Disclaimer: Transformers; do not own. His Dark Materials/Golden Compass; do not own.
Summary: Semi-crossover; oneshot series. Prowl; Even Prowl had to wonder why, out of all mechs, it was he who was stuck in an underground watery cavern with three phobic humans and their jumpy dæmons.
Author note: I kind of took my own challenge. Oh well.
After
Prowl
It had been a couple of months since Mission City. There was still a government frenzy going on in the background, covering up the fact that they were not alone in the universe, and there were still plenty of questions and too little answers. Things were starting to calm down. Prowl's group, after the initial flurry of arrival, was, by now, all settled in. It was a good thing, too, because the Decepticons started to take notice of the incoming Autobots.
A Decepticon ambush was what led to their current predicament. Prowl wasn't the kind of mech to gripe or complain about whatever situation fate had cast in his way. It just wasn't productive. He would much rather concentrate his efforts on escaping from said situation. However, even he had to wonder why, out of all mechs, it was he who was stuck in a dark underground watery cavern with three phobic humans and their jumpy dæmons.
The humans and their dæmons surprised and baffled the Autobots continuously. Each side was awkward with one another in an almost endearing way, and for the most part, they went through their share of cultural gaffs and embarrassments with nothing more than a couple of laughs.
However, there was one cultural difference with which they could not smooth over with laughter. Their hosts were still trying to get used to the fact that Autobots, for the most part, occurred singularly, and the Autobots were still trying to get used to the fact that semi-spark splitting was a beautiful thing on this planet.
The twins felt it more acutely than the singularly-occurring Autobots did. It was instinctual. But Prowl felt it in a different way.
Their entrance was blocked by huge chunks of rock, a result of Starscream's low and cowardly attempt at shooting the humans. It was completely devoid of light, save for Prowl's glowing optics. As if fate was toying with him, Prowl's external lights had been shattered when he got the humans out of the way of the falling debris.
So even though he could see his surroundings quite well because of an internal scanner, the humans were as good as blind.
Well, not exactly. Sam and Mikaela were slightly better off than Miles, as their senses mingled and magnified with those of their cougar dæmon and jaguar dæmon, respectively, whose cat-eyes penetrated through some of the darkness.
Miles, however, hadn't left Prowl's side. He was perched atop Prowl's foot, soothing Delaney who was making frightened monkey sounds in his arms.
"Where are Sam and Mikaela?" Miles asked, as he and Delaney looked futilely into the darkness.
"Over here," they said. Their dæmons gave two low growls.
"Where's that?"
"Um…lemme get back to you," Sam said, he and his dæmon taking a couple of steps forward. They were slightly to Prowl's right, and were dangerously close to the ledge that overlooked the slowly running river below.
Prowl moved to grab the humans and their dæmons from the ledge. Miles gasped at the unexpected movement, Sam yelped and Mikaela gave a short shriek. Their dæmons made a cacophony of sounds, echoing their discontent.
In his right hand, Sam gave a shaky laugh. "Geez, Prowl! Give a guy some warning!"
"I apologize," he said. "But you and Miss Mikaela were about to walk off a ledge and into a river a good fifteen feet below us."
A shocked pause, then Sam sighed. "I seem to have a habit of doing that, don't I?" His cougar dæmon rubbed comfortingly against him, settling into Prowl's palm. Sam's arm came to hook around Prowl's upraised thumb, and the other arm wrapped around his dæmon. Both boy and dæmon were trembling noticeably.
Mikaela, in Prowl's left hand, sat stiffly, and her dæmon was growling. They sense Barricade in you. Wasn't that what Miles said?
Prowl wasn't exactly sad, but he was disappointed. They were probably scared of him.
"My scanners indicate that there is an exit nearby," Prowl said finally. "With your limited visuals, I believe that it will be best if I transport you there."
"Um, thanks, Prowl," Sam said, he and his dæmon looking at the glow of his optics.
"Thanks," Mikaela said, not looking at him and her dæmon still growling slightly in her arms.
"Miles, if you could make your way to—"
"Already here," he heard Miles' voice say from his right shoulder. Delaney gave the baffled tactician a grateful pat on his cheek.
"How did you—?"
"Thank-you Prowl," Miles said innocently. Prowl just shook his head inwardly, then made his way through the dark.
Prowl didn't know exactly how their bond became chains, became nothing more than a burden that both of them were shackled to. It didn't start out that way. Prowl remembered their younger days with fondness.
"Aw, Prowl, ya scared of the dark?"
"Am not!"
"Don't worry, squirt. I'll take care of ya."
"Hey! You can't call me squirt when you're the same age as me! We're twins, remember?"
"Well, yeah, but I act older. That's what counts."
No, wait. That's not exactly true. Prowl does remember the beginning—or perhaps it was the breaking point? But he remembers incidences—little bits of conversations, little ticks—that added up to—to something. And it came to a point that he couldn't stand looking at his brother anymore.
It seemed as though the deeper they went to the cavern, the darker it got. Sam and his dæmon started to tremble and shiver and squirm.
"Are you alright, Samuel?"
"Huh, me?" he said, his voice pitched an octave higher than it usually was. His dæmon was making a high-pitched, whining sound, and squirmed in his grasp. "Uh, yeah. I'm fine. Why shouldn't I be fine?" He looked distractedly all around him, not meeting Prowl's gaze.
Sam gave a sigh. "Guys," he started as his dæmon quieted down. "I guess it's a bad time to confess this, but I'm alchuophobic."
"What now?" were the responses simultaneously given by Miles and Mikaela.
"It means that I'm scared of the dark," he muttered.
"Oh," Mikaela murmured sympathetically.
"That sucks," Miles said from his perch.
Prowl couldn't understand. "Why?" Prowl said. "Darkness is merely the absence of light. Why should you fear it?"
"I guess it's not it that I fear, inasmuch as what could be hiding in it."
"There is nothing there, Sam," Prowl said patiently.
Sam shrugged, and his dæmon fidgeted, causing Prowl to curl his hand a little to keep her from falling off. "I just am, you know?" he said, fretfully looking all around him again.
No, Prowl didn't know. He didn't understand humans and their irrational fears.
"I don't get what you're afraid of, squirt."
"Stop calling me that! I am not a 'squirt.'"
"Uh-huh…But y'are."
"Optimus! 'Cade's being mean again!"
Barricade had a strange hatred of the half-sparks, believing them to be demons that needed to be exterminated. Prowl had distanced himself from Barricade by the time the war started, but he was sure that Barricade was among those who thought that the half-sparks were the cause of it.
It wasn't, really. The half-sparks were merely the breaking point, the "straw that broke the camel's back," as humans put it (Prowl didn't really understand the analogy, but understood what it was supposed to convey).
He had called Prowl a coward for not thinking the same, had blamed it on his irrational fear.
In the end, Barricade didn't need Prowl's help to "cleanse" Cybertron. When all-out war ravaged Cybertron, the half-sparks faded, all by themselves.
"Well, while we're confessing," Mikaela said in a small voice. "I'm claustrophobic."
"Uh…"
"Means I'm scared of confined spaces," Mikaela elaborated, her jaguar yowling at the darkness.
"Wow," Miles said, clutching Delaney. "What are the chances?"
"What is it that you fear of confined spaces?" Prowl asked. "It is merely an enclosed area, is it not? And the ceiling of this cavern is still quite high above us. How can it feel confined to you?"
"I don't know," Mikaela said, cuddling her dæmon. "I just do."
He could feel his processors begin to freeze…
"And you?" he asked Miles. "Do you have some irrational fear that I should be aware of to preserve your state of well-being?"
"Well, now that you mention it," Miles said, his voice pitched a little higher, as though seeing the fears of his friends reminded him of his own fears. "I do suffer from anatidaephobia."
Prowl looked that up. Anatidaephobia: Noun; coined by Gary Larson to describe the fear that somewhere, somehow, you are being watched by a duck.
Prowl's logic processors seemed to stop for a minute, in shock, before beginning to freeze again.
"The ducks…they're watching," Miles muttered, and Delaney clung to him, whimpering. "Always watching…Prowl, save me!" The boy attached himself to Prowl's right cheek, his dæmon on his shoulder and clinging to the baffled tactician as well.
Prowl restrained himself from sighing. It was amazing, but whenever he talked to Miles, something inside him self-destructed. He believed that, this time, it was his dignity.
"Do you have no dignity?"
"Can it, 'Cade."
"I'm just sayin', Prowl, I'm just sayin'…"
Prowl knew that his comrades were wary of the humans. He could even foresee that some of the Autobots coming might even despise or even become disgusted by the humans on sight. But he knows that, with a twisted twin bond, he and Barricade were the closest living beings that resembled the half-sparks. Closer to the half-sparks than even the humans.
That's how he knows that the humans and their dæmons are not quite like the half-sparks at all, and really, he doesn't quite understand how his comrades can make that similarity. The humans and their dæmons were, after all, very much whole.
Prowl watched Miles rock backward and forward on his shoulder for a little while, thumb in his mouth and monkey dæmon clambering from shoulder to shoulder. Prowl's thoughts were lost somewhere between I wonder if he's alright and Whaaaaa??
"He's been like that since a duck attacked him in pre-school," Sam supplied sympathetically.
"Oh," was the only thing that Prowl and Mikaela managed to say.
Somehow, Prowl managed to get them across the cavern and to the other exit, without completely freezing. The absence of sound seemed to make them more aware of their irrational fears, so Prowl ended up speaking to them about random things—Bluestreak would have been so proud of him—to ward off the silence.
In turn the humans started to calm down a little, and their dæmons stopped growling and snapping at the darkness. They even started laughing, which gave Prowl warm and fuzzy feelings that he was pretty sure he was going to have to talk to Ratchet about later. It couldn't have been healthy.
As Prowl watched Sam and Mikaela reunite with an anxious Bumblebee, and as he watched Ratchet fuss over the lot of them—human, dæmon, and Autobot alike—Prowl knew that the humans were, on some level, still afraid of him, especially Sam and Mikaela. In the cavern, their phobias just overshadowed their wariness around him.
They still felt Barricade inside him, and probably always would. But, maybe, they had started to look past that, and started seeing Prowl. The humans and their dæmons were gathered into a mother-Bee's arms protectively, and as they smiled at Prowl, he was left thinking that that was a pretty good start.
"You know we'll always be brothers, right?"
"Right."
"Love ya, squirt."
"Love ya, 'Cade."
Author notes:
Anatidaephobia—fear that somehow, somewhere, a duck is watching you.
Achluophobia—fear of darkness
Claustrophobia—fear of confined spaces
Miles' little rant about how the ducks are always watching him actually came from swany10's comment on the challenge post at lj.