the sound was like a gunshot; too loud, too obvious. At any moment, Shockwave's forces should have been descending upon them because of Prowl's inadequacies.
That worst case scenario never happened.
Neither did the second worse case scenario: Jazz running off. True to his word, he was only fast enough for Prowl to catch him in the end. Beyond that, it was clear that the saboteur had lost himself inside his own head.
They trekked for what felt like joors. Prowl's limbs, already sore from their recent exertion, became like leaden weights. His visor wavered terribly. To spite him, his gyroscopic sensors decided to spin off in all directions and inform him that a straight line was no longer a viable option to walk in. Every shift in the darkness threatened to make him heave. When a break in the darkness came, Prowl did not know if relief was in order or if his own damnation had just been shone on him. Just beyond the cover of the collapsed wall of rocks Jazz now crouched behind was the compact base where Shockwave undoubtedly resided. Prowl fell to his knees at Jazz's side, shocking pain shooting up from the joints as they protested the movement.
"Shh," breathed Jazz.
Prowl resisted the urge to snarl. He found his patience at an all-time low.
Jazz craned his neck to get a better look at the compound. It was a small ensemble, consisting of three buildings in total and a large perimeter surrounding the place. Bright lights illuminated every corner. As Jazz had suspected, there were motion, sound, and energy detectors stationed at intervals around the perimeter. No chances of anyone sneaking in from any direction. The look was compact and utilitarian, with a side of foreboding. The air was several degrees warmer here, charged by the powerful field surrounding the base.
"This is it," the saboteur murmured, exhilaration making his tone breathless.
Prowl squinted against the stark lights that glared over the utilitarian base. "I had expected something a little more foreboding."
"It's what's inside that counts," Jazz replied with poisonous delight. He had forgotten about his promise to check for the missing Neutrals Moonracer had solicited from him. He had probably forgotten that promise long before arriving in this place. Instead, Jazz's focus was Shockwave. All it had taken was a few mysterious files about the scientist and one meeting with him and Jazz knew he had found a challenge in the Decepticon scientist. Someone who was ruthless, sparkless, and not afraid to go beyond the limits of depravity. Shockwave was Jazz's equal in some way, and the thrill of hunting the monster down and besting him, slaughtering him, elicited the same excitement that solving the complex mess called "Prowl" did.
A frown laced with tension bracketed Prowl's mouthplates. He raised a hand to the side of his head where the throbbing was the worst. "How do you propose we get inside? I assume someone like Shockwave would have this place highly guarded."
"It's highly monitored, but not highly guarded," Jazz replied while his sharp optics surveyed everything there was to see. His vagueness was transformed into a deadly form of focus as sharp as a diamond blade. "Shockwave is too Top Secret ta have too many Decepticons around. He'd have access ta a limited, permanent crew, but he likes his science more. He'd rely on his own machinations more than anyone else."
"You gathered this from a couple of files on this bot and a single meeting with him?" Prowl wondered skeptically.
"If Ah were lookin' ta keep mah existence and the things Ah did a secret, then it's what Ah would do. Actually, Ah'd just kill everyone and go do mah own thing, but Shockwave has take make a couple of concessions for science," Jazz said. "Just look around. Do ya see anyone watching the perimeter?"
In truth, Prowl did not see anyone. Not a living spark appeared to be anywhere within or near the vicinity of the base. The full extent of the lifelessness of the base brought about a disturbing uncanny sense. He did not like how quiet the setting was. Even if there was only a limited team assigned to Shockwave, there should have been evidence of those members somewhere on the base. Prowl slid a wary glance in Jazz's direction and saw that the saboteur had already realized the same thing. They had found Shockwave's lair, but there was something terribly wrong about it.
"Ya know, Ah don't even see any lights on," observed the silver mech, frowning at the black windows that stared back at him with accusing optics.
Prowl repressing the rising tide of dread within him. "Energy-saving implementation?" he offered futilely.
"No," Jazz replied. After a moment, he added, "Ah don't like this. Doesn't feel right. Doesn't look right."
"Perhaps this is the thing you sensed was "wrong" when we first came down to this level?" Prowl said.
"Maybe." A long silence followed, while Jazz stared unblinkingly at the base with an intensity that bordered on insanity.
'It is insanity,' Prowl thought wryly as he sat hunched over, cradling his head in his hands. He could not bear to think of what it might mean in the base was already evacuated. There were too many conclusions to fathom, but the most prominent of which did not bode well for Prowl or certain members of his supposed "family". Shockwave would have first needed to learn of someone on his trail before he would be prompted to leave such a well-equipped and advantageously remote facility. It was too much of a coincidence otherwise. The informant would have had to of been someone aware of Jazz and Prowl's movements, and only one designation came to mind.
The sickly churning tide of dread roiling inside of Prowl got worse.
Jazz shifted, a soft growl emanating from him. "No one's been in or out of any of the buildings for at least a couple of orns." His fist clenched tightly, landing one quick, violent punch to the ground.
While the movement itself did not surprise the tactician, it was the sudden waft of warm air that drifted from Jazz that proved unexpected. What once had been an internal glacier prompted by what Prowl suspected was an internalization of the power reserves necessary to support the higher power complex thought patterns Jazz's processor was capable of, was now transformed into something else entirely. Daring a glance at his partner's faceplate, Prowl was comfortable to hazard a guess that Jazz was not overly pleased to know that Shockwave had got the better of him. All of their combined effort, the orns they spent flying here, tracking through this Primus-foresaken pit, all for nothing because Jazz's real prey had already moved on. If anything, this would cement the saboteur's obsession with the Decepticon scientist, much in the same way it had cemented his relationship with Prowl.
That anger inspired by Shockwave's perceived superiority in whatever personal competition Jazz had conjured in his head now translated into an outpouring of heat. Any hotter and steam might have started billowing from him.
"Jazz-."
"Don't," the saboteur snapped. "Ah don't want ta hear it."
"Too bad," Prowl said, forcing himself to sit straight and and not appear weak. He did not want to risk Jazz attempting to prey upon his weaknesses because he was in a bad mood. "Shockwave may not be here-."
"He's not. He's gone," Jazz spat, the light behind his visor briefly flashing red. "That fragger knew we were coming."
"Nevertheless, we still have a mission to complete," Prowl said.
"But-!"
"No, listen to me. Regardless of Shockwave's presence, or lack thereof, you agreed to come out here because of Moonracer. You told me she asked you to find out if Shockwave had taken Neutrals from this area; you were to find them, and, if possible, bring them back. Those were the original parameters of this mission. They will be carried out."
Jazz fixed Prowl with a glare so potent that the tactician briefly wondered if he was about to be assaulted by his partner.
The blaze of white behind that inscrutable diamond visor reached a fever pitch just as the tactician took a calculated risk by reaching out and wrapping his long fingers around Jazz's hand. He gave the lukewarm appendage a squeeze. He felt the warmth radiate through his own armour, waking his numb neural circuits from stasis. White light flickered for a moment, and then came the expected shift the heralded Jazz's return to mild lucidity. He sagged, tension draining out of him. Rage still boiled beneath the surface, but now held at bay with the steadiness of Prowl's touch.
"Ah hate it when ya make sense like that," the silver bot murmured, though he didn't pull his hand away.
"Lucky for you, I tend to make enough sense for the both of us," Prowl sighed, only to grimace. If he was not mistaken, the burning sensation currently searing the inside of his cranium was a set of neural circuits within his processor burning themselves out. "Ah..." His hand came to the side of his head of its own volition.
Jazz's expression morphed into blatant concern, leaning in to get a better look at Prowl's shadowed faceplate. "You're not doing so well, are ya?"
"I believe my head will split in two if I remain out here any longer," Prowl lamented, though it might have been a poor attempt at humour. His dim optics peered up at Jazz with evidence of a wan smirk. "At the very least, smoke will begin to billow out of the cracks in my plating."
"As soon as we're outta here, we're gonna work on your sense of humour," Jazz said.
"I will add that to my list," Prowl drawled.
Jazz murmured something else, but Prowl did not catch it. He barely even noticed when the saboteur shook his hand loose of the frosted fingers that held him. It was only from the edge of his blurring vision did he see familiar silver claws running alongside his faceplate, not quite touching. The air flexed with the disturbances in Prowl's personal field, tingling down Jazz's sensitive palm. A secondary charge came into the air as the generators in the saboteur's palm activated.
"That will make it worse," Prowl coughed, leaning away tensely.
"Oh. Right." Jazz leaned away, his faceplate frowning behind his battlemask. Prowl did not have the strength to meet his partner's gaze, but he felt the clarity with which he was being evaluated. The sharp, lucid gaze of someone who wasn't lost inside their own heads anymore. Jazz's concern for him had been enough to finally allow the saboteur to settle down.
"Ah'm gonna find a way in, alright? Stay here an' don't move. Ah'll be right back."
Before Prowl could reply, whether to object to being left behind or wish the stupid fragger luck in trying to break in, Jazz was gone. In the cold emptiness that followed, Prowl resigned himself to the fact that he was not going anywhere. In fact, he was going to make himself comfortable while he waited for Jazz to return. His frozen joints ached as he shifted over the uneven ground. Eventually he found a reasonable spot to rest his back, leaning his head against the collapsed wall in a way that did not make it want to explode. He blinked once, twice, and then let his shutters stay lowered over his optics. The soothing dark was better than the harsh glow of the fluorescent lights behind him.
Since his chronometer was not operating properly, Prowl could only guess that he sat like that for several breems before a soft laugh caught his attention. Not Jazz's laughter, either. He reacted as quickly as he could, whipping out a blade and aiming it in the direction the noise had come from. His vision blurred for a moment with his rapid movement; it took an agonizing astrosecond for the diodes to adjust themselves, images coming back into focus. Prowl nearly choked when he saw who was sitting with him, the tip of his blade poised at the vulnerable hollow of her throat.
A smile lit up the femme's familiar features.
"Hello, bright spark," she said, the quality of her voice making her seem like she were both close and very far away.
"Evasia." The designation fell from Prowl's mouthplates breathless and ethereal, like the ghost that sat before him. His spark lurched painfully in his sparkcase, a sudden burning that had nothing to do with electromagnetic fields and everything to do with a deep-seated sense of longing and regret that Prowl had never been able to let go of.
Evasia did not appear bothered by her lacklustre greeting. Instead, she laughed quietly again, flashing a smile that was perfectly in proportion with her delicate, narrow faceplate. Her optics glowed like twin blue stars, two jewels set into an achingly familiar background. Her paint glittered a sweet, mellow, and sensible light blue-grey. Her chevron was the same enchanting shade of teal it had always been.
"You look surprised to see me," she said.
Prowl floundered for words, managing to point out the obvious. "You are a hallucination."
"Of course I am," Evasia replied warmly. "You are currently sitting dangerously near the south pole of Cybertron during a heavy EM storm. Being as susceptible as you are to the ambient energies, it is perfectly logical that you would be hallucinating right now."
Prowl's raised arm dropped like a heavy weight, his knife clattering away to disappear in the dark. He stared without fully accepting what he was seeing. He could not recall if there was proper protocol for experiencing a hallucination; was there some kind of visual reboot program to rid himself of the illusion?
"For someone so smart, my dear Prowl, you could try a little harder not to look so dumbfounded," Evasia intoned teasingly. "You always were so easy to confuse when things did not suit your logic." Her smile, her faceplate, the sound of her voice, the way she was sitting; every detail was exactly as it had been when she was alive.
"I...have never hallucinated before," Prowl said in place of a proper apology. He surmised that it was the vividness of the experience that was tripping him up. Evasia's presence was so clear, so intense, that Prowl could almost feel the energy of her spark brushing against his own.
"There's a first time for everything," Evasia replied cheerfully. "You experienced many firsts with me, remember?"
"Why am I hallucinating you?" he croaked.
Her head tilted to the right, her chevron glinting in the light. "There must have been a part of you that wanted to see me."
"This is Jazz's doing," Prowl rationalized quickly. "I allowed him into my mind. He was the one who stirred up memories of you." He shuttered his optics tightly, waited an astrosecond, and then opened them again. Evasia was still sitting where he left her. Her smile turned sad as she leaned forward, rocking onto her knees without a sound. The tips of her long, pointed fingers nearly brushed his faceplate. Prowl flinched away from her touch.
"I do not deserve to see you," he admitted, voice cracking. "Please go away."
"I don't think that is how these things work," Evasia admitted regretfully. "Why do you think you don't deserve to see me?"
"After what I did to you, of all bots..." He wished it was warm enough to cycle air. Instead, he remained stifled in his own frame, choking on the emotions that were suddenly bubbling up in him. Old wounds opening up with new energon to bleed. "I loved you, Evasia. You're the one who taught me to love. What did I do in return? I..." He couldn't even say it. He gritted his mouthplates and finished with, "I do not deserve to see you now after what happened."
"Are you sure?"
He nodded curtly.
Evasia's fingers twined together thoughtfully, her gaze contemplative. "You have been punishing yourself ever since I died, haven't you?"
"I have been trying to prevent my mistakes from happening again. I will not be weak again."
Evasia looked truly hurt by his words. "It was a mistake to feel for me, Prowl? You were weak because you loved me?"
"No!" he exclaimed, not knowing why he was bothering to humour this hallucination. It wasn't real. The whole thing was just a figment of his mind being transposed on reality due to the heavy electromagnetic energies saturating the atmosphere. "No, Evasia, I-!"
She watched him with wide, expectant optics.
Prowl stared at the ground. "I do not know what to tell you."
"Good thing I'm not real," Evasia said softly. "You don't need to explain yourself to a hallucination." She reached out and made the motion of patting his knee, though the air didn't even move as she ghosted her hand over him. More proof that she was more alive in Prowl's mind than she was in the physical reality. "You know what would be better? If you made peace with yourself."
He could not bring himself to look up again. His pale gaze remained firmly planted on the ground, able to see Evasia's shins and her distinct lack of a shadow. "I do not understand."
"What happened to me was an accident, Prowl. Nobody was at fault, least of all you," she breathed. "But you locked me away after that. You locked away everything that had to do with me. All those wonderful emotions you learned, how to be happy, and sad, and angry, and loved- you let them be poisoned, and then you bottled them up and pretended they didn't exist anymore. Look at what it's done to you! It's eaten you up inside until it became...what is it called?"
"Emotional Maximum Output," Prowl answered automatically, thick with shame.
"Ah, yes, EMO," Evasia said lightly, as unjudgemental as she had been in life. "Did you ever think that it would be better if you tried to make peace instead of punishing yourself for things that weren't your fault?"
He shuttered his optics, but it did nothing to block out her voice.
"I know this is a hard concept for you, but forgiving yourself is healthy, Prowl. It's the right thing to do; if I were still alive, it's what I would have wanted you to do. There is so much you can give if you just opened your spark up to others again." There came an impish laugh, breathless and ghostly around the edges. "Take that partner of yours, for instance. He's a wild one, isn't he? Imagine how much more you could give each other if you just made peace with yourself-."
"Enough of this," Prowl snapped. "Go away. You have no business here."
A long silence followed, filled in by a voice that definitely did not belong to his dead ex-lover.
"Ah got no business?" Jazz wondered perplexedly. "Aren't ya the one who told meh Ah had ta stay?"
Prowl stared with optics that he knew looked wild. Evasia was gone with no sign of her ever being there. Of course there was no sign; hallucinations never left a mark except on the minds they were tormenting. For all Prowl's desire to have her gone, he suddenly found himself regretting his harshness. He wished he could have said goodbye.
"Ya okay?" Jazz asked when he failed to get a response to his first question.
"Yes, yes, of course. I am fine." His hands were shaking as they came up to scrub his face. His headache came back with a vengeance, searing like a red hot poker behind his optics. Another set of circuits burned out. "No, correction, I am not fine." He squinted through the pain. "It seems my perception of the colour red has now been compromised."
Jazz rocked back on his heels. "It could be worse. Red's an overrated colour," he shrugged. "So, ya wanna tell meh why Ah ain't got business here?"
"I was not speaking to you," Prowl gritted out through the pounding in his cranium. "I fear I was hallucinating. She was...someone I was not ready to talk to."
"Anyone Ah would know?" Jazz wondered absently as he crouched, taking one of Prowl's arms over his shoulder to help the other mech stand.
Prowl drew his mouthplates into a thin line. "No, not anyone you've met," he moderated. "Did you find a way in?"
"Yeah, we got lucky," Jazz grunted, taking most of Prowl's weight without complaint. They moved slowly together, slightly out of sync. Jazz's arm wrapped tightly around Prowl's back and kept his partner tucked close to his side. "An ice sheet fell down from the overhang up above on the south side. It's piercing the shield, making it weak. We can push through with relatively little trouble."
"Good."
"Ya can rest against meh a little more," Jazz murmured. "You're not that heavy."
"I can walk."
"Says the mech who's been dragging his aft since we dumped the ship."
Prowl scowled, thrusting his weight in such a way to cause Jazz to stumble. Jazz hissed, his feet slipping on ice. They both nearly fell on their afts.
"How's that for dragging my aft?" Prowl snorted.
"Like a microbot could do better," Jazz sneered. "You're lucky Ah disabled all the motion sensors while Ah came through here or ya would have set them all off with your flailing."
"I am not flailing."
"Ya sure ain't walking in a straight line, either." Jazz dipped his shoulder and hitched Prowl's weight higher so both of them would be more comfortable. "That's not the only reason Ah took 'em out, though. If Shockwave's anything like meh, then he would have rigged the base ta explode if any of his sensors were tripped."
"If he couldn't have this base, no one could?"
"Exactly."
Prowl nodded. "That does sound like something you would do."
Flickering light announced the section of shielding where the ice sheet had fallen through. It was a massive piece of jagged glacier shrouded in a thin haze of steam from the force of the energy shielding burning through it. Its sulfur-saturated body glittered as if covered in millions of yellow diamonds. High above was the titanic overhang it came from, a shadowy monolith whose tapered ice-claws curled down as if reaching to rip the sparks out of anyone unfortunate enough to be below it.
"Beautiful, ain't it?" Jazz breathed.
"Intimidating," Prowl replied.
Jazz leaned his free shoulder against the force field, so close to the glacier that flakes of ice chipped off on his armour. Sparks flashed over the silver paint. He pressed until his shoulder passed through. He turned to Prowl and held him closer. "It'll sting going through."
"Don't care," Prowl grunted, shoving all of his weight against the saboteur so that they tumbled to the ground together. Their legs tangled and their armour chinked together. They landed in an ungraceful heap, their heads slamming together so hard that they both saw stars. Jazz huffed as Prowl's full weight landed on him. Prowl, on the other hand, could only sag in relief as the pressure in his head was instantly neutralized. The effects of the shielding were nearly immediate, settling his churning tanks and clearing his vision. It felt as if a massive weight had been lifted from him.
"I have never felt so good in my life," he sighed.
"Really? An' we haven't even gotten ta the good stuff yet," Jazz laughed, bracing his hands against Prowl's shoulders to lever the other bot away. "At least let meh get mah cable out before ya start complimenting meh on mah performance."
"You know what I meant," Prowl snorted, pushing to his feet and helping Jazz to his feet. His joints still ached from the cold, thawing out with every moment he spent in the slightly warmer environment within the base's shielding. He rolled his shoulders, listening to the loud pops and cracks. A final satisfying full-frame crack came when his iced over vents all popped open at the same time, cycling some desperately needed air through his stifled systems.
Jazz cracked his vents open and cycled air, stretching his arms above his head to work out all the kinks at the same time.
"How do ya feel now?" wondered the saboteur.
"Much better," Prowl replied. "I still can't see the colour red, though."
"Ratchet will replace the circuitry. Or we can stop by Tyger Pax on our way back and get Grimm to-."
"No."
"Ya sure?"
"Yes."
Jazz chuckled. "Fine then, be that way. Ya feeling up ta canvasing this place ta see if Shockwave left anything useful behind, or ya want ta rest for a bit?"
Prowl tilted a shoulder up in a half-shrug. "I have been useless for too long. I would rather get to work immediately to make up for lost time."
A smirk curved Jazz's features. "How about we raid the energon stores first? Ah'm willing ta bet something must have been left behind, and Ah'm a little low on reserves."
"Do you think they might be rigged to blow if we touch anything?"
"If they are, Ah'll disable anything before it has a chance ta blow. You forget, Ah've been sneaking in ta places long before ya came online. Ah'm so good at this, Ah make it look like an art form." And then he winked.
Instead of rolling his optics at the wink as he once might have, Prowl was instead reminded of the words granted by his hallucination. Advice he had not wanted to hear, and he still did not want to comprehend.
"Come on, store rooms are probably this way," Jazz said, waving a hand absently as he set off across the empty grounds.
Prowl followed automatically without trouble. He walked in a straight line as if it were second nature to him. It was nice to have his equilibrium back.
"I have a question for you," the tactician intoned, causing Jazz to slow down.
"Yeah?"
"When you hallucinated earlier, you said you saw your master."
Now Jazz stopped dead in his tracks, inching around until he could fix Prowl with a wary stare.
"What about her?"
Prowl frowned, choosing his words carefully. "Was she someone you wanted to see?"
A sharp laugh like a gunshot escaped Jazz, mirthless and cold. "Ah can honestly say Ah'd be fine living the rest of mah life never seeing that glitch's faceplate again."
"Oh."
Another huff of noise left the saboteur, this time softer and quieter. "Doesn't mean Ah didn't need ta see her, Prowl. Without her, we wouldn't be here right now. We'd still be wandering around out there, completely blind."
Prowl drew away cautiously, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "So you think your hallucination held some purpose?"
"If what Ah saw really was a hallucination, then yeah, she showed up ta teach meh another lesson. Same as she's always done."
Something about the phrasing caught Prowl off guard. "If she were not a hallucination, what would she have been?"
"Ah've been asking mahself the same question for vorns," Jazz murmured dryly. "It's like ya said- the poles have ways of playing tricks on us."
Prowl knew he was revealing more than he meant by the look on his faceplate. Jazz could see it plain as dawn.
"You're not really asking meh about what Ah saw, are ya? It's what ya saw that's bothering ya."
Knowing there was no point in lying, Prowl confirmed it with a quick nod.
Jazz canted his head, his expression pensive. "Prowler, Ah don't know if Ah got the right words ya wanna hear. Whatever ya saw out there, it might not have been what ya wanted ta see, but it might have been something ya needed."