Hey ya'll, so this is the last official chapter and the next one will be the epilogue. I do want to apologize ahead of time for Prowl's OOCness in this chapter but it was done on purpose, 'why' will be explained at the end.
Thanks for sticking with me and reading this story.
Enjoy!
Chapter 8:
Praxus, the city of peace. It was what they were known for, and all the city-state's denizens strove to maintain the reputation. Now, this was not to say that Praxus was perfect, but everyone, even the criminals, followed a certain honor code. Very few non-Praxians lived in the doorwinger capital of the world, as few outsiders could adjust to the strange meta-set, and Praxians were not tolerant of any who would jeopardize their City's heritage. It was for this that Praxus was also known as the biggest tourist attraction on Cybertron. The city-state's cultural purity was novel to the of mechakind whose functioning were mostly shades of grey from eons of cross-cultural mixing.
It was these thoughts that were coursing through Smokescreen's meta as he stood trapped on a public transport stuffed full of tourists, and he sincerely wished he had chosen to drive home on his own. However, with the energon shortage, a Praxian psychologist was only allotted one cube per orn and Smokescreen could ill afford to use it on driving. It took a quarter cube's worth to drive to and from work, then another three-quarters cube to focus properly on his job. This meant he was already on short rations, but he also had been forced to take out a loan to pay for medical bills after a nasty virus hit him. Now he had to pay six hundred credits a decacycle to the loan sharkticon until his debt was paid. The only way to get that was to save a half cube of every orn's ration and sell it on the black market. Which meant choosing the free public transport rather than his speedier altmode.
At last the transport came to his stop and the weary blue and red mech was able to escape the yammering, pushy crowds. He walked down two streets from the PT stop and turned left. Just ahead was the tall housing structure that served as home for four hundred and twenty-three families, not including himself. It was adequate midclass housing according to the Council, however, in reality it was over-crowded, cramped, and not in the best of neighborhoods. Sadly, with his occupation recently downsized in the global class hierarchy, it was all he would likely ever have to call home.
Still, his neighbors were nice and the majority of the building's tenants had formed a sort of family, trading services back and forth to help with things the others could not afford. It had formed an exclusive close-knit community and gave them all a sense of safety. So, when an elderly femme from his floor stopped him and told him that there had been an unknown mech seen entering his apartment he took it seriously. Smokescreen warily pulled his, slightly nonregulation, blaster out of subspace and approached his unit.
His entry door was locked so he tapped in the code as quietly as he could and slipped in while it was still opening. The blue doorwinger crouched low and slid along the entry wall until he reached the main room. He could sense the intruder's spark signature in there and as subtly as he could he accessed his Vector Sigma gift, flooding the room with magnetic smoke. Smokescreen waited until he heard the mech cough to try and clear their clogged vents and he sprang. The Praxian got lucky and managed to pin the intruder to the floor without a fuss. He dismissed the smoke and prepared to give the thief what-for, only to stop in surprise when he saw who it was.
"Prowl?" Smokescreen gasped.
The black and white Praxian coughed a last bit of smoke out and answered in a roughened voice. "Hello brother. May I sit up please."
The blue winger scurried to get off the other and helped his long-estranged brother and trinemate to the couch. It was as he moved to his own chair that his shock wore off and vorn of suppressed anger came to the fore. "You've got a lot of bearings to show up in my presence unannounced."
Prowl looked at him, sorrow written plainly across his normally neutral faceplates. "I am sorry. I had no choice."
Smokescreen arched an optic ridge. "You didn't have a choice in asking whether u wanted to see you? Come on, that's a load of slag and we both know it."
The black and white shook his helm. "No, I am sorry I had to send you away."
"You're sorry. Really?! That's all you have to say for what you did?!" exclaimed the other incredulously. "You had me brought up on charges for illegal gambling and had me dismissed! Granted, you gave me an honorable discharge, but Prowl, that was my dream career! How could you possibly ever justify that?!"
Prowl hung his helm, he knew this would be coming and he could only hope to regain at least his brother's trust if not his love. "He threatened you. Said that if I did not cooperate then you were next. I... I could not bear the thought of anything happening to you so I made it look like I despised you so he would leave you alone"
That was when Smokescreen's psychology programming kicked in. He immediately began analyzing his brother's behavior and posture, and he did not like what it was telling him.
Prowl's servos were clasped nervously in his lap and his wings were flicking in distress. His optics were pale and dilated, and his mannerisms were submissive. Whoever this 'he' was, was going to get steamrolled for causing this behavior in Smokescreen's baby brother. "Who is 'he'?"
The black and white mech's optics flicked up to hold the other's for an agonizing telling moment before dropping to stare at the floor. "Sentinel Prime."
Smokescreen blinked, that... was not who he was expecting, and slag, the mech was deactivated so there would be no elder brother vengeance. Fine, he would settle for restoring Prowl's confidence and healing his hurts. "Sentinel Prime threatened you?"
Prowl nodded. "He... was not like everyone thought. Being his second was supposed to be an honorable job, instead..."
Large coolant drops began to fall from the younger Praxian's optics and Smokescreen jumped up to comfort his brother. "Sh, sh, Prowl, it's ok. You don't have to talk about it right now, you can take your time."
Prowl nodded again as he buried his helm in his older brother's chest and wept, feeling safe for the first time since his first session with Sentinel.
/"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"\
Smokescreen held Prowl until the tears would no longer come and the dry heaved tapered off.
The psychologist was preparing to coax Prowl into the other room for some recharge, but the younger mech began to speak. The black and white told of everything that had been done to him, every horror he survived. He asked his brother why he had needed to suffer, if he had done something to cause it all, and Smokescreen had no answer. Not because he thought Prowl caused his own victimization, but because he was going to either cry or yell if he opened his mouth. The red and blue mech got ahold of himself eventually and began to shush his brother, telling Prowl that nothing would ever hurt him again.
It took joors for Prowl to release all his pent up emotion, but Smokescreen never let go of him. When the emotive purge reached a lull the elder Praxian nudged the younger up and into the berthroom. Prowl needed recharge to properly deal with his trauma, and Smokescreen knew well that this would only be the first of many repeat purges. No one who had been through such an experience as his little brother could recover quickly.
The blue doorwinger tucked Prowl into the berth meshes and then curled around him to keep him safe while he recharged.
/"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"\
Prowl woke up the next morning acting more normal, and although Smokescreen knew that state of meta would not last, he left anyway. The deadline for that decacycle's payment was coming up and he did not have any more paid sick leave for the vorn. Taking an orn off now would cost him a cube of energon on top of losing that orn's meager credit wage. He made sure to leave Prowl his comm number for emergencies and blithely assumed that the other coming to him as the younger had yesterorn meant he would actually use it.
He was wrong.
/"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"\
Smokescreen opened the door to his unit, quite ready for a nice, refreshing glass of energon with his brother. He was hopeful that the lack of calls all orn were a good sign of Prowl's current mental stability, but even without a battlecomputer the doorwinger knew that probability was low.
The apartment was dark and Smokescreen could not hear anybody inside. He wondered for a moment if Prowl had left, but a small scraping noise like someone turning over on the berth alerted him to his brother's location.
Thinking nothing of the fact that Prowl was taking a nap so late in the orn, Smokescreen entered and began preparing dinner. When he finished pouring and heating the glasses the primarily blue mech moved to the berthroom door to wake his brother. Before he could open his mouth to speak he heard a strangled sound. Smokescreen leaned closer to the door to hear better and when the sound came again he could clearly hear that it was a desperate whimper. He threw back the sliding door and rushed in. Prowl was curled in the center of the berth, optics distant and unfocused, and from the tone of the continued whimpers, still in the throes of a memory purge. It looked as the triggering culprit was one of the berth meshes which had tangled around the black and white's limbs during his nap. Smokescreen moved forward cautiously so as not to startle the half-aware mech and leaned forward to nudge his brother awake. As soon as his servo contacted Prowl's shoulder plating the black and white flung himself away and clanged sharply against the far wall.
"Please, please not again." Prowl pleaded in an uncharacteristically broken tone. "Please don't Sentinel, please!"
Smokescreen felt anger rise up within himself again at the deceased pit-spawn that had taken hold of his little brother, but he pushed it away knowing that Prowl would be able to sense it. The psychologist did not want to make Prowl's memory purge worse, but he was in a catch-twenty-two. If he left, Prowl might stay lost in his own meta for joors, but if the blue Praxian stayed he might further traumatize the younger mech.
A moment more of his indecision and he yielded to his brotherly instincts. Smokescreen carefully and tenderly gathered his resistant sibling up and just held him. It was hard to listen to the continued pleas for mercy so the elder mech began a litany of his own. He told the black and white doorwinger that he was safe, loved, and with family, over and over, until Prowl was silent. Smokescreen looked down into the face of his brother and saw him looking back with a spark-rendingly broken and vulnerable countenance.
"Are you awake now Prowl?" Smokescreen asked gently. The other nodded and shuttered his optics, snuggling deeper into the safe embrace as he registered his surroundings were not the berthchambers of Sentinel Prime.
After a few more kliks of comfort Prowl glanced up at his elder brother with that same shattered look and said. "I thought if I got away from that place all of this would go away, but it's getting worse."
Smokescreen carefully took his brother's faceplates in his servos and leaned in until their chevron crests were touching. "No, it won't, not on its own, but I will help you. Together, this can be overcome."
For a moment it was as though Prowl had become a youngling again so trusting was the gaze he turned upon his brother. "You promise?"
Smokescreen nodded, fully accepting of that trust and prepared to go to great lengths not to break it. "I promise."
Soooo, Prowl. I know from personal experience that when bad things happen to people like Prowl (and myself), we tend to bottle it up until we shatter and explode everywhere. It makes us act very unlike ourselves for awhile, and we tend to heal best when with trusted family. Hopefully I didn't overdo it and yes, Prowl will be back to his normal stoic self (minus the trauma damage) soon.
kkcliffy: Thank you, you would not believe sometime how hard it is to come up with unique names for these chapters (yes I know I don't have to name them, I like to do it anyway.), but that title was pure inspiration. And yes, I could not come up with a feasible way for Prowl to heal in-house and I could never see Optimus as being anything but understanding.
Lair of the Twisted Muses: I'm so glad you enjoyed it and that it was able to brighten your day! I have never really seen anyone detail the interactions between Optimus and the Council and I felt it needed some screentime. I'm glad you liked how I did it. This chapter should have answered your question of who he was going to see, and yeah, I didn't think very many people would remember the one sentence mention I gave to poor Smokey early on in the story so it kinda became a bit of a cliffhanger, sorta.
R: Thank you so much, it makes me a bit sad too, but I'm also happy because I am finishing a story, yay! I also have noticed the lack of early Prime-hood stories and it was partially how this plot-bunny got started. Thank you for all your compliments, and I will be editing chapter 7 to fix that error.
SomeoneI'mSure: yeah, I noticed, it is a great pen-name. Thank you for the confidence.
Vigatus: thanks!