Starcrossed

by Gatekat

G1 AU, Jazz/Prowl, Jazz/Vortex Jazz is the second creation of a Noble House that's fallen on hard times. He's promised as the subordinate mate to a wealthy commoner in exchange for a great deal of credits. It's only when he meets his future mate that things get bad.

31. Admissions to the Past

Starcrossed 31: Admissions to the Past
(alternately titled: The Authors Have Had Enough of Fluff…but then included a bunch anyway because they haven't learned how to say No to the characters)
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Radiance followed Prowl and Jazz through their apartment-their apartment, he thought again, trying to believe those words-up to the second level, and out to the balcony with the hot oil pool. They were quiet, touching to direct more than speaking, all of them tense with the knowledge of what was coming.

They settled in together in the liquid heat and looked out over the glittering landscape of Praxus at night and were simply quiet for a time as the warmth seeped into their frames. Eventually Jazz turned to Prowl, wings set just a fraction low in accordance with the protocols he'd installed. Never held high, when there was to be a potential disagreement, or lowered enough to be submissive with a weakened stance, but just enough to indicate there was no threat, no judgment, only what the mech thought was right and the willingness to stand behind it.

"There's nowhere else to look," Jazz said softly, as Radiance held one of Prowl's hands in his own.

"They are somewhere," Prowl murmured, leaning into his mate. It was part ritual, arguing it, but it was really just trying to process and his field was a riot of the conflict. He knew they were right. It was why he'd suggested coming home. At the same time, his emotional center and spark were in violent denial of what he was hearing.

"They are," Radiance agreed. "But we have nothing to follow, and they could be anywhere. The odds of locating them with three mecha performing random searches among a constantly shifting planet-wide population of billions..."

"And my love," Jazz said, turning Prowl's face towards him with gentle fingertips. "Just because they must be somewhere, does not mean they are somewhere with their sparks still in their frames. That is a small chance, but it grows every orn."

It was a cruel thing to say, that truth, and it made Prowl tremble. His field screamed his denial before he went abruptly calm, only for the denial to build again.

Radiance gave Jazz a worried, confused look.

Jazz reached past Prowl and gave Radiance's hand a brief, reassuring squeeze, while never looking away from Prowl's optics. "Shh, love, it is still a small chance," he murmured. "Most likely, they will survive. Their heritage all but ensures they will do whatever necessary, and they have each other to live for. But we have no way to find them, not without giving up everything and devoting endless vorns to searching."

"We have better ways to hunt," Prowl said calmly despite the rising distress clattering across his processors and interfering once more before being caught and crushed. "Our positions give us access to data networks. A few well crafted spiders will do more good than centuries of pedes to the ground."

"That is a good plan," Radiance said, getting close enough to nuzzle him.

Jazz nodded and pushed his agreement into his field. "That will keep you here, and safe, and you will do better if you are not looking for them yourself. This will get easier," he said, carefully monitoring the rapid shifting in his mate's field between calm and distress. He placed his hand over the center of Prowl's chest, met his optics. "You know it will."

There was a spike of denial-pain-distress-hate and then he settled again. "I know." He shivered, pressing into the offered comfort. "Three orns and it'll be functionally over."

Jazz's gaze dimmed. "Love..." he said, sadly.

"Three orns?" Radiance echoed, stunned. He turned Prowl's face towards him. "How will this be over in three orns?"

"Protocols that kept me functional when I gave up the sparklings I carried," Prowl answered him quietly. "It works better when the creator protocols are not allowed to fully engage in the first place, but it works well enough even with these two. Something I asked you to forget I possessed."

Radiance was quiet for a long moment. "I learned something that made me certain that coding was keeping you from feeling the grief of giving your creations up," he finally murmured, and his hand came around to rest over Jazz's, directly above Prowl's spark. "Grief that would be here. Will they work the same for this?"

"Yes, as soon as I admitted to myself that they were gone, it activated," Prowl lifted a hand from Radiance's grip to place it over the two over his spark. "It is the nature of it, of the existence I was created for."

Radiance shivered, fully aware of how much information was hidden away in the glyphs should he choose to chase it down and link it in with everything else. "Would you like to wait, then?" he asked quietly. "The three orns, until you talk to me?"

Prowl murmured, a wordless sound and lifted his hand from Jazz's grip to cup the back of Radiance's neck, drawing him in to rest their chevrons together. "No. I would rather the trauma be revisited all at once. What we survived was ugly, and much of it is still very raw."

"You survived it together," Radiance said, now more certain of that than ever, and they both nodded. His spark felt tight, anxious, and as much as he tried, his vents weren't entirely steady.

Jazz hand cupped a hand on Prowl's cheek to draw him around and looked into his mate's optics as he brought both hands up to cup his face. "I'd like you to spark merge with him," he said, so quiet that Radiance could barely hear him. "Once it's over."

It was Prowl's turn to shake, his field, unguarded here between the mecha he loved, undulated and flickered, washing between deep fear from multiple sources, desire just as intense as uncertainty. "You ... are sure?"

"I'm sure," Jazz said, steady and certain against him. "I've wanted that for a long time. Wanted both of you to have that."

"Saxo..." Radiance drew Jazz's attention. "Three can merge," he said, startled that his mate wouldn't know something as simple as that, Praxian or not. "It isn't hard to do."

The pair went quiet, sullen, pained but calm. It was Prowl who spoke. "When you know the full story, you'll understand. If you wish to merge with only me?" he looked at the dark mech, honestly uncertain.

Radiance answered with a deep, searing kiss. "Yes, yes I want to merge with you, you have no idea..." He looked back at Jazz, hesitated, then reached out to stroke his cheek. "I want both of you."

Jazz shuddered and pressed into the touch. "So do I," he whispered longingly, and there was a sudden tension in his field, followed by a short snap of a burning, seething, wild rage that made Radiance gasp before it was gone, leaving the familiar, calm field in its wake. Jazz shivered and looked to Prowl. "I can hardline in with you, at least."

"Three way hardline," Prowl suggested, standing so they could lay on their berth for this. "This is his story more than mine."

"Combination of both memory sets will show the most," Jazz murmured, almost to himself. "You're sure you want to do this right now?" he asked Prowl one last time as they stood for a moment to let the oil drip from their frames once they stepped out onto the balcony.

"Yes," he nodded, drawing Jazz close and kissing him. "Better to get it over with. We've all wanted this longer than we'll admit to."

Jazz inhaled, cycled, and vented slowly, and held his arm out to Radiance, bringing him in to stand with them, wings brushing together, each holding the others, until they were dry enough to go inside and settle on the berth.

Prowl and Jazz laid Radiance back and stretched out on either side of him, Jazz stroking his helm and Prowl his chest. "Hardline for the story. We can merge if you still want us afterwards," Prowl decided, his tone firm as he shifted his touch to circle a dataport on Radiance's chest.

The port spiraled open as Radiance turned to bring Prowl into a kiss. "I'm not going to stop wanting you, beloved," he murmured. Prowl just smiled at him, field and expression tinged with what felt like an ancient grief, and clicked into his chest.

Radiance's cable went to Jazz, and Jazz's went to Prowl, and on the final click, three processors came peripheral to each other, firewalls lowered, frames settled, and then a long silence.

~Designations first?~ Jazz questioned.

~It will ... I want you to see how he thinks, love,~ Prowl responded with a hint that this was something that excited him very much, that it made Radiance very attractive to him. ~Don't stop yourself from making connections this time,~ he trilled to Radiance. ~I am Seneschal Prowl. He is Lord Jazz of the House of Vortex.~

Radiance didn't need to make connections to know those designations, and the stunned shock that slammed through him and into his field left him feeling beyond dazed. Almost immediately his processors pulled up two detailed images, downloaded as part of a top priority, arrest-on-sight, planet-wide search that was still officially ongoing.

~My frame,~ Jazz said, smiling nostalgically as soon as he saw it. ~How I miss those frames some orns.~

~You-you have botnapping charges against you, serious ones,~ Radiance managed, looking at his lover as Prowl for the first time. ~Of-you! Of-of a...~ He looked back to Jazz. ~They're twins. Primus below, you didn't each carry one, they're twins! You were never botnapped, oh...~ He struggled to sit up between them, too tense to stay completely still, hand going to Jazz's shoulder, then looking at Prowl. ~He ran away with you!~

~Yes. It took us a vorn to get out, and if it hadn't been for what he wanted to do with one of them we would have taken longer. We bolted long before my plans were ready and we paid a high price for it, but we survived.~

~Vortex,~ Radiance said, and then at the way they flinched just at hearing the designation, immediately brushed his field out in comfort and apology. ~Him. What did he...~

Jazz shuddered. ~In time. That's close to the end. The beginning is...~ He cocked his head and his lips quirked up in a slightly smile. ~The very beginning is happier. We were in love, as much as I could understand what that meant, but I was contracted to an oligar who wanted my seals intact. Prowl and I believed that once they had been broken and my bonded tired of my frame's newness, we could be together as much as that world would allow. But... he's a seal fetishist. Once he breaks them, he keeps them until they deactivate, and doesn't let any other touch them. It's the thrill of knowing his is the only spike to have ever been inside a frame.~

Prowl picked up then. ~He kept me alive even after I'd touched his property because it meant he could continue to punish me, and he didn't want me to deactivate while Jazz still had feelings for me.~ He shuddered, part of him shutting down just at the prospect of facing these memories again. It took him a moment to drag himself back to the timeline and begin properly. ~Jazz was kindled to a noble House that was losing credits faster than they gained. I and my creations were their greatest asset other than their own creations they could sell off, so long as they only had a few. My first two were sold to larger Houses. My third is almost one hundred now and I didn't know his designation until recently. He is my replacement for the House, as I went with Lord Jazz to his newly founded House. By then, as I know you've gathered, we were already deeply in love. The night before we left was one of the best, and worst, of my existence up to that point.~

~That's why you've always acted like you've known each other as long as you've been alive,~ Radiance said, and looked at Jazz. ~He's been there since you separated. The Praxian you saw, the first mech you wanted.~ He turned back to Prowl. ~You said you knew as soon as you saw him you were in trouble.~

~Even as a new sparkling he captured me in a way no creation before or since has,~ Prowl confirmed. ~Seneschal coding ensures I have a strong caretaker drive, but very little possessive interest in the youths around me, not even my own. Jazz was the exception. He was my Lord and thus more important than the others, but he was also mine in a way that I still do not completely understand.~

~And I didn't make it easy on him,~ Jazz chuckled, field brimming with bright joy to be able to talk about this with another, freely and without fear. He pulled up the memory of the night he'd snuck into Prowl's quarters and kissed him, the unbelievable tension and want they'd felt. Radiance smiled as they all watched, but too quickly, the memories were shifting forward to Kaon, to Prowl's conversation with fellow servants in a washrack, to his panic, to the desperate, clashing first kisses in a grotto. The tactile/hardline overload that Prowl gave Jazz, sweet and painful all at once. Watching Prowl overload himself, experiencing the erotic tension and an unbridled hope they had both felt at the prospect of running away together, Jazz brimming with hope and joy for the future, before a crack ran through the world at the sound of a single pedefall, and then everything shattered.

He watched the guards that came in, Jazz's effort to send them away, only to see Prowl bound and a blaster to his helm while Jazz was unceremoniously dragged off. They felt Jazz as he fought against his lover's parting words, and Radiance glimpsed the reality of a long, terrible night grieving for his lover before letting go of him near the end to focus on survival as Prowl would have wanted.

Focus shifted completely to Prowl after that and he shared the strange calmness that came with complete acceptance of his fate, execution.

Only... that execution never came, and before long, Radiance was shuddering along with Prowl, horror growing with every passing moment. Prowl was shielding the agony of these memories, but it came through in the sounds, the thrashes, as his frame was melted away. Radiance didn't have to feel what Prowl had to have a fundamental grasp of what it must have been like. To be able to imagine what it felt like to have his plating either torn off or melted.

Radiance shared Prowl's horror at the words Vortex spoke, at the promises made that were believed. He felt Prowl's desperate move in shutting down his own sensor net in such a crude, if effective, way. He watched as Prowl's very mind, his ability to control his own settings, was shredded and locked down, forcing him to feel everything that happened to him.

There was a brief moment in the memory that Prowl was barely cognizant of but for Radiance it said more about who and what Prowl was than any amount of speech ever could. When the choice was between protecting his frame and securing his mind, Prowl didn't even consider it. The firewalls had his full attention, more important than even working out where he was or what was going on.

Prowl did his best to skim the memories, to lessen the trauma for his new lover without lessening the truth for Radiance of just how much Prowl had survived that orn. Just that night of a vorn.

Fingers melted off, one at a time. Eleven and a half breems in all before his hands, all the way down to his wrists, were finally gone. Eleven and a half breems and Vortex had overloaded twice from it. Prowl offered the number to give Radiance a grounding in how long this torment took since he skimmed much of it. His goal was to make Radiance fully understand what had happened, hopefully without traumatizing him to the extent that they'd been by living through it.

When the memory finally cut for a moment of being knocked offline and returned with the sight of something on the floor in front of him that had Prowl utterly fixated, Radiance peered, confused, trying to figure out what it was. When he realized-

~No-Primus, oh-those-~ He choked. Prowl's doorwings, one of them partially melted, ripped right from the base and thrown to the floor in disgrace.

~It gets worse,~ Prowl warned him, trying to prepare him for a blow that simply couldn't be softened.

Prowl's spike was extended against his will, something that in that moment left the still-dazed Prowl quite confused. Radiance couldn't stop the slight grin when Prowl threw insults instead of fear, only to shudder when he realized that Prowl was trying to anger Vortex enough to kill him right then and there.

Then fire touched spike and the very coding of the memory began to warp from the pain.

Radiance seized from shock and grabbed for Prowl and flared his field, desperate to feel him safe in the present as he watched something that no one could have survived intact. Everything lurched in a confusing moment as Prowl fell, cuffs slipping over the stumps that had been hands, leaving him on his back as a huge, dark frame loomed over him, pressing unrelentingly.

When it finally, finally ended Radiance found that his hands were gripping Prowl tight enough to dent. He tried to loosen his fingers, couldn't even do that, and shuddered when he heard Vortex's parting words, ominous and damning to Jazz, who still had no idea what was coming.

There was a lull for the bonding ceremony and it gave all three a chance to steady themselves again, though Radiance did not miss how easily and completely Jazz was shifting his very core beliefs and needs. It was eerie, and more than a little unsettling to the free-sparked mech.

~It is very normal for a second creation noble,~ Prowl told him gently as Jazz and Radiance both reached for Prowl, holding their mate tightly between them. Despite the calmness of Prowl's words, it was impossible to miss just how badly rattled he was by watching the events that had forged a criminal from a seneschal.

~You don't have to watch all of this,~ Jazz murmured to Radiance. ~It will be much more of the same. But to truly understand us...~

~I need to,~ Radiance said, looking between his mates. ~I'm going to. This...this shaped you.~

~It created us,~ Prowl said. ~What we are now was forged by him. What we were before is only a shadow in our current selves.~

Radiance nodded weakly, grateful that the replay was paused, or at least slowed, while he gathered himself. ~I need to know what he did to you both.~

~He didn't deactivate us.~ Prowl answered grimly. ~In the end, that is what he did and did not do.~

~Not for lack of desire,~ Jazz snarled, and watched with some disgust at the way he was trilling subserviently to the rotor as they entered their shared quarters. Radiance watched with no judgment for that but instead with amazement at the way the young processor was already learning field control by using vivid memories. Jazz smiled faintly. ~Seems amateurish now,~ he commented on his own technique.

Radiance shuddered at the memory of the stench from inside that room, something that got worse the further in Jazz moved. The visual feed sharpened as the young noble looked around when coding that was designed to take in a space and figure out the most pleasing aesthetic arrangement for a bonded took over, and then that heightened gaze fell on something sitting off to the side of the berth.

Radiance had both the advantage and disadvantage of realizing what he was looking at before Jazz had, and he choked, groping blinding for Prowl as he stared at the mangled frame that was somehow still alive. Optics that were nearly white with agony came on, startling Jazz, and Radiance fled back from the memory, shaking. ~I'm sorry,~ he gasped as they both curled around him. ~I just need-I'm sorry, I've never seen anyone look like that and still be alive.~ There was a horror in seeing a living frame in such condition that simply didn't exist with a deactivated one.

~That first round, as shocking as it looks, is nothing compared to the condition he'd leave me in later,~ Prowl held his lovers tightly, all of them taking much needed comfort in the strength and vitality of the others to get past those moments. Memories flickered from further on, offering themselves for example before Prowl shunted them back into place in the timeline. ~Try to remember. We survived. We are strong, alive and fairly sane. We love you and we are only showing you this because we wish you to be part of our existence forever. If there was a way for you to understand why we've done all we've done, why we are what we are and fear what we do without showing you this, we would.~

Radiance nodded, taking as few moments as possible to steady himself before moving back into the now-combined memory feeds from his mates, the jarring mix of Jazz's shocked panic and anger and Prowl's dread and certainty of what was about to happen leaving him shivering.

As skilled as Jazz was at combat now, he was equally untrained then, and the small, slight frame stood no chance against the combat-upgraded rotor, and he was pinned in moments with no effort, no matter how much he thrashed to escape. From Prowl's memory, Radiance saw the bladed spike, and from Jazz, felt the edges scraping across abdominal plating, leaving him with no doubt that it was as terrifying as it looked. ~He'll rip you apart with that,~ he gasped.

~He did, countless times,~ Jazz said grimly. ~Though it was worst this first night. It got better for me, but for Prowl...~ He shook his head.

They watched in silence as Jazz skimmed the file forward through the moments of pleasure that now sickened him, up to the moment when his spike extended into Vortex's fingers. Prowl synced his own feed back up, and then Jazz felt a confusing, painful lurch while Prowl watched the rotor sink sharpened denta around his love's spike and tear, coming away with energon dripping through his lips.

~He never did replace that,~ Prowl added. ~All other damage to both of us was always repaired, but he didn't have a spike again until we escaped.~

The focus shifted to Jazz briefly when the pain abated, watching as his gorgeous spike, a work of art as much as the rest of his frame, was forced into Prowl's mouth. The sickening crunch of Prowl's denta crushing the creation mean for pleasure into bits, then the slide down his intake and into his tank where it would be broken down and used to repair him. If he ever had enough energon again.

Jazz shuddered faintly. ~If you could call what Flatline did 'repairing,'~ he muttered, then smirked as he glanced through Prowl's memory of the view of his legs tied high and apart, putting his forcefully bared valve on open display. ~Well didn't I make a lovely image,~ he said, voice dripping with disdain.

~I like it better when they're flat and you're dripping hot,~ Prowl cooed, forcing a few more modern images into the stream along with his worry for his mate. ~Hated watching what he did to you more than what he did to me.~

Jazz leaned across to kiss him before settling against Radiance's chest, wincing in unison with the other two as Vortex slammed in. He tried to separate the pain from the memory file as much as he could, but the sickening feeling of his delicate valve being shredded in a single pull couldn't be removed. Radiance curled an arm around Jazz, holding tightly. ~You said you sometimes wonder if your creators would have acted the same, if they had known about him.~

Jazz nodded. For his part, the next joors were spent in a disoriented haze of agony, being pushed and pulled around on the berth as nothing more than the plaything that Vortex had still considered him at that point. There was no mistaking the rotor's intense lust through field or frame, curled as he was around the smaller noble, spike pistoning when it was even visible. To call it rutting would almost be generous. It was taking his conquest.

Jazz shook his head and sped the feed up as much as possible while still giving an idea of how endless the first part of night had felt. ~I don't know if they would have or not,~ he said honestly, looking at Prowl. ~I believe my carrier loved me, even if I was only a source of income to my sire.~

~They had a better source of income,~ Radiance said, nuzzling Prowl. ~Apparently they didn't realize it, or thought too much of themselves to use it.~

~A bit of both. I still believe they would have prepared you better had they known,~ Prowl struggled to say through the haze of reliving this, even knowing there was worse to come.

Vortex lumbered off the berth, a sudden and startling pause. ~You will see why those images they circled planet-wide were worthless,~ Jazz said dryly. ~I can only wonder that he didn't give an estimation closer to how I appeared at the end of a vorn.~

~Doesn't help to get Enforcers on your side if you tell them you disfigured your 'botnapped' bonded,~ Radiance murmured, trying not to think about what was coming. ~Your creators supplied those images, Jazz.~

Jazz started slightly, but before he could even begin to respond to that, Vortex was holding the torch to his lips, pinning the noble without needing any restraints.

Radiance made it almost halfway through watching Jazz being all but melted down before he turned away, shaking. ~Stop!~ he gasped, pleaded, because even if it didn't look like the mech he'd fallen in love with, the voice was the same, and those shrieking, desperate sounds of agony were overwhelming. ~I'm sorry-a moment, just a moment.~

The response was instant at his word glyph even if it took his processor a moment to realize they really were listening and paying attention to him despite what was passing through the hardlines and their processors.

~Shu, shu, it's okay, love,~ Prowl held him, stroking his chevron with his lips soothingly along the small ridges while Jazz stroked his doorwings in much the same manner. ~We survived. We're okay. We're here and so are you. He is far away.~

~Lucky for him,~ Radiance snarled with a furious rev of his engines, a rare sound for the normally laid back mech. He was calming quickly under their touches, and after another klik, sighed, and nodded. ~All right.~

~You don't have to see all of this,~ Jazz murmured, offering up that option again. ~It will get worse. We can strip the memories down to data files, you would still know everything that happened.~

~No,~ Radiance said. ~I am watching with you. You both survived this, I can survive the memories.~

Jazz nodded once and started again. The screams filled their processors, the sight of liquid living metal mixing with transfluid as Vortex ground against the melting frame and overloaded again and again, until the comparative relief when he finished with the torch and wore himself out the rest of the way by driving into the gash between Jazz's legs that could no longer be called a valve.

The relief when Vortex finally dropped into recharge, right on top of Jazz, was intense.

The brief exchange that followed on their comms was telling to the mech whose gift was connecting data. Despite it all, Prowl was still focused on helping Jazz, and Jazz was obedient to him despite their significant gap in rank.

All three used the break to recover, but it was Radiance that noticed there was still a feed coming from Prowl. Small and dim, but there.

~When he locked my controls, he also prevented me from recharging. The only relief I had was energy deprivation induced stasis, and he rarely allowed me to go that low. Even for repairs I was fully cognizant. As much as one can be after being awake that long. I was pretty glitchy after a vorn.~

Radiance nodded shakily, feeling at once the need to hold and be held that his mates seemed to also be feeling, and it was resulting in their current tangle. ~One night done,~ he said weakly.

~A vorn to go,~ Prowl shuddered, holding him tightly. ~Only a few other nights were markedly different.~ His gaze flicked to Jazz. ~At least from my perspective. The spark merge was a moment for me, a good one. But he should see what you learned to do, to me, to the ones that didn't survive.~

Grief, and a guilt that Radiance had felt once before, welled up in Jazz for a moment.

~He taught you everything he knew,~ Radiance said, and Jazz nodded. Radiance turned to Prowl. ~And ... he practiced on you.~ Against them, Jazz shuddered.

~Yes,~ Prowl nodded, pressing close. ~Towards the end, Jazz was good enough to convince him that he was enjoying it, that he hated me and wanted to punish me for all the trouble I'd caused them.~ A slightly hysterical giggle creeped across the line. ~We're both very good actors when we need to be.~

~You fooled me. I knew you weren't who you said you were, but I had no clue...~

~Only because I asked you to erase it,~ Prowl murmured. ~I kept that memory, if you'd like it back.~

Radiance cocked his head, nodded, and accepted the offered file, then chuckled as it integrated neatly back into the erased spaces. ~I can't be certain, but from that, I am almost positive I had figured out you were a seneschal. Some of the most brilliant mecha with humility and the desire to serve literally bred into them, and ambition bred out.~ He caressed Prowl's cheek. ~Though I'm sure not all of them have sparks as bright and lovely as yours.~

Jazz smiled, then regretfully drew Radiance's attention back. ~He forced me to bond with him the next night,~ he murmured, and the memory stream began again.

Radiance was lost to time and space as his very concept of evil evolved, and his morals of what was acceptable. Not just because he loved these mechs who had done such horrible things, but because he finally understood how a good mecha could do such things and still have a good spark.

He was going to need a few more orns off just to recompile his code and work out how to do his job when he knew what he did now.

All that, and they still were in Vortex's estate. He was becoming a bit numb to the horror, much as they had, but everything still came to a screeching halt when he realized that the current subject was a carrier less than a metacycle from separation and Jazz wasn't just watching or helping, but the primary.

~I'm not proud of this orn,~ Jazz murmured. ~There are many orns I'm not proud of, but this one...~ He trailed off as the carrier begged and he hesitated, before learning in a sudden leap how to hate on command, realizing that the carrier would choose his sparkling's life over Prowl's, and making him scream for it.

Radiance could only stare, frozen, as he felt the glee coming from his lover when the spark left the frame and the memory turned into yet another of the thousands of episodes of Vortex spiking his bonded. He felt a tentative brush from Jazz over the hardline and looked up into wide, uncertain optics.

A moment later, the feed forcefully sped up by Prowl, he saw his lovers' exchanged texts and heard Jazz sobbing.

~P-please tell me that was the worst,~ Radiance couldn't help but plead. He loved these mechs, he really did, but he wasn't sure he could take anything more. Knowing this didn't make him love them any less, but the scars just from watching their memories were already digging deep into his psyche and it wasn't even over yet. They weren't about to run. There was more to come, but he begged them both that it not get any worse.

~No,~ Jazz whispered, optics blinking off as he leaned against Prowl, seeking support from the mech who did know and still loved him despite. ~I won't show you if you don't want to know.~

~I'm sorry,~ Radiance shuddered, pressing close and holding them both. ~I love you both, none of this changes that, but I can't see anything more. I can't. I'm sorry. I want to know you both, but you're stronger than I am right now.~

Prowl reached an arm around to hold Radiance, reassure him by touch and hardline that he was accepted, that it was all right. ~We spent a vorn building up to that, and we either learned to accept, or we'd be extinguished. You do not have the advantage of either. But you've seen enough, if you can still accept us knowing what you know now.~ He glanced at Jazz to confirm that this was enough of a test, enough for Radiance to understand them and their respective glitches. ~It gets much, much calmer once we get away.~

Jazz nodded in agreement, still pressed harder against Prowl. ~There are things before then he should still see,~ he murmured. ~We can filter. He should see when he tried to spark rape you.~

Radiance startled, looking at Prowl, alarmed, and the last thing he expected was to hear Jazz's engines purring from that memory.

Prowl chuckled and purred back, a vicious grin on his face as the memory opened up. It began with the usual refueling. Vortex grabbed him by the neck, forced his face up and poured high grade down his intake, giddy as the energy exploded through Prowl's systems in fits and spurts, causing him to thrash. It was a lot of energon to take in at once, but Prowl quickly began routing it to his processor. It left him more dazed that he had to be, but all the programs and automatic scripts that didn't need his commands began to run. His control over a network that spanned the estate in intimate detail and spread over the entire empire through the standard networks didn't fail to leave Radiance amazed in the best of ways.

Then Jazz came in and made himself seductive on the berth while Vortex watched, then hauled Prowl to the end of the berth. The next line made even Radiance stall.

"You will pleasure him. Fail to knock him offline and I will punish you severely."

~All I can guess is that he really believed Prowl wouldn't be able to handle more than one overload of his own, if that, and that I might never reach one,~ Jazz said. ~It... that was when I realized he meant to keep me, instead of snuff me once he had his heirs. That he loved me, and believed I loved him.~ Jazz smiled faintly, leaning against his mate as they relived this glimmer of something less than horrible from their time spent trapped in that estate. ~You are a stud,~ he teased his lover. ~Your heritage served you well.~

~I'd spent many vorns imagining pleasuring you, even if I'd always assumed I would be doing so as the submissive one,~ Prowl purred, his engine rumbling as their first real interface played out in gorgeous detail. Jazz may not have dared record this in high quality, but Prowl had. Every taste, every shiver, every sound and touch was as intense as it had been in that moment when their long denied desires had finally been acted on. It was enough to bring them very close to overload even now.

Radiance tried to focus through his lovers' pleasured haze, confused by something else he was feeling. ~He's enraged,~ he murmured. ~Why hasn't he stopped you yet? He can see how much you're enjoying this.~

Jazz managed to pull out of the memory enough to mentally shrug. ~He ordered Prowl to offline me, I assume he wanted to see through to the conclusion.~ He moaned when Prowl forced him over, pushing his shoulders down and pulling his aft up. ~So good even with what you were using,~ he gasped, and both Praxians purred proudly to him.

~Wanted you for so long,~ Prowl shivered, his will to hold to the memories wavering in face of his desire to overload inside his mate once more. ~It was amazing to feel you around me, against me like that. I couldn't make myself care what was coming. I had you for that moment.~

~Do you two want to take a break?~ Radiance teased.

~Yes!~ two minds echoed through his processor, causing all three to laugh.

~When do we pass up a chance to 'face?~ Prowl purred deeply as he put the show on pause and focused fully on the here and now.

~Never, you two are the worst I've seen,~ Radiance chuckled as Jazz scrambled into his mate's lap, reaching for Radiance as he grabbed Prowl in a deep, consuming kiss.

"Come on," Jazz gasped, speaking out loud and grinding their panels together. "Frag me like you did then."

Prowl's engine gave a deep growl of desire that flooded both the other mechs across the hardlines before he pushed Jazz down, pinning him on his back and grinding their panels together briefly before Prowl snapped his open. "Mine, my lovely. Always mine."

Jazz grinned, baring himself for his lover, as Radiance shifted behind Prowl and rubbed warm, inviting fingers over the closed valve panel. It snapped open immediately and Prowl pressed into that most welcome touch that placed him firmly in the middle.

"Let a Praxian stud please you at the same time," Radiance purred, leaning over him, running an inviting hand up the inside of his thigh. He reveled in the desire they both felt for him, how welcomed he was into this intimacy that they had no need to allow him into. It was a welcome relief from the memories as well, a reminder of why he was enduring it.

"Yes," Jazz moaned at the idea. "We'll have you between us, my love."

Prowl could only moan and leaned forward to kiss Jazz, hot and deep as he sank into the valve that was always slick and ready for him. Through the hardline he shared the sensation with both his lovers, along with his intense anticipation of being pressed and ground between two mecha he loved dearly. The perfection that was a triad slipped from both Prowl and Radiance, flooding into Jazz and encouraging the fledgling Praxian protocols to engage more fully and experience the bliss that was being with three that meshed so well.

Radiance shifted and angled himself to push into Prowl, completing the union, and Jazz gave a sharp, keening cry as he felt the pleasure rush from both of his lovers. "Radiance," he sobbed, and something in his voice made both Praxians stop and hold where they were.

~Jazz,~ Radiance answered.

~Everything I've done, you can still stand me?~

"Would you kiss our ridiculous mate for me, please?" Radiance murmured to Prowl, and hummed in approval as Prowl happily and readily complied with the request. ~Not only can I still stand you, I still love you so much it hurts to imagine not having you. Not being able to handle the things you were forced to do to survive isn't a reflection of who you are to me. You are strong, you saved Prowl when I couldn't, and you are a good mech. And Jazz...~

Jazz hummed through the deep kiss that Prowl was still giving him.

"You are ours," Radiance said, and slammed his hips forward, causing Prowl's frame to shift forward, driving him deeper into Jazz, and his powerful engines revved at the dual cries he got in response. "Now, my love, will you help me drive our mate," he pulled out and thrust again, ~Our Prowl,~ he gripped Prowl's hips in his hands, "To a screaming, processor-whiting overload?"

Jazz's frame tried to arch up under the weight of both his lovers. "Yes!" he cried, pulling his legs back to hook around Prowl's hips, pulsing ecstasy through his field and over the hardline. "Love you both, want you both!"

"Triad, lover," Radiance purred, pleasure coursing through him. "You have us both."

~Feel how good it is, my Jazz,~ Prowl moaned, trembling as he allowed Radiance to drive the pace, smoothly moving as the others dictated. ~I'll never need more than you, but this is so perfect.~

~It is good,~ Jazz gasped, rocking his hips in a counter-rhythm to Radiance, pushing and pulling at Prowl between them. His hand reached up and back, found Radiance's, twined their fingers together and held tightly. There was a joy, and a peace, to feeling all three frames moving together, each working to pleasure the others, each being pleasured by the others. ~It's like a dream.~

~This is triad at its best,~ Radiance moaned, hints of what his own creator-triad felt like when they were all settled by a recent interface slipping into the connection. ~Triad is much stronger than three.~

Prowl could only tremble between them, his ability to think largely wiped out already, but he responded to Radiance words with belief and deeply coded agreement that helped Jazz's new protocols connect further into his own processors through the deep links he already shared with Prowl.

Jazz managed to nod, face pressed to Prowl's helm, his lover's against his neck, Radiance moving above both of them. ~Prowl, Jazz,~ the dark mech gasped, the new designations making his lovers' fields flare out in pleasure in a way the assumed ones never had.

~Radiance,~ they responded in unison, before all three were lost to the triad union, crying out and shaking together, bliss-joy-sorrow-love-support-ecstasy tumbling chaotically through their twirling, meshing fields, more of a rush than the charge that flooded through their frames ever could be.

They remained there, joined and unified as well as any unbonded mecha could be as they gradually came down from the intense high of it all.

~A break was a good idea,~ Radiance mumbled when his upper functions finished their reluctant boot cycle.

~Yes,~ Prowl agreed, his processors happily lazy along with his frame. There was a desire to get back to the job of filling Radiance in on what had happened to them, but it was barely a blip on their shared awareness right now.

~Show me what he did to you,~ Radiance finally murmured, and he lifted himself up, pulling out of Prowl to settle next to them on the berth, coaxing Prowl to roll between them. His lovers moved in unison, shifting to their sides, frames still joined, and Radiance pressed his chest to Prowl's back, slipping back into his valve and staying there, comfort more than pleasure.

~It's more what he tried to do,~ Jazz said, smiling, beginning the memory stream again and syncing it up with Prowl's, letting the rounds of interfacing play out until his own file cut out, knocked offline, and Jazz paused for Prowl to continue alone. Prowl skimmed forward over the fear and pain that was being grabbed by the neck and having his chest plates ripped open.

When Prowl's chamber irised open it slowed to real time. The real terror was here, fear on a level that Prowl had never known before, not in nearly a vorn of being the sadist's plaything. They all felt Vortex's pleasure at the reaction and against when a finger was dipped directly into Prowl's spark, then the visual of Vortex's chest plates parting. They all felt it when the memory began to corrupt as Prowl went from afraid and slipped into pure irrational terror.

The merge came fast and painful, and while the memory was still corrupted they caught the shift in the underlying sensations that quickly calmed Prowl's processors. The memory came back into focus, uncorrupted, as Prowl's spark latched onto the large red orb invading him and locked their energies together.

~You've come into my realm,~ Radiance heard in a voice he knew even without having ever heard it. That voice was Prowl, the very essence of the spark that powered the frame. ~You would try to kindle with me. Force me to bear your creation until you ripped it out of me. You know so little of this place.~

Prowl grinned internally as the Vortex of his memory felt fear for the first time in his life, fear that turned into panic when he tried to escape. Radiance's engines rumbled and Jazz's purred.

~Insolent nothing,~ the rotor hissed back, stalling. ~You should only be so honored to bear my creation.~ But the words had felt hollow and sounded weak, and Prowl allowed himself the rush of absolute authority over life and death that was rare enough to feel unnatural.

~No, Vortex. You will bear mine,~ Prowl's voice was strong, certain, even. The pale spark surged, enveloping Vortex's much as Vortex had done to Jazz. ~You were created far below me. You will always be below me. You can break my frame, send my spark back to Primus, but you can not erase the truth that is here.~ Prowl's spark surrounded and trapped with a viciousness he had never displayed in his life before that moment and that still did not come easily for the normally calm mech. His spark held a fire that his processors were carefully shielded from. One brush of that heat had both his lovers moaning and pressing in around him, trembling with want to be one with that essence.

Prowl's memory faded, his ability to perceive anything beyond his frame extremely limited, but Jazz picked up smoothly, showing Radiance what he'd booted to see and hear and how he'd reacted, tearing the two apart, something he still regretted doing, now that he knew what had happened. In that moment, both Jazz and the construct that Radiance was growing more and more familiar with had just been desperate to save the mechs they loved, each from the other.

Vortex had advanced on him, roared at him, barely masking his new terror with rage, while the vicious growls of what could have been a turbo-wolf about to kill served as a backdrop to the entire scene. Jazz was thrown to the berth, his spark exposed and forced into a merge that left the exhausted frame unable to stay online after the overload.

Jazz paused at that point and exhaled through shivering vents, nudging Radiance through the hardline. Their lover felt dazed.

~If I hadn't wanted him before then,~ Jazz murmured, and his spark surged in his chest, desperately wanting.

~He is amazing,~ Radiance agreed. He nuzzled the back of Prowl's helm. ~Do all seneschals have processors like yours? Your is ... is astonishing. Paired with your spark it makes you formidable."

~I am one of the finest yet produced, so no, most are not quite as good as I am,~ Prowl responded, a bit at a loss at the idea of being formidable in the way Radiance meant but responding to the desire so clear in his mates. If they found it so desirable, he wasn't going to object to the term.

~It explains so much about you,~ Radiance murmured, still in the process of filtering and integrating the massive amount of data that learning who and what his lovers were had brought in. He cycled his vents, taking a moment to enjoy their fields and the warmth of their frames. ~I think I can see more. I just...nothing worse than what I've seen.~

Jazz nodded. ~After this...he was going to kill Prowl. He'd seen how much I still felt for him. I convinced him that I hated him for it, and asked that he let me torture Prowl for his pleasure until I no longer loved him. After that orn...~ He shuddered.

~It was much worse for Jazz, but the acts were not as bad as some he'd already done,~ Prowl supplied. ~I think we can give that as data, though, given you care for me much as he does.~

Radiance reached around Prowl to run his arm up and down Jazz's side, teeking as much as comforting. ~Show me one,~ he decided, and felt a strange flicker of relief and gratitude from his mate.

Jazz and Prowl consulted silently for a moment, then nodded.

~One,~ Jazz said. ~Not the first. One mixed in with the rest of the telling. There is not much longer.~

Radiance shivered. ~Good. I want to know how you got out of there alive.~

Jazz smiled. ~Our lover is responsible for that.~ He and Prowl synced their feeds back up and showed Radiance as many details as quickly as possible, skimming over the repeated sessions of Jazz torturing his love for his bonded's pleasure. Radiance watched Jazz learning how to pick locks and manipulate video feeds and saw the complex planning that Prowl brought together near the end. After they slowed for one of the last times Jazz had ever hurt Prowl, they curled around each other, holding tightly.

~Do you think you would have lasted much longer?~ Radiance asked quietly.

~I would have lasted as long as I had to,~ Prowl responded the only way he could. ~But Jazz, the construct, we were running out of time even before Jazz learned just how horrible he could be.~

~Worse than I've seen?~ Radiance shivered again.

~Worse,~ Jazz said, and they showed Radiance up until the medic announced that Jazz was carrying twins, and let him hear Vortex's response.

It took the SWAT CO a horrified moment to realize that the rotor had meant exactly what he'd said. ~He planned to...~

~He had this...vision of a future with me,~ Jazz said. ~Raising our creation together, teaching him to be like us on his brother. Enjoying himself with his own creation,~ Jazz spat in disgust. He forwarded through the glitching memory stream that followed that moment, his own panic and coding making the images hazy, until Prowl's calm certainty was there. ~But after that...~

They slowed for their escape, the first fight against the construct that showed off Prowl's processors and will, even after all the hacking and viruses that left him in terrible condition, and stopped as they walked out the gates, leaving the estate behind them.

Radiance slumped. ~All that in not even two vorns.~

~It felt much longer,~ Jazz sighed. ~It changed us more than one vorn ever should have.~

~It changed me more than my entire lifetime before it,~ Prowl murmured, his still-active creator protocols raging at Vortex in much the way Jazz's had at the time, only far, far more violent in intent. ~By the time we walked out, we were both too damaged to return to what we had been, even if it had been possible.~

~That hurt you more than the torture,~ Radiance realized as he sorted through the intense emotions Prowl was shielding him from with limited success.

~It destroyed me,~ Prowl responded, shivering and pressing against Radiance as he reached over the black mech to make physical contact with Jazz. ~The Seneschal was destroyed and I was rebuilt from what remained. I lost count of how many times I wished to extinguish to end the broken code, but I couldn't do that to Jazz.~

~Do you...want to stay alive?~ Radiance asked, hesitant and uncertain and unfamiliar with taking one's own spark being considered acceptable, but having seen for himself that for Prowl's kind, it was not unusual. Scattered, terrified thought pieces were flicking through his processor, wondering if mercy, if letting this spark go...if going with him...

~I am ... learning to.~ Prowl responded, catching bits and pieces from Radiance and pushing reassurance through the hardline that it was not something Radiance needed to grapple with. ~I've made it past the hardest part. I've found a new function that agrees with my spark and my base coding. I will always long for what I was, miss what I was created to be, but it dims a little every vorn. I am an Enforcer now. It suits me.~

Radiance nodded, relief clear in every line of his frame. ~I'm going to do everything I can to brighten your existence,~ he said, then turned and brought Jazz into a kiss. ~Both of you.~

~Thank you,~ Jazz kissed him before Prowl turned his helm for his own kiss.

~You do a great deal just being here, love.~ Prowl rested their forehelms together, chevrons lined up. ~My triad coding wasn't even active before you. It feels good, settling in a way I didn't know was possible.~

~Same for me,~ Radiance admitted with a soft laugh. ~At least, it wasn't activated like it is now. That first time with you two...that was the first I'd ever been with a pair.~

~You grew up with it, knowing it existed and would activate if you found two others you like,~ Prowl pointed out almost playfully. ~I had no clue until this mass of coding unfurled on me, telling me that three was right. I can't say I'm at all sorry for listening to it. You're very good for us.~

~You're good for me,~ Radiance hummed, trying to imagine what it would have been like to have that kind of coding just start up one orn. ~It was lonely before you. I almost can't believe how much now. And knowing you have each other when I'm too busy is a welcome relief.~

~Knowing Prowl has you when I'm gone for orns is too,~ Jazz snuggled against Radiance and gripped Prowl's hand over the back mech. ~Even without the coding you gave me, I could see how this was a good thing for us. I'll have you too, when Prowl finally gives into his natural desires to work for a few orns through. You saw it now, but he used to do it all the time.~

~I enjoy working, performing my function,~ Prowl didn't hesitate to confirm. ~I also enjoy time with my mates. I will never work as I did as a seneschal. I had no one to take care of then. I had the entire estate and all who lived and worked there, but none were mine.~

~Until there was a troublemaking sparkling who decided he was going to be yours,~ Jazz teased. ~Whether you liked it or not. He used to call me a Pit demon,~ he added conspiratorially to Radiance.

~He earned it as a mechling too,~ Prowl chuckled, happy to relax and talk of much older times, when they'd had no idea of what was coming. ~What he didn't know is that I saw everything. His first efforts at getting overcharged. The way he danced when he thought no one was watching.~

The playful indignance that came from his younger mate made Radiance chuckle. ~You will have to share,~ he said.

~Have him share the dances when I knew he was watching,~ Jazz purred. ~Those are better. And he was so frustratingly good at never reacting, no matter what I did, I just kept trying harder to get his attention. He was so beautiful and calm and everyone trusted him, even my creators trusted him with me.~ He stroked Prowl's cheek. ~I loved you so.~

~You made it almost impossible to work some orns, and I couldn't bring myself to care,~ Prowl murmured, the tone that of a shameful secret being shared. ~All I could do was watch you and focus on not begging for you to take me.~

~I would have, too,~ Jazz said, shivering. ~Oh, if you had ever asked, I wouldn't have been able to stop myself. House reputation be damned. It's a good thing for both of us you had as much self-control as you do.~

Radiance hummed. ~Some orn I'll show you how much self-control he really has,~ he purred. ~Before we work on yours. Don't think we've forgotten about that.~

~But now, perhaps we recharge?~ Prowl suggested. ~We have dealt with a great deal this orn. A long defrag to incorporate it all would do us well.~

~You especially,~ Radiance murmured, stroking his lover's helm, then sighed as he felt Jazz curl up around him from behind. ~All of us.~

~Love you,~ Jazz said, speaking to both of them. ~Thank you.~

Radiance and Prowl echoed the words and all three fell readily into welcome recharge.

SxSxSxSxSxSxSxSx S===================S SxSxSxSxSxSxSxS

Radiance roused first, a glance at his chronometer showing a recharge almost twice as long as what he usually took in a single orn, and his mates were both offline against him. That was little surprise to him, Jazz was integrating a massive number of social protocols and as much triad coding as Radiance could find to give him, and Prowl was dealing with accepting the loss of younglings he had come to know and love, something his coding was not designed for.

Radiance stayed curled between their frames, relaxed and safe and surrounded by warmth on all sides. Jazz and Prowl.

He repeated the new-old, original-designations to himself, enjoying the sound and feel of them. They were new, but he would adjust, easily.

Less easy was going to be adjusting to what they were. Nobles were disliked almost universally by commoners, and there were strong biases towards the kind of structured coding that Prowl had in their society. Not as bad as if he was a pre-prog, but a subtly encouraged disdain. Something Radiance had been working a lifetime to overcome, having met and worked with many mecha from pre-programmed castes over the course of his career.

Radiance loved these two sparks and nothing was ever going to change that. He wanted to tell their story to the world, show off that they were his mates, let everyone know how strong they were. But not only could he not do that, he couldn't even be publicly affectionate for another forty vorns, and a solid hundred and forty or more before he could admit they were triad publicly or legally. Not without causing a scandal that none of them would enjoy. Mecha were understanding of triads that formed before it was acceptable, but only so long as they remained out of sight. At least he knew the three of the most important mecha in his life, his creators, would not care in the least so long as they agreed that his mates were good for him.

But then there was Jazz... Radiance shivered. He understood that it had been sheer desperation to survive that had guided his lover's actions, but that didn't make them easier to know about. That was going to take time.

It was joors later, Radiance still nestled between the other two, integrating all the new data, before Jazz stirred next to him, and a few kliks after that, Prowl's systems began to hum as they started up. After seeing just how complicated Prowl's systems were, it no longer surprised Radiance at how much longer it took Prowl to boot than normal. The mech had a lot of systems to check and far more to load than most.

"You're still here," Jazz's first words contained a mixture of relief and amazement.

"It never even crossed my mind to go," Radiance said, turning his head to accept a kiss. "I found my triad, I'm not leaving it."

Jazz smiled at him, then shifted his gaze to Prowl, watching the familiar start-up sequence. "You realize," he murmured, once he was sure Prowl's external senses had come online, "If he comes looking for us, if he gets even the slightest hint of where we are, we'll have to run."

"I know," Radiance said, voice soft. That was one of the things he was having the most trouble coming to terms with. There was a possibility that he would have to leave Praxus, or lose them both. "I...I would go with you."

There was a rather long pause as Prowl finished booting. "I will save up accordingly," he murmured, then shifted to nuzzle Radiance before lifting up for a long kiss from Jazz. His fingers found Radiance's dataport. "Do you have any questions, now that you have had some time to process?"

"Is..." Radiance said, spiraling open, then hesitated, waiting until Prowl had clicked in and the rest of the three-way hardline was completed. ~Is there any chance he will find you? Your records here are flawless, these rebuilds incredible,~ he ran his hands over their frames, ~But does he have any way to track you?~

~As far as we know, the trail should have died in Crystal City, while I was still carrying,~ Jazz said. ~We do not take risks.~

~There is always a chance,~ Prowl responded seriously as they all felt that powerful number-crunching processor he'd been bred for did what it did best. ~It is minuscule, but it exists.~

~But the bond...~ Radiance said, already coming to conclusions that he didn't like, thinking he had a good idea of why he had only been offered a merge with Prowl, praying that he was wrong.

~Is blocked.~ Jazz said with a growl, all the hate he had for the myriad of issues that created summed up in the sub-glyphs.

~His second rebuild, the emergency that we were paying off until we moved in here, is a permanent bond blocker,~ Prowl said rather bluntly. ~We haven't quite gotten to that part of the story yet.~

Radiance's engines growled deeply, fingers going to Jazz's chest. ~So we can't have you,~ he said, his field filling with a deep, vengeful rage for a mech he'd never seen and who didn't even know he existed for stealing this from him. ~I realized you weren't bonded, but...~ He looked at Prowl. ~You've never merged, not once.~

~No, we haven't,~ Jazz affirmed, a bitter smile playing over his features. ~My bonded's is the only spark I've known.~

~I'll kill him,~ Radiance snarled, startling even himself at the vehement declaration, primal protect-vengeance triad coding that he'd never been aware of before flaring up.

~If you get the shot, take it,~ Prowl couldn't make himself say anything else, his own rage flaring hot and bright in a way that terrified his core coding, but was also far beyond its ability to dampen. ~We will protect you from anything that comes of it. But if you can, catch him and give him to us. We have learned so much we want to show him. Not to exclude you, but I do not think you want to be part of what we want to do.~

Jazz purred just at the thought of it. ~Unless you'd like to be there for the opening act,~ he said. ~I'm going to force him to watch as I overload hard and fast on Prowl. He would have kept my valve to himself for eternity, I want him to watch as a mech he considered as less than an Empty brings me more pleasure than he ever could.~

Radiance purred back. ~For that, yes,~ he said. ~But I do not have the taste for torture that you do, my love.~

~He taught it to me, he will suffer for it,~ Jazz said. ~As long as you are nearby when the bond breaks, I will be content.~

~We intend to bond as soon after the break as possible,~ Prowl added. ~Preferably before he even cools. We would include you in that if you can accept the setting.~

~That, I can do,~ Radiance said. He looked to Prowl. ~How did you avoid detection after you got away from the estate?~

~You saw how much I stole from him before we ran?~ Prowl asked and got a nod. ~Much of it was used to pay for our rebuild. High quality materials, military to noble grade armor and systems. The protocols to run them. But what we truly paid for was an invention. Something called sorcelling. We each have it installed.~ He included the basic technical file of what it could do.

Radiance glanced over it, and his frame seized up in shock. ~That's-that kind of technology is considered impossible,~ he gasped. ~It's not even technically illegal because no one thinks it can be done, so no one has bothered!~

~We know,~ Prowl chuckled. ~We are the test subjects. We got it relatively cheap because it was completely unproven. I don't exactly keep him up to date, but until the inventor was paid off he knew it was working well enough that we were still free.~

Radiance looked between them. ~How in Primus's name did you even find that?~

Jazz chuckled and looked fondly over at Prowl. ~Our lover has many connections,~ he said. ~One led us to an inventor and his apprentice.~ Jazz's first sight of Mucit and Wheeljack came up, and recognition came immediately to Radiance's field.

~I've seen that face,~ Radiance said. ~Denounced scientist, he's supposed to be crazy.~ He glanced at his lovers. ~Though apparently not.~

~Crazy or not, he does very good work and much more importantly, he has an impeccable reputation for discretion and not speaking of his clients,~ Prowl said. ~He charges a fortune, but it is worth every credit.~

~Agreed,~ Jazz said, and grinned hugely. ~Because doorwings.~

Prowl gave his lover a fondly patient look. ~The ability to change appearance and escape at a moment's notice isn't bad, either.~

~Yeah, I guess,~ Jazz said. ~But doorwings!~

~I have to agree with him on this one,~ Radiance said, also grinning at Prowl. ~Show me the rest?~

The pair nodded and queued up their memories from when they got outside the estate and everything had become so very real. They split up, Jazz driving, because he could still transform and Prowl walking, such as he could, since his mangled form could do no better. It was a slow progress, and painful, though it didn't really register as pain to Prowl, not after the agonies he'd endured, only as a hindrance to movement.

Meeting up at the by-joor room, watching his young lover experience something other than a noble's realm for the first time, realizing just how little he'd known, and then moving on to the warehouse and Mucit. Radiance almost sobbed along with Jazz in the memory when he heard the voice he knew as Prowl's. ~I'm going to thank that mech if I ever meet him,~ he said.

Jazz leaned against him as they skimmed forward through that long, exhausting drive before finally reaching the safety of an empty estate, and Radiance felt an immediate brightening in both his lovers.

~Alone, safe, and repaired,~ he summarized. ~How long did you stay there?~

~A decaorn,~ Jazz said.

~And how many overloads in that decaorn?~

~I have no idea,~ Prowl smiled fondly. ~Many. And many, many orns of recharge.~ His entire frame shuddered. ~I needed to defrag so badly. Not even in here can I explain how bad it is going without for so long. The physical pain was easier in many ways than not being able to recharge.~

Jazz trilled to his mate. ~We started discovering the glitches we've been left with, too,~ he sighed, and Radiance saw a reality of vorns of Prowl learning how to recharge without having to drive himself to exhaustion, processors that had been so overclocked for so long that they could no longer cope with having nothing to do, and emotions that were so painfully intense they'd created shorts and a hard crash when the former seneschal hadn't been able to reconcile why he was feeling them.

~Love,~ Radiance gasped, when he realized what Prowl had done in an attempt to avoid future crashes. ~That's why, last night...~

~Yes. When it gets too intense, the hack I wrote forcefully shuts my emotional center down.~ Prowl nodded. ~It's also why I can't grieve effectively any more.~ He paused. ~Not that I ever really did grieve like you do. Something about having such an advanced processor makes it difficult to process more subtle emotional context. Even if it had been repairable, is repairable, I would have to explain how it happened, and I can't. Not while he lives. Much like Jazz's glitches. They could be fixed, but the price was far too high.~

Radiance wrapped his field around them both, offering as much support as he could. ~I'm sorry I tried to push you to,~ he murmured.

~You had no way to know,~ Prowl countered smoothly, holding him. ~I wouldn't tell you. Your spark was in the right place, and I love you for trying.~

Radiance curled into the arms, pressing against the warm frame. ~I couldn't stand seeing you in pain,~ he sighed before they all looked to the memories again. Radiance glimpsed through Tyger Pax, the increasing weight of Vortex's attack on the bond that led them to the drastic act of fleeing to Crystal City for the blocker before losing everything they had to the sheer cost of the energon needed to keep Jazz alive, watched as his lover offered his frame up for credits without a moment's hesitation, and then witnessed the terror of knowing a bounty hunter was close.

For the first time he saw Prowl panic at something that wasn't an immediate threat, though he understood why well. The deal was made by the gang, and Radiance nearly shuddered at how little it registered to Prowl to have his frame used like that, and then he growled when the leader of the gang threw credits down in front of his mate. A caress from that same lover calmed him again, steadying him until he felt the shock as Jazz was told of the reality of being a commoner, or even a very valuable, powerful servant around nobles.

Then they were driving again, headed for Simfur, and if Radiance had been shocked at how little Prowl reacted to selling his frame, he was stunned by what came after, something that could have crippled many mecha, and Jazz had laughed. Just the sound of it was enough to make Radiance shudder. It was manic, unhinged, exactly what he'd picked up on Jazz when they'd first met, but on full, unrepentant display in that moment.

Prowl's memory of that moment faded away into a confusing tumble of images that quickly caused the files to corrupt, and Radiance looked to Jazz's feed to watch as Prowl was slowly coaxed out of a severe flashback loop.

~Fragging Simfur Enforcers,~ Radiance snarled. ~Someone should have heard that and stopped them. Rotten city.~

~Simfur was good to us, overall,~ Prowl murmured, giving Radiance the fast forward version of the darker orns, intent on getting to the better part when the black Praxian brought it all to a screeching halt when he saw Prowl draining a mech of energon, right in the relative open of an ally.

~I-I know you said you-~ he stammered. ~Just-to see is-I'm...~ He shivered.

~These were my energy readings while he was doing that,~ Jazz murmured, bringing up a screen that was far, far below what would have been safe for a carrier, especially one of noble protoform, with systems not designed to handle anything less than full tanks.

Radiance nodded. ~I just wasn't expecting...~ He cycled air through his systems, steadying as best as he could. ~Jazz said something like that, once, I knew it had been part of your reality but I wasn't prepared,~ he told Prowl, pressing his hand to the side of the other Enforcer's face. ~You were surviving.~

~Yes, and my carrier-mate, my Lord, was in desperate need,~ Prowl leaned into the contact. ~Thankfully we were not that desperate for long. I may have been on the wrong side of the law while in Simfur, but it was soon a much cleaner form of crime.~

Radiance hummed. ~Well, let's see it then, and I'll see if it warrants handcuffs,~ he teased.

~Since when have you needed probable cause to cuff me?~ Prowl purred, nuzzling in for a kiss.

Radiance obliged him. ~Never,~ he purred back, hand wandering to his lover's flank and back up. With his free hand he reached back for Jazz and tried to pull him even closer. Jazz wrapped an arm around his waist, fingers dancing over his frame.

~You in particularly will likely find his occupation in Simfur interesting,~ Jazz hummed, nipping against Radiance's neck, and the dark mech's field perked with curiosity.

Prowl chuckled. ~Likely so,~ he agreed, and all too willingly showed Radiance his successful theft, followed by the memorable flirting that had taken place in the washrack and left them stumbling for a room.

That scene, like many others before it, left Radiance's engines hot and revving, especially as he watched a new side to Jazz, a forceful lover that he was now familiar with but hadn't seen in these memories until now. He knew Prowl enjoyed that lover, but the memory from Prowl suddenly twisted into something unpleasant as hands closed around his throat.

Radiance felt the frame-locking panic response that Jazz hadn't, as lost as he was, and he could feel the shame coming from their lover as they watched.

~Stop,~ Radiance said softly, once it was over. They did so, waiting and watching him. ~It's a trigger for you, the hand on your neck.~

~Yes,~ Prowl said. ~As much as I enjoy being dominated, even bound, it's a very difficult line to tread at times, so we often simply avoid it.~

Radiance nodded, and twisted to look at Jazz. ~But it's something you crave, that's why you did it to me first chance.~

Jazz murmured confirmation of that. ~The Ops work helps,~ he said. ~It takes the edge off.~

Radiance reached back and took his lover's hand, bringing it to his own throat, pressing down. ~Whenever you need,~ he said, as Jazz's optics widened. ~It doesn't bother me.~

~A good triad balances.~ Prowl purred deeply, excited to watch Jazz get off as he did when it was not a surprise.

Jazz shifted up, pulling Radiance onto his back as he swung a leg up and over his hips, straddling him, keeping his fingers curled around the offered neck. ~Even knowing why I grew to like this?~

~Even then,~ Radiance said.

Jazz released the hold and stretched out over him, kissing deeply, hungrily. When he finally lifted his head, Radiance turned to draw Prowl into his own kiss, and then watched with purring engines as Jazz did the same in turn.

~Balance,~ Radiance whispered, nuzzling them both.

~Balance, support, strength,~ Prowl purred. ~Ready to get a few insider tips on Engineer?~

~Engineer?~ Radiance repeated, trilling curiously as Jazz settled down over him, resting his helm on Radiance's chest.

~Engineer was good to us,~ Jazz said, while Prowl curled an arm around them both, cuddling close. They skimmed their way forward through their memories, moving up until Radiance was watching Prowl design a credit laundering system for an underworld boss, one that excelled in the sales of illegal weapons.

~You!~ Radiance gasped, stopping everything as he struggled to sit up, turning on Prowl, pushing his mate's shoulders down to the berth. ~You are the reason imports from Simfur have gotten so-so-do you have any idea how many processor aches Simfur imports have given me over the last half century?~ he demanded, though his field was light, playful, and more than that, impressed.

~I've listened to you complain,~ Prowl smiled uncertainly at the mix of field, words and history.

~Rant is more like it.~ Jazz chuckled. ~He really made that big a difference?~

~Oh yes,~ Radiance affirmed, and it was his turn to shift into a straddle over Prowl. ~Out of nowhere, the amount we were seizing from Simfur almost doubled, and what we were getting was going up in quality. That city has become notorious, they've even started routing imports in through other cities because they know we search everything coming in from that direction. You, my love, are a force to be reckoned with.~

Prowl looked up at the mech describing him, again, in terms he had great difficulty attributing to himself. He had no difficulty stating his skills, his qualities, and he took some pride in it, but for Prowl there was always a context that it was to serve another. He didn't understand how to process being the authority, only the agent charged with enforcing it.

~What do you want to do with that?~ Prowl glanced at both his mates, the hardline subglyphs giving them a forceful reminder that Prowl was a servant without a real master, and he wanted one.

Radiance exchanged a look with Jazz, then shook his head. ~I don't want to do anything with it except admire and love you. I understand now why you don't have the kind of ambition mecha would expect from someone with your skill. You...~ He hesitated and looked back at Jazz for a moment. ~You already serve and provide, for Jazz, and now me. You've given us a beautiful place to live, you've kept Jazz safe and in energon, that's all I want.~

~You keep us happy,~ Jazz trilled and claimed a kiss that was eagerly returned.

Tension melted from Prowl's frame that none of them had noticed build up and he nodded, reaching up to caress Radiance's sides. ~We are a rather odd triad, each of us from three very different cultures.~

~We make it work,~ Radiance purred, armor loosening under the wandering fingers as his own came to rest on Prowl's chest, stroking over it. ~Even if I'd known it wouldn't have stopped me falling for you, both of you. You were so bright.~

Jazz smiled. ~Would you two like to finish anytime soon so we can give into this?~ He brushed his field against theirs, flickering with want for his mates that was readily returned.

Prowl chuckled lightly and reached over to cup Jazz's helm and pull him in for a kiss. ~Yes, my love.~ The memories picked up again, moving on to combat training with the muscle that had first approached Prowl, then the decision that they couldn't trust Engineer with keeping them safe against him and the trip to Iacon disguised as a vacation. Plans, more killings to rebuild for the staged accident, and then something that Radiance had never witnessed, much less been through.

The warnings of the impending separation, Jazz's tense anxiety and Prowl's calm certainty, but there was more beneath that he wasn't letting his mate feel. Prowl knew that the situation was less than ideal, and there were complications with grounders carrying twins that even he couldn't predict, as rare as the phenomenon was.

~Hot,~ Radiance whispered, feeling the heat through the memory as easily as his lovers had while experiencing it. ~He's running so hot.~

~The windows wouldn't open,~ Jazz sighed. ~What I would have given for cool air at that moment.~

Radiance nodded, focusing intently as armor shifted away and parted, watching and experiencing from both sides, and just the sight of a newly separated sparkling climbing up made creator coding surge up.

Jazz shook his head and cut his memory stream off right before Sideswipe crawled up his chest, then backed away from Prowl's. ~I'm sorry, I don't want to see them like this.~

~I know,~ Prowl's mind caressed him gently, supporting his mate in this despite all the pain and trouble it had caused. He easily shielded Jazz from the replay, and from Radiance's responses to seeing the two tiny, bare, glistening protoforms emerging from Jazz's open abdomen. ~He loved them dearly when he could still feel them in his spark.~ Prowl explained. ~It was only after they emerged and he could no longer feel them that his fears overrode his creator code.~

~Sunstreaker's aggressive protectiveness of his twin,~ Radiance surmised. ~Too much like the spark sire's possessiveness towards anything he viewed as his. And the way Sideswipe fixated on flight frames.~

~Yes,~ Prowl murmured, looking at the memory through the very active creator protocols still running hot in his processors. The grief welled up again only to be put down, hard, as Radiance watched the hack in action for the first time from a hardline perspective. It was brutal in his opinion, harsher than it needed to be, but without contacts that could fix it there was little he could do other than try to keep the conditions that activated it from happening.

The separation ended, and then they were in Praxus getting their forged identities, and then the memory stream ended, Radiance already knowing about their lives after that point.

~Two vorns,~ Prowl murmured. ~All that in just over two vorns.~

Radiance shuddered, undeniably glad that it was over. ~I have you now,~ he said, voice firm. ~All of that brought you here. My Jazz, my Prowl,~ he murmured, looking between them. ~And I still want you. Thank you for trusting me enough to show me who you are.~

Jazz reached up from where he was pressed alongside Prowl, running a thumb over his jawline. ~There were so many things we had to be sure of first. I don't think we ever set out expecting to find something like this, it was just too dangerous to let someone else in, in a world where he would pay beyond belief to have us back in his control.~

~I never thought I wanted a third, the coding wasn't even active in me yet,~ Prowl reached up to stroke Radiance's doorwings. ~But the way you treated Jazz when he was hurting, that he liked the idea of playing with you. It happened so fast. Thank you for being patient, knowing we were hiding very important things and giving us the time to be sure we weren't going to risk everything to have you.~

~I'd have waited centuries, my loves,~ Radiance promised them, leaning in for a kiss as Jazz sat up, moving his fingers behind Prowl's, over panes and along seams, making Radiance shiver. ~I just thank Primus we were lucky enough to stumble into each other, past all the odds.~

Jazz smiled and shifted in behind Radiance, pressing flush against him, hands on hips and sliding pelvis against aft. ~All the rules of this world would have said this triad could never form,~ he said, and chuckled quietly. ~Showed them, I think.~

~Very much so,~ Prowl rumbled, hot and eager in response to Jazz's arousal. He offered up three images for them to consider, all of them positions they were eager for. ~So tell me, my loves, what appeals most?~

Radiance's entire frame gave a hard shiver when he saw and fixated on the first offered image, to the engine revving approval from his mates. The idea of both of them being inside him was intoxicating.

Jazz slid his hand down between their dark lover's legs, rubbing his fingers over the valve cover. ~Sure you can stretch like that?~ he purred. ~We don't want to hurt you.~

~I've never tried,~ Radiance admitted, the cover snapping open as he pressed into the touch. ~I trust you both.~

Prowl's ventilations picked up to the point where it was a solid motion of air. He leaned in to kiss Radiance hard as his fingers joined Jazz's in pressing into their lover. ~You are Praxian, built and sparked. You were designed to be with two. Relax, love, and let us indulge you. It is past time you were between us.~

Radiance nodded, giving himself up to their attention, whining just from the press of his mates' fingers inside him, feeling a surge of coding bliss to bare himself to two. They moved carefully, slowly, playing their fingers off of each other to help stimulate and arouse, but not satisfy, not yet.

Prowl drew out first, then Jazz, who reached around their lover to run his hand up along his neck, up to his chin and then his mouth, pressing lubricant-slick fingers against his lips, purring deeply when Radiance drew his glossa along them, licking with a low moan. Jazz nudged his hips forward, his spike already hard between their frames, lining Radiance up with Prowl first.

Without hesitation Prowl helped lift Radiance up, bracing him between their frames before sinking into that welcoming valve with a long, single stroke that ended as he pulled back out and stopped with the tip of his spike just inside the rim.

Radiance's field flared with warm, welcome acceptance, and burned brighter with anticipation when Jazz rubbed his spike against him.

"Forward," Jazz murmured, guiding Radiance to lean further over Prowl, running his fingers down his back as he complied. Jazz shifted back and settled his hands on Radiance's hips, enjoying the view of his lovers' frames joined together for a moment before he nudged his spike up against Prowl's, then pushed, slowly, patient with the resistance but unrelenting with his pressure until without warning, he slipped in.

Radiance gasped and then moaned, unaccustomed to the stretch but reveling in the act of being joined with his triad like this.

"All right?" Jazz murmured, running soothing hands over hips and aft, though there was no hiding the strain in his voice from the effort it was taking to hold there.

"Yes!" Radiance keened, expressing the pleasure that was this stretch and fullness he'd never felt before.

~Amazing, isn't it?~ Prowl moaned across the hardline, his frame quivering with the effort to be still. ~How good the ache feels.~

Radiance managed some semblance of affirmative, which was all Jazz needed to grip the dark frame and rock forward, tossing his head back and shuddering as he sank in, feeling the texture of Prowl's spike and the gripping, quivering lining of Radiance's valve all at once. "Radiance!" he gasped, as between them, Radiance cried out, gripping Prowl's frame for stability.

"Loves. Radiance, Saxo." ~Jazz,~ Prowl moaned, trembling as hard as any of them. He kissed Radiance feverishly as he rocked down, pulling out while Jazz remained, then pressing in as Jazz pulled out. ~So good. So perfect. Thank you.~

~Love you,~ Radiance moaned, bliss flooding the hardline as all three of them felt the combined sensations coming from the other two, sliding easily together, slick and charged. ~Primus!~ he cried, almost sobbing from ecstasy. ~Primus blessed!~

Jazz shuddered and rocked, trying to keep his pace steady with the other two, struggling not to let go and just drive until they were all screaming. ~Prowl,~ he moaned, feeling an overjoyed surge to be able to finally, finally use his love's designation, not to have to hide it from their mate any longer. ~He's ours, ours to have and love, Radiance, ours!~

~Yes. Triad. We are triad.~ Prowl replied, shuddering. His next thrust was faster, deeper, as he picked up on Jazz's desires and knowing that they matched all around. ~We are mates, all of us.~

Radiance's engines whined with need as the speed increased. ~All of us,~ he echoed, moaning, caught between the other two, subject to their pace and desire, trapped until they decided to release him from the tormenting bliss that this union was. ~Faster, take me, take me!~

~As you desire,~ Prowl moaned and obeyed, his spark and core code rewarding him with deep pleasure at obeying that was evident in every electron that passed between them. A joyful submission to another out of love and devotion was Prowl's offering. An offering that Radiance and Jazz both accepted with a matching pleasure at making him so happy.

The bliss of that gift flowed between them and claimed what little self-control any of them might have still possessed, pushing them to incoherent movement and ecstasy. Rocking together, panting, stroking, kissing, claiming, it took little, so little for the triad to push themselves to the brink after that, not even a full groon.

Jazz lost himself first, the youngest, the least able to fully control his rising pleasure, and he shouted in warning just moments before overload crashed through him and his hips bucked forward involuntarily, breaking the rhythm they'd set between them, shooting into the tight heat of Radiance's valve and mixing charged transfluid with lubricant, his pleasure rushing over the hardline into the other two.

It was all either of the Praxians could take, not that either were inclined to resist. Prowl's roar echoed through the room as his hips drove up, adding his crackling transfluid into the mix and his overload bliss, as much emotional as physical, rushing into his lovers across the hardline.

Radiance screamed and seized between them, caught and surrounded by the crashing waves that rushed over, around, through. His fingers gripped tight enough to dent, with no awareness of his frame outside the absolute, unbelievable ecstasy that went spark-deep in a way he'd never thought possible.

When he finally came out of the white-out daze, vision flickering and vocalizer crackling with the leftover static, he couldn't do anything more than sob his joy against Prowl, overwhelmed with the perfection of a triad completed.

Behind him, he was dimly aware of Jazz moving and then pulling out, moving up. "Know his spark," his lover's voice murmured, low and eager.

"Are you sure?" Prowl asked, looking at his first mate.

Jazz nodded. ~I'll feel it through the hardline, be part of it that way.~

~Join us, open your chest,~ Prowl cooed. ~We may not be able to merge, but you can feel our sparks on your circuits.~

Jazz nodded with a shudder of want and shifted to stretch out next to the other two, armor latches clicking open, plating moving back, and exposed the black crystal that surrounded his spark chamber and the warm blue spark caged by it.

Radiance recovered enough of himself in the pause to gasp when he saw it, and reached out, fingers hovering over the cage. ~May I touch?~

~Of course you can,~ Jazz said. ~I don't feel anything from the blocker, though.~

Radiance stroked over the complicated latticework. ~Your chamber can still open?~

Jazz tilted his head in affirmative and spiraled the center iris open in answer. Immediately blue leaders reached out, only to dissipate at the blocker, if they weren't turned back.

~It is beautiful, isn't it?~ Prowl rumbled in unabashed desire as he reached to stroke the crystal chamber where it was accessible. ~The chamber is so sensitive, and his spark loves to play with fingers.~

Jazz groaned, then shook as Radiance's fingers followed Prowl's lead and slipped beneath the blocker, his spark eagerly sending out seeking tendrils to know the new touch of this mate. ~Wasn't...going to tell him that yet,~ he managed, voice cracking with static even over the hardline. ~I'll overload again if you keep that up!~ he gasped when Prowl moved his fingers into the spark energy alongside Radiance.

~And this is a bad thing, how?~ Prowl's tone was full of lust that had nothing to do with physical desire. ~You are so amazing in pleasure. We'll wait for you to recover before we explore our sparks.~

~So vibrant,~ Radiance whispered, knowing with even just this small touch that he wasn't going to stop working until he could fully have his lover's spark, and Jazz's overbright, pleasure-hazed optics found the golden visor, lost in it.

He whined softly, overwhelmed and with fans straining at full speed to keep up with the pleasure-hot systems. Vents became staggered and his spark surged and pulsed, pushing against the constraints, touching as much of its lovers as it could. Very carefully, Radiance lifted himself up and guided Jazz fully onto his back, moving the quivering frame as slowly as he could, shifting over him, leaving room for Prowl to claim him in a kiss.

Their fingers swirled, touched, crooked, and the rapidly building charge snapped and Jazz sobbed his bliss, spark energy swirling and crashing against the barrier, an overload that left him panting and trembling and barely holding onto his senses when it crackled out.

~Amazing,~ Radiance's whisper was the first thing that penetrated Jazz's consciousness as he came around enough.

~I know. That is what I have been bound to for as long as it has existed.~ Despite the servitude of the words and tone, across the hardline there was no questioning that it made Prowl's very spark sing to say it. ~One orn, his spark will be free again.~

~And it will join yours,~ Jazz finally managed, shaking off the daze. ~Form the bonds that always should have been.~ He pushed himself up, iris spiraled shut again, but chest remaining open, and pressed a kiss against Prowl's mouth. ~Know each other, let me witness.~

~Yes, my love,~ Prowl responded to them both, kissing Jazz before turning to spread his chest plates open, bathing them in the pale blue light of his spark, offering himself without reservation to the mechs he had claimed as triad. ~Radiance, be one with me.~

Jazz purred at the familiar sight, stretching out on his side and resting his head on Prowl's shoulder, leaving one hand free to touch and stroke, while Radiance moved over their lover, dark fingers hovering over the offered chamber, optics bright with awe.

~Gladly, willingly,~ Radiance whispered, chest armor unlocking and retracting, pulling away to reveal rich, golden light and a bright, shimmering crystal chamber and spark, one that was already pulsing to push forward and feel the touch of the other.

~Prowl,~ Jazz gasped in awe, unable to keep himself from reaching forward towards the light as they looked at their mate together.

~Exquisite,~ Prowl shivered as he looked at the spark. Suddenly his vents caught and he reached up to hold Radiance at his shoulders, keeping him away. ~Oh lover, such a strong spark. Please, don't agree to kindle. Not this time.~

Flickers of curiosity were met with the simple truth that for Prowl, a spark merge meant he was being bred. It had not been since his first lover that he'd merged for pleasure, and even that had not been often.

~Not this time,~ Radiance agreed easily with the experience of one who had only ever merged for pleasure. ~Or even soon. I'm not ready for that. We're not ready for that.~ He looked to Jazz. ~When we kindle, it will be all of us, and all of us will want it, and not until.~

Prowl nodded, relief clear in his field and hardline. His grip eased on Radiance, shifting to allow him to control the merge that Prowl wanted just as badly.

Radiance took a slow, deep intake, working to steady himself as much as he could, before lowering down, the first seeking tendrils of light creeping forward to brush against their mirrors from Prowl's, the lights twirling and playing together, eager to touch, to feel, to be together.

The closer he sank, the more feeders came out, each one finding another and twisting together, drawing the sparks closer. It took all Radiance's control to keep himself as far away as he was, pausing once he was on his elbows, a hand's width separating their open chests.

"Want-want to feel this as just you," Radiance managed, reaching to unhook the hardline between them, leaving them each connected to Jazz but not to each other. Once the cable was tucked away, he released the fraying control he had over his spark and it surged forward, faster than intended, pressing against Prowl as Radiance sank down fully, crying out. Under him Prowl arched into the contact, willing and eager, but also a conditioned response. Radiance caught how easily Prowl accepted the rushed final stage, welcoming him, offering to carry his creation with an honest desire.

~No, my love, that would not do for us right now,~ he whispered. ~Some orn, you will be our Vision, we will fill you with life, but not this orn. Want your pleasure, want to know you, nothing more.~

The ice blue spark gave a flicker of confusion before embracing the declaration just as willingly. Prowl shivered and cautiously opened himself a bit more, uncertain with this kind of merge but willing, so very willing to learn. Prowl shivered and moaned, his frame on fire from the spark-on-spark contact.

Radiance moaned in turn, opening himself fully, inviting the naturally curious essence he had come to love so much to explore his very being. Distantly, he heard his armor locking as safety protocols engaged, could feel a hand stroking up and down along burning hot plating, but the presence before him was enthralling in every way possible, a spark he wanted both to own and be owned by, to love, to live, to be with. ~Prowl,~ he whispered, sang, feeling the glyph of his lover's designation echoed all around him.

~Radiance,~ came the reply. Sung in a rougher voice, but with no less absolute devotion. ~Yours. Mine. His. We.~

More slowly Prowl opened up, offering himself as his essence swirled around Radiance. Despite the intense subservience bred into his spark, there was a predator there too, deep and quiet, roused only to protect itself and its wards. Radiance recognized it instantly from the memories. That predator was what Vortex had faced and failed against. It knew how to consume and command, yet like the upper levels, it was also content to remain within its domain, only rising when it was challenged by one without the authority to do so. It was a predator that Radiance both respected and was humbled by, and once he realized that this was the part of Prowl that had deemed him trustworthy, his spark pulsed with joy and gratitude.

His own spark felt shallow compared to that depth for a moment, until Prowl moved forward, touching every part of him, glimpsing everything he was. Predator and servant twined with him, purring, proud and deeply honored to be his. His spark was investigated, every corner of it mingling with Prowl as it was met with approval.

Prowl's memories opened up to him, the older ones from his youth. Formative vorns and moments that shaped him into the mech he was now. His first interface, being taken by a group of young nobles. The acceptance that this was within their rights and thus nothing to object to. His first love, a mech Radiance had only heard a bit about before now had a face and frame to go with that designation. Gentle touches, gentle words, but the moment that stood out for Radiance had been one of limited importance to Prowl. One of the first things Susurrus had told the young seneschal in training.

"Then this will be your first lesson. We are created, thus we must end. If you love, the last memory you will have is pain."

Prowl had only understood in an abstract way then. He knew about death, knew that lives began and ended, but he had not yet lost one he cared about. Susurrus left him with good memories, and left him with a deep, numbing pain that had lasted for centuries before it finally leveled out and Prowl looked at others as potential berthmates, but never another lover. He wasn't avoiding pain. Even then he had little care about it. Not even his own creations, three of them, could muster any emotions from him while they were inside him and he nurtured them. He simply did not have the fire needed to love again until he saw the newly separated Lord Jazz.

Radiance smiled through their joined awareness, grateful for the gift he was being given, and offered much the same in return, a life so different from the one Prowl had known as to be almost impossible to imagine, showing the experiences of a sparkling with no directive coding, built to be free, even from what his creators had chosen.

Prowl saw joy and love and excitement for the mystery of the future, first in an adventurous youngling and then in an enthusiastic mechling who gave everything he was to a first lover, a schoolmate who hadn't given anything in return and had left Radiance confused and broken, a first lesson but not enough of a deterrent to stop the same from happening again and again throughout the mech's life.

Radiance gave all of himself to a lover, even when he knew it wasn't going to be returned. He was beautiful, and he knew that, and had been seriously courted more than once over the centuries, only for his partners to lose patience with his work. One mech, Nimbus, had enthralled him, and Radiance had courted him instead, almost tearing himself in two in order to please his partner and do the work he loved so much, but in the end, that lover, too, had left.

~Never again. Never again will you give to have nothing given back. Never again will you be turned away from because your love your work,~ Prowl promised with his entire spark, a trait he shared with Radiance. He gave his all when he gave, and did so without shame or regret. Only Prowl gave rarely, guarding himself well until his spark had enough of it and found love again. ~We are triad, my love. We three are balance.~

The glyphs, spoken spark to spark, made Radiance's spark swell as he shared a final bit of memory. The last thing he'd expected that orn, going upstairs to meet a pair of sparklings after refusing courtship after courtship with no plans to try again, was to walk right into a captivating, bright, mated pair, and be unable to walk away ever again.

~You are the bright one,~ Prowl wrapped Radiance spark with his own, joyful, honored and humbled to be found worthy. ~Unscarred, unbroken, still as you were meant to be. You remind us that there is something beyond survival, that hope should be held onto not as a leash but as a gift.~

~You show me that there is strength, and goodness, that can overcome the darkest Pits, that being hurt does not mean being broken, that it is still possible to find love in this world,~ Radiance's spark whispered back, swirling around Prowl's, touching the scars and accepting them, seeing that they had made this spark stronger. ~You've shown me there is a reason to hope for the future, to keep giving.~

~Love you.~ Prowl shivered, loosing his grip on keeping the merge steady enough to converse. It felt so good to simply sink into and abandon himself within.

~Let go, love, my love, our Jazz wants us to take this joy in each other,~ Radiance trilled, singing his bliss in the golden light, painting the taste of ecstasy where it met with bright, pale blue. ~I love you!~ he cried, ancient glyphs known spark-deep, given only to triad, only to mate, and light consumed them as they both surrendered to ecstasy that was a merge with a mecha you loved.

Both their frames were trembling, shivering with the fading sensations as their sparks pulled apart, retreating to their respective homes reluctantly after a taste of what could be, would be when he was no more.

Jazz was shivering next to them, pressed alongside Prowl, panting from the overload that had been triggered by the dual surge of spark energy from his mates' chests washing through his own systems. ~Some orn,~ he whispered. ~Thank you for letting me witness and feel.~

Radiance came back to himself enough to nod, and lifted himself just enough for chest armor to close before collapsing back down on top of Prowl. ~Anything,~ he murmured, exhausted. ~How much could you...~

~A little, I think,~ Jazz said. ~I could hear you.~

Radiance just nodded again. "Triad," he murmured, snuggling against his lover's warm frame as all three settled in to cycle into much needed recharge.