Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ironically, it was Chromedome who first warned Prowl against bargaining with the fae.

Prowl had known already that it was a bad idea, of course. Everyone knew. Chromedome, old enough to have seen mechs who should know better make the bad choice anyways, had told Prowl bitter with personal experience that he set his prices higher just to try and make people stop coming back. That if you walk into a bargain with one of the fair folk they already know you’re desperate.

This is why Prowl goes to him, when he’s out of other options. He already knows Chromedome will hate him for asking. There’s a bitter satisfaction in that.

The breakup had been messy, for all that their actual relationship never progressed much past the mutual tension and teasing phase they had both been so good at into the actual emotional honesty that, Prowl has heard, is supposed to happen. Chromedome had vanished back to the Otherworld and Prowl had never expected to see him again.

Judging by Chromedome’s expression when he finds Prowl on the outside of his corner of sub-reality, he hadn’t expected to see Prowl again either. Tough. The war is rolling forward anyways. Chromedome should run away—he shouldn’t be involved with it—but Prowl can’t. So his only choice is to be the best.

They make the deal. Prowl gets the speed and precision of processor he needs to pull ahead, to win that many more battles. Chromedome gets all of Prowl’s memories from before joining the Autobots.

Prowl knows it’s a terrible deal, intellectually. It does help that after it’s over, he can’t remember why that is.

The second time Prowl makes a deal, it’s with strangers. He still knows exactly what he’s getting into—or, at least, he thinks he does.

The Constructicons are Otherworld mercenaries. Megatron pays them well, but not in deals. Rumors vary as to whether that’s because he knows better or because he’s already traded all of himself away—and of course, deals cannot be made with parts of another mech’s life, only the dealmaker’s own. Their combiner form confers on the Decepticons an incredible advantage. They cannot be killed, they cannot be coerced, and they cannot be threatened. But perhaps they can be tempted.

Prowl arranges a meeting with them expediently, by mapping out a route they will be taking between bases and placing himself in the middle of it. The speed with which they stop after rounding the corner of the canyon is gratifying.

“This is not an attack,” he says, once they have slowly come closer, surrounding him with weapons ready. “I want to make you an offer.”

The scoop of the front-end loader raises and lowers, as though assessing him. “What is it?”

“What will it take to make you stop working for the Decepticons?” Prowl asks.

They negotiate then and there, circling him in the canyon under the blazing alien sun. He’s not blind to their attraction, and not afraid to use it, cocking one hip to let the light glint off his rims and revving his engine when they circle too close. This, of course, only entices them to circle closer. Negotiations end up coming to an extended pause. That’s fine. He’s budgeted time for it.

In the aftermath, once panels are being closed and Prowl is resting in the shade provided by Long Haul, Scrapper reaches out one hand and trails it over Prowl’s still-closed spark casing.

“Tell you what,” he says. “Give us your spark and we’ll walk away.”

Prowl rolls away from the touch, back up onto his feet. “I’m not about to bond or die for you.”

Mixmaster catches him before he can leave entirely as a chuckle goes out from them in unison. “Nah. Not what we’re asking.”

“We could use your passion,” Hook says. “You’d be able to leave and go back to the Autobots. Free to move on with your little war.”

“We’ll take good care of it,” Scavenger wheedles. “No one else will get their mitts on it.”

“You won’t hurt,” Scrapper promises. “You’ll just never forget us.”

Prowl cannot weigh any part of himself—especially when it is only a part of himself—any higher than victory.

He opens his chestplates.

There is electricity left in his spark casing when they are done, pulsing rhythmically. His body still moves. His fuel pump still works. His processor still functions.

They thank him and leave. Prowl does not feel that he has lost something valuable.

The third time—the third time.

The last time Prowl goes to the fae is a mistake from start to finish.

He knows Mesothalus. He’s known Mesothalus for vorn. They are not allies. They are well-established trade partners and have both benefited from their acquaintance. Mesothalus is capable of far more than he provides the Autobots with in exchange for research materials, but what he provides is still substantive.

With the Constructicons gone, the Autobots are turning the tide of the war. It still isn’t happening fast enough. Casualties are mounting. Command requires something drastic. Optimus is hoping for a miracle.

Prowl knows better than to hope. He goes under the landscape, into the ground, to meet with Mesothalus as usual.

He comes with the materials for a contract in hand. Not as usual.

“Prowl,” Mesothalus says, seeing the vial of his innermost energon. “What’s this? Re-negotiating so soon?”

“I want to make another deal,” Prowl says. “Not about your contract for the Autobots. About you and me.”

Most fae who deal with mortal mecha try to blend with them, like predators that hunt using camouflage. Mesothalus is not most fae. He moves like a shadow, sinuous and slicing. “Oh?”

His voice is, objectively, beautiful. Prowl can admire it from a distance, but proximity makes it clear.

“I want to deal for your services. I know you’re capable of more than you’ve been giving the Autobots. You can make something that will end the war.”

“Oh, you know me so well. Yes, I can.” Mesothalus draws closer, eyes shining. “And what will you give me in return, Prowl?”

The third time he goes to make a deal with a fae, Prowl has done his research. He knows better than to issue an open offer, especially now that he has so little of himself left to barter with. “You can have my firstborn.”

Potential is powerful. Potential is valuable. Prowl has never had any intention of reproducing. Once he has made this agreement, and has the necessary weapon in hand, he can go back to the Autobots and schedule an appointment for Ratchet to terminate his reproductive capacity for good. Should Mesothalus make a clause against that, Prowl will just refrain from interfacing again. It won’t be much of a loss.

The point of this war—the point of his choices—is to minimize suffering. He isn’t going to bring another being into this world. This is the best deal he can make—and more than that, it won’t hollow him out further to lose what he doesn’t have.

Mesothalus draws in a breath. A shiver runs along his plating, or perhaps it’s a trick of the flickering light. “Oh, Prowl . Now there’s an offer.”

“Do you accept?” Prowl demands. He wraps his hand around the vial of innermost energon so the trembling of the liquid is invisible.

“Oh, yes.” Mesothalus holds out his hand to collect Prowl’s offering.

When he takes it, their grips magnetize together. Prowl stumbles as he trips forward, Mesothalus dragging him into the dark.

The ride through the void to the Otherworld proper, not just Mesothalus’s in-between lab, is dizzying. Prowl’s gyroscopes can’t tell which way is up. The only thing he can sense is the magnetic attachment between their hands.

When they re-emerge into a space with gravity, Prowl stumbles again, Mesothalus’s grip guiding him down to a soft landing. A very soft landing. Padded. A bed the size of a room, with cables stretched across the ceiling, soft zaps of bioluminescence drifting between them.

Prowl has read about fairie bowers. He never expected to find himself in one.

Something of that must show on his face, because Mesothalus chuckles—the beauty of it is almost painful here, with no buffer of reality in the way—and draws him into laying down, stroking soft trails along his frame.

“Oh, Prowl. Such a generous promise. I know you will see it fulfilled.”

Prowl has no idea, afterwards, how long it takes.

He leaves. Despite the best attempts of Tarantulas to keep him—and Prowl knows his true name now, after enough time into the creation process to be sure it was going to take he whispered it into Prowl’s audial like it was a gift and not a threat and binding promise and a mark of confidence in his ability to hold Prowl here forever—despite tender words and vows, despite strategy games and fuel pressed lovingly to his lips, despite offers to lay the treasures of the Otherworld at his feet, despite the small frame in a cradle overhung with charms on cobwebs, he leaves. As was their deal, he leaves Ostaros behind.

Tarantulas had gushed about what their creation will be like fully-grown, a fighter capable of taking out an entire battlefield, a triple-changer. Perhaps he had meant for Ostaros to be the weapon Prowl had asked for. Prowl doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know, anymore. Their deal is never concluded.

He leaves Ostaros anyways. He suspects he would be a terrible parent, no matter what Tarantulas believes or wants. The Otherworld has its own dangers, but it is not part of the War. Not really.

When he stumbles back up out of the cave he recalls walking into a lifetime ago with a vial of his own energon in his hand and a plan he was blind to the implications of, only a night shift has passed.

No one seems to have noticed he was gone.

Prowl resumes his life again, hiding his feelings of stumbling unsurely through what should be quotidian routines. He refuses to let on what he has lost. He refuses to lose anything more to his own poor decisions, as the last recourse left to him.

After all. It is known. To give something to the fae is to forfeit your own right to regain it.

Chapter Text

The war ends, eventually. Prowl is left adrift.

He has no purpose. The celebrations bring him no joy. He can’t even derive any satisfaction from having completed his work. What else is he supposed to do now?

He made himself into a machine with one purpose. That purpose no longer exists. He doesn’t even remember what he did before the Autobots.

Through a combination of busywork other people bring to him (he has no desire to seek his own), the need to respond to the inquiries of friends and allies, and many many off-shifts spent staring blankly at a wall for lack of anything else to do, he makes it through the vorn after the war.

On the anniversary of peace, Jazz turns up at his habsuite door, practically vibrating out of his plating. He’s carrying a lot of engex.

Prowl lets him in. He doesn’t have a reason not to. He likes Jazz, he thinks.

They drink together. Jazz tells him about the many, many places he’s been since the end of the war, a frantic edge buried under a stoically cheerful exterior. He seems to realize it after the second bottle they finish together, cutting himself off as he opens the third.

“But enough about me. How ‘bout you? How you been since the end of the war?”

“Empty,” Prowl says, and holds out his cube for another drink.

“What? No grand plans for peace?”

“No. I have no idea what to do.” He drinks. “I think I hate it.” He’s not sure if this is what hate used to feel like when he still had a spark to inform it. He’s afraid that it is, that everyone everywhere is feeling like this all the time, that they manage to present the correct behavior anyways and he’s the only one with this particular failing of character.

“Don’t tell me you’re starting to buy that slag about you being a sparkless drone,” Jazz says, and whoops, he’s been saying this out loud.

“It’s not slag,” Prowl says. “That. I mean. It’s not that. I did, actually, give away my spark.”

Jazz pulls the whole story out of him. Prowl only means to tell him about the Constructicons, to not give away how lacking the mech sharing a drink with him really is. Except as soon as that story finishes, Jazz asks “Mech, did no one ever ever teach you not to make a deal with the fae?” and Prowl has to admit he doesn’t remember, and of course Jazz is too skilled an interrogator to just let that go, and by the time the whole sorry saga with Chromedome has come out they’re into the fourth bottle of engex and Prowl is severely enough overcharged to start talking about Mesothalus and how that ended and Ostaros. How small he had been. By the time he picks up his glass and there’s nothing left in it, his engine is hiccuping, interfering with his air intake.

“I’m done,” he says, and curls forward, wanting nothing more than to recharge.

He wakes up on his recharge berth with a miserable hangover. Alone, of course. It’s a good thing he didn’t have time to expect anything else. Of course Jazz left as soon as he knew Prowl is a shell of a mech with nothing left to barter to convince anyone to stay.

Chapter Text

Jazz isn't fae, but he's been to the Otherworld a lot.

Of course it’s risky, everything’s risky, staying alive is risky. The fae don’t care about the war unless they’re getting paid to, though, which means sometimes the least risky thing to do is find the spaces between spaces, the back alleys and undergrounds and wormholes that twist back on themselves and can dump you out just that much closer to where you need to be. Unless you take the wrong one and they dump you out half a vorn in the future. Or two vorn in the past, where you have to put a lot of time and effort into avoiding yourself or anyone who knows you so your past self doesn’t hunt you down and kill you for being an imposter engineered by the Decepticons to replace him.

Not that Jazz would know anything about that. Anyway.

He’s been between a lot, he knows what he’s doing and where he’s going by now, and he knows how the fae think. They like things in order. Symmetry. Patterns. If a fae were setting out to steal back three things a friend had traded away, of course they’d go in the same order they were lost in. But Jazz is all syncopation, baby.

He starts with the kid.

Mesothalus has a big spooky tower with cables descending from it in the heart of a gas giant that shifts and storms according to his moods. Real aesthetic. Real easy to get directions to. Jazz makes his way up the side with his grappling hook and sticks his head in the highest window.

Sure enough, there’s a sparkling in there, small and yellow and bright-eyed, looking up at the unexpected visitor with a familiar alert curiosity that confirms Jazz found the right place. “Who’re you?”

“I’m Jazz,” Jazz says, because the other reason he started here was that since this really is Prowl’s kid, he has a hunch how to deal with this. “I know your other creator. I’m on a quest to find some stuff he lost. It’ll be an adventure. Wanna come?”

It works, and he’s teaching the kid who hasn’t picked a freename yet how to cast off Jazz’s little appropriated solar skiff for launch before Mesothalus even knows anything’s up.

They set a course by the rock formations instead of by the stars, since those like to change whenever they get bored with what they’re doing. Jazz handles the tiller while the kid gets excited about every little star snake in the graphite and eddying whirls of dark matter moss.

“You don’t get out much, huh,” Jazz observes.

“Mesothalus says it’s dangerous out here and that people will try and steal me away because I’m a miracle of innovation,” the kid says. “And that Prowl had to leave when I was too young to remember because people kept taking things from him and he didn’t have anything left he could love us with.”

Jazz decides this particular line of thought, said with the absolute conviction of someone too new to the world to know that real reasons are complicated, is a problem for later. Still, it’s always good to know what your accomplice’s actual reasons for helping are. Jazz can do his good deed for the day by giving this kid some of the other facts of life.

“Yeah, it’s dangerous out here,” Jazz agrees, for the ‘in’ of validating the most important figure in the kid’s life and also because it’s fragging true. “You forget that, you’re dead. But there’s some basic precautions you can take to keep yourself a little safer. Like a freename, not a true name, that you can go around introducing yourself with so no one can use it against you.”

Jazz can see the wheels turning in the kid’s head as he squints at this strange adult he’s with and realizes that no, he can’t use the name Jazz introduced himself with to do anything except talk to him. Jazz stays nice and calm, idly steering the boat towards the next rock formation and waiting to see if the kid’s going to feel the need to do something about having less power than he thought he did.

“Can I have your true name?” the kid asks, and yeah he’s definitely Prowl’s creation.

“Nope.” Jazz would ask back ‘can I have yours?’ except he can’t really be sure the kid wouldn’t give it to him, and there’s not much Jazz could do with it anyway.

He bounces back quickly. “How do I get a freename?”

“You can just pick one you like,” Jazz says, and as he’d hoped this handily distracts the kid with all the exciting possibilities of calling himself whatever he wants the whole rest of the trip.

Jazz had been aiming for Chromedome’s place, with the intention of continuing to move out of order and also delaying dueling the fragoff huge combiner until he came up with a plan. Or until some kind of magic weapon falls out of the sky that he can use to get ahead, but isn’t that just what a ‘plan’ is?

Then the boat’s course takes them right by a pocket dimension with a beautiful basilicate structure out front with contact information slapped on a sign, and, well. No time like the present.

“Okay." He cuts the tiller to turn them towards the dock. “Here’s how you bring a boat along," Jazz says.

“Here’s how you tie a clove hitch,” Jazz says.

“Here’s how you break and enter,” Jazz says. The kid, now going by LizardMech5000, is a quick study. They make it into the pocket dimension and he sets the kid to keeping a lookout for any trace of green or purple armor. The Constructicons might have changed their colors since they were last in the mortal realm, but he doubts it. Anyone with a color scheme that ugly has committed.

They get lucky. LizardMech5000 spots one of them hauling a pallet of rods all by his lonesome, and Jazz finds the perfect spot for an ambush just over the hill.

“All right, LizardMech, time to look pathetic,” Jazz tells him.

“I think I want to be Destructonator actually,” Destructonator says.

“All right, Destructonator, time to look pathetic,” Jazz corrects himself. “Gonna be hard with a name like that, though.”

It is. Destructonator isn’t much of an actor. He does manage to look like he has a terrible stomachache, and Jazz kneels next to him and looks desperate.

The truck stops and Jazz waits until he hears the distinctive sound of a transformation sequence to spin around and whip out his trusty laser pistol. He’s getting rusty. It takes two shots to knock Long Haul over.

“That was so cool!” says Destructonator, already forgetting how to look pathetic.

Jazz waves an acknowledgement, already rummaging in some real personal places under the dump truck’s plating. He’s hoping mostly for information—maybe codes, or a keystone, or a treasure map leading to a predacon guarding a binary tree with a chest at the top, and a retrorabbit inside the chest, and a dataduck inside the retrorabbit, and a diamond inside the dataduck, and a spark inside of that.

He doesn’t expect to actually find a spark, loose, in the Constructicon’s subspace.

It takes him aback, and he stops for a moment and stares. It’s bright, and it’s warm, and it gleams a different color every second, bumping against his fingers like it’s saying hello.

It’s also small. Too small. Maybe a sixth the size it should be, jagged at the edges.

He curses when the realization hits and Destructonator gasps. “I wanna call myself that!”

“I wouldn’t,” Jazz says. “Everyone will think you’re a square.” He puts the spark back inside the nest of plating. It clings to his hand like static until he scrapes it off. “You know how to put pieces of a spark back together?”

“Nope,” Destructonator says. It was a long shot anyways. “Sorry.” He looks genuinely crestfallen, tip of his forehead drooping, equal measures cute and creepy.

“It’s okay,” Jazz said. “Hey, now that we know you can act, how do you feel about learning some lines?”

Jazz might feel a twinge of guilt in sending a sparkling out alone in front of a group of hostile mechs. This is only slightly mitigated by the knowledge that if he has to he can grab the now-named Explosive and drive like a Sweep outta Unicron to outrun the angry Constructicons, and also by how enthusiastic Explosive is about this plan. It takes longer to dissuade him from having a gun than it does to convince him it’s worth a shot.

By the time Long Haul comes around, Jazz is hiding out of sight again, and Explosive is sobbing in front of him.

Long Haul tries to talk to him, to reassure him, but the kid just keeps sobbing until the other Constructicons show up, looking confused.

“Hey, who are you?” Scavenger sounds like he’s trying to be nice and isn’t quite hitting the mark.

“Fu-fu-fulminatron,” Fulminatron sobs. “There was a scary mech! I’m scared! What if he comes back?”

“We’ll protect you,” Mixmaster says, which is sweet. Also stupid.

“But he was scary!” Fulminatron shouts. Maybe it was supposed to come out a wail? Jazz isn’t sure. “What if he scares you too?”

“We’re scarier,” Bonecrusher boasts.

Fulminatron stops crying and stares at them. He waits for so long Jazz is worried he’s forgotten the lines. “...No.”

They all stare back. “No?”

“No you’re not. I don’t believe you.”

They argue with him for a bit, trying to prove how scary they are. Hook unsheathes an array of knives and scalpels that Jazz has to admit he finds pretty impressive. Long Haul picks up the entire pallet of rods and throws it terrifyingly close to where Jazz is hiding. Mixmaster shreds a rock.

Fulminatron, bless his bright yellow boots, maintains his refusal, shaking his head. No, no, that mech who could come back any astrosecond is scarier than all of them.

“Well,” Scrapper says. “He’s not scarier than this.” Finally. “Constructicons! Form Devastator!”

Jazz waits until they’re all the way put together, head sliding out of the torso, to zoom out of hiding headed straight for Devastator’s feet. Fulminatron, good kid that he is, has already obeyed instructions to scamper away from the combiner’s shadow.

Combiners aren’t supposed to have single sparks, but Jazz can see one massive spark chamber right at the center of Devastator’s chest.

Jazz has been outmassed in fights before. Never by this much, maybe, but the principle is the same—the bigger they are, the harder they fall. He takes a hard turn, hard enough to get enough air under his right tires to transform out his grappling hook and fire it at Devastator’s legs. It’s a little harder to tear circles around the combiner with only three wheels for speed, but he manages to wrap it enough to be a problem.

The titan falls like a carrier ship crashing. Jazz experiences a moment of pure panic before he spots Fulminatron safely out of the fall area, bouncing up and down in excitement like a little spring.

That solved, he’s free to scramble up onto Devastator’s chest. He’s quick-released his grappling hook, he can’t afford to be tied down and can’t risk knocking Devastator out in case he falls apart again. The giant spark chamber doesn’t have anywhere near the integrity of a regular-size one, opens up with a good couple of slashes from a knife, and sure Devastator roars and thrashes but he hasn’t got the momentum to roll so Jazz just keeps cutting.

He finds the spark, full-sized now, under six layers of plating. Of course. It buzzes up into his hands and he shoves it under his hood to keep it nice and safe before getting the frag off this rodeo.

Transforming to get just a bit more speed almost blows the whole operation up. Ditching his grappling hook means his weight is off, his balance is off, and transforming as he reaches Fulminator in an attempt to regain his equilibrium sends him sprawling into the dirt. His hood jounces open. The spark flies out.

In a turn of events that probably burns the rest of the luck Jazz was due for this century, Fulminatron leaps even higher on his next bounce and Prowl’s spark shoots straight into his hand. Jazz grabs both spark and sparkling, transforms back to vehicle mode, and rolls for it.

Fulminatron rides on his roof, cackling, all the way out back to the ship and keeps hopping up and down as Jazz shoves the skiff away from the dock and leaps in once it’s launched.

“Whoa, slow down there, spring-o,” Jazz says, and the giddiness of surviving an impossible fight and not losing the spark gets him to laugh. “You’re going to bounce yourself right off this boat.”

“We got it! We got it! We got it!” Fulminatron does slow down, still bouncing, holding Prowl’s spark to his chest like a favorite toy. “I said my lines and they believed me and we got it!” He squeezes it, sending a rippling rainbow of colors over the spark as lines of warm lightning dance over his hands like it’s squeezing him back.

Jazz has been the bad guy before. He can tell a kid to hand over his creator’s spark. He will. In an astrosecond.

“Yo, Fulminatron.” He fishes out an empty—clean—energon cube. “You can hang onto that for now, but how about you put it in here?” Baby steps will make it easier to get it away from him. Probably.

“Okay.” Fulminatron sits down with the cube in his lap and starts trying to coax the spark into it. It clings to his hands the same way it did for Jazz. He talks to it, reassuring it that it will be nice and safe and it will like the cube, but once he’s gotten it put away he goes silent.

Jazz pretends to be very busy with the sails.

“I don’t wanna be Fulminatron,” the kid says. “I wanna be Triceratops.”

“Sure,” Jazz says.

“Prowl got really hurt here,” Triceratops says, petting the spark. Jazz can see the lines where the pieces of it fit together, unchanging gold cracks laid over the ever changing colors. “Didn’t he. That’s why he hasn’t come back.”

“I don’t know,” Jazz lies. “Maybe.”

Triceratops doesn’t say anything else, quietly sitting on the bench and petting the spark all the way down the river of road.

Chromedome and Rewind, according to the intelligence Jazz has managed to scrape up, live on the edge of the Sands of Time. The skiff can take them most of the way there, cutting through the surface of the road and leaving a yellow line in its wake. There’s probably a shortcut they can take to get the rest of the way there, through some pocket dimension, but Jazz doesn’t know one around here he trusts enough to take with a sparkling.

They leave the boat at the foot of a hill, hiking up it with Jazz scouting the horizons and Triceratops very carefully carrying the energon cube with his creator’s mended spark inside. When Jazz looks back, the kid is staring at the ground to make sure he doesn’t trip. Very serious. Jazz picks an easy route.

When they get to the top, in sight of a big flat building with lots of skylights, Jazz picks out an easily defensible position and steers Triceratops to it.

“You’re gonna keep a lookout, alright?”

“Okay!” Triceratops looks around. “How?”

“Make sure no one steals the boat. If anyone comes out of the house…” Jazz has to think about this. “Tell them you’re lost. Loud.”

“Okay!” He sits down, staring at the boat. Good kid.

Jazz does some advanced breaking and entering by walking up and opening the door. Fae like being clever. Sometimes that means you can outsmart them by doing the objectively dumb thing. Jazz loves it when that happens.

There’s a big important room at the center, because where else would it be, and once Jazz has sweet-talked the door into letting him in he has to take a moment to stop and stare at the—shelves? Probably shelves. There are shelves and bags and boxes and nets full of all kinds of things. Things that flicker and flash and gleam. Things that whisper and click in corners. Things that rustle like pages without ending. Things that grow and shrivel and rejuvenate. Fish in cages and birds in tanks and spinning windchimes that bump together and make no noise.

There’s probably a way they’re organized but Jazz doesn’t know it. He goes looking for things that seem like they’ve been forgotten.

The back shelves are dark and dusty, and if he looks out of the corner of his eye everything is a row of neatly stacked computer banks, radiating a chill fog that leaves no condensation behind. If he looks at them straight on they dissolve into a mess of blurry cassette tapes. When he picks one up it’s a flash drive.

“I’m not plugging you in,” he mutters. He has no idea where it’s been.

It obligingly morphs into a holographic generator and disobligingly displays a video of someone being shot in a cave. Jazz watches it through three times because he’s suddenly terrified it’s going to show him being shot to death in a cave before he accepts it’s a loop and shuts it off, putting it back on the shelf. It’s a pile of holographic generators now. The next one he picks up has a video of someone getting stabbed through the spark. The one after that shows someone turning into a tree, screaming. A mech being strangled to death by living barbed wire. Fire burning out of someone’s eyes. Armor melting into a puddle. The effects of traveling through a black hole played out on a formerly-living frame.

“What the flak,” Jazz says, putting down the generator and not quite ready to reach for another one.

“I feel like I should be asking you that,” a disgruntled voice says. All of the dark skylights illuminate immediately, and Jazz spins with his gun raised to point it at an orange and white mech at the end of the hallway. He looks recently disturbed from recharge, a cable looped around his neck and dust bunnies clinging to his wheels. “Who are you, and why are you in my conjunx’s files?”

In hindsight, Triceratops is a terrible lookout. When Jazz reunites with him he’s sitting on a table holding Prowl’s cubed spark in one arm and an energon goodie in the other, chattering to a black and white mech with a red facemask and blue visor.

“Jazz! This is Rewind. I told him I was lost like you said I should and he said I should come inside and he would find you.”

Jazz had put his gun away because in a house like this the hosts have all the power here and could turn it on him at any moment, gun or not, but he wants to reach for it anyway. “Triceratops, you...” He almost tells the kid he shouldn’t go with strangers, but that’s pretty hypocritical of him."...you okay?"

“Yeah. Did I do something wrong?” Triceratops looks worried and hugs Prowl’s spark closer. Jazz relents.

“No. I did.”

“Okay.” He bounces back quick, perking up. “I wanna be Boomstick now.”

“Why not,” Jazz says, and drops down into a seat. Chromedome continues looming over him until Rewind clucks at him.

“Sit down, Domey, you’re going to warp my neck struts. Jazz, was it? What brings you and your associate here?”

There’s a compulsion behind the words—not a mean one, a curious one. Downright friendly, for a fae. Jazz doesn’t let it get its hooks in, resetting his transmission and partially disengaging his audials. “Looking for something. Belongs to a friend of mine. Heard he left it with you.” He’s not about to make a deal with them, but he can test the waters, maybe make them angry enough to do something stupid—

“You’ve got Prowl’s memories,” Boomstick says, and takes another bite of energon goodie. Jazz maybe should have spent more time considering the downsides of teaming up with a sparkling.

“That’s what you wanted?” Rewind asks. “You didn’t have to break in for those. I finished copying them ages ago, I thought he’d be back sooner.”

Jazz looks at Chromedome. He’s wearing a visor but Jazz has a lot of experience telling where someone’s gaze is going anyways, and Chromedome’s is absolutely looking away from the table. Guiltily?

“Yeah, just those,” Jazz says, looking away from Chromedome. “You can hand them over and we’ll be out of your wires.”

“Hm,” Rewind says, thoughtfully. Jazz already hates whatever’s coming next.

“What’ll you give for them?” Chromedome says, abruptly.

Jazz stands up, immediately. “We’re done here.”

“Wait—”

“I didn’t mean—”

“We can’t be done!” Boomstick’s undersized hand latches onto Jazz’s arm with a surprising strength. “We need those memories. Prowl needs them. We can’t go.” He’s giving Jazz big petropuppy optics.

“We won’t take anything,” Rewind says. He’s holding up his hands. No weapons. A mortal gesture. “No contracts. No innermost energon needed. Just hear us out. Please?”

Boomstick’s grip tightens. Jazz sits back down.

“That wasn’t nice, Domey,” Rewind says, severely, and Chromedome hunches. Jazz has no idea what’s going on here.

“...Sorry.”

Jazz really has no idea what’s going on here.

“You complicated things by breaking in,” Rewind says. “If you’d asked, we could have given them to you, but you snuck in and we caught you. If we reward thievery we’ll have thieves coming out of our ears as soon as the walls start whispering.”

Jazz, familiar with basic opsec, can accept this logic.

“So now what. You take a pound of plate and send me on my way?” He’s done the recon. Maybe he can try again later.

“We make an exchange. A fair exchange,” Chromedome says. “Something of value that won’t cost you too much to lose.”

“Really,” Jazz says.

“How about truths?” Rewind suggests. “A perfect truth from the mouth of a liar is one of the most valuable things in our realm.”

Jazz has dealt in plenty of truths. Sometimes three or more versions of the truth in the course of a shift, during the war. Most of those truths won’t get anyone killed now. This can’t be too hard. It’s worth it, anyways. “Sure.”

“A perfect truth,” Chromedome clarifies. “No evasions. No partial answers. No lies, even to yourself.”

“I get the gist,” Jazz says. He already feels uneasy enough about this. They don’t need to make it worse. “How are we gonna do this?”

They do it right there at the table, after Jazz has set a nauseating and gritty pinch of salt in his mouth. It probably has some fae ritual reason that isn’t just ‘to mess with him’ but Jazz has his doubts.

Chromedome and Boomstick sit to one side of the table, leaving Jazz in front of Rewind, whose camera is raised but not lit yet.

“I’m going to ask you some questions,” Rewind tells him. “They’ll be about you, since that’s what you’re qualified to tell truths about.”

This isn’t what Jazz thought he was signing up for. Too late to back out now. “No compulsion.”

“No compulsion,” Rewind agrees. “Wouldn’t work, anyways. Perfect truths need to be deliberately given.” Isn’t that nice. “Answer the questions as honestly and completely as you can. If you find a perfect truth, you’ll know.”

“A perfect truth?” Jazz doesn’t like the sound of that. “How many do you want?”

“Three,” Chromedome said. “One for the trespass. One for payment. One for good measure.”

“Also so we can restock our fuel stores,” Rewind said, looking at where Boomstick was on his fourth energon goodie.

“Huh,” Jazz says, skeptically.

“Threes are powerful,” Rewind says. “And more binding than two. Are you ready?”

Jazz releases all his vents, smacks his mouth on the taste of salt, and says, morbidly conscious of how deadly this feels, “Shoot.”

Rewind’s camera blinks open and he asks, steady and friendly as a trained interrogator, “Who are you?”

“I’m Jazz,” Jazz says, reflexively, and waits.

Nothing happens.

“Don’t tell me you want my true name,” Jazz says, already annoyed. He left that behind a long time ago.

“No,” Rewind says. “But that’s not all of the truth. I ask again. Who are you?”

Jazz stops and really thinks about it. He hates thinking about it. “I’m...me.” For whatever value that has.

“And who are you?” Rewind asks, for the third time and Jazz hates this too, the emphasis on three. He always has preferred 4/4 time to triple beats. Something with more room to swing.

He’s not an Autobot anymore. War’s over. He’s a Cybertronian, but so are lots of people. He’s a musician who doesn’t perform anymore. A spy with no one to report to. A racecar with no track to circle. A thief with nothing he wants to steal. An improv melody with no one to pick it up. “I don’t know.”

That’s not enough. He knows that’s not enough. And it makes him angry, having to admit that, sets something boiling down around his spark, because dammit, he does know. He’s a musician. He’s a spy. He’s a thief. He’s a racecar. He’s the notes that pick up out of nowhere and pull on an old familiar theme and keep going into something bright and brave and new, the warm shadow and the low light and the smokey room.

He knows who he is. “I’m Jazz. I’ll work the rest out as I go.”

Something cool and sharp and unexpected swells up between his throat cables, probably an effect of the damn salt, and he opens his mouth and spits into his hand. Whatever-it-is lands with a chime that rings out and hovers in the air. Four overlaid notes.

Jazz stares down at the four crystal keys of a tiny xylophone and runs one finger along it, plunking out the notes. Do-Mi-Sol-Ti. A perfect major seventh chord. It’s smaller than Boomstick’s hand, but it’s real, and it sings.

“Well, that’s one down,” Rewind says, sounding a lot more cheerful than Jazz feels. “Two more to go!”

Jazz strokes the keyboard again, letting the notes ring, and sets in on the table. “Yeah. Okay.”

“How did you get here?”

“Might have stolen a boat,” Jazz says. Of course it doesn’t work. No dissembling. “Stole a boat.” That doesn’t work either. “Uh. Fell through a hole in the world. Climbed through a hole in the world.” He’s drumming on the table, reflexive, falls into a rhythm. “Snuck into the ways between that no one guards and…” He glances at Boomstick. He doesn’t want to say this part. Not to those wide and trusting eyes. “It doesn’t matter.” Nothing comes out, proving, clearly, that it does.

Rewind doesn’t ask his question again. His camera’s light is a steady glow.

“I lied, I stole, and I fought, alright?” Jazz asks. Nothing comes up. “I...meandered. I got caught.” He stops drumming. “I stole back the things that belonged to my friend, and then some more, because I needed to.”

“Do you think you did the right thing?” Rewind’s voice is still friendly. Jazz can hear the interest under it, sharp as the jaws of a trap and just as impersonal. “And, follow-up question: do you think you’ve done enough?”

“I don’t think I could say it’s the right thing. Don’t think I could say it’s the wrong one.” Jazz pulls himself back in, tries to get all his nervous energy under his plating, tries to wrestle his thoughts back into shape. “And of course I haven’t done enough yet. I’ll be done when I’m dead.”

The words have barely left his mouth when something sprouts from under his tongue and he lets it fall past his lips, scratchy on the roof of his mouth. It’s one of those little ferns Jazz has seen on alien planets and here in the Otherworld, dipped in silver and fractaling its leaves out in a series of perfect spirals.

It’s kind of cheering to think he’ll have something to do for the rest of his life. Little depressing he has no guarantee how long the rest of his life is going to be, but you can’t win them all. Jazz sets the metallic plant on the table. More than halfway there. Maybe this won’t be so bad.

“Why are you doing this?” Rewind asks. Across the table, Chromedome stiffens up.

If fighting Devastator all over again was an option right now, Jazz would take it. Even if it didn’t get him Prowl’s memories. He’d do it just for the hope Devastator might squish him this time.

“Someone has to,” Jazz says, and he can hear how weak it sounds. He knows that’s not really why. Rewind doesn’t even have to ask him again. “What else am I gonna do? I need a mission. It’s the thing I’m good for.” He waits for something to fall out of his mouth. Nothing does. Oh.

Jazz resets his thoughts. Drags away from the processing loop playing the last vorn of traveling—the moving in circles, the desperate chase of excitement that faded faster every time—on repeat. No evasions. No partial answers. No lies. That isn’t all of the truth. “Someone has to. Prowl saved my life, during the war. Saved a lot of people’s lives, over and over, but saved mine up close and personal more than once on a mission and every damn day in command. I know him. I know he’s hurting, even if he doesn’t. I don’t want to see that. I—” This was never supposed to be anyone else’s business. He releases lubrication to his vocalizer. Something is stuck in his throat cables. “I don’t want to run away when I could have helped. Done enough of that already. Even if he doesn’t want me to stay…I’m not going to abandon him.”

The thing in his throat hurts, clawing at his vocalizer. Why isn’t it coming out? “I care about him.” He has to force each sound out at this point, fingers denting into his arms. “Don’t know if it’s the kind of love...people would tell stories about...but I want to do right by him. That’s enough for me.”

The last words catch on his dentae, and he opens his mouth one last time to cough out a single, flawless diamond. When he holds it up, it catches the light in too many facets to count, glowing like a spark.

Appropriate. Jazz doesn’t want to let it go.

He puts it down anyways. It’s only an expression. He knows where it came from. “We done here?”

Rewind doesn’t look like he got the answers he wanted, but the camera shuts off. “Yes. We’re done.”

Jazz gets to his feet. Boomstick is staring at him, wide-eyed, hugging Prowl’s spark close enough it’s probably going to leave scratches on his plating if he moves too fast. Chromedome sets down a hard drive, one of the ones with thin needles you can plug directly into a brainstem. Jazz takes it immediately and, hesitantly, holds it out to the kid.

“Want to come home with me?”

Boomstick takes it, putting it in the cube with the spark, and hops down. He reaches up with his free hand to hold Jazz’s.

They leave, together, with what they came for.

Chapter Text

Boomstick is quiet until they’ve left the Otherworld, through the closest and safest route to Prowl’s residence Jazz can find. He’s carrying the cube with Prowl’s spark and memories in one hand, and holding onto Jazz’s hand with the other.

They’re close enough to walk from here. It would be faster to drive, but Jazz is okay taking it slow for a bit. Letting the adventure wind down. Taking a little more time before he finds out if he’ll have to leave.

“Wait,” Boomstick says and shoves the cube with Prowl’s spark in it at Jazz. Jazz manages to catch it, despite a brief fumble, and stomps on the terrible little mission instinct of ‘target acquired, time to bolt.’ Boomstick is picking through the rocks at the side of the path.

“Got one,” he says, and trots back over with a shapely rock in one hand. He grabs onto Jazz’s leg with the other until Jazz shifts his grip on the spark and reaches down so they can keep holding hands. Then they walk again.

“What’s the rock for?”

“I need to bring Prowl a present,” Boomstick says. “This is a cool rock. He’ll like it.”

“Okay,” Jazz says. Prowl probably will like the rock. He’s a nerd.

They make it another ten astroyards and the kid says “I don’t wanna be Boomstick anymore. I wanna be Laser.”

“Okay, Laser,” Jazz says.

Another ten astroyards, walking pretty slow, and Laser asks “Do you think he’ll like me? When he can again?”

“Sure,” Jazz says, immediately.

“I’m serious,” Laser says, with a little bit of a whine.

“So am I,” Jazz says. “You’re cool. Like a rock. He’s gonna like you.”

“You promise?” Laser asks, urgently.

Jazz usually knows better than to promise anyone anything, but he remembers Prowl, cradling an engex bottle, staring at nothing and talking about the child that wasn’t his anymore. Too small for the eyes he had. Too small to be believed. How Prowl didn’t even know if he could talk by now or was somehow fully grown, didn’t know what it looked like for a child to age in the Otherworld.

“I promise. He’ll like you.”

Laser doesn’t seem to trust this promise. He hides behind Jazz’s legs when they arrive at Prowl’s hab. Jazz lets him, conspicuously tripping the perimeter alert and loitering at the edge of the boundary line so Prowl won’t feel encroached upon.

Prowl comes out slowly, like he’s not sure what’s happening, and Jazz leans down to try to nudge Laser at least far out enough to be visible. He looks back up as Prowl draws within arm’s reach, close enough to see the glow in the cube and the little head poking out from behind Jazz’s legs, and sees the realization hit.

Prowl steps closer, staring wide-eyed at Laser with his lips already shaping a word and hand rising to reach out. Looks up to the cube. Back at Laser again. He pulls back, hand drawing up to brush against his spark chamber, face absolutely expressionless, and then he meets Jazz’s eyes. He looks ready to call one of those battles where they already know it’ll be a retreat under fire.

“What is the price?”

Jazz twitches. He didn’t—does Prowl think that of him, seriously? Rude. Laser’s hands are digging into his leg, now, denting his armor.

“Price is take this back and take better care of it from now on, seriously, Prowl.” Jazz shoves the cube at Prowl’s chest, and his own optical feed must glitch or something because one second the repaired spark is lighting its container like a lantern and the next it’s gone. Prowl takes the cube, stepping backwards like he’s taken a blow, and Jazz can see that there’s a difference. It’s a good one. “Don’t go giving that away to anyone, not even me, it’s yours. Won’t do anyone else as much good as it’ll do you.”

“Ah,” Prowl says, and crumples to his knees. He’s just staring at the kid now, face frozen, the memory stick rattling around in the cube as his hands holding it shake.

Jazz reaches down and pries the kid’s fingers off his plating, one by one, and nudges him forward. “Go on. You came a long way for this, remember?”

It seems he does, because he takes one hesitant step forward, and then another, and then another, cool rock held ahead of him like a torch.

“Hi. I’m Springer.”

Prowl’s vents all sputter, and he tips forward in a sparkbeat, scooping Springer up into his arms rock and all.

“Of course you are,” Prowl says, and Jazz feels like he maybe isn’t supposed to hear this but he doesn’t want to leave. “Of course.”

Jazz’s job here is done. Mission complete. He should go now, right?

He starts to take a step away, to think of a good parting joke, a perfect ending one-liner right before he transforms and rides off into the sunset to find his next adventure. Prowl looks up, still holding Springer, cleansing fluid streaming down his cheeks.

“Jazz,” he says. “Please stay.”

It’s not a question, or a bargain, or an opening bid. It’s not exactly a mission, and it’s definitely not a threat.

Just an offer. Please stay.

And Jazz does.