Sooo Close To Being Caught Up On The AUs. 8 And 9 Are Both Finished, So Ill Have Some Wiggle Room If

Sooo close to being caught up on the AUs.  8 and 9 are both finished, so I’ll have some wiggle room if I need it during the week. 

I am currently working on so many stories!  Old and new, but Virgin Widow is letting me hit my groove just like Secret Identity did. It’s just flowing so nicely!

Here’s a spoiler-y preview

Prowl steered them to the back corner and grabbed onto the pole.  He turned Smokescreen towards him so that his face was mostly hidden. Smokescreen took this as an invitation to tuck his helm into the curve of Prowl’s shoulder and bawl louder.

“I have you,” Prowl murmured, starring the other passengers down.  Some looked mildly concerned, others annoyed.  He heard the tail end of one bot saying “-wimps probably crying about –“ and shuffled Smokescreen further back.

Beside them, a tankformer with an impressive amount of very politically charged engravings shifted until his massive arm and shoulder shielded the two of them from the rest of the bus.  Prowl whispered his thanks.  The bot only grunted and nodded.

AU August Fic 10

Space Academy

 Jazz stepped into the room with a datapad under his arm and a tightly controlled field.  He was looking forward to hearing these bots explain themselves.  He looked around at the seated bots - generals and sergeants and captains, all wearing their decals proudly.  None of them stood when he entered.

 So that was how it was going to be.

 “Hello,” he said, masking his accent, “My designation is Commander Jazz, 4th Legion, Special Operations and Internal Affairs.”

 The mech on his left stood and held out a servo.

 “I’m so glad you could come, Commander, but it’s really not serious enough to warrant Spec Ops or even the IA.  One of our newest recruits has been having some trouble adjusting to life in the service and -”

 “It was my understanding that he has been missing for six hours and none of you have been able to locate him,” Jazz interrupted him.   “And I will be deciding what is important enough for our attention, thank you.”  He released the mech’s servo and stared at him until he retook his seat.

 He turned back.  A few of them were leaning back in their chairs, casually, daring Jazz to say something.  Technically he was of equal or superior rank to all of them.  Jazz said nothing.  He was saving his anger for something more important than a bit of disrespect.

 “I’ve been reviewing the files you sent over,” he said, omitting the fact that Jazz had had to request them twice and then just hack the system and pull them himself.  “Tell me more about this, Cadet Prowl.” He lowered himself into the chair at the head of the table.

 “I’m his Sergeant,” the bot on the end said leaning forwards.   “Like we said, he was having some trouble adjusting.  We didn’t realize that he was so close to the edge.”  There was real regret in the mech’s voice.  “I’ve been out searching myself, but no bot knows the canyons like Prowl.”  

 “I agree,” said another bot, a femme with an ‘Educator’ decal.   “I used to catch him wandering away during our hikes.  He even drew his own maps with prediction software to anticipate how the rains would change the paths.  He went on makeup hikes in his spare time with other classes when he could.”

 “He wrote his own software?” Jazz asked, pretending he didn’t know.  “Sounds like he was adapting quite well to the base.”  Those were Optimus’s favorite words -  ‘quite well’ - when he knew someone was lying to his face.

 “Listen,” the Sergeant took control of the conversation again.   “No one is saying Cadet Prowl wasn’t smart.  It was everything else he struggled with, but I was trying with him.  He was a bit weird with the other cadets - always wanted to be with them, but never had anything to say.  Never talking about home with them or swapped stories or care packages.  

 “I’m not sure if he was cautious or a bit lazy.  Every time we did the obstacle course he would pause before each transition, looking around like he’d never seen any of it before.  It didn’t matter how much we made him re-do it, he took his time.

 “He was a bit of a whiner too - every little thing needed a visit to the medic or a pain patch.  He couldn’t stumble without it becoming a two day limp -”

 There!  Jazz interrupted him.

 “You believe he overreacts to pain?”

 The Sergeant shot Jazz a foul look, but it was the Quartermaster that spoke up.

 “Well, yeah,” the mech said, leaning his chair back on two legs, arms crossed over his chest.  “He’d be standing there, cool as cadmium, saying his pain was a six or a seven and wanting a patch.  Pft.  He needed to harden his plating if he was going to stay with the SA.”

 “He tripped one time and I had to tell him to get up.  He wanted to go to the medics,” the Sergeant put in.  “I made him walk it off and he was fine.”

 Jazz dug a claw into his thigh under the table to keep his temper.

 “And this has been consistent throughout his training?  Constant claims of being in pain that were dismissed by his superiors?”

 They shifted uneasily as he reframed it.

 “No,” the Sergeant said, slowly, thinking.  “After the first month he stopped.  He’d toughened up a bit too,” he put in quickly.   “The others said he used to have trouble recharging and that he’d complain of helmaches after class.  They said he stopped after that.”

 “What did his friends say?” Jazz asked, already knowing the answer. He leaned back and rested one elbow on the chair arm.  

 “Oh, he didn’t really socialize much.  Kept to himself,” the Sergeant said.

 “So, if something was wrong, say, something that would cause him to drive off in the middle of the day for no reason, who would he talk to?”

 The Sergeant opened his mouth automatically and then closed it. The teacher from before looked like she was trying to think of an answer.

 “So, what you are saying is that you had a young recruit who stopped telling you when he was in pain, had no friends or close companions, was recently reported to display signs of illness, and has now disappeared into the wilderness.  Is that correct?”  Still as a zero gravity oil pool.  Don’t let them see your next move.

 “Hey…” Dosage said at last.  “It’s not like we were yelling at him for it or anything. He was the one always wanting a pain patch for little things -”

 “Did you have him examined by a medic?”

 “Well, no, he looked fine -”

 “Then have you considered that he had a very high pain tolerance?  That believing his word was more important than “toughening” him up?”

 Uneasy shifting all around.

 “Listen,” one of the generals cut in, “I don’t know what it’s like at your fancy-dancy base, but we’re training soldiers here - “

 “Which part of training is this?  I must have been absent the day we did “runs off just before a deadly storm.”  Could you explain it to me?”

 The general coughed and grumbled, but didn’t answer.

 “Thank you all for meeting with me. I am going to locate Cadet Prowl and after he is found, I will continue my investigation.”  Jazz stood and left without waiting for a reply.

 He headed straight out the eterior door and made his way to the edge of the base where Prowl had last been seen.

 The sky above him was a thick, dusky purple.  Hopefully the rain would cool him enough by tomorrow.  He didn’t think he was ready to have a civil conversation yet.

 Prowl’s test scores were exceptional.  Jazz had sped-read his essay on ‘Improving the Space Academy’ on the flight out.  It was usually trite nonsense since it wasn’t technically part of the acceptance criteria.  

 Prowl’s was six times the required length and talked about everything from their diplomatic efforts to their colonization aims.  It was dry, but incredibly well researched and direct.  Jazz was going to hand it over to Optimus the moment he got back.  Optimus would use his superior people skills to get the ideas into the right servos.

 He’d written his own - very advanced - software and improved mapmaking for unstable regions across the board.

 His interview answers had been about improving lives and meeting new bots.  He’d rated “Working with my fellow cadets” as the number one thing he was looking forward to when entering the Space Academy.

 The medics had noted uneven layers throughout his frame - probably indicative of fuel shortages throughout his youth.  Not uncommon in sparklings from the poor cities.  Very uncommon in the rich distinct of Praxus that Prowl was from.

 They’d also noted an aversion to touch at the start of the exams.

 His family doctor had taken a very long time to transfer his files and when he did, the data clerk had made a note that some of the dates were wrong, as if the medic had added parts in later.

 These things painted a very clear pattern.

 Jazz longed to wrap up this dedicated, mistreated genius and bundle him back home to Optimus’s naive enthusiasm and Ironhide’s gentle experience.  

 Teetering on the edge of a war with Quintessa, struggling to handle a rising revolt, and this was how the Council was treating new recruits?

 Jazz transformed and gunned it.  He opened a comm as he drove.   Best to have all his targets lined up before he blew the place’s roof off.

 :Hey, Ratchet, I’m going to need a medic down here.  Can you send that sweet one, your assistant?  The one that couldn’t scare a sparkling?:

 :Do you mean First Aid?:

 :That the one so cute everyone wants to just pick him up and squeeze him?:

 :Pick him - Jazz, he is three times your size.:

 :Doesn’t mean I don’ wanna pick him up and hug him.  I got a mech runnin’ scared, probably suffered at home before joining the SA.   Probably not good with medics, authority, yelling, or criticism.  I need someone he’ll feel comfortable wit’:

 :Putting my “cute” soft-sparked apprentice on the plane now.:

 :Thanks, Ratch.:

 :Hmph.:

 Thunder shook the air.  Prowl had been out here alone - at this base alone - too long.

 Jazz was going to find him.

 0-0-0

 The rain was mostly solvent from the landlocked lakes, but it had mixed with Oil from the sea and the chemicals from the city had added small pockets of weak acid.

 It was cold, slick, and it stung.  Prowl curled himself up smaller into the shallow divot on the side of the cliff.

 His processor was racing, faster and faster, but it just kept circling back.

     Failure failure failure.  Weak.  Stupid.          Banished        .  

 It was over.  He needed to accept that it was over.  It was his own fault.  It was always      him    that was wrong.  The wide-opticked hope of his first week seemed vorns ago.  He’d been so      stupid….  

 0-0-0

 The datanet had      said    this was what he was supposed to do.  Multiple sites and a question on GlyphMe (using an untraceable account) had all assured him that he would be fine.  This was a normal thing to do.

 He approached the window with a small plaque that read “Non-medic dispensary.”  He had read in the pamphlet that he could request over-the-counter meds.  The datanet said that asking for a pain patch for a helmache was something all bots did.  No one would get mad at him.

 He stood and waited to be acknowledged by the mech - Quartermaster Dosage according to the sign.

 “Hello!  New cadet?” He was smiling.  He pointed to Prowl’s small rank decal that displayed the Youngling constellation.

 “Yes.”  Prowl clenched his fists and stilled his doorwings.  “I have a helmache and would like to request a pain patch.”  That was what the datanet had said to say.

 “Oh?  First day aches and pains, huh?  You’ll get used to it!   What kind do you need?”  He leaned on the counter.  Prowl blinked.

 “What kind?”  The datanet hadn’t said anything about different kinds!  The medics on television just slapped in whatever was in their subspace.

 “Well, yeah.  If you’re having a processor crash you’ll need something a bit stronger than a light patch.  But if I gave you a level 4 patch for an achy helm, you’d be passed out until next month!”  The Quartermaster laughed and Prowl smiled, pretending he understood.  “How bad is it, on a scale of 1 to 10?”

 “Uh…”

 Dose rolled his optics skyward.

 “One is you bump into a wall walking around the corner, 5 is getting your arm broken, and 10 is being thrown in a vat of acid.”

 Oh!  That made more sense.  He’d had his digits slammed in a door once.  The medic had spent forever setting them all.

 Prowl confidently pointed to 4.  This was easy.  He could do this.

 Only Dosage was frowning at him.

 “Cadet, if you were in that much pain you’d be on the floor and I’d be sending you to the medic.  Here’s a light pain patch.”  He thrust an individually wrapped patch at him.  “I know the classes are more than you’re used to, but you’re in the Space Academy now.  It’s time to grow up.  Drink more fuel and push through it.”

 Prowl took the patches.  His servo didn’t even shake.  He’d gotten it wrong again.

 The next time he waited until his helm was so bad his optics were cycling on and off.  They’d done the obstacle course three times and his processor wouldn’t stop analyzing each step, providing alternate approaches, insisting that he needed to bypass the obstacles because that was the most ‘logical’ route.  

 He said his pain was a three and received a single pain patch, only slightly stronger and a long lecture about not being a ‘whiner.’  

 The time after that he had fallen from the obstacle course - the damn obstacle course - and cracked his plating.  

 “Quartermaster Dosage?”  Prowl approached the dispensing window nervously.  He had a real injury this time.  His Sergeant had even said he should get a pain patch if it still hurt after the evening mess.

 “What can I do for - Cadet Prowl.”  He smiled - he always looked friendly, but -

 “Sir, my Sergeant said I should report to you for a pain patch for my arm.”  He held up the limb, timidly,  as proof.

 Dosage raised a brow.

 “Oh?  Why are you only coming now?”

 “He told me to wait until after dinner, in case it wasn’t anything serious.  May I - may I have a pain patch?”

 He waited, torn between hope and a gnawing fear that -

 Quartermaster Dosage vented loudly and let his field extend.  He was mildly annoyed and amused.

 “Listen, Cadet, if your Sergeant thought you were actually hurt, he’d have sent you right after you got that little ding.  What he wants you to do is tough it out and act like an SA Cadet.  Soldiers don’t run around asking for pain patches all the time.  When you’re out on the field, do you think the medic is going to waste a pain patch on your little nicks when she’s got bots leaking out?”  Dosage gave him a queer smile.  “You’re in the Space Academy now, youngling, it’s time you started acting like it.”

 “I -” Prowl started, not sure what to say.  Was he agreeing?  Was he going to explain how much it still      hurt    ?  Dosage didn’t give him time to speak.

 “Academy cadets are strong and resilient.  Now I know you probably have a pair of creators at home that worried over all your falls and scrapes - it’s what they do.”  He gave Prowl a mock scowl.   Prowl struggled to make sense of what he was saying.  “But you have to accept that being a soldier means pain.  It means getting hurt and not stopping.”

     “-we aren’t going to stop and rest, just because your legs hurt, Prowl.  You ruin everything.”  

 It was just like home.

 “I’ll give you a patch, because I can, but you don’t need it.”   Quartermaster Dosage turned around and started rummaging in the drawers.

 “I am sorry for bothering you, Quartermaster.  I won’t do it again.”  Prowl turned and walked away as swiftly as he could.  Dosage called after him.

 “Hey, hey!  Do you still want a patch?”

 Prowl never went back.

 0-0-0

 Jazz didn’t bother taking anyone with him.  He was faster than most of the bots on the base and, if their superiors were anything to go on, smarter too.

 He roared down the road, heading into the canyon as the rippling black clouds spread out across the sky ahead of him.

 0-0-0

 Prowl stood up on shaking legs.

 “Sir - Sergeant!  I think - I think something’s wrong.”  His hip joint was throbbing and his pede felt strangely numb.

 “Walk it off, cadet!  We don’t have time to kiss all your boo boos!”  

 The others were thundering past him, onto the next section of the obstacle course. Someone slammed hard into his side and sent him back down onto the unforgiving concrete.

 It felt like he was being electrocuted.  

 Everything went white and then black.  His audials turned off.  Then everything came back into focus.

 Someone was clapping in front of his face.

 “Get up!  Get up, cadet!”  The Sergeant.  His face was inches from Prowl’s curled up in a snarl just like -

 Carrier.

 Prowl got up, his frame numb.  He felt like he was floating above the ground.  He turned and followed the others.

 That night he laid in his bunk, a servo clamped tightly over his mouth as his leg spasmed and twitched.  

 For the first time, the place felt horribly, terrifyingly, like home.

 0-0-0

 Jazz knelt and turned up his sensors.  Yep, that was energon.   He pressed his fourth digit into the small spill and let his very tiny and very expensive spectrometer analyze the sample.

     High levels of chemicals associated with stress  

     Indications of a prolonged period of insufficient fueling  

     Not a single molecule of chemical pain blockers or stims.  

 He wasn’t surprised.  The military, even the Space Academy, had a bad habit of seeing any bot that didn’t conform as being an aberration.  They wouldn’t have known what to do with a young, freshly painted cadet that looked like a well cared for youngling new to his adult frame but acted like a returned prisoner of war.

 “Sorry, Prowler,” Jazz whispered, looking up to scan the road.  “Ya didn’ fail us, mech, we failed you.”

 Jazz was going to fix this.

 0-0-0

 Something was wrong.  

 It started during evening meal two weeks ago in the mess hall.   He’d taken a seat on the edge where it wouldn’t be as obvious that no one spoke to him.  He’d been sipping his bland energon when something in his chest twisted.  

 He barely made it out the door before purging everything he’d intaken for the day.

 The bots nearby had ridiculed him.

 “Can’t stomach the mess, recruit?  Go back to Carrier and Creator!”

 “Aw, want me to rub your back for you?”

 “Gross dude!”

 “Nice projection!”

 Prowl had stumbled back to the barracks and laid down.  He’d recharged in fits and starts until morning.  He skipped the morning fueling.

 He knew what wasting fuel at home got him.  He was terrified of what they would do to him here.

 Since that day he’d barely managed to keep anything down.  He sipped on the lowest grade fuel that had and waited for whatever was wrong with him to pass.  He didn’t dare go to the clinic again.  What if Dosage told his Sergeant?

 It didn’t pass.  It was one more thing - his hip that never stopped hurting, his helm that always seemed to ache now no matter how much he recharged, and now the never ending throb of hunger.

 0-0-0

 Prowl whimpered.  Was that - did he hear something?  The rain was      so    loud.

 0-0-0

 It hadn’t happened in any dramatic way.  Not on the hated obstacle course.  Not in one of the classes where his helm threatened to split in two.  Not in the mess hall where the other bots ignored him.

 They were clearing one of the fields that had been used for training earlier before the rains.  His Sergeant and the base Commander were talking on the edge of the field.  Two of the cadets were struggling to carry one of the long tunnels between them.

 Prowl was collecting the small magnets that marked the course.   He had to pause and vent slowly each time he bent down as his hip ached.  He caught sight of the pair out of the corner of his optics, saw their mouths move, and froze.

 “Those two look like they could use a servo.”

 “Nah, they’ll figure it out.”

 “And that one?  If he takes much longer to pick up the markers he’ll find himself putting them back for tomorrow.”

 “Yeah.  He needs some work.  That one’s not my best.”

 Those simple words.  

     “He needs some work.  That one’s not my best.”  

 Prowl hadn’t been meant to hear it.  His processor, that never shut down, never rested, had simply taken in the data and read his Sergeant’s lips and field.

     That one’s not my best.  

 Prowl was never going to be anyone’s anything, was he?  

 There was a roaring in his helm and he felt everything shattering - his helm, his frame, his sparkcase.

 “All right!”  His - no,      the    - Sergeant was shouting.  “Time to go back in!  I don’t want you whiners getting a rust infection from the rains!”

 “Aw, Serg, you      do    care about us!”

 “It would break my spark!” he answered.  His smile was wry, but real.  There was fondness there for the loud recruit.  Not for Prowl.

 Suddenly, he couldn’t.  He couldn’t face going back to those barracks and sitting in his bunk reading over the course material while the others laughed and joked.  He couldn’t sit there, worried about whatever was wrong with him, worried about hiding it.

 His -      the    , not his, never his,      the    - Sergeant called his name, but Prowl didn’t turn back.

 0-0-0-

 Jazz almost missed him.  The visibility was slag-awful and half the time he was relying more on his treads than his processor to keep him on the road.  

 The rain had only gotten worse.  Everytime he transformed to investigate something, he noticed little streaks where it had gotten through his paint and was starting on his plating.  It made him drive just that much quicker - Cadet Prowl had been out in it longer than him.

     Hold on, sweetspark.  

 Jazz spun around a corner and caught movement on the very edge of a scanner.  He slowed and transformed.  He stood, frozen in the middle of the road, extending his range.

 A twitch.  The barest hint of a spark signature.

 He leapt down from the road into the ditch and plunged through the undergrowth, following that signal.

 He finally got a visual on him as the ground started to climb.  A gray and black smudge against the side of the cliff, pressed tightly into a small creavass.  

 “Prowl?” he called softly, keeping his distance.  He could outrun the mech if he spooked, but Jazz was itching to get him under cover, cleaned up and warm.  Clearly Optimus was rubbing off on him.   Yeah, that was it.

 The smudge moved and a helm appeared, optics dull and flickering.

 “Oh,” the smudge said.  “I’m in trouble again, aren’t I?”  He started to droop away from the cliff, like a sticker peeling off in the wash racks, limp and uncoordinated.  “Sorry.”

 “Nothin’ ta be sorry for, mech.  Nah, I’m jus’ here ta get ya inside.  ‘S dangerous out here.”  Jazz stepped forwards, feeling the metal beneath him bend and crack, weakened by the acid.  He slid down into a ditch full of rain and dissolved slush.  

 They needed to get moving before the roads flooded.

 He slowed as he drew nearer, but Prowl barely acknowledged him. Instead he was staring down as his own servos, leaking dull colored energon from the joints. Jazz winced, imagining the rain slipping into those gashes.  Prowl’s face was completely blank.

 “Hey, hey mech.”  Jazz leaned over him, shielding as much of Prowl’s battered frame as he could with his own.  What he wouldn't give to be a giant like Ironhide at times like these.

 “Hello.”  Prowl’s voice was unnervingly calm.  “I’m not going back,” he said clearly.  He looked up at Jazz.  “I’m not.”

 Prowl’s field was drawn in far too tight for such a young bot, but at the word ‘back’ it lashed out and Jazz got a taste of Prowl’s emotions.

 It was lucky he was who he was, Optimus or Chromia would have been crying and raging, respectively.  Ironhide would’ve just picked him up and spent the evening using his superiors for target practice.  

 To Jazz, it was a familiar mixture of shame, despair, and spark-aching loneliness that came with being raised as a punching bag.

 “Ya don’ have ta go back, Prowl.  Ya comin’ wit’ me instead okay?  We’ll find ya a place where they’ll take care of ya.  Don’ worry.  Can ya stand?”

 Prowl contemplated the question before nodding.  Jazz helped him stand and then slotted himself under Prowl’s arm on his weak side.

 “Slow ‘n steady, mech.”  They took a few, faltering steps before they found a rhythm.  Jazz kept up a steady stream of - “keep going, doing good, I got ya” - as they walked.  He wasn’t expecting Prowl, who’s field was as weak and thin as light in a black hole, to join in.

 “Tore myself apart for them,” Prowl said, absently, after they had staggered their way up the side of the last ditch.  “I would have - would’ve kept doing it, too, if they’d loved me.”

 Jazz focused on taking each step, on keeping them from slipping.

 “Your creators?”  He felt Prowl’s helm nodding against his shoulder.

 “First them.  I tried to do everything they wanted me to, but I kept failing.  I studied and I went out for sports - I liked racing - and they were never happy.  Sometimes it would be fine for months - we were happy for almost a vorn, one time, when I was younger - and then I would mess up and they’d be mad again.

 “The datanet said - it said that they took everybody in the SA. It was where you were supposed to be part of something.  I read all the stories.  I just wanted to be part of it.  I thought, maybe, I could find bots that wouldn’t mind it if I messed up.  ‘S always my fault.”   Prowl’s careful speech was starting to slur.  “Tried not to whine, but then I couldn’t -” he trailed off and Jazz could feel his pedes start to drag.

 “Hey, heyheyhey - Prowler, Prowl-love, I need ya awake, okay?   We’re goin’ ta get ya warm and then I’ll take care of it all, okay?   Prowl?”

 “Okay,” came the whisper, Prowl’s helm tucked up against Jazz’s neck.

 0-0-0-

 “Would you like me to explain it using simple words?” Jazz asked, spreading his servos like a showman.  The bots gathered before him had lost much of their previous bravado and swagger.  They shifted and checked the time, instead of looking at him.  They slumped in their chairs or sat ramrod straight.

 It had been less than a day since he’d trudged into the camp with Prowl mostly unconscious, but he’d found the energy to finish his investigation.  A fury-fueled furnace burned short, but he didn’t need long.  It was not complicated.  

 “Four months ago, Cadet Prowl escaped from an abusive home and joined the Space Academy since he had no family, no money, and nowhere to go.  The SA prides itself on being a place where you can find a home and a family among other recruits.  

 “When he arrived he was told repeatedly that he was not in enough pain for a patch, despite being in, at times, extreme amounts due to an untreated glitch that the intake medics missed.  A glitch that would have been discovered if anyone had taken his claims of a helmache seriously.  

 “At one point, he -” Jazz found the Sergeant’s stricken optics, “I believe you said, ‘tripped’ and tore half the sensory relays free from his hip.  He was told to walk it off, and, since he had been told repeatedly that his pain was to be expected and that it wasn’t severe enough for medical intervention, he has been living with the slowly increasing damage of this untreated injury ever since.

 “Unaddressed anxiety and trauma had reduced his recharge significantly as he was trying to make friends and was told that he was being,” Jazz pretended to consult his datapad, “a ‘sucky little sparkling’ when he had nightmares.  His solution was to cease recharging because he didn’t think he had any other options.

 “The most recent change was first noticed by other cadets outside the mess hall.  His frame is rejecting fuel.  His glitch had reached such a severe level that his processor was having trouble maintaining all of his frame’s functions.  He has been starving himself for the past few weeks in order to avoid ‘wasting fuel’ as he put it.   Because he believed that fuel, to keep him alive, would be wasted.”

 Now, Jazz let the full force of his anger enter his field, let that expand, let every mech in the room know what their negligence had done.

 “A traumatized mech came to all of you repeatedly, asking for help and you disregarded him to the point that he did not think he was important enough to fuel.  To the point where he stopped coming to you with his needs.  To the point where he ran off into the canyon to avoid returning.”

 He looked around the room, making sure to meet each bot’s optics.

 “You have failed your duties in every way possible.”  Jazz sought the gaze of one bot in particular, remembering his words the day before:      a bit lazy, a bit of a whiner, a bit weird, but I was trying    .

 “I’ll - I’ll explain that it - that this wasn’t his fault.  That I didn't mean for him to -  I’ll apologize to him,” the Sergeant said, standing, his face horrified.

 Jazz stood as well and the room stilled.

 “No.”  It wasn’t what was best for Prowl.  If the Sergeant walked in and explained that he’d never      meant    to hurt Prowl, Prowl would forgive him.  He would find a way to twist everything until it was his fault again.  It wasn’t Prowl’s responsibility to make sure bots like the Sergeant could recharge peacefully at night.

 The Sergeant needed to apologize.  He needed to explain himself and feel as if he had fixed everything.  He wasn’t a bad bot.  He was probably beloved by his recruits.  Had probably changed their lives.   They probably told their friend and sparklings all about ‘their Sergeant’ and wrote him letters.  That didn’t mean he hadn’t done terrible damage to someone he was supposed to be nurturing and mentoring.

 “He doesn’t need your apology.  He doesn’t need you.  I’ve already arranged transport.  My team’s medic is on it and the custody will transfer to him once Prowl is in that plane.”  Jazz looked across the table and met the optics of every bot there.  “None of you will contact him.  None of you will speak to him before he boards.  A full investigation will be launched by the Internal Affairs.  I expect you to all comply.”

 No one moved.  

 He wasn't a “young upstart” now.  He wasn’t the annoying junior investigator anymore.  He was a threat.

 It was something he’d always been very comfortable being.  An easy role to slip into.  He wanted very much to carry out the threat he represented on Prowl’s behalf.

 Instead, he nodded at them all, gathered his things, and left.

 0-0-0

 On the plane - Skyfire, one of Jazz's friends from his Polyhex childhood - Prowl was gently strapped into one of the fold down berths. First Aid was curled up on the next berth, his helm just brushing Prowl’s whenever they hit a spot of turbulence, deep in recharge as well.

 Jazz remained on the floor beside them, Prowl’s servo in his.   He kept them both wrapped in his field, pressing affection and safety on them, until it felt like an overstretched cable.  He didn’t stop.   Prowl was still and quiet and free from nightmares.  He deserved a good rest for once in his life.  Jazz would be damned if he wasn’t going to give it to him.

AU August Fic 1

I posted this on AO3 too!  Same fic

Underwater

Prowl bent down and unhooked his submersible from the thin, rarely used dock.  He looked over his shoulder.  It was mostly deserted.  Good.  He coiled the rope and laid it down.

His family was, even now, petitioning the courts to have him placed under their control care.  He had been put on leave by the Enforcers for “mental health” because they couldn’t write “the stress has finally broken our best detective.”  The papers had taken the story and run with it.

It wasn’t that Prowl thought what he was doing was smart.  He knew it was stupid.  He knew he sounded like a bot on stims.  It was just that he also couldn’t not do it.

He slipped inside the sub.  It was tiny - a secondhand purchase from a local university that studied sea life.  They hadn’t asked any questions and, to his relief, there had been no recognition in their optics.  

Polyhex was a long way from landlocked Iacon.

Prowl typed in the location and the sub cruised along the surface faster than he’d anticipated.  His spark spun faster.  Was it hope or fear?

It should have been fear.  He remembered the sight of the sea below him as the shuttle spiraled down, out of control, one wing gone.

It had been their last attempt to stop him before he made it back to Iacon with the information.  Prowl had known they would try and had requested an empty, unsparked transport shuttle.  He had been careful and secretive, filing his flight plan under another designation, choosing a small, out of the way station to depart from.

He just hadn’t expected his creators to resort to shooting him out of the sky.  That had been a surprise.

Surviving the crash had been another surprise.  Not necessarily a more pleasant, as he immediately began to sink beneath the crushing, suffocating waves, trapped inside the shattered shuttle.

His processor had encoded the memory of the moments after the crash oddly.  He had flashes of intense detail - the chill of the sea, the beeping of the console as it was flooded, and the smell of energon mixing with the frothing sea - but none of them were connected.

The next thing he could properly remember was being towed on his back by someone.  He had bits and pieces of that journey and then - nothing.  A single, crystal clear picture of a face above his own haunted his recharge.  Then the sounds of the rescue team.

He had stumbled back into his life and, wide-opticked, he’d told them about his savior.  A handsome mech with wings on his sides - as thin as wire and as flexible as gold - and his legs fused into a single, powerful tail with another flexible wing twice as large as him.  Prowl remembered it curling over them, diffusing the light, as a curious face smiled down at him.

Everyone told him it had been a hallucination.  The crash, the results of his mission for the Prime, the near drowning - it had made sense.  For a while, Prowl had wanted to believe that he’d imagined it too.  There was no sentient life in the seas - no wheels spinning up sand on the bottom, no bots walking amongst the foil seagrass, no strange bots with tails.

But he remembered…

Clever webbed servos…

A voice humming a soothing lullaby as Prowl struggled to stay above the surface…

The gentle press of a helm against his shoulder before the warmth withdrew…

The sub beeped.  Arrived at destination.  

He was over the trench now.  Directly above the spot where his shuttle, broken and betrayed, had settled on the bottom.

It was his last chance to change his mind.

“Gotcha, mech, I gotcha.  Don’ worry.”

Prowl pressed the button and the sub began to sink.

The mech had been real.  He’d saved Prowl’s life.

He was real and Prowl was going to find him.

I have now posted 250,000 words of Transformers fanfic on AO3.  *jazz hands*

I swear I’m working on Warring Houses.   

Excerpt for proof:

“Bitlet, why is your lip bleeding?”  On the screen, Prowl stood up from his chair and leaned forwards to get a better look.

“Are you injured, Red Alert?” he asked with concern.  

“I hit it when I was hiding,” he said.  He lifted a servo and touched the sore spot.  His fingers came away shiny with energon.

“What were ya hidin’ from?”

Crash!

Shattered glass and energon on the ground.

“Run!”