Crap, crap, crap, I hope this makes sense. I've been staring at this chapter for way too damn long, to the point that I don't even know what the hell I'm supposed to be saying. Damn these two for complicating everything so much! Reviews help me- tell me your thoughts and speculations! They help me spit chapters out faster and god willing, they'll come faster than this one did.

I ran away
I could not take the burden of both me and you
It was too fast
Casting love on me as if it were a spell I could not break
When it was a promise I could not make

But what if I was wrong?

But hold on to what you believe in the light
When the darkness has robbed you of all your sight

- Mumford and Sons

"Ratchet?"

He looked up from his unfinished patient release forms from the last battle and saw Prowl uncharacteristically hovering in his office doorway. He raised an optic ridge and gave a small, tired smile. "You know you don't need my permission to come in, right?" he said, though the attempt at teasing sounded tired even to him. Prowl had the good graces to quirk a small grin even as he stepped into the office and sat down heavily in the chair opposite Ratchet. "It's late—what are you still doing up? And especially with that door-wing. You should be resting."

The mech gave a small huff. "I could ask the same about you," he said. "You're still supposed to be recovering."

Ratchet rubbed the factory new silver arm he hadn't had time to get re-painted yet. "Yeah well, First Aid's not ready to handle the paperwork on top of piecing everyone back together. It's bad enough he's having to do it when the battles are coming so fast," he said.

"And your mobility—it's coming back alright?" Prowl prompted.

"So far, so good," Ratchet said. "Adapting to earth-built armor's taking some getting used to, but my full functionality should be back in a couple of days." He looked at the mech, a small frown tugging at his lips. "As much as I appreciate it, somehow, I don't think you came down here at—" He checked the local time on his monitor, "—four fifteen in the morning to ask about my well-being. What's up, Prowl?"

The Praxian sighed and rubbed his helm tiredly. "I don't know who to begin to ask about something like this, but I figure you would be a good start," he said and drummed his fingers against the arm of his chair. "Jazz contacted me tonight from the Nemesis."

Ratchet's optics brightened and he set his datapads aside, giving the mech his full attention. "What did he have to say?" he asked.

"Not much. He didn't have a lot of time and his connection wasn't a good one," Prowl said. "He said he would explain everything when we got him back to the Ark. But, first and foremost… he asked for help."

"That's not a word you hear out of him often," Ratchet said.

"That was my thought as well. Even worse, he sounded… scared," Prowl said and rubbed his helm.

"Another unusual thing from him."

Prowl sighed and leaned back in his chair, careful of his newly patched doorwing. "This entire time, I thought Soundwave was doing this to him… controlling him somehow."

"But you've seen yourself that Jazz is close to immune to Soundwave," Ratchet pointed out. "He's the only one of us who's trained himself entirely against his telepathy and any other of his psychic abilities. No way that mech can bust through Jazz's defenses."

"I know. That's why I wanted to investigate futher," Prowl said. "But tonight, Jazz confirmed that Soundwave is controlling him, yet he denied it was telepathy as well." He sighed and rubbed his aching helm. "Which makes me ask… what the hell is Soundwave doing to him?"

Ratchet whistled and leaned back in his chair, crossing his mismatched arms over his chassis. "Well… there's always remote control but we wouldn't be seeing Soundwave at the battles if that were the case. He'd be somewhere else, using some sort of interface to dictate Jazz's actions and so far, I've seen Soundwave and all his slagging cassettes during every fight since Jazz left. There's also the problem of installing the remote control onto Jazz in the first place and I can't think of a single instance where that would have been possible—it's an intensive and invasive thing to do. Requires a medbay, quite a few illegal tools and a lot of time."

Prowl nodded. "So we can safely rule out remote control," he said. "And it can't be the Robo-Smasher. That was destroyed before we even left Cybertron. Can you think of any other possibilities?"

Ratchet sighed and leaned his head back, looking up at the ceiling. He was quiet for a long moment and Prowl allowed himself to enjoy it, hearing nothing but the soft sounds of the recharging patients in the medbay. When Prowl had been able to find so little, peace and quiet was a welcome thing. "It's not what you came here to hear," Ratchet said at last. "But I can't think of any medical or processing related reasons—at least not any I've come across. Unless Megatron's figured out a new way of body jacking someone, which I guess isn't completely out of the question, I'm at a loss."

Prowl nodded and rubbed his helm. He had been hoping for more, but he hadn't been expecting it. His own findings matched Ratchets, but often, the CMO had managed to surprise him.

"I'm sure you've already thought of blackmail or extortion," Ratchet said, his voice trailing off in something like a question.

"Jazz has many secrets," Prowl said quietly.

Ratchet snorted. "You got that right," he muttered and rested his head on his hand.

"It's… possible that something from his past has reared its head. My main concern with the theory is… why now? It's not like this war is anything new," Prowl pointed out. "We're not even at a pinnacle point—we're stagnant even, or we were before Jazz left for the Nemesis. If the Decepticons did have some information to use against him, why not use it when they were so close to winning—before we even left Cybertron?" He shook his head and sighed. "Secrets lose power over millennia. I can't think of anything that could still be relevant after all this time."

Ratchet shifted in his seat and medic's relaxed stance suddenly became more closed off as he tightened his arms over his chassis, legs pulling a bit closer to his chair. Despite what others thought of Prowl having the emotional capacity of a droid, he was incredibly adept at reading people and his optics narrowed at the change. "You have an idea?" he prompted.

"I—well, no, not exactly," Ratchet said and ran an uncomfortable hand over his helm, his optics a little too bright.

"Ratchet, need I remind you that our third-in-command is sitting in the Nemesis? He's very good at resisting interrogation, but even Jazz can only last so long before all of our secrets are lost to the Decepticons, if they aren't already," Prowl pointed out.

Ratchet scowled and his optics narrowed into a glare. "Primus, Prowl. Thanks for that comforting thought to keep me awake the rest of the night," he snapped. Prowl could tell he was trying de-rail him, but he was having none of it and fixed the red and white mech with his best stare. Ratchet returned it for a long moment before he scowled and threw his hands up. "Patient confidentiality—you have to order me, alright?"

"Ratchet, as second in command of the Autobot forces, I order you to share your thoughts," he said immediately.

Ratchet gave him a petulant glare—it was no secret the medic took his confidentiality oaths very seriously. He typed into his console and brought up Jazz's long medical record. Every injury, every checkup had been documented since the moment Ratchet had been named the Ark's CMO—a good couple million years history. It was quiet a record, but Ratchet typed in a star-date that Prowl recognized instantly—the day the Ark had left Cybertron, the last of the many Autobot ships that had made the exodus from the dead planet.

"After the crew of the Ark was gathered, I was tasked with giving everyone a physical—standard procedure, yadda yadda," Ratchet said and waved a careless hand. "Jazz always played this evasive little game with me and I was through taking slag from that mech. I finally had the authority in medical matters so I ordered his aft to the medbay. I gave him his physical and I found a… fracture on his spark."

Prowl's optics widened in surprise at that. A fracture in a spark crystal was no small matter. It usually meant a lessened energy output to the frame it powered. It was almost always noticeable—mechs fatigued faster, limbs would go numb at random or in extreme cases, the mech could even die from it. "That would point to some sort of trauma, like a spark interrogation or—or a rape," he said.

Ratchet nodded before adding, "Or a broken or strained bond."

It took a second to sink in. "No—no." Prowl had learned to accept many things but the idea that Jazz, his friend for millennia, had once been bonded? "They kept records of that on Cybertron. Even if it wasn't announced after the bonding happened, surely it would have been noticed during a maintenance update and recorded." He pushed out of his chair and walked behind Ratchet. He leaned over his shoulder and typed something into the Teletraan terminal. With a few quick commands and his authorization code, he brought up Jazz's general records—a timeline of Jazz's known history.

Ratchet scrolled slowly, optics skimming over the records while Prowl watched over his shoulder. When Jazz had first joined Special Operations, Prowl had been tasked with doing an extensive background check so he had already seen the mech's records, but he watched carefully, trying to find anything he might have missed.

"Jazz, previous designation Meister. Creation date, born a musical savant, became a composer at an early age, blah blah blah," Ratchet said and he scrolled down further. He reached a point during Jazz's adolescence and he couldn't stop a snort of a laugh. "Get this, he walked out of the middle of a performance at the Iacon Towers just to spite them—that was his last show."

Prowl couldn't stop a grin. He'd heard Jazz tell that story before. From a renowned musician to a pariah in the span of an evening. "He was a self-proclaimed free-floater after that," Prowl said and looked at the records. "He told me once that he just… travelled. Visited the different city-states on Cybertron and used whatever money he'd saved up from his performance days to get by. That's actually how I met him. When I was part of the Peacekeepers in Tarn, my partner dragged me out to a bar and Jazz was remixing some of his old compositions into dance music. That was the same night I arrested him for his involvement in a fight outside of that same bar." He snorted at the memory and shook his head. "He still went by Meister back then… it wasn't until he joined the Autobots that he took the name 'Jazz.'"

Ratchet scrolled down further, frowning as he looked at the screen and seeing a smattering of other small-time offenses—Peacekeeper evasion being the most pervasive. "Why did he change his name?" he wondered.

Prowl shrugged. "I asked him the same thing when I met him again in Iacon. He said it was… something like a new start for him. Stop there," he said and squinted at the screen where a stretch of blank filled a small part of the timeline. "That five vorn period," he said and pointed to the screen. Barely a blip of time to the average Cybertronian, but it was enough to catch his attention. "If he was travelling during that time, there should be something. Peacekeeper reports, tracking records, notable credit transactions, something," he said.

"There's no guarantee Jazz was entering cities by legal means. This is Jazz we're talking about," Ratchet pointed out.

"It's too clean," Prowl said. "That was when Jazz was still the naïve little Iaconian musician. He was too clumsy back then to have such a flawless record and I know he wasn't a flawless mech." He swore. "I should have seen it when I was doing his initial background check—I didn't even think of it, it was such an insignificant time. I had interpreted it as Jazz staying rooted for a time," he muttered. "But looking at it now… I think someone wiped the record of that part of his history."

"Shit." Prowl nodded, silently echoing the sentiment, and when Ratchet spoke again, his unease showed in his voice. "When I did the initial check-up, he was real evasive. Gave me short answers which is just… weird for him," he said. "He said he had been bonded for a short time and his bondmate was dead—my scanners showed me that his spark was giving a reduced output so I took him on his word. Why would you lie about that?"

"Unless you were bonded to a Decepticon. Oh Primus," Prowl whispered and rubbed his optics.

"Specifically… a Decepticon communications officer who would be able to wipe those records so clean," Ratchet finished. His optics were pale as he stared at the screen. "Bondmates share emotions, thoughts. How is it that Soundwave doesn't know every damn secret we possess?"

Prowl swallowed, knowing that a part of him should accept this as speculation only, but the part of him that still functioned off of emotion told him that this was the Primus-given truth. "If Jazz had any sort of loyalty left to Soundwave, he wouldn't be asking to come back. If he had been passing information along, we would have lost this war a long time ago—we'd all be dead or worse if his loyalties were with the Decepticons."

Ratchet ran a hand over his tired face. "Primus… so that's it, then? Soundwave's blackmailing him—threatened to expose the bond if he didn't cooperate. He must have already told Megatron… he's probably one of the few Decepticons that could get away with revealing a secret like that and still keep their spark intact."

Even as Prowl nodded in agreement, something felt off. An unease resonated deeply in his spark, screaming at him that there was still a critical piece missing.

Soft music played through the speakers on Jazz's system. A slight undertone of static hissed through the speakers due to the inhibitors that had been installed, but Jazz was able to ignore it for now. He sat on the floor of his cell with his head resting against the wall behind him, optics closed behind his visor as he lost himself in the smooth music and let the gentle sound roll over him. It was an easy way to escape the confines of his cell, of his own treacherous body—no one could take the music from him. Even if he was struck deaf, it would play out like a story in his processor, forever ingrained like a fond memory.

The walking bass line that drummed in the background of the song reminded him of waking up on Earth. Tuning into the radio stations for the first time after a four million year stasis had felt like being reborn. A musician and composer born and raised, he was more than familiar with the metal percussion and horns and electronic synthesizers that created Cybertronian music, but as soon as his comms. had synched up with the airways, his entire view of what music could be was changed.

Never before had he heard an instrument made out of organic material. Over the strong blast of a trumpet, he'd heard the smooth, thrumming bass line holding the entire weight of that song on its steady, syncopated rhythm. It was mesmerizing—so alien compared to what he was used to, what he had studied and practiced and perfected for his entire existence, and yet at the same time, the sound spoke harmonies within his very spark that made him shiver just in remembrance.

It hadn't taken him long to discover that he'd been listening to a stand-up bass. It had only taken him a moment longer to discover that the style of music he had heard was called jazz, and it was one of many different styles of music this little rock had to offer. He branched out into other styles, other genres , drinking it all in like a starving mech, but jazz music remained his favorite. He even adopted it as the English translation to his name. 'Style of music,' didn't make a slick sounding name, so he had become Jazz. And it had fit perfectly—better than his creation name ever had.

A quiet noise brought him back to attention. Instantly, he switched the music off, aborting the sound so suddenly that the silence of the brig made him twitch. His one remaining audio picked it up much easier now—the steady step, step, step, of pedes, a single mech, walking down the brig's main hall. He stayed sitting against the wall, optics trained just past the ever-glowing bars of his cell.

He wasn't surprised when Soundwave stepped in front of his cell, crimson visor peering through the bars at him. For a long moment, the mech was silent and Jazz didn't offer him a word. He had nothing left to say to the mech. Long experience knew that Soundwave wasn't comfortable with silence from him, and he used it, drawing it out to painful lengths while his visor never left his.

The unexpected pulse to his spark made Jazz gasp, a hand flying to his chassis as though he could stop it.

"Jazz knows as well as Soundwave does that bond is fractured," Soundwave said, his monotone quiet in the brig.

Jazz glared at the mech, dentals bared. "Take the voice synth off, I hate that fucking thing," he growled.

Soundwave gave a small inclination of his head before his mask slid open, exposing his mouth and nose. "Jazz, avoiding the truth," Soundwave said, his voice deep and almost melodious without the synthesizer to disguise it. "The bond is fractured. Needs to be renewed."

A harsh laugh spilled from Jazz's mouth. "Bond?" he repeated. "You can't bond, remember Soundwave?" He got to his feet and sauntered closer to the bars, wagging his hips in a way he knew would get the mech's attention. "Remember all those times we tried? The lapses, the blackouts?" he asked, voice saccharine sweet. "You're a telepath, remember?" He reached a hand through the bars of his cell, one finger tracing a weaving pattern down the mech's chassis. "So sensitive to signals, you can pick up any signal wavelength- even a mech's thought pattern, but the ones used in forging a bond are just... too... much," he says and flicks the mech's chassis in emphasis to each word. "And you shut down before it can be finished. Too bad, so sad," he tsked and the taunting tone disappeared. "You were so damn close to having me forever, too."

Soundwave grabbed his hand as he tried to pull away, keeping it pressed against his chassis. "You are mine," he said. "Or does Jazz need a reminder of the solution we found?" Without waiting for an answer, Soundwave's chassis spiraled open, the glass of his tape deck folding back to reveal his modified spark casing, and underneath, through the tangle of wires and metal, his brightly pulsing spark. Jazz tried to jerk his hand away, shock written clearly across his face, but Soundwave kept his grip, holding his hand just over his spark and the signal dampener that encircled it.

As hard as he tried, Jazz couldn't seem to look away. "It's even uglier than I remember," he said, though the familiar signal of his spark energy washed through him. Soundwave released his hand and Jazz pulled it quickly back through the bars, cradling it against his own chassis and rubbing his wrist, despite the fact that the mech hadn't hurt him. "I've made a lot of mistakes, but none of them were as bad as that."

The light behind Soundwave's visor narrowed. "Jazz didn't regret it at the time," he said, his voice gaining a hard edge. "Jazz attempting to make me lose my temper. It will not work."

Jazz smirked. "That's not what I'm feeling, Soundwave," he said. "That's the problem with a signal dampener- it makes things so one-sided. I can feel everything you do, and right now, you're absolutely boiling with it."

Soundwave's hand shot through the bars, faster than even Jazz could react and wrapped around his neck. "Other problem with a one way bond," he said. "You can't block it out."

Jazz choked, grabbing Soundwave's hand and standing on the tips of his pedes as the mech drew him up higher. "I learned that the hard way," he choked out before digging his fingers into a sensitive pressure point on the mech's wrist. Soundwave dropped him and Jazz rubbed his neck, coughing once. "That's the one thing I can't figure out," he said, his voice laced with static. "How did you do it? It's been millions of vorns- how now did you figure out a way to use it?"

Soundwave's lips curled up into a smile, an expression so rare that Jazz felt like he had stepped back in time as he looked at it. "It's easy to control a spark that's become so torn."

Jazz froze as he tried and failed to keep his surprise from his face. "What are you talking about?" he asked, though his tenuous tone said he knew exactly what was being implied.

Soundwave's smile slid into a smirk, an even rarer expression from him. Without another word, he turned and walked out of sight. Jazz's spark throbbed, as though it was trying to call him back, but he knew Soundwave wouldn't be able to feel it. Once, that truth had saddened him beyond words, but now, he couldn't have been more relieved.