Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Walking in the garden with Jazz was truly an incredible experience. Finally made visible, audible, and, most importantly, mobile for the first time in millennia, courtesy of the Wheeljack Ghost Augmentor™, Jazz was absolutely reveling in his new freedom. Prowl couldn’t keep from smiling as he watched him. Jazz lit up with excitement every time anyone so much as made optic contact with him, and he practically glowed whenever they spoke to him.

“They were talking to me,” Jazz whispered incredulously after a small group of students moved on, practically vibrating where he ‘stood’ just barely above the actual surface of the garden path. The relatively simple conversation they’d just shared seemed to have shaken him, but he was still beaming. “They were really talking to me!”

“They were,” Prowl confirmed, wishing that the augmentor could have also made Jazz tangible. He wanted so much to offer physical support and comfort in addition to his words. “They were grateful to you for assisting them with their project as well.”

“Was kind of nice to be recognized for my expertise on the subject.” But Jazz’s grin faded quickly this time. “I knew a lot of different crystals were dyin’ off,” he nodded to the new seedbed the students had been studying, filled with the tiny crystal cuttings that were an attempt to help revitalize several struggling species. “I could hear it when I sang.”

“Because notes went missing?” Prowl guessed.

“Exactly.” Jazz’s hand hovered just above the delicate new growths, almost as though he were afraid to touch them instead of unable to. “I’m glad they’re trying to bring them back.”

“The library is a member of the CCC — the Crystal Conservation Committee,” Prowl told him, wondering if that was something he would be interested in. The ex-gardener’s passion for crystal certainly hadn’t waned since being trapped in it in death. “They have a station inside dedicated to the program’s efforts where donations can be made and volunteers can sign up for events. We could take a look at their calendar, if you would like.” Maybe there would be something they could attend together, if Jazz enjoyed sharing his knowledge with others.

“Really? But…” Jazz glanced back toward the chapel; Prowl once again noticed the distinct lack of EM presence around the ghost when there was no field change to match his expression. “What about Smokescreen and Wheeljack?”

“Wheeljack is probably going over every last inch of the chapel right now, and insisting that Smokescreen help him. We have plenty of time.” Though to confirm, he sent his cousin a quick message over comms. ::Are you both alright in the chapel while we continue to explore?::

::Of course!:: came the immediate, cheerful reply. ::There’s lots here to keep us occupied, though Wheeljack’s already got a list of questions for when Jazz gets back that’s a mile long and growing by the minute.::

::Thank you for the warning.:: Prowl closed the call. “Smokescreen says they are happy to wait.”

“Then let’s go!” Jazz leapt up from his crouched position, but didn’t immediately take off. He stuck next to Prowl instead, never moving far from his side as they walked together into the main building due to the limitations of the augmentor. While it could use the resonance of its humming opalescent center stone to project Jazz’s image more than a few feet away, his synthesized voice would still emanate from the device, no matter where he appeared to be . Staying close was the only way to stay convincing, if they were to maintain the illusion that Jazz was alive.

“Wow…” Jazz slowed and came to a stop in the center of the main hall. Rows of stacks branched out to either side of them behind orderly clusters of long tables and individual desks, while the main staircase to the second level rose up majestically under the warm light filtering in through the domed crystal skylight overhead. The effect was entirely different to standing in the center of the chapel. Instead of distorting everything into a kaleidoscope of light and color, here it created a distinct, grounded space. “I always wondered if it was as impressive on the inside as it looked from outside.”

“Have you never been inside the library before?” Prowl felt foolish as soon as the question left his mouth. Of course Jazz had never been the inside of the library; he’d been trapped in the crystal chapel since his death, with only a brief spell of being able to visit the rainbow crystals in the garden outside before they disappeared. He’d had no transportation beyond those bounds until now. “I apologize, that was thoughtless of me.”

“It’s fine,” Jazz assured him with a brilliant smile. “I’m here now, and it’s all thanks to you.”

“Not all,” Prowl demurred, glancing at the device in his hand. “Wheeljack played a considerable part as well.”

“Because you reached out to him and got him involved.” It seemed Jazz would not be dissuaded. He stepped up beside him, laying an insubstantial hand over Prowl’s on the augmentor. “I don’t know how I’ll ever thank you enough.”

“You do not have to. I was happy to do it.” Somewhat uncomfortable with Jazz’s intense, if understandable, gratitude, Prowl cast about for a distraction. “Come see the rest,” he said, taking a step away toward the stairs. “There is plenty more that is equally impressive in smaller, quieter ways.”

“Then by all means!” Jazz turned to follow. “Lead on. I want the whole tour.”

It took them even longer to traverse the interior of the library than it had to walk the gardens. Jazz really did want to see everything, not just the CCC station. Prowl found himself rediscovering things he had forgotten were even there, like some of the tiny study rooms tucked away in quiet corners, and an almost completely hidden stairwell that went directly from the upper floors to the basement, bypassing the main level entirely.

“Why even have something like this?” Jazz asked as they traversed the steps, emerging behind a row of stacks that looked like no one had touched them in years. “Do you think they forgot about it too?”

“Perhaps.” Prowl looked back up the way they came. “We passed a section that looked like it might have been an opening to the main level at some point in the past. They may have been planning additional renovations that would have closed up the stairwell that were never completed.”

“Budget cuts?” Jazz guessed, contemplating the ceiling. “Wonder what’s up there in front of it.”

“According to the floor plan, I believe— Jazz!” Prowl looked around hurriedly to make sure no one was there to see as Jazz simply floated up off the floor and disappeared into the walls. There wasn’t. Prowl couldn’t relax though, not when he had a strong suspicion that Jazz was going to peek out through the floor above them to see what was there. What if someone up there saw him? What if someone who’d seen him earlier in the garden saw him?

Thankfully Jazz reappeared only seconds later, drifting down onto the stairs calmly with no indication he’d encountered anyone. “Computers,” he reported. “Looks like a workstation with a bunch of private terminals around the room.”

That’s what Prowl thought he remembered being there. He preferred the one on the second floor himself when he needed an actual console rather than his personal computer and datapads, since it afforded a view of the garden. “Was anyone working there?” he asked anxiously, hoping his preferences were shared and the room had been empty.

“No. Why?”

“Because someone could have seen you, and then what? How would we explain you clipping through the floor?”

Jazz started to form a reply, then stopped, his mouth hanging open soundlessly. He was trembling again.

“You had forgotten,” Prowl realized. Sympathy he wasn’t even sure if Jazz could feel welled up in his field. “You thought no one would see you.”

“…guess that’s still gonna take some getting used to,” Jazz whispered, spectral arms wrapping around his torso like the hug Prowl wished he could give him. “Can we go somewhere there’s other people again?”

“Of course.” Prowl beckoned Jazz to follow him again. “Let me show you the reading corner. There are almost always at least one or two people there, and sometimes small groups as well.”

The latter proved to be the case when they arrived. Prowl didn’t see Kup or any of his ‘adoring fans’ today, but Jazz quickly found himself with several fans of his own. He chatted animatedly with everyone, leaving Prowl to simultaneously enjoy watching his excitement and begin worrying again that someone would notice something suspicious about their new conversation partner.

He had to remind himself that he saw every minor tell because he knew where to look, was in fact consciously looking for them the whole time, but the others had no reason to think Jazz was anything other than he appeared to be. Granted, what he appeared to be was fairly eccentric. Polyhexians, foreigners in general, weren’t an overly common sight in Praxus, despite the changes time had wrought since Jazz had lived and worked as a non-citizen for the now long-gone nobility of the city. His frametype alone was enough to attract interest and stares. Add in that the frame he remembered, and therefore what the augmentor projected, was entirely antiquated, and he was getting a lot of questions about the way he looked. Jazz was doing a good job of deflecting and only vaguely answering those questions, but they made Prowl nervous all the same. At least no one had tried to touch his unique armor!

Prowl was ready to move on and find someplace quieter fairly quickly, but there was no denying how happy it made Jazz to see and be seen by so many people. He could not, would not disrupt that just because something might go wrong. Letting Jazz continue to draw all the attention, he hid the augmentor behind a datapad and did his best to relax; he could always pull it out and claim to be helping a friend with a test run of an experimental holoprojector if the illusion fell apart. It was even the truth, and a little personal embarrassment was the worst that would happen… to him. It was what it would do to Jazz to have everyone treat him like he wasn’t real, like he was nothing more than a holographic AI that he dreaded.

Jazz remained on the floor, much to his relief — not that he could have done a thing to stop him if he’d started to float away. He could hardly put his hand on his shoulder and pull him back down! But talking to everyone seemed to be, for lack of a better word, grounding him.

“—f you’re interested in going too?”

“Me?” Prowl had to ground himself, bringing his focus out of his thoughts to the conversation that suddenly included him. “If I were interested in what?”

“In goin’ to the amphitheater,” Jazz said brightly. “I’d love to see it, even if we can’t make it to an actual performance.”

“I…” Prowl didn’t want to say no, but he didn’t know if he could say yes. The amphitheater was on the other side of downtown Praxus; not precisely far, but certainly a lot farther from the chapel than the library. Would the augmentor still work at that distance? “I think we should ask if the others would like to go as well,” he temporized, hoping Jazz would use that to make their excuses and leave.

He did. “Good idea. Thanks for the suggestion! I don’t know how long I’ve got here and I want to make the most of it.” Jazz turned to Prowl. “Let’s go find your cousin.”

They were back out in the garden, but not yet to the crystal hedge, when Prowl slowed. “I hope you did not think by what I said that I do not wish to go to the amphitheater with you,” he said, watching as Jazz’s really quite natural-looking steps slowed as well. It was sad to think he had tried so hard to mimic the movements of someone living while trapped in the chapel as a way to keep from despairing and giving up, but it was proving to be a good thing now. Only the occasional overly-smooth glide or too-quick turn betrayed him. “I would like that very much.”

“But you don’t know if it’s even possible. Don’t worry, I figured that out,” Jazz said, ‘scuffing’ the ground with his toe. The dust remained undisturbed. “If it doesn’t happen tonight, it doesn’t happen tonight. And even if it doesn’t happen at all, this is already so much more than I ever thought I’d get to do again.”

Without an EM field or the crystal of the chapel around them to telegraph Jazz’s emotions, Prowl wasn’t sure whether Jazz was happy or sad. He was feeling more than a little of both himself. “I would like for you to see the ways the city has changed since you knew it.”

“I’d like that too.“ Jazz’s smile, at least, seemed purely happy. “So let’s see if Wheeljack can tell us what kinda range this thing has!”

Smokescreen met them in the clearing just outside the chapel once they climbed through the hedge. He was holding some kind of scanner — or what Prowl assumed was a scanner; the boxy object in his hands was covered with so many antennae that had to be meant for receiving some kind of data — while Wheeljack’s discolored silhouette moved around inside. “Welcome back! Did you have fun?”

“‘Fun’ doesn’t even begin to describe it,” Jazz said, and now Prowl could tell not just by the beaming smile on his face and the bounce in his step but by the color and vibration of the chapel windows that he was overjoyed. “That library is a beautiful building.”

“You sound like Prowl,” Smokescreen teased. “He loves that building, though he’s always loved the garden even more.”

“And am I ever grateful for that.” Jazz gave the scanner a curious look as several indicators suddenly lit up. “What’s that mean?”

“That,” Wheeljack said as he rejoined them, helm fins flashing even more excitedly than the scanner, “means that the crystal is surging with energy! I’ve been trying to track down where it’s coming from, but the surges are irregular and the chapel has so many planes and facets and is so conductive that it’s confounding all my instruments.” Which didn’t seem to bother him at all. “We’re taking a bunch of readings so I can tweak the Wheeljack Ghost Detector™ to pinpoint the source.”

“Isn’t it coming from me?”

“Oh, of course it is,” Wheeljack said, nodding absently as he took the scanner back from Smokescreen and held it up beside the ghost detector. He moved his arms back and forth, sweeping the devices through the air across where Jazz and Prowl were standing. Both lit up brightest when they passed directly in front of the augmentor. “See? It can detect the energy you’re conducting through the crystal in the Wheeljack Ghost Augmentor™ just fine. But that isn’t you — you’re a being of energy, but that energy has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere,” he turned and aimed the devices at the chapel, sending them both into a blinking frenzy, “is your anchor.”

“I thought it was already evident the chapel was his anchor, given his previous inability to move beyond it?” Prowl frowned at the ghost detector when Wheeljack swung back to look at him. It still lit up when pointed at him, not just at the augmentor. “What more do you need to determine?”

“It’s incredibly rare for a ghost to be anchored to something this large,” Wheeljack replied, unperturbed by Prowl’s skepticism, “and a building like this isn’t really a singular object. Jazz appears to be tied to the chapel as a whole, but that’s because it’s all made of the same conductive crystal. All the surges caused by his activities have an origin point somewhere in there, and I’m going to find it!”

“Is that why I didn’t wind up in the Well when I broke the window?” Jazz asked, waving at the empty space where the crystal pane had once stood. “Because I wasn’t… what, tied to this plane by it?”

“Yup! Which is why I want to find your exact anchor before we do anything else so we don’t accidentally dislodge you. Not that I’m planning on breaking any more windows,” Wheeljack chuckled. His levity was at odds with the very sober message Prowl received over his commsuite: Once I know where he’s anchored, we can help him move on when he’s ready.

Prowl nodded silently, surprised but thankful for Wheeljack’s sensitivity and restraint in not voicing that thought. Ultimately it was what Jazz would want, naturally, but right now he was so excited about getting to see the world he’d been shut away from for so long. “Is that something you can more easily do with Jazz here, or does that not matter?”

“Yeah, because I really wanna go out again,” Jazz said eagerly. “Do you know how far away this thing’ll keep working? How long it’ll work? I don’t want to be doing something and just, poof!”

“Hey now, I only just invented that today! How am I supposed to know all that?” But Wheeljack was still laughing happily. “You’re the thing’s power source — the crystal’s just a conduit. Theoretically you should be able to keep projecting as long as you can keep channeling without needing a break. Lucky you’ve had lots of practice doing that,” he winked.

“But how far can I go?” Jazz asked again, his longing to get away deepening the colors of the chapel. “There’s so many things I want to see!”

“So go see them and find out! I don’t know how far you can go. You’ll just have to experiment. Hmm, maybe I should come with you…”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Smokescreen said, stopping Wheeljack before he could get too distracted by a new set of experiments. “You stay here and keep looking for Jazz’s anchor, and I’ll go with him and collect data as we move away from the chapel.”

“Really?” Prowl and Wheeljack looked at each other as they both asked the same question almost simultaneously.

“Yes, really!” Smokescreen’s doorwings flicked back in mock-affront. “You’ve been talking to Jazz for weeks already,” he said to Prowl. “I want to get to know him too. And besides, this ghost stuff is interesting.”

“Ha! I’ll make an assistant of you yet!” Wheeljack considered the two devices in his hands, then passed the ghost detector to Smokescreen. “You remember how to use it?”

“Don’t worry, I got it,” Smokescreen said. “So? Where are we going?”

“The amphitheater!” Jazz’s excitement was strong enough Prowl could feel subsonic tremors emanating from the chapel. “And whatever else’s on the way.”

Smokescreen was entirely unselfconscious carrying the ghost detector, though Prowl still felt awkward holding the augmentor. His cousin seemed to notice, and he stopped them when they got to the edge of the library grounds. “Prowl, is something bothering you? You’re acting kind of… twitchy.”

“I am not,” Prowl protested, perfectly unconvincingly. He didn’t not want to go with them, but he was even more nervous now than he had been before about people thinking there was something strange about Jazz. But how could he possibly say that without Jazz becoming upset?

“Wow, are you ever a terrible liar.” Jazz turned around to look at him, concerned. “What is it?”

While Prowl hesitated, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t be offensive, Smokescreen called him and asked, ::It’s the ghost stuff, isn’t it? You’re worried we look as crazy as Wheeljack.::

::I do want to show him the city,:: Prowl rushed to defend, not bothering to confirm what his overly-insightful cousin had already figured out. ::I am just… not comfortable with the thought of someone confronting us if Jazz walks through a street sign, or floats up into the air, or disappears.::

“Ohh, I bet I know what it is,” Smokescreen said out loud, and for a second Prowl panicked, thinking he was going to blurt out what he’d just told him. “You’ve got another project for the judge, don’t you?”

That— was not what Prowl had been expecting him to say. He blinked stupidly at first, almost having trouble processing the words, before letting his doorwings slump in resignation (and relief). “I do,” he said; nevermind the fact that he still had a couple more days to work on it. “I did not want to say no to you,” he told Jazz, “but there are other things I need to do today.”

“Prowl! When have I ever minded you having a life? Just because I can actually pretend to have one too now doesn’t mean you have to pretend you don’t.” Jazz made a shooing motion with his hands. “Go back inside! We can go somewhere together when you’re not distracted and up against a deadline.”

::And after we’ve determined whether or not he’ll vanish and get him some practice moving unobtrusively,:: Smokescreen added helpfully. ::Sound good?::

“I look forward to it,” Prowl said, and meant it. ::It does. Thank you.:: Though it was curious that Smokescreen was so willing to help out with no visible payoff. ::What do I owe you?::

::Nothing. I told you, I want to get to know him. Besides, I need to get rid of you if I’m going to get any accurate readings off this thing.:: Smokescreen waved the ghost detector at Prowl, and it promptly went off again. ::You interfere with it.::

Prowl held back a sigh. It wasn’t like he was doing it on purpose. He wasn’t a ghost! There had to be something wrong with it.

“Think of someplace we can go later while you’re working,” Jazz said, following as Smokescreen took the augmentor from Prowl. “See ya when we get back!”

“Have a good time.”

Prowl waited until they were out of sight before heading back inside the library. He would get his work out of the way now so that tomorrow there would be nothing hanging over him to interfere with spending time with Jazz.

Chapter Text

Prowl did wind up taking Jazz out several times in the following weeks on outings that were thankfully not stressful at all. Jazz had obviously practiced paying attention to his surroundings to avoid running into (or through) things with Smokescreen, and Prowl was able to relax better once the pressure he’d been putting on himself to make sure things went well for Jazz abated. A not fully rational part of him had somehow fixated on the thought that that first day needed to be perfect, as though Jazz would disappear at the end of it. Knowing that he wasn’t going to suddenly vanish without warning, as evidenced by his continued presence the following day and his continued ability to use the augmentor to leave the chapel with whoever was carrying it, helped a lot.

What didn’t help was the knowledge that eventually, inevitably, Jazz would decide it was time to move on. At long last he knew what had become of the noblemech he’d loved; the young lord of House Rhadamanthys had lived out the remainder of his life in exile, stripped of both his title and the name Prowl shared with him. He was dead, and would not be coming back for Jazz as he had promised. Surely the only reason for Jazz to delay going to meet him in the Well was to see that the prejudiced system that had resulted in their unfair and untimely deaths was well and truly abolished.

What also didn’t help was the way Jazz seemed to be getting along so well with Smokescreen. It made Prowl feel like he was losing him already, even though he wasn’t actually gone… or his to lose in the first place. Jazz didn’t belong to him just because he was the only one who could see or hear him without Wheeljack’s mechanical assistance.

He’d had to remind himself of that multiple times after their first outing to the amphitheater. Smokescreen had dropped Jazz (and the augmentor) off with him in the library when they came back, and Jazz had gone on and on about how wonderful it had been. He’d talked so much about how much fun they’d had while Prowl had been stuck studying, in fact, that he’d made it impossible to keep studying. Prowl had given up any attempts to focus on his project and just listened to Jazz’s excited rambling, all the while trying not to hate himself for having been too unsettled to go with them himself.

It would have been nice to have seen an impromptu performance by a group of street musicians and several individual dancers with Jazz…

In addition to being the one who got to see Jazz’s initial reaction to the changes in the city, Smokescreen had apparently also made good on his desire to get to know him better. It was clear the two had become friends, and Prowl had to stomp down on his jealousy whenever Jazz wanted to do something and asked if Smokescreen could take him. He knew it wasn’t really a statement of preference. His cousin simply had more free time to play escort to Jazz than Prowl did. The alternative would have been for Jazz to float around the chapel until Prowl was available if he didn’t want to go out with anyone else, which would just have made Prowl guilty instead of jealous.

And, in the category of ‘not helping’, it didn’t help that he often brought up how nice it would be if Smokescreen was there too when Prowl did have the time to take him out.

“I am becoming far too attached,” he mumbled quietly as he climbed through the crystal hedge.

“Too attached to what?” Wheeljack’s voice greeted him as he stepped into the clearing.

How had he even heard that? “Nothing,” Prowl said, looking around for Smokescreen or Jazz. The two were supposed to be back from watching the races by now, but there was no sign of either of them. Smokescreen had probably gotten caught up in the odds for one (or more) of the racers… “I was not expecting you to be here today.”

“Wasn’t planning to be,” Wheeljack agreed cheerfully, “but I had a thought about pinpointing Jazz’s anchor and wanted to chase it down before it got away. The way I figure it, if I adjust for—”

“How do you know when a ghost is ready to move on?” Prowl blurted out, then immediately apologized. “I did not mean to interrupt, but I… I have been wondering how much longer we will have with Jazz.”

“Because you’re getting too attached to him?” Wheeljack asked, his usual air of levity settling for once into something more sober and grounded. Prowl could only stare, shocked and a little embarrassed. “You wouldn’t be the first mech I’ve encountered who had trouble saying goodbye to a ghost,” he explained with a sympathetic look. “Whether it’s pets, friends, or lovers, even if most can’t talk to each other the way you talk to Jazz, it’s normal to have mixed feelings about letting them go. You want what’s best for them, but you’ll miss them, of course you will!”

“Really?” That was reassuring to hear, but Prowl couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being ridiculous. “But I never even knew Jazz before he was a ghost.”

“Doesn’t matter!” Wheeljack said confidently, some of his usual enthusiasm returning. “Ghosts are as real as you or me. Jazz is still Jazz, and you’ve gotten to know him and become friends with him, haven’t you?”

“Not as good of friends as he is with Smokescreen,” Prowl said without thinking. “I mean, yes, we have become friends. At least, I hope he thinks of me as a friend.” He certainly thought of Jazz as one of his very small number of friends. The thought of losing him, just like the thought of losing anyone else in that circle, was painful. “But he cannot— he is already—”

“He’s dead, yes. But dead isn’t gone, when it comes to ghosts.” A gray hand patted Prowl gently on the shoulder. “You’ll grieve for him when he moves on just like you would for a living friend who died because he won’t be in your life anymore. Trust me, I ought to know! It’s something of an occupational hazard.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean my ghost subjects. I don’t keep them forever, after all.” Wheeljack shrugged. “Not all of them were sentient, sure, but I miss them when they go. Heck, I’ll even miss the little scraplet ghost from the dog collar when it’s time! Which,” he said, stepping away to start fiddling with some of the equipment strewn across the ground, “brings us back to your question: how do you know when it’s time?”

“I suppose, with a sentient ghost, one could just ask?” Not that Prowl wanted to ask Jazz that particular question. It would probably depress him to think about it, and he might not even know the answer. Worse, what if asking him prompted him to want to leave sooner? “I am not sure that I can.”

“So don’t. Asking might be an option with some sentient ghosts, but watching for erratic energy readings is usually more reliable. That’s a sign they’re starting to destabilize and detach from this world on their own, and when I see that I usually go ahead and sever the link. It’s less stressful for them if it isn’t drawn out.”

Prowl felt a claw of panic around his spark. “If you saw unstable readings from the chapel, what would you do?”

“Well I certainly wouldn’t try to exorcise him right then and there! What do you think I am, crazy?” Prowl flinched, but Wheeljack’s helm fins flashed teasingly. “Don’t worry, I know you think I’m a little eccentric. Just please, trust me not to be so thoughtless when the ghost in question isn’t a threat to itself or others!”

“I do trust you,” Prowl promised. “I did not mean to imply otherwise.”

“But you’re worried for your friend, I get it. I haven’t seen anything that says you should be yet though.” Wheeljack stood and brought the ghost detector over to show him. “Look at these— no, wait, that’s it detecting you again.”

“Why does it keep doing that?” Prowl huffed, glaring at the blinking device. “There is no reason for it to continue to behave as though I were a ghost!”

“No reason that we know of,” Wheeljack said, far too happily in Prowl’s opinion. “I’ve checked it over and over and haven’t found a single malfunction. My invention is foolproof!”

“Meaning, you still believe there is something strange about me.”

“You don’t find it strange that you can see and hear Jazz on your own without assistance? Especially when you can’t even so much as sense any other ghosts besides him?”

“One other ghost. A sample size of two is hardly sufficient to be drawing conclusions from.” Besides, Jazz and the scraplet weren’t even remotely comparable. “I thought you were going to show me something?” Prowl said, trying to steer the conversation back on course.

“Oh! Right. Here,” Wheeljack tapped a few buttons and the display changed to show a chart with several nearly-overlapping lines that wobbled slightly as they ran from left to right across the screen. “And it’s more than two, you just don’t know it. Which is exactly my point.”

Prowl ignored that. He’d already told Wheeljack that he wasn’t interested in letting him experiment with him, though it sounded like he’d been toeing that line by passively observing him nonetheless. “What am I looking at?” he asked instead.

“These lines represent the readings I’ve been taking over the last two weeks. See how the days almost overlap each other in some places, and none of them jump way up or down?” Wheeljack traced the lines as he spoke, illustrating the non-existent spikes with his finger. “Jazz’s energy fluctuates to some degree since he’s using it to do different things at different times, but he’s not experiencing any drastic surges or dips that would characterize a weakening anchor.”

“And what would cause his anchor to weaken?” Prowl frowned, concern coming back to replace his momentary irritation. “What if it weakens before he is ready emotionally?”

“That’s where identifying the exact anchor point is so important — if it’s physically damaged or destroyed, there’s not a whole lot I can do,” Wheeljack admitted. “Sometimes there’s interference from another energy source or disturbances caused by emotional distress. The first we could try to isolate and neutralize, but the second would really be up to Jazz. Like I said, it can be a sign of being ready to move on. I promise I’ll ask him first before doing anything though, whatever happens. Upsides to working with a sentient and non-hostile ghost!”

“Thank you, Wheeljack.” The prospect of having to say goodbye to Jazz still wasn’t a pleasant one, but he felt better knowing he wasn’t alone in considering Jazz’s wishes… whatever they were. “I am still afraid to ask him what he wants,” Prowl said quietly. “I want to spend as much time with him as possible, not accidentally chase him away.”

“Based on what I’ve seen and heard so far? I’d say that’s pretty unlikely.” Wheeljack patted his shoulder again. “Jazz doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to go anywhere besides Praxus — all of Praxus!”

Prowl couldn’t help a small laugh at that. “True. There is nothing that has not interested him yet.” Even things that made no sense to Prowl for him to be interested in. Sitting out on the deck of an upscale restaurant had turned up on Jazz’s ever-increasing list of things to do, for instance, even though he couldn’t actually consume anything. Still, it had been a very enjoyable afternoon. Prowl had taken him on that outing alone, and Jazz had selected a corner table on the terrace so he could watch the walkway and the people passing below. It had been secluded enough for Prowl to easily sneak sips of his drink for him, and they’d been able to talk about any and everything without worrying about being overheard once the waiter had brought them their order.

That day Jazz had mostly talked about how different the people and buildings looked now compared to what he remembered. He still garnered a lot of stares everywhere they went because of his archaic armor — ‘antique chic’ Jazz insisted when anyone commented on his appearance.

I’m not dated, I’m classical!

Whatever he called it, Prowl thought he looked wonderful.

“—u’re just standing there smiling.”

Prowl snapped out of his reverie. “My apologies, did you say something?”

The look Wheeljack levelled at him was an odd mix of amusement and concern. “Oh yeah. You’re attached, alright.”

He doubted very much that was what Wheeljack had actually said, but before Prowl could ask him about it he heard the sound of footsteps approaching outside. The ghost detector in Wheeljack’s hand lit up, and the mech’s helm fins with it.

“That’ll be Jazz and Smokescreen!” he said, leaving Prowl’s side in favor of greeting them as they emerged through the hedge. “What kept you guys?”

“Someone,” Jazz said dramatically, “who shall remain nameless, but was the spitting image of the mech standing next to me, wouldn’t let us leave until he met up with his bookie.”

“Oh, come one! I just wanted to place a bet or two while we were there,” Smokescreen protested, practically shoving the augmentor into Prowl’s hands. “It didn’t take that long!”

“A bet or two? Try one or two dozen. And it did so take that long.” Jazz made a face at Smokescreen, then moved to stand closer to Prowl. There was an anxious burr in the chapel windows. “He wouldn’t even stop talking to the mech long enough to call you and let you know we were running late!” he lamented. “I was worried you wouldn’t still be here.”

“Why would I not have waited for you?” He had told Jazz he would come by because he had the rest of the day free; there was nowhere else he needed, or wanted, to be. “I would have called Smokescreen if you had taken too much longer.”

“He probably would have called already if I hadn’t been distracting him,” Wheeljack put in. “We were having a pretty interesting discussion that I think the two of you should probably continue together.”

“Wheeljack!” That wasn’t what Prowl wanted to do, and he knew it!

“Oh?”

“Ohh?”

Jazz’s interjection was nothing more than plain curiosity, while Smokescreen’s was far less innocent. Prowl’s optics snapped to him. What was he acting all knowing about?

“Nothing, nevermind,” Smokescreen said quickly in response to the glare and the unspoken question. “I’ll just catch up with Wheeljack while you two have fun on your date. I’m sure you have lots to talk about.”

“We— that—” Oh, no. Prowl was not sticking around for any more of that. Bad enough he was going to have to explain what Wheeljack meant and actually talk to Jazz about his eventual departure. He did not need his cousin’s teasing complicating things further. “I am ready to leave. Are you?” he asked Jazz.

Jazz looked suspiciously between the three of them, but thankfully didn’t start asking questions yet. “Sure,” he said, gesturing back to the hedge. “After you.”

Prowl didn’t bolt through the crystal to escape the other two, if only because the path was too narrow and crooked to do so effectively.

“Hey! Slow down!” Jazz abandoned any pretense of following the path himself. His projected form slid through the solid crystals as he floated after Prowl, settling on the ground again when they reached the garden. “What was that about? You look upset.”

“Please. Not here.” Going somewhere else would give him time to think, would get them away from Wheeljack, from Smokescreen, from the chapel. Prowl needed distance. “Was there anywhere in particular you wanted to go?”

“Not really,” Jazz said with a small frown. “Maybe you could surprise me?”

Prowl thought for a minute, trying to come up with a destination. Where could they go that would be interesting to Jazz? “I would hate to bore you.”

“I won’t be bored. I’ll be with you. So just pick someplace,” Jazz pressed. “Somewhere you feel comfortable.”

Somewhere comfortable… normally that would be the library, but his usual refuge was currently occupied. “There is another garden I am familiar with,” Prowl said slowly, hesitant to suggest it. “The hall of justice has a small courtyard.” The problem was that to get to it, one had to walk through the hall itself. Prowl, through the course of his internship with Judge Camber, had become very comfortable there, but to many it was an intimidating building. “We do not have to go there if you—”

“The hall of justice?” Jazz interrupted, so intensely that the barely-there hum from the augmentor increased for a moment. “The same place they brought the young lord to be tried for treason and sentenced to nonexistence for daring to be a good person?”

Prowl wanted to smack himself. “Forgive my insensitivity,” he started to apologize, but Jazz interrupted again.

“I’m not upset! Well, maybe I am, kind of, but not with you. Please,” he begged, the sudden desperation almost painful despite his lack of EM. Prowl could hear it both in the words emitted by the augmentor and echoing in Jazz’s real voice. “I want to see it.”

Even though he wished he could take back his words, feared that if they went it would only bring Jazz one step closer to moving on, there was no way Prowl could refuse him. “Then I will take you,” he said simply, pushing his own feelings aside. Jazz was his friend and he had promised to help him. Even if it meant losing him.

They had determined early on that having Jazz pretend to drive alongside whoever was holding the augmentor was just too difficult an illusion to maintain. It was unfortunate the device had to be either fully on or off; otherwise, Jazz could have simply gone invisible while Prowl drove until they reached their destination. As it was, they took public transit, sitting side by side in near silence. Jazz wasn’t in the mood to say much, and Prowl didn’t want to press him.

“The building looks different than it used to,” he did say just before they reached their stop. “There have been multiple additions and remodelling projects over the millennia as the city grew in size.”

“Doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t know if it’s changed or not,” Jazz said with a shake of his head. “I didn’t get to leave the estate much. Not being a citizen and all kind of got in the way of playing tourist, you know?” Prowl moved his hand so it just barely overlapped the edge of Jazz’s, the closest approximation he could make of a comforting touch. Jazz gave him a slightly crooked smile. “But hey, things are better now! No more Praxian-only attractions and government buildings, right?”

“Right.” For Prowl it was hard to imagine it being any other way. “But I still believe we can do even better.”

“That’s right, you’re studyin’ to become a judge too.” The jagged grin on Jazz’s face softened into a genuine smile. “I didn’t put it together before, but you work here, don’t you? That’s how you know about the garden we’re goin’ to.”

“I do, yes.” The transport stopped, and they both waited to allow everyone else to get off first so there were fewer people for Jazz to avoid insubstantially ‘bumping’ into. Prowl led the way off the platform. The hall was just across the street. “I am not here every day, but I spend almost as much time here as I do on campus.”

“So it’s like your, what, fourth home? After your place, the library, and the university?” Jazz laughed. “I didn’t know you’d practically invited me over to your house!”

Prowl was somewhat surprised to realize he wouldn’t mind actually inviting Jazz over to his apartment. Smokescreen’s dig about this being a date popped up in his memory, and he had to suppress a flare of embarrassment — and regret — in his field. He should never have let himself get so attached!

“What is it?” Jazz stopped walking, forcing Prowl to stop as well. “You’re upset again. Was it something I said?”

Apparently he hadn’t suppressed his reaction well enough. “No,” Prowl assured him quickly. “It was nothing you said.”

“Hmm. So it’s what Wheeljack and Smokescreen said, and I just reminded you somehow.”

Prowl sighed. “The garden is this way,” he said, motioning for Jazz to follow him again. “We can talk there, since you will not be distracted from it.”

“Of course I won’t! Whatever it is, it’s really bothering you!” Jazz caught up quickly and fell in step beside him, lowering his voice to avoid attracting attention. “Does it have to do with the way you’ve been getting more and more melancholy every time I see you?”

“Have I been?” It certainly hadn’t been intentional. “I did not mean to burden you with my problems.”

“We’re friends, aren’t we? Friends help each other with their problems — each other,” Jazz repeated. “It’s a two way street. I want to help you, if I can. You’ve already done so much for me I’ll never be able to repay you for everything.”

“Friends do not need to repay each other for favors,” Prowl said, his spark simultaneously lighter and heavier at the acknowledgement of their friendship… a friendship that could only be, due to Jazz’s non-living nature, short-lived. “I only wanted to avoid causing you any more pain.”

“…you don’t cause me pain, Prowl.”

The words were so quiet Prowl thought he might have imagined them.

At last they reached the front entrance to the courtyard. Prowl stopped to hold the door open. “After you,” he said, mirroring Jazz’s earlier gesture.

“Oh,” Jazz breathed softly as he stepped inside. The small enclosure was empty, save for them. Prowl went directly to his favorite bench while Jazz walked around the entirety of the short, circular path, taking it all in. Unlike the largely natural shapes the crystal of the library garden had been left to grow in, here the crystals were arranged in carefully planned and tended lattices. A handful of different species, none of which Prowl knew the proper names of, had all been interwoven along the walls into a continuous geometric sculpture, tessellating upward as the crystals grew. Their subtle whites and grays stood in contrast to the bright orange and yellow of the crystal inside of the ring of benches, which had been cultivated into a living fountain. The liquid flowing over the gently sloping crystal faces filled the space with gentle music, and Jazz tilted his helm back to bask in it. “Beautiful,” he sighed, his voice harmonizing perfectly with the chorus around them.

“Yes.” Yes he was.

Jazz turned back to look at Prowl. “Thank you for bringing me here,” he said, leaving the crystal to join him on the bench. “I would rather think of this place as something with a bright future than a dark past.”

“I want to help you lay all your ghosts to rest. I promised that I would,” Prowl said, his voice steady despite the minute trembling in his frame. “I just wish… wish that you were not one of those ghosts.”

“That’s why you’ve been such a mess?” Jazz sounded surprised. “I didn’t think me being a ghost was that big a problem for you.”

“You being a ghost is not a problem.” Beyond the way it complicated going out and rendered true touch impossible, there was absolutely nothing wrong with Jazz being a ghost. It didn’t make him any less real, just like Wheeljack said. That was where the problem was. “But you are not always going to be here.”

“That’s true of the living too,” Jazz pointed out.

“Well, yes, but…” Prowl could see the frustration on Jazz’s face at his hesitation, so he forced himself to continue. “I feel like I am helping someone with a terminal illness enjoy their final days. The reality is that your time is limited, but I do not want to ruin whatever you have left by talking about when and how the end will come.”

“…I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Jazz said after an excruciatingly long beat of silence, “but as far as terminal illnesses go, being dead’s about as fatal as it gets.”

Prowl blinked stupidly for a moment, then started to chuckle at Jazz’s teasing smile. Jazz joined him, and soon they were both laughing. The sound pinged against the crystal, amplifying as it bounced back to fill the courtyard and dispel some of the stress in the air.

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to make fun of you,” Jazz said when they had calmed down again. “But really, it’s okay to talk about me being dead. It’s not like I haven’t had a loooong time to get used to the idea.”

“Longer than I have,” Prowl conceded. “I did not even believe ghosts were real before meeting you. That is part of what has me at such a loss. There is no precedent in my life or that of anyone I know that I can look to for advice.”

“You can always ask Wheeljack. I don’t know if you noticed, but he loves to talk about ghosts.”

“I thought I had detected something like that, yes.” It was only the mech’s most defining characteristic. “We did speak a little about when a ghost is ready to move on. He said you did not seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere.”

“Why would I be? There’s so many things to see now that I’m not stuck in the chapel anymore. Like this place.” Jazz gestured around them. “There’s nothing like this in the Well! Pretty sure there’s nothing but a whole lot of nothing in the Well, actually.”

“But not no one,” Prowl said softly, unable to forget the reason Jazz had become trapped in the chapel in the first place. “You know what happened to him now. You know he will not be coming back, no matter how long you continue to wait.”

“Of course I know that. He’s the one waiting now.” Jazz moved away from Prowl, gliding rather than remembering to step toward the fountain. “Are you saying I should be rushing off to him instead of lingering here?”

“I thought you would want to, yes.” But Jazz didn’t sound at all eager at the thought. If anything, he sounded bitter. “Are you… trying to punish him?”

“What? No! How can you say that? I told you, I never blamed or hated Prowl for what happened to me!” Jazz whirled, his figure flickering as the crystal in the augmentor flashed fitfully. Disturbances caused by emotional distress, Prowl’s memory supplied in Wheeljack’s voice. “But you don’t know for sure that sparks are reunited in the Well, do you? What if I let go and there’s no one on the other side? And anyway, even if he is there, neither of us are the same anymore.”

“Are you afraid he might not want to see you?” Jazz had said before when Prowl first showed him the evidence that the historical Prowl had lived that he had ruined his life. “Nothing you or the stories have said about him makes me think he would hold anything against you.”

“Then he won’t hate me for wanting to stay here a little while longer, will he?” Prowl couldn’t tell if the question was rhetorical, or if Jazz was genuinely asking. He suddenly looked guilty and miserable, and Prowl automatically reached for him. Their fingertips overlapped briefly before Jazz pulled away, drawing in on himself. “You’re not trying to get rid of me, are you?”

“Primus, no.” That was the last thing in the world Prowl wanted. “The more time I spend with you, the more time I wish I had. I… I do not want you to go at all,” he finally said, his voice breaking on the words. “But I have no right to impose my desires on you, or to hold you back from the rest and peace that you deserve, if that is your choice.”

“My choice, huh?” The augmentor had stopped flashing, but Jazz’s outline was beginning to waver, his color dissolving just like his image faded with the echoes after a song in the chapel. “But you want me to hurry up and make a decision, one way or the other.”

“Not hurry up, no! I did not mean to rush you. I only want some idea—” what to expect so I can try to prepare myself for when I have to let you go, but he didn’t get to finish his sentence. Without even a ripple in the air to mark where he had been, Jazz was suddenly gone. Prowl stood alone in the garden, the rainbow crystal at the heart of the augmentor silent and inert.

“Jazz!”

Chapter Text

Frantic over Jazz’s sudden disappearance, Prowl’s first thought was to call Wheeljack. He held the augmentor in trembling hands as he opened a commline, alternately trying not to crush or drop it in his shaky grip.

::Hey there! What can I—::

::Are you still at the chapel?:: Prowl cut him off almost as soon as he answered. It was the only place for Jazz to have disappeared to (he would not think about the alternative; Jazz couldn’t be gone for good). ::Can you tell me if Jazz is there?::

::I thought he was with you. Did something happen?::

::Wheeljack, please!::

::Okay, okay, you want me to answer your question first: no, I left just after you did. Smokescreen said he’d found someone with the specialized toroidal inductors I’ve been wanting to experiment with.::

Prowl didn’t care why he’d left, but he managed to wait until he finished talking this time. ::How far away from the library are you?:: A quick look at his chronometer proved there was no way for him to make it back before it closed for the day, either by driving or by transit — he’d just missed the last express train. ::Is Smokescreen still with you? Can either of you go and check?::

::I don’t think I can get there before it closes,:: Wheeljack sounded apologetic, ::and Smokescreen left to stop by his office.:: Which, depending on traffic, he might be able to make it to the library from in time… if that was really where he’d gone. Prowl suspected he’d more likely gone back to the races. ::What’s going on?::

::Jazz disappeared,:: Prowl said, already pinging his cousin to find out where he was. ::We were talking and then he started fading and just vanished.:: And I need to know if he’s alright!

::Disappeared?:: That had Wheeljack’s full attention. ::I wonder why that happened. Did the Wheeljack Ghost Augmentor ™ malfunction?::

::Could you tell if it did if I brought it to you?:: Smokescreen wasn’t answering. Even though he knew it wouldn’t do him any good, Prowl set off at a brisk walk out of the hall of justice for the road outside. ::I can meet you outside the library,:: he offered, hoping Wheeljack might still try to get there fast enough.

There was a soft sound on the other end of the line that sounded like either a huff or a sigh. ::Sure, I’ll meet you there. No promises I’ll be able to get a look inside though.::

::Thank you, Wheeljack.:: Prowl ended the call and stepped out onto the side of the road, still trying to reach Smokescreen as he transformed and pulled out into the flow of traffic. ::Smokescreen, if you are in any way able to go back to the library before it closes and see if Jazz is there when you get this message, I would very much appreciate it,:: he said when his call went to voicemail. ::If not, please do not lose more than you can afford to at the track.::

It was extremely difficult to obey the posted limits as he made his way to the library. Speeding wouldn’t make any difference — except to potentially get him pulled over and ticketed, which would take even longer on top of being absolutely mortifying — and he knew it, but the desire to was so strong that Prowl found himself fitfully revving his engine and annoying those around him. He dimmed his lights apologetically and forced himself to calm down as much as possible, though his thoughts continued to run in circles the entire drive back.

Wheeljack’s research vehicle was blatantly obvious parked across from the library entrance, and Wheeljack stepped out to greet him when he pulled up beside it. “I was too late to go inside,” he said as Prowl transformed, “but I did drive around taking energy readings from out here and I am happy to report that you can stop panicking! According to my equipment, he is almost definitely probably still in there.”

“What?” Prowl ran the sentence through his processor again. It didn’t make any more sense a second, or even third time around. “What does that even mean?”

“It means everything’s fine! Unless I’m totally wrong, which I’m nearly maybe certain I’m not.”

Prowl brought a hand up to his helm. He could feel the logical errors starting to pile up. “That is not helpful at all,” he said, terminating several corrupt, confused thought threads. “I need to talk to him.”

“Hey.” Wheeljack pulled his hand away from his face and brought him into the RV. “Why don’t you sit down,” he pushed Prowl into a seat, “and let me take a look at this.” Prowl surrendered the augmentor when Wheeljack reached for it. “Whatever happened, it’s not like you can go in there right now. Not unless you want to try breaking in, which I do not recommend!”

“Tried that before, have you?” Somehow Prowl wasn’t surprised. “Were you arrested?”

“Only the first time,” Wheeljack said absently, more tools than he had fingers appearing in his hands like magic. “Alright, you — let’s see if you had anything to do with this!”

Prowl hid his face in his hands again while Wheeljack proceeded to talk to the augmentor, his tools, and everything else on his workbench.

A few minutes into his ongoing narration, Smokescreen called back. Prowl turned away from the semi-ordered chaos, grateful for the distraction. ::Hello, Smokescreen.::

::I’ll have you know I’m at work,:: his cousin began. ::Just because I enjoy gambling does not mean I have a gambling problem.::

::Only a penchant for it?:: But Prowl didn’t really want to get into an argument now. ::I should not have said that in my message,:: he apologized. ::Taking out my fear and frustration on you was entirely uncalled for.::

::I thought you sounded upset.:: What indignation there was in Smokescreen’s voice evaporated, leaving behind nothing but concern. ::What happened? Why did you want me to check on Jazz?::

::He disappeared while I was talking to him and I was too far away to reach the library before it closed to see if that was where he had gone.:: Saying it made him start worrying all over again, which must have been evident in his field because Wheeljack paused what he was doing to peer over at him through the ghost goggles. “Smokescreen called,” Prowl explained. “Why are you wearing those?” he asked, unable to stop himself.

“So I can see this little guy!” Wheeljack held up his hand, empty except for a small dog collar. Prowl slowly edged away. He did not want a ghost scraplet chewing on his plating. “He’s helping me test the crystal’s conductivity!”

::Oh no!:: Now Smokescreen sounded genuinely distressed. ::Did you try calling Wheeljack?::

::He was not able to make it back either, though he did try. Right now he is determining whether or not the augmentor malfunctioned.:: Prowl couldn’t tell how much progress he was making, but the device was partially disassembled in front of him and he was back to staring at it intently as — Prowl assumed — the ghost scraplet zoomed around the crystal. ::He said that Jazz was… almost definitely probably in the chapel?::

::Well that’s a relief,:: Smokescreen said. ::Really, that’s good. It means there’s something still there instead of nothing.::

That made Prowl feel a little better. ::And that something is Jazz?::

::What else would it be?::

Prowl couldn’t think of anything else, but then, he was hardly an expert. ::Wheeljack must think something else is possible if he is unwilling to state definitively that Jazz is there.::

::Or there’s a large enough margin for error in his readings that he doesn’t want to say that without better data,:: Smokescreen countered. ::He is a scientist, after all.::

“Aha!” Prowl jumped at Wheeljack’s sudden exclamation, bumping into the parked ghost dispenser beside him with a loud clang! “That settles that!”

::What was that?::

::Wheeljack startled me,:: Prowl told Smokescreen. ::Thank you for calling, but I need to hear what he has to say.::

::Alright. I’ve got a few more things to take care of here before I can head home. Keep me posted, okay?::

::I will.:: Smokescreen disconnected first, and Prowl let the line drop. “What settles what?” he asked Wheeljack.

“The Wheeljack Ghost Augmentor ™ didn’t malfunction. See?” Wheeljack held up the remarkably reassembled device. Sitting on top of it was a disturbingly solid-looking scraplet, currently calm and docile with no spectral teeth in sight. “I checked all the wiring and didn’t find any shorts, and the crystal is completely undamaged. No repairs necessary for this baby to reveal our resident ghost!”

“But that means something must have happened to Jazz.” So much for feeling any better. “I should not have said anything, I wound up upsetting him and look at what happened.”

“Exactly! Look at what happened.” Wheeljack thrust the augmentor at Prowl, disturbing the scraplet and sending its teeth and limbs into a whirling frenzy.

“Ah!” Prowl jerked back as the thing launched itself at him, falling off his seat and clattering loudly to the floor. He hissed in pain as he clipped the corner of his doorwing on the way down, but didn’t let that stop him from scrambling away from the… disappearing scraplet?

“Oops. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“How would I not have been scared? You threw a scraplet at me!” Even if it was a ghost. Prowl stilled, watching as the last of the scraplet’s form faded just like Jazz’s had. “Where did it go?”

Wheeljack pulled off the ghost goggles and tossed them over. “Right there,” he said, pointing at the dog collar now resting on the corner of his work space.

Prowl didn’t bother putting the goggles on fully; holding them up to look through was enough. “So it did.” He lowered the lenses and started carefully levering himself up off the floor. “What just happened?”

“What happened,” Wheeljack said triumphantly, “was the scraplet snapped back to its anchor when its channeling was disrupted! Being a ghost doesn’t make it any smarter than a regular scraplet, so getting it to channel at all was more of a happy accident than anything else,” he admitted, taking the goggles back and helping Prowl the rest of the way to his feet. “But once it was, a quick distraction from the augmentor in the form of something to attack and voila! It had no way to sustain itself that far away from its anchor.”

“Do you mean to say,” Prowl said, ignoring Wheeljack’s admission that he’d deliberately, albeit (mostly) harmlessly, assaulted him with a ghost in favor of focusing on the implications of the incident, “that the same thing happened to Jazz?”

“That’s my working hypothesis, yes: something interfered with his channeling and he was pulled back to the chapel. I won’t know for sure until we can confirm his presence and ask him a few questions, but until then, based on what you said about him being upset,” Wheeljack said, and Prowl winced, “I’d speculate distraction is what caused it rather than an energy surge from his anchor being damaged or weakened.”

“Thank Primus,” Prowl whispered. That meant that, in all likelihood, he would be able to apologize in the morning. “I hope that you are right.”

“I usually am when it comes to ghosts!” Wheeljack clapped a hand down on his shoulder and Prowl winced again, this time with pain from his damaged doorwing. “Say, why don’t you spend the night here? That way you can go in as soon as the doors open tomorrow, and in the meantime,” he said, patting his shoulder again much more gently, “I can take a look at that panel for you.”

“Really?” Prowl sagged as all the tension he’d been carrying finally let go, leaving him feeling worn out and exhausted. “Thank you.”

“Hey, it’s my fault you dinged it in the first place. Besides, this way you might actually get some sleep instead of sitting up all night worrying!”

There was no point arguing that.

***

In the end, the only way Prowl got any sleep was with the help of a sedative. He’d been hesitant to take it at first, despite Wheeljack’s assurances it was short-acting, but eventually he gave in to escape his own restless thoughts for a few hours. Lying awake contemplating all the what ifs wouldn’t accomplish anything, and continuing to stress wouldn’t make the morning come any faster.

Given the choice, Prowl had to admit it was easier to wait unconscious.

The library was just minutes from opening according to his chronometer when he woke. He thought for a moment he could hear music, but no; the melody disappeared as his processor came fully online, nothing more than a dream.

“Good morning,” Wheeljack said from the other end of the RV. “I was just going to come get you up. Here, have some of this.”

‘This’ turned out to be a thermos of warmed energon. Prowl looked at it skeptically when Wheeljack brought it over. “Is it safe?”

“Of course it’s safe! What makes you think it wouldn’t be?” Wheeljack asked, his helm fins blinking in confusion.

“This.” Prowl pointed to the inventor’s name on the side of the thermos. “Is this short for ‘Wheeljack Ghost Thermos ™’?”

“A ghost thermos? Now that’s just silly!” Wheeljack laughed. “I only put my name on it so I can tell which one is mine when I’m visiting Perceptor.”

“So, not one of your inventions then.”

“Nope! Although now that you mention it, perhaps I could—”

“Take it,” Prowl said hurriedly, passing the thermos back to him. He wasn’t interested in fueling anyway. “I will get something after I see Jazz.” Because Jazz would be there when he reached the chapel. He had to be.

“Oh! Right!” Wheeljack started rummaging around in the drawers beside his workbench. “You don’t need any of this stuff to see him so you go on ahead. I’ll be along as soon as I get everything I need together.”

Prowl was out the door before Wheeljack finished his sentence.

He slipped around to the garden as soon as no one was watching him. A couple of the library staff seemed surprised to see him so early, but while he’d never made a habit of it, this wasn’t the first time Prowl had arrived right as the doors opened. Nor was he the only one already here — he saw a handful of others in the stacks and even spotted old Kup wandering around as he went by.

Fortunately there didn’t seem to be anyone else outside yet. Prowl took advantage of the garden’s emptiness to not-quite sprint to the massive hedge wall that enclosed the chapel. The crystal around him wasn’t singing, but he could still feel energy in it, growing stronger and stronger the closer he got to his goal. His spark spun faster in his chest.

“Jazz!” he called out as soon as he felt safe to do so. “Jazz, are you there?”

“Prowl!”

His relief at hearing Jazz’s voice was strong enough to make him stumble. Prowl stopped himself from falling by grabbing onto the crystal around him until he was steady enough to keep going. “I am so glad you are still here,” he said, rushing across the clearing to where Jazz hovered in the crystal glass of the chapel window, reaching for him. “I am sorry I could not get here sooner.”

“Inside?” Jazz asked, his fingers curling against the crystal beneath where Prowl had laid his hands, futilely trying to grab onto him. “Please?”

Without taking his hands from the window, Prowl walked along the wall until he could step inside the chapel through the missing crystal face.

“Better?” he asked, then had to look around for Jazz when the ghost moved. He found him again beneath him, standing alongside his reflection. Prowl held his arm out into the empty air so the mirror-finish of the floor showed his arm around Jazz’s shoulders.

The crystal around him gave a shuddering sigh.

“I am so sorry,” Prowl said again, wishing he do more to comfort him. As difficult as the night had been for him, it looked like it had been even more distressing for Jazz. “I did not mean for that to happen.”

“What happened?” Jazz asked, his voice shaking slightly. “I was talking to you and then everything went dark and I couldn’t see or hear you anymore. You just vanished! Or I thought you had, until the blackness went away and I realized I was back here and I was the one who had disappeared.”

That didn’t sound like it had been a pleasant experience at all. “Wheeljack thinks your channeling through the augmentor was disrupted,” he said, only now realizing he’d left the augmentor behind in the RV. “I distracted you from making sure the crystal kept resonating, and once it stopped, you—”

“—got pulled back here,” Jazz finished. The color in the windows brightened a little around the edges of the filigree holding the chapel together. “That used to happen sometimes when I’d go out in the garden, but it never went black first. ”

“Perhaps the distance played a factor?” They had been hundreds of times farther away yesterday than Jazz had ever been able to go on his own. “We can ask Wheeljack when he gets here.”

“I thought it was all over,” Jazz said, continuing as though he hadn’t heard. “When the blackness didn’t go away, I thought maybe that was it. Then the light came rushing in and I thought for sure I was dying, really dying and going back to the Well, but I… Prowl, I didn’t want to go!”

Prowl could only imagine how frightened he must have been. The raw fear echoing around them even now was so intense it made the recently popped dent in his doorwing ache. “Then stay,” he said, wishing more than ever that he could hold Jazz. “Stay here as long as you need, as long as you want.” Stay here with me. “I will not leave you alone.”

“…I can’t…” Jazz moved again, this time appearing in one of the windows that made up the roof. “I can’t keep ‘living’ like this!” Prowl watched him pound his hands uselessly against the crystal in both directions, trying to escape it. “I don’t want to be at the mercy of a promise like that! You mean it, I know you do,” he said in a rush, dropping down through the panes back into the floor to stand beside the pillar bearing Prowl’s name. He touched the reflected sigil sadly. “But it’s not always up to you, is it? Sometimes things are beyond your control.”

“I would do more than promise if I could,” Prowl said, at a loss for what to say. “Things are different now. I doubt very much I am likely to be exiled or executed.”

“You can’t come here when the library is closed though,” Jazz countered rather pointedly. “It doesn’t have to be something major. Even a little thing like an accident on the road or the judge calling you in unexpectedly could stop you from being here when you say you’ll be, and then I’m stuck waiting, wondering if you’re never coming back for me. And it doesn’t matter how unlikely that is. All last night after I realized I wasn’t actually going to disappear, all I could think about was whether or not you’d be here in the morning. I tried to tell myself there was absolutely no reason you wouldn’t show up, but what if something had happened to you? I’d never know unless someone came to tell me!”

Prowl almost wished he had tried to sneak in now. Jazz had already spent thousands of years only able to guess at what had happened to the historical Prowl when he never returned as he’d promised. He didn’t deserve to suffer that kind of uncertainty again. “What if we could work out a way to call you, to leave messages here even though you do not have your own commsuite?” he started to suggest, but Jazz was already shaking his head.

“No. I don’t want to be tied here anymore. You know how I keep saying that being dead doesn’t bother me? Well, being lonely does, and this place? It might be beautiful, but it’s the loneliest place in the world.” He blinked back to the ring of ground level windows, pacing slowly around the perimeter. “I had gone numb to it, before you showed up. So numb I forgot how much it hurt.” His face was pointed up at the ceiling, but his words seemed to come down from everywhere, falling and settling mournfully over Prowl in thick, heavy layers. “If I stay here that pain will kill me.”

Flicking his wings in an attempt to shake off the almost paralyzing effect of Jazz’s sorrow, Prowl walked across the mirrored floor to intercept Jazz’s path. “I do not want you to die,” he whispered, laying his hands on either side of Jazz’s reflection.

Jazz turned to face him, hands automatically coming up to meet Prowl’s. “I’m not ready to die,” he whispered back. The crystal separating them whispered too; a nearly soundless backdrop that felt like crying.

Prowl leaned forward, dipping his head until it rested against the window. He watched Jazz do the same, but the only thing he could feel against his chevron was cold, smooth crystal.

Chapter Text

Still unsure what to say, Prowl was saved the trouble of breaking the silence that had fallen over the chapel by the comparatively tumultuous racket of Wheeljack’s arrival.

“Hello in there!” came a call from somewhere in the hedge. The amount of noise he was making had Prowl wondering just how many of his devices he’d decided to bring. It sounded like he was carrying some in his hands, rather than in subspace. Had he run out of room? “Could I get a little help, please?”

Jazz drew away, rising up to the next tier of windows for a better vantage point. “You’d better go save him,” he said with a hint of a chuckle. “I’d do it myself, but I’m kinda useless when it comes to carrying things.”

“That might not be a bad thing in this case.” Prowl didn’t leave immediately though. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” Jazz said, waving him out. “As long as you come back, I’ll be fine.”

“Seriously, I think I might actually be stuck on something here,” Wheeljack called again.

“Coming,” Prowl replied, this time walking out to the hedge and peering in cautiously. “Wheeljack?”

“Here! I made it about halfway but then this darn thing slipped right out of my hand!” Sure enough, Prowl found him only a few paces in, struggling to twist himself around to pick the ghost detector up off the ground without stepping on it. He wasn’t having much luck. “I can’t see where it fell, can you?”

“Wait,” Prowl said, reaching for Wheeljack first. “You have your kibble caught on the crystal.” He pushed the offending piece of armor up just enough to scrape over the protrusion it had gotten hung up on. “There.”

“Thank you!” Wheeljack still didn’t put his foot down. “Did you get the detector?”

Prowl tucked his doorwings back to avoid getting them caught too, then bent down and scooped it up. “I have now,” he said. “Why were you carrying it in your hands?”

“Why? Because I can’t get readings with it in subspace, that’s why!”

“And those?”

“Well I was wearing them, but they made it really hard to see anything in here.” Crisis averted, Wheeljack put the ghost goggles back on. “Come on, let’s go! I want to talk to Jazz.”

“Good, because I want to talk to you too!” Jazz waved as they emerged in the clearing. Wheeljack waved back, but didn’t say anything in response to the statement he hadn’t heard. “Did he bring that translator thing? You didn’t have the augmentor with you.”

“I am sure he brought both,” Prowl told him. “Which would you prefer to use?”

“If the augmentor still works, definitely that.” Jazz made a face. “That translator makes me sound like a drone.”

“What’s he asking about?” Wheeljack asked, squinting through the goggles. “He looks like he’s okay.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Jazz muttered.

“He asked if you have the augmentor,” Prowl said, returning to the window so he could touch the crystal again. Once more, Jazz’s fingers immediately sought out his. “It is much easier to have a conversation when all the participants can hear each other.”

“I’ll say. Here,” Wheeljack pulled the augmentor from his subspace and handed it to Prowl before addressing Jazz. “I don’t expect it to, but pay extra attention when you activate it and let me know if it feels any different.”

“Sure. Prowl?”

“Of course.”

They had discovered it was easier for Jazz to activate the augmentor if it was inside the chapel. Prowl carried it to the exact center of the structure and waited, already angling his doorwings to listen as Jazz started to sing. Smokescreen would just set the device down and go back outside (he still wasn’t really comfortable in the chapel, especially if Jazz was doing anything spectacular), but Prowl preferred to stay. Being at the center of the music, feeling the energy build around him as the sound stretched and deepened, focused on him and the crystal in his hands, was an experience like no other. He would never tire of it.

Jazz never sang exactly the same song when he did this, though Prowl had begun to notice a pattern in the melodies he coaxed from the crystal. He hadn’t asked, but he suspected it was because something about that particular kind of music worked best to transfer his energy to the repurposed crest ornament incorporated into the augmentor.

He’d already shut his optics off protectively before things became too bright to see, but Prowl could still feel the crystal coming to life, throwing off heat and light as it started to hum faster and faster. Before long it was singing along in a counterpoint to the song reverberating through the chapel. Then, with a sudden electric snap! it was all over but the echoes.

“You were right,” Prowl heard in front of him. “It didn’t feel any different than usual.”

Prowl brought his optics back online to look at Jazz, seemingly solid and audibly present to all once again.

“Oh, good,” Wheeljack said, joining them inside as soon as the song had faded enough to not fry any of his other equipment. The goggles were still on his helm, but he’d pushed them up above his optics to read the screen of one of his passive scanners. “It looked the same as usual on here too, which just goes to support my theory.”

“Prowl told me you thought I’d accidentally stopped channeling,” Jazz said, inching his was closer to Prowl as he spoke until they were practically overlapping. “Is that really all it was?”

Wheeljack nodded. “It looks that way. My invention wasn’t the problem, and you don’t seem to have been affected beyond a temporary disruption.” He started going around the chapel, placing sensors to collect more data. “Unless you’re still experiencing a change of some sort?”

“Not anymore, but nothing like what happened yesterday’s ever happened to me before. I’m—”

“Really? Can you describe what happened? What did it feel like? How long did it last? Did you—”

“Woah, hey, stop! One question at a time!” Jazz laughed, holding up his hands against the flood of questions. “If you’ll let me continue with what I was going to say before the sudden inquisition: I’m not sure how long it lasted, but everything around me just went black and empty with no warning. I didn’t have a sense of… anything, really. Sight, sound, passage of time; nothing.”

“When you say ‘no warning’, what do you mean?”

“What else does ‘no warning’ mean? Everything was normal one second, then not the next.” Jazz looked perplexed. “Anyway, after who knows how long in the dark, the light came rushing back all at once. It was too much, too fast and I was dizzy and disoriented,” and scared, he didn’t say, but the lengthening shadows around the chapel weren’t due to a change in the lighting outside. “Again, I’m not sure how long it took besides too long, but eventually things evened out and I figured out where I was.”

“Prowl told me you faded before vanishing to his vision, so from an outside perspective there was some warning,” Wheeljack said, undisturbed by the discrepancy. “If you didn’t notice anything until it was happening, that pretty much confirms a channeling failure from a distraction-based loss of crystal resonance.”

“But I’d lose resonance sometimes in the garden and it was nothing like that,” Jazz protested, obviously still unsettled. “One second I’d be looking at something outside, then I’d blink and be back inside, but it never went black or dizzyingly bright.”

“The farther away you are from your anchor when you lose hold of your form, the more difficult it is to remanifest,” Wheeljack assured him. “Most ghosts as old as you would have experience with that, but then, you aren’t exactly a normal ghost.”

“Because of the crystal, yeah. You’ve said that before, but I still don’t understand what difference it makes.”

“Neither do I! I keep finding new ways you’re different from any other ghost I’ve encountered!” A fact that never ceased to make Wheeljack happy, even giddy. “My point in this case though is that the way you manifest isn’t typical — you’re always channeling; you can’t not, because of the unique nature of your connection to this very particular crystal species. That lets you do more with less energy than your average ghost but limits you in other ways, like restricting your movement so you’ve always been close to your anchor whenever you did run out of energy and needed to recover. Or just got distracted and had to refocus,” he added. “Yesterday might have been a bit of both, come to think of it. You did go out with Prowl right after spending most of the day with Smokescreen with no pause in between.”

“So next time I won’t try to stay out all day without coming back here to rest. But on that note, and speaking of limits,” Jazz changed the subject, pouncing on the opening, “is there any way for me to not be limited to this place anymore? Permanently?”

“This place, as in, this building. He wants to stay on this side of the Well,” Prowl clarified quickly, “but being obligated to return here is not optimal.”

“Understatement of the millennium. Several, even.” A ripple of discordant notes skittered across the windows along with Jazz’s scoff. “You said I’m not bound to the chapel as a whole, didn’t you?”

“I did. I’m positive of it.” Wheeljack turned away from placing his sensors, intrigued. “Where are you going with this?”

“Out of here, I hope. I know we’d have to be careful not to damage it in the process,” Jazz said, rocking restlessly in place, “but if my anchor is a single piece of the building, couldn’t it be moved somewhere else?”

“Somewhere else? Like where?”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought beyond not here somewhere else yet.” Jazz turned to Prowl, the blue light in his visor beseeching. “Maybe you could you find a place for it? You’d take care of and look after it for me, wouldn’t you? You said you wouldn’t leave me alone.”

“Of course I would,” Prowl said immediately, without any hesitation. “You need not even ask.”

“Now wait just a minute before you go making any big plans,” Wheeljack said, surprising them both by being the one to put on the brakes for a change. He pulled several datapads from his subspace and lined them up to show off his research. “I’m still working on isolating which crystal among all the ones you’re channeling through is the one you’re anchored to, Jazz, but as you can see, it’s complicated stuff! I can’t tell you if moving it will even be an option until I know where it is, and that’s going to take me awhile yet.”

“But it might be an option, right?” Jazz pressed, glossing over the dizzying array of diagrams and equations spread out on the floor. “You can’t rule it in but you can’t rule it out either.”

“No, I can’t,” Wheeljack agreed easily. “I’m not saying you should throw the notion out altogether! I just want you to be prepared either way. But I promise that when I find it, if it can be moved, I will help you move it — even if it means losing the opportunity to watch you work your wonders in here,” he said with a wink.

“Don’t worry.” Jazz smiled. “I’m sure I’ll still be able to help your research in other ways.”

“Is there anything we can do to help you find it?” Prowl interjected, determined to do something for Jazz even if there was no guarantee of success. “The sooner we find it, the better.”

“Well I’m certainly not one to turn down a pair of willing assistants!” Wheeljack’s helm fins flashed deviously. The sensors staged around the room beeped to life as he brought his hand down on the scanner, slapping several of the buttons with vigor. “Let’s get to work!”

Over the next several days, all three of them — four, once Smokescreen learned what the plan was — focused all their energy into identifying Jazz’s physical anchor. Jazz had latched on to the idea of being able to take it out of the chapel with a fierce sort of optimism, and it cheered Prowl to see him in such good spirits. The root of those feelings was somewhat selfish and Prowl knew it, but Jazz’s new fixation on relocating in this world was proof that he wasn’t looking to move on. Prowl wouldn’t have to say goodbye any time soon.

It also cheered him to be the one Jazz wanted to entrust his anchor to. Beyond being honored by the level of trust it implied, it also helped him feel less jealous of Jazz’s friendship with his cousin, which had been a ridiculous problem to have in the first place. Thank Primus Jazz had no idea, and Smokescreen, if he’d guessed, didn’t hold it against him.

He probably had guessed; something had given him the idea to tease Prowl about spending time with Jazz, at any rate. Prowl did his best to ignore Smokescreen’s needling, but it wasn’t easy when he had to admit, if only to himself, that going on a date with Jazz would be really nice…

He didn’t need to get any more attached than he already was, Prowl firmly reminded himself. Jazz might be staying for the foreseeable future, but that wasn’t a future he should be contemplating.

Not when he couldn’t even give him a hug.

He could help him escape his prison, however, and so he would. Prowl was just as determined as Jazz to do whatever Wheeljack needed to isolate the right crystal.

Unfortunately, they weren’t having much luck… until they tried something a little different.

“Now this is interesting,” Wheeljack said when Jazz reappeared in the chapel after deliberately dropping resonance with the augmentor (currently in Smokescreen’s possession somewhere in the library) for the fourth time. Prompted by the difficulties they’d been running into from the sheer number of interactions caused by so many crystals and the limitations of his equipment when Jazz tried doing anything inside the chapel, Wheeljack had suggested having Jazz leave and intentionally snap back from outside so they could track his remanifestation.

“WHAT IS/What is?” Jazz asked from his perch in the ceiling, where he was attempting to read the results in the reflection of Wheeljack’s scanner. Prowl could hear him normally, of course, but they were using the ghost translator for Wheeljack’s benefit until Smokescreen returned with the augmentor, even though Jazz still didn’t like the flat, mechanical voice it gave him. “It looks the same as it did last time.”

“Precisely!” Wheeljack exclaimed, excitement bubbling up in his EM field. “Do you know what this means?”

“That your scanner glitched?”

“It means we finally have repeatable results,” Prowl answered more seriously. “Results that we can draw reliable conclusions from.”

“Really?!” Now Jazz was as excited as Wheeljack. Prowl could feel the subsonic static from the windows crawling along the edges of his doorwings. “Where’s it say the origin point is?”

“Somewhere under the floor. Specifically,” Wheeljack waved at the eastern corner of the chapel, “somewhere kind of sort of over there.”

“I think you might want to revisit the definition of the word ‘specifically’,” Prowl said, torn between frustration and hope. “Are you even sure it is under the floor, not the floor itself?”

“Absolutely!” This time Wheeljack didn’t tack on any ambiguous modifiers. “At first I thought it was just a glitch,” he winked at Jazz, “but there’s a slight uptick in energy before the floor — and everything else — starts resonating every time.” He walked over to the corner in question and paced off a rough area. “That resonance begins around here, then radiates up and out.”

“So when I snap back, I reappear under the floor?” Jazz moved to ‘stand’ in the floor beside Wheeljack’s reflection to look around, but was disappointed. “I can’t see through the mirror,” he complained.

“Neither can I, but I’m not about to go cutting holes in the floor,” Wheeljack said. “Not until I get an idea what the foundation under it looks like.”

“Should you do that before we repeat the experiment then?” Prowl stepped over to join them. It didn’t feel different from anywhere else in the chapel to him. “Either way, I think Jazz could use a break.” Repeatedly activating the augmentor and reconfiguring himself so many times in such short succession had to be tiring.

“No I don’t,” Jazz said quickly. “I can do it again, no problem!”

“It’s alright, you don’t have to. Prowl’s right — mapping out the foundation first is a good idea. It’ll let me reposition the sensors more accurately. This equipment isn’t going to cut it for that though,” Wheeljack said, gathering up everything he’d been using. “I’m going to have to go get a few things. Shouldn’t take more than a day or two.”

“A couple of days?” For a second Prowl thought Jazz was going to argue, but despite clearly not being happy about the delay, he reigned himself in. “Fine. But call if it winds up taking longer, okay?”

“You got it!” The last sensor disappeared back into Wheeljack’s subspace, along with the translator. “I’ll be back before you know it!”

“And I’ll be here,” Jazz sighed. “Not like I can really go anywhere.”

“Not permanently, perhaps, but we can take another trip out into the city,” Prowl said. Smokescreen still had the augmentor, and Prowl doubted that Wheeljack would take the device and leave Jazz with no way out of the chapel. “Although the only place either of us can take you tomorrow is Smokescreen’s office.”

“Oh?” Jazz floated up into one of the windows so Prowl didn’t have to keep looking at the floor to talk to him. “I haven’t seen his office yet. Is it nice?”

“Nicer than my brother’s in ambiance, though considerably more modest in its appointments.”

Jazz laughed. “I’ll take comfortable over ostentatious any day. So? Is it alright if I come? I promise I won’t get in your way. Just give me a voice activated datapad to read and I’ll be set.”

“If Smokescreen agrees to focus on what we need to review, I do not mind.”

“Great! Hey, Smokey!” Jazz’s reflection reversed so he was facing outward. “You gonna cooperate so I can come see your office?”

Prowl didn’t hear anyone approaching, but as usual, Jazz’s senses proved accurate. Less than a minute later, Prowl saw Smokescreen’s distorted outline separate from the hedge through the rainbow crystal of the window. “Wheeljack’s going back to Iacon?” he said without preamble. “How come?”

“He does not have the equipment he needs to utilize our breakthrough with him here,” Prowl explained. “You saw him on his way out?”

“Barely. He was moving so fast I didn’t catch anything more than where he was headed.” Smokescreen stopped in front of Jazz’s usual spot beside the missing window, speaking to it even though Jazz wasn’t currently in it. “What kind of breakthrough are we talking about here? Minor? Modest? Monumental?”

“Maybe… modest? I don’t know yet.” Jazz walked around the wall to ‘meet’ Smokescreen’s optics, resting his hand against the edge of the pane. Prowl followed him, standing in the opening so he could curl his hand around the filigree frame and Jazz’s fingers in the crystal. “Turns out I’m anchored somewhere under the floor, but I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”

“Wheeljack was able to roughly narrow down the anchor’s location,” Prowl paraphrased. “While it is not any of the large windows or the floor itself,” which a relief, to say the least; nothing of that size would have been moveable, “it is somewhere beneath the eastern corner of the building, and that poses some difficulty.”

“It’s under the building?” Smokescreen stepped back to peer at the edges of the foundation. “That’s going to make getting at it kind of hard.”

“But not impossible,” Jazz shook his head firmly. “He just needs the equipment to safely survey through the crystal, then once we kno— oh!”

“What’s wrong?” Smokescreen jerked upright at the agitated flickers of color Jazz was sending across the clearing. “What’d I say?”

“Someone’s coming,” Jazz said, pointing to the path Smokescreen had just emerged from. “And it isn’t Wheeljack.”

“Jazz says someone is approaching,” Prowl said quietly, trying to suppress his own sudden anxiousness. Smokescreen had been coming and going a lot for their experiments, with Jazz conspicuously beside him half the time. “Did anyone see you come here?”

“I didn’t think so…” Smokescreen’s doorwings had started twitching reflexively at Jazz’s nervous energy, but now they flinched back violently. “Oh, Primus,” he whispered. “I am so, so sorry, Prowl.”

“Why are you sorry?” Jazz asked, but Prowl didn’t need to repeat the question. Their visitor was close enough now for him to identify, and he knew him all too well.

“Barricade,” he greeted his brother when the mech made his appearance. He forced his tone and posture to be as calm and civil as possible, even though every wire and cable in his frame had tightened almost to the point of pain. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“To whom, more accurately,” Barricade said absently, thoroughly and understandably distracted by the spectacle of the chapel. Prowl remembered being overwhelmed by it himself at first, and that without his brother’s obsession with historical artifacts and architecture. “There was a mech in rather remarkable armor travelling with you the other day,” he nodded vaguely to Smokescreen, “and when I heard he was here again today, I came hoping to meet him. I didn’t expect… all of this.”

“He wanted to meet me?” The question was accompanied by a muted shifting in the light glancing through the chapel windows. “Why?”

Barricade didn’t seem to have noticed. The sideways glance Smokescreen shot him told Prowl that his cousin had, but he gave the barest shake of his head. He was not going to say anything about Jazz if he could help it.

Of course, not saying anything about Jazz also meant not saying anything to him. “Prowl, what’s going on?” Jazz asked, increasingly worried and distressed when Prowl didn’t say anything. “Talk to me!”

Prowl continued to ignore him. “If you were hoping to meet someone,” he said to Barricade, “then perhaps you should look elsewhere. As you can see, there is no one here aside from us.”

“That’s not true and you know it,” Jazz said behind him, though with surprisingly little emphasis from the crystal. “He’s your brother, isn’t he? The one you didn’t want finding this place.” Barricade had walked far enough around the side of the chapel now that Prowl risked a curt nod. “…How bad is this?”

Prowl didn’t know, but he was already imagining the worst. “We were in the middle of something,” he said, shifting his stance to fully block the opening he was standing in. If Barricade saw the names on the pillars there would be no getting rid of him. “I would appreciate if you would leave us to it.” Leave them long enough to go somewhere else so his inevitable return to scrutinize every inch of the place wouldn’t be keeping Jazz trapped inside. ::You do have the augmentor, yes?:: he asked Smokescreen.

::In my subspace.::

“Do you know what this place is?” Barricade asked, sidestepping Prowl’s request. “The architecture is early classical, but I’ve never come across a reference to anything like it.”

The disbelief in his voice was, for once, genuinely warranted rather than a product of his arrogance. Prowl couldn’t even begin to calculate what it must have cost to build the chapel, but the now-vanishingly rare rainbow crystal had been highly valuable even back then, and the building incorporated not only a lot, but a lot of very large, solid, unblemished pieces of it. A project of such magnitude should have been extant in the historical record somewhere.

“My assumption was that it was a chapel of some sort,” Prowl said, lying only by omission. “You would know better than I where to look for record of it.”

“True enough,” Barricade agreed easily. He had walked a full circle of the chapel, examining it, and was now once again at the entrance facing Prowl. Fortunately, he didn’t look like he was about to try to push his way past him. “Though given the vast amount of time I’ve spent collecting information on this sort of thing, I should have encountered something even without specifically looking for it.”

And there was the arrogance. “Maybe you would see it now that you do know to look for it, if you revisit your collection,” Prowl suggested, hoping he would go and do just that. “Or the library’s collection.” Because even that would take him away long enough for them to make their escape. “I would be interested to know what you find.”

“So would I,” Jazz echoed, the crystal’s reaction to his words still muted. “Can’t imagine he’ll succeed, but I’d be interested to hear if he does.”

Barricade couldn’t hear Jazz, but what Prowl said struck a chord. “It could be worth taking another look at the library’s collection, since I’m already here.” He turned to head back out the way he’d come. “If nothing of its origins remain, perhaps it will still be possible to identify which house it belongs to. I’m sure its scions would be intrigued to learn of its existence.”

He didn’t even glance at Smokescreen as he left, any thought of the mech he’d initially been pursuing clearly driven completely from his mind.

“He’s going to blow a fuse when he finds out the place is Rhadamanthian,” Smokescreen said once he was well and truly gone. “Then, as soon as he recovers, he’s going to start searching and scheming for a way to claim that makes it his.”

“Can he do that?” Jazz ‘tapped’ on the window, the subsequent crystal chiming drawing both their attention. “What does that mean for us?” For me, Prowl could practically see him thinking, and he wished he could tell him not to worry. But he couldn’t.

“What it means for us,” he said, holding out a hand to Smokescreen, who readily produced the augmentor, “is that getting you out of here just became a whole lot more important.”

Chapter Text

By the time Wheeljack returned from Iacon three days later, Barricade had worked out which noble house had commissioned and built the chapel. Prowl knew he had because his brother had actually gone so far as to turn up on campus, demanding he reveal everything he knew about it. Fortunately, Prowl had had a lecture to get to and therefore an excuse to cut their conversation short, but Barricade had gone to Smokescreen’s office next — where he’d gotten to meet Jazz after all.

“I thought about disappearing when he showed up, but I couldn’t do it,” Jazz said when they were all together in the chapel again. He was reluctantly ‘resting’ in one of the crystal windows rather than channeling through the augmentor, and the ghost translator was once again being pressed into service so Smokescreen and Wheeljack could hear him. “I didn’t know how long I’d have to wait here for you to come for me and just couldn’t do it.”

“I can probably do something about that.” Wheeljack paused in his scrutiny of the floor long enough to snatch the augmentor from Prowl and examine it. “Give me some time and I can make it so you can activate the crystal without having to project the hologram.”

“I think it might be a case of too little, too late,” Prowl said regretfully. “The damage has already been done.”

“Yeah, I’d rather you spent your time mapping the foundation,” Jazz agreed. “Though I don’t know about damage. Seeing me didn’t help, but I’m not sure it made things any worse.”

“He’s right,” Smokescreen chimed in. “Barricade had already seen everything by the time he dropped in on us. All he wanted from me was an explanation for why I hadn’t told him anything. Guess he already knew why you hadn’t, given how much love there is between the two of you,” he quipped at Prowl. “When he saw Jazz he guessed that he had something to do with the place, but he wasn’t overly concerned.”

“He was actually pretty dismissive.” The translator didn’t convey the emotion to the others, but to Prowl Jazz sounded both relieved and, oddly, offended. “Once he decided I wasn’t a threat to him, he basically ignored me.”

“Big mistake,” Wheeljack said. He passed the augmentor off to Smokescreen and went back to puzzling over the floor, this time with a datapad in hand to work out his calculations. “Just because a ghost hasn’t shown themselves to be dangerous doesn’t mean they can’t turn dangerous.”

Jazz snorted derisively, which the translator expressed as a blat of static. “And just how would I have been dangerous to him? It’s not like I’m the kind of ghost that can knock things over on a mech’s head!”

“No, because knocking things over on a mech’s head — or blowing fuses inside it, for that matter — happens when ghostly energy interacts directly with the physical world, and your energy is filtered through the crystal you use to channel. Which isn’t to say you can’t still do a lot of damage by,” Wheeljack tapped on the window beside him, “charging up these babies and wreaking havoc on a mech’s sensor suite with them.”

“‘These babies’ are a lot bigger than the crystal in the augmentor, which was all I had to work with at the time,” Jazz said. “Unless he follows me here or into some other huge crystal field, the worst I’d be able to do is say, hi, I’m a ghost, fear me/HI I AM A GHOST. FEAR ME. I AM A GHOST. FEAR ME. FEAR ME. FEA—”

Smokescreen gave the translator a swift kick. The loop cut off abruptly.

“…kinda wish I’d done that now,” Jazz chuckled into the resulting silence. The first few words came out garbled, but by the end of the sentence the translator was working normally again. “Maybe it would’ve annoyed him enough to distract him from being such an aft. In case it wasn’t already abundantly clear,” he said, looking directly at Prowl, “I do not like your brother.”

“Why not? Do not get me wrong,” Prowl said quickly at Smokescreen’s incredulous stare, “I do not like him either. The mech is selfish, arrogant, and generally unpleasant company on the best of days. What I meant was, what did he do specifically to upset you?” Because Jazz was clearly upset; the darkening crystal around them was buzzing with the emotion.

“Wasn’t anything specific. It was just… He didn’t figure out that I was a ghost,” Jazz said with a sigh that reverberated around the room. “Not that I wanted him to. But he knew I had something to do with the chapel and there was no getting around that, so we just went with what he assumed.”

“Which was…?”

“That he was an eccentric foreigner who’d come to Praxus in order to lay claim to it,” Smokescreen answered. “We made up a half-truth about Jazz’s ancestors being the ones who worked to build it to explain his knowledge and interest, but Barricade—”

“He said I had no claim because I’m not Praxian,” Jazz spat. The buzzing in the windows intensified, and Prowl watched Smokescreen edge discreetly over to the exit to escape it, doorwings flinching against the building sound. Wheeljack just looked up excitedly and whipped out a different scanner to record the phenomenon. “According to him, no judge in Praxus would award me any right to it over him because the chapel belongs to the Praxian nobility.”

“There is no Praxian nobility anymore, whatever my brother may wish,” Prowl said, his own ire rising to match Jazz’s. “Not only was that cruel to have said, it is an outright falsehood.”

“There is a judge who would rule in my favor then? Other than you; you aren’t a judge yet.” Not to mention he would never be allowed to adjudicate the case, even if he was. Conflict of interest. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t believe you. This city’s come a long way from the Praxus I lived in, but I doubt it’s come that far.”

“If it did come to an actual court case between you,” Prowl rapidly reviewed the relevant laws and precedents in his processor, “the ruling would probably be in his favor, yes. However,” he said emphatically, “it would not be because of your frametype.” A trivial distinction to some, perhaps, but an important one for Jazz. “The problem is that when it comes to documentable evidence, Barricade has the advantage. He can argue his right to inherit the property based on traceable lineage, whereas your very existence cannot be proven on record.”

“Heh. Yeah, there’s no way you’d be able to find my creator’s petition for me,” Jazz said, the hot reds and purples in the crystal fading as his anger drained away. “Assuming they even recorded petitions for non-Praxians back then in the first place, Lord Obduras would have had it destroyed when I died. Plus, there’d still be the teensy little problem of it being dated so long ago anyone looking at it would think it belonged to my ancestor instead of me.”

“Speaking of ancestors and descendants though,” Smokescreen said, peering back in now that Jazz had calmed down, “what if we made a case of our own? Anyone in the family could use the same grounds as Barricade to contest that the chapel should be theirs.”

“Or we could let the city contest him.” Prowl hadn’t informed the Praxian historical society right away when he’d discovered it to prevent public awareness from drawing his brother’s attention and interfering with his ability to help Jazz move on, but now neither of those considerations applied. “I had hoped you might find Jazz’s anchor before legal action of any kind became necessary,” he told Wheeljack, “but Barricade is almost certain to find a way to have us removed from the premises if we do not do something to counter him.”

“I’ve worked at historical sites before,” Wheeljack shrugged. “It’s not the easiest thing in the world to coordinate, but if you want to involve the city, I’ll find a way to manage.”

“I don’t think any of us wants to,” Smokescreen said ruefully, “but I don’t think we can avoid it either.”

“Not once the courts are involved, no,” Prowl said solemnly. “And that will not be long in coming now. It does not matter that three days ago he did not even know the chapel existed. Barricade will have things in motion by the end of the week, even if he believes his only opposition to be inconsequential.”

“So letting him see me really did make things worse.” Dejected, Jazz vanished from the window he’d been hovering in. Prowl almost thought he’d let his visual manifestation slip entirely, but then caught sight of him huddled against one of the columns reflected in the floor. “He wouldn’t be in such a hurry if I’d just disappeared.”

“No. The more my brother wants something, the less patient he becomes, and I can think of precious few things he would covet more than this place.” There was no way for Prowl to make his reflection appear beside Jazz since the ghost was all the way down where the top of the column met the roof, but he went to the base of the column and looked up at the empty ceiling so his reflection was looking at Jazz. “Even if he had not seen you, we would still have needed to act quickly. This is not your fault.”

“Yeah.” Smokescreen followed Prowl’s gaze up to the ceiling, unaware that Jazz was really in the floor. “If this’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”

“…pointing fingers won’t fix things now,” Jazz said softly. “Not unless they’re pointing at my anchor.”

“Agreed. Laying blame would be a waste of time.” Prowl smiled when, in the space of a blink, Jazz appeared looking down at him from above. “I just want to get you out of here.”

“So go, get out of here,” Smokescreen said, passing the augmentor to Prowl with a mix of determination and gratitude in his field at the unspoken forgiveness. “Spend some time alone,” he winked, “together and figure out what to do about Barricade. Wheeljack and I will stay and do as much as we can here while we still have the place to ourselves.”

“Don’t you worry! I’m not leaving until I have a full three-dimensional model of the foundation!” Wheeljack promised. An astonishingly large collection of esoteric gizmos had appeared around him in the time Prowl hadn’t been looking at him, all haphazardly wired together. “Best if I get everything I need with this equipment out of the way in one go so I don’t have to justify it to anyone later.”

“Am I going to break any of it by activating the augmentor?” Jazz asked, sounding as uncertain as Prowl felt about the stuff’s durability. “It looks kinda fragile.”

“Oh! Good point. Come, Assistant!” Wheeljack grabbed an armful of cables and thrust them into Smokescreen’s arms. “Help me move these outside! Some of them need to be set up there anyway.”

“Yessir!”

As soon as they were out of the way, Jazz began to sing. His song felt more rushed than usual, the notes hurrying from window to window and vibrating raggedly against Prowl’s doorwings. The flash of the augmentor had barely receded before Jazz was ‘grabbing’ at Prowl’s arm, insubstantially drumming his fingers against his armor. “Come on, let’s go! We’ve got work to do! Where do we need to go? Who do we need to talk to?”

“Slow down,” Prowl said, waving a quick goodbye to the others as they set off for the library. “By ‘we’, do you mean that you want to be personally involved in the legal proceedings?”

“Honestly? I’d love to mess up Barricade’s plans myself, but…” Distracted, Jazz wasn’t doing a very good job of pretending to walk. He wasn’t taking enough steps for the distance he was covering, and he was passing through small rocks and other obstacles rather than avoiding them. “I’d probably just complicate things or cause problems for us instead, what with being dead and all.”

“Noticeably,” Prowl drew his attention to his feet, “when you glide like that.”

“Drat.” Jazz took a moment to collect himself, then started ‘walking’ again much more normally. “See? That’s exactly what I mean. I can’t be any help when my existence is, as far as anyone can tell, nothing but an illusion.”

“You are not an illusion,” Prowl insisted, but he couldn’t really argue the point. “In any case, you can still help me determine what our course of action should be.”

“And here I thought you had that all figured out already,” Jazz laughed, setting the crystal along the path sparkling. “You really expect me to believe you didn’t prepare for this eventuality? Come on. I know you better than that.”

Prowl chuckled. “You do at that,” he said with a soft smile. “But while I do, in fact, have everything I would present to the library already laid out, part of me still hesitates to submit it.”

“Why? Is a personal suit more likely to succeed?”

“On the contrary. Without anything besides our identical lineage to argue, a personal suit would come down to a judgment call, and Barricade is the one with a proven interest in and means of preserving the chapel.” Which virtually guaranteed they would lose, whether Prowl put himself or Smokescreen forward as the counterclaimant. “The city, on the other hand, would have an actual case against him. There is a good chance the library’s current inadvertent ownership would be made official; presuming no documentation showing the chapel was intended to remain in private ownership when the other holdings of the house were dissolved turns up, that is.”

“Pfft. That’s not going to happen. His high and mighty lordship wanted the place erased from existence, not kept in the family. Barricade’ll never find anything like that.”

“He does not need to find it. He need only commission it,” Prowl said bluntly. “Which is all the more reason why, if we are to involve the library, we should do so quickly. It takes time to create a convincing forgery.”

Jazz’s armor bristled. “That’s disgusting.”

“Yes it is.” Prowl was in complete agreement with him on the matter. “But it is not something Barricade will hesitate to stoop to if he feels it is necessary.”

“Then why aren’t you going straight to the front desk to tell them about the chapel right now? If you don’t, Barricade will get his hands on it for sure!”

Jazz sounded pretty upset at the thought, and Prowl couldn’t blame him. He would prefer to see the chapel go to the city himself. Still, “Preventing his acquisition of the chapel is not our priority.”

“What? But,” Jazz’s steps faltered again in surprise. “I thought stopping him was what we were trying to figure out how to do. Isn’t that why you didn’t want him to find it in the first place? Because you didn’t want him to have it?”

“I care what happens to you, not the building.” Prowl’s doorwings dipped with the emotion creeping into his voice. “Otherwise I would have told the library the day that Barricade discovered it. But doing so would have prevented Wheeljack from having a chance to map the foundation and possibly even identify your anchor before things became so tied up in litigation that you wound up trapped again.” Trapped in the crystal, unable to escape even temporarily through the augmentor. Trapped alone, where no one who could see or hear him. “…I wanted to spare you that.”

“Prowl…” The awed look in Jazz’s visor was more than a little humbling. “That’s…”

Prowl’s doors dipped again. “I should not have taken such a risk without asking you what you wanted,” he said, trying to brush off his embarrassment by focusing on the task at hand. “So I am asking now: would you rather take action immediately, even though doing so will interfere with and delay your freedom for months, maybe even years, or hold off to give Wheeljack a few more days unimpeded in the hopes that it will be enough?”

“You know I‘d rather be with you than stuck in that place,” Jazz said, reaching for him with an insubstantial hand. He stopped just short of touching his chest, right above his spark. “But you called it a risk and that’s what it is. If Wheeljack doesn’t find my anchor, or if… if he finds it can’t be moved without destroying me,” his voice wavered on the words, “then the only hope I have is for the chapel to go to the library and we’ll have made it that much harder for them to win by waiting.”

“Then we will not make that gamble,” Prowl promised, bringing his hand up to meet Jazz’s fingers. Their outline flickered where he passed through the augmentor’s projection, unable to sense even a tingle of static at the non-contact. “We will go make our presentation to the library’s legal team now.”

“‘We’?” Jazz asked, mimicking Prowl’s earlier question. He glanced around, then floated out of Prowl’s reach, hovering pointedly above the ground. “Are you sure you want me along?”

“Absolutely. This affects you more than any of us. I am not saying you need to do anything, other than preferably stay on the ground,” Prowl said with a gentle, teasing smile, “but you should be there.”

Jazz smiled back, settling on the floor. “Thanks, Prowl.”

Ironically, the decision turned out easier to make than to carry out.

“Closed?!” Even without an EM field, Jazz’s dismay was obvious.

“Apparently.” So proclaimed the hand-written sign tacked up in the window of the legal offices’ door, at any rate: Closed for the day. Sorry for the inconvenience. Prowl wondered what had happened. Usually there was a paralegal or at least a secretary in the office on the occasions an actual lawyer wasn’t available during business hours. “We will simply have to try again in the morning.”

“There isn’t anything else we can do?”

“Not today,” Prowl shook his head. “In the unlikely event that they are closed again tomorrow, I will discuss it with Judge Camber in the afternoon.”

“I suppose there’s a reason we can’t go do that right now,” Jazz said, still peering through the door as though someone would materialize inside if he just stared hard enough.

“The judge’s schedule is already full,” Prowl confirmed. “Come. We should find something to occupy ourselves. Standing here worrying will not accomplish anything.”

“I guess not.” Jazz turned away from the office, dragging his feet a little as he followed Prowl away from the office. He was taking the setback surprisingly hard. “So what are we supposed to do now?”

Prowl thought for a moment, his steps wandering aimlessly as he tried and failed to come up with anything. “I do not know,” he finally admitted. “Perhaps we should just return to the chapel so you can rest.”

“I don’t need to rest!” Jazz protested, whirling to face Prowl with a speed just beyond what a physical body was capable of. “I might be stuck for months while the court sorts out who the chapel belongs to. I want to stay out as long as I can, while I can.”

Prowl couldn’t argue with that. “Is there anything in particular you would like to do then? Anywhere you want to go?”

“I don’t know.” Jazz looked as at a loss for ideas as he was. “Maybe… we could sit somewhere and you could tell me a story?”

“A story?” Prowl changed directions, heading for the reading corner and its selection of comfortable chairs. “Like how a recent series of trials collectively elevated a set of archaic traffic regulations to a review committee to determine their continued relevance, given their habitual lack of enforcement by the majority of the police force?”

Jazz met him with a blank stare. “That,” he said slowly with a long, deliberately drawn-out pause, “is not even remotely what I meant. I was thinking something with a plot and characters, a beginning, middle, and end; you know,” he stressed, “an actual story.”

“What I suggested is an actual story,” Prowl defended, lips curling into a teasing smile. He’d just said the first thing that had come to mind, the cases in question being the ones the judge wanted to discuss with him tomorrow. That Jazz wasn’t interested in hearing the details neither offended nor surprised him. “A series of interconnected events with a resultant conclusion presented in a structured, chronological narrative is a story, yes?”

“A boring story.”

“A nonfictional story,” Prowl countered, his smile widening as Jazz started to laugh quietly. “Nonfiction does not mean boring.”

“No it doesn’t,” a voice called out behind them. Prowl and Jazz both turned and saw a teal-gray mech seated in the small reading nook they’d just passed, watching them with interest. “Sometimes nonfiction," he said in an almost conspiratorial tone, “is a whole lot more fantastical than anything the imagination can dream up.”

Jazz laughed again. “You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “The problem here is that my friend doesn’t seem to know any interesting stories, nonfiction or otherwise!”

“Perhaps you would be willing to save us from my pathetic attempts?” Prowl suggested, knowing Kup was an inveterate storyteller. He’d been the one to tell him the story of the Lost Prince, which had turned out to be the story of his namesake after the historical Prowl was stripped of his title and erased from the nobility.

“Why?” Something about the old mech’s smile, sly and subtle around the corners of his mouth, made his next words sound almost knowing. “You worried you’ll bore him to death?”

“Oh, I’m harder to kill than that,” Jazz said blithely, as usual less sensitive to such remarks than Prowl. “But I’d sure appreciate a story about something other than the rigors of traffic court.”

“Well then, pull up a seat and I’ll see what I can come up with. You’re Jazz, right?”

“Yup, that’s me.” Jazz ‘patted’ a nearby chair and Prowl obligingly sat, tossing one of the cushions on the floor so Jazz could ‘sit’ at his feet. “And you must be Kup, unless there’s more than one creaky old fossil in this place who likes to hang around rusting in the stacks.”

“You’ve been talking to my fans, I see,” the old mech laughed, the derogatory description rolling right off his shoulders. “So. An interesting story, a true story, too incredible to be believed… I think I know just the thing.” Jazz leaned forward with interest, and Kup chuckled again. “You’ve both heard of the great sage Yoketron, I trust?”

Again Prowl felt that slight frisson of coincidence, like Kup knew more than he was saying. “Yes,” he said, almost warily, while Jazz nodded.

“Well,” Kup went on as though he hadn’t noticed his hesitation, “at the end of Yoketron’s life, the student he’d taken on with the hopes of passing on his legacy decided to abandon his teachings, forsaking the journey for moral enlightenment in pursuit of personal glory. It was a bitter disappointment for him, though not a complete surprise. The warning signs had been there all along but Yoketron had ignored them, believing the mech would chose to overcome his selfish inclinations.”

“Guess that didn’t work out so well for him,” Jazz remarked.

“That’s putting it mildly, since the mech didn’t just walk out on him. He used his knowledge to sneak into the treasure room beneath the temple to steal Yoketron’s collection of ancient scrolls and artifacts, planning to sell them for profit. Yoketron caught him in the act, but even though he was able to prevent the mech from carrying anything off, his former student attacked and wounded him as he made his escape.”

“Call me crazy,” Jazz said with a sardonic look up at Prowl, “but I get the feeling this isn’t a happy story.”

“Happy and good are not the same thing,” Prowl said, remembering Jazz making that very distinction the day they’d met. “A story can be one without the other.”

“Just like being true and being interesting don’t always go hand in hand,” Kup said with a wink. “But some would say this story’s got a bit of all four, despite the mortal nature of Yoketron’s injuries.”

“You’re telling me his own student murdered him and that’s supposed to be happy?”

“Not the murder itself, no. Master Yoketron’s death was a tragedy, then and now. However,” Kup held up a hand, “the great sage was already nearing the end of his functioning before his student’s betrayal. While he was saddened by what had happened, he was not resentful of his fate. There was only one thing that still concerned him.”

“His legacy,” Prowl guessed. “He needed to safeguard it against future thefts before he could return peacefully to the Well.”

“Indeed — which, as you already know, he was successful in doing.” Kup gestured around them at the grand library. “We have records of Master Yoketron’s writings from copies commissioned by various noble houses and those given to his many students, but we don’t have the works of the other sages and historians that he collected.”

Prowl did already know that, having spent a fair amount of time looking for the materials Yoketron referenced in his writings during his search for the fate of his ancient relative to no avail. Most of them weren’t to be found anywhere on Cybertron.

“So… the happy part is he managed to hide everything from the creep before he died?” Jazz didn’t sound like he considered that to be very happy. “But that just means his legacy was lost instead of being passed on.”

“It means that instead of being destroyed, his legacy was preserved.”

“Preserved for what?”

“For the return,” Kup shifted his gaze from Jazz up to meet Prowl’s optics, “of his true disciple.”

Prowl’s vision momentarily blurred. The edges of the stacks behind Kup ran and melted together, transporting him to another room full of shelves. He couldn’t make out their contents clearly, but somehow he knew they were—

“Wait a second,” Jazz said, disrupting the strange phenomenon. Prowl blinked and the library reformed around him, solid and unwavering. What… what had just happened? “I thought you said this was a true story.”

“You mean you don’t believe me?” Kup asked, a mischievous twinkle playing in his optics. “It’s completely true. Master Yoketron sealed away his treasures so that when the spark of his true disciple returned to the world, he could find and bring them back into the world.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jazz protested. “Sparks don’t remember specifics from their past lives when they come back. Most don’t remember anything after mixing in the Well, especially not events that happened after they died,” he emphasized. “Someone as wise as Yoketron wouldn’t’ve been that stupid.”

“And he wasn’t. That’s why he left behind the story: so that someday,” Kup stood from his chair and walked over to lay his hand on Prowl’s shoulder; Prowl flinched, but couldn’t escape the old mech’s firm grip, “someone would tell him he needed to look.”

Prowl stared up at Kup, unable to say anything. It was impossible. The old mech must be making a joke at his expense. He couldn’t possibly be implying that he was—

“—Yoketron’s disciple,” Jazz was saying, his voice pulling Prowl from his reverie. “And even if you could find him, the story still doesn’t say where to look.”

“Of course not! If it did, Yoketron’s final resting place wouldn’t have stayed hidden all these years now, would it? But sometimes the storyteller knows more than the story tells, if you follow me. Or, instead of following me,” Kup patted Prowl’s shoulder one more time, “follow the river to the old mountain shrine. You might just find I was telling the truth… and then some.” Then walked away, pausing at the edge of the stacks to look back at them with an enigmatic smile. “Good luck.”

Then he was gone.

“Okay then,” Jazz said after they’d both sat in silence for several minutes. “Wanna go check it out?”

The absurdity of the question brought Prowl out of his stupor. “What?”

“The mountain shrine. Let’s go check it out.”

“You just said you did not believe him,” Prowl argued, uncomfortable with how much he wanted to go along with the suggestion. “What would going to the shrine prove?”

“Maybe nothing. But it’s something to do, isn’t it?” Jazz stood up and took a step toward the door. “Come on,” he said, holding out his hand. “It’ll be an adventure.”

That hand might not have been able to drag him out of his chair, but the begging tone in Jazz’s voice and the eagerness in his visor to go somewhere new was stronger than any physical pull. Prowl stood, shifting his armor in an attempt to shake off his uneasiness. “If you want to go, then I will take you.”

Jazz’s smile was worth setting his reservations aside for.

It didn’t actually take all that long to get to the site of the shrine. Jazz was surprised to find there were transit lines running up into the mountains, though Prowl pointed out that, as a relatively popular tourist destination, it had to be easily accessible.

“Good spot to hide something you never want found,” Jazz joked when they disembarked among the crowds. “There’s no way anyone could stumble over something they weren’t supposed to by accident here.”

“Not here,” Prowl said, pointing further up the mountain. “The main temple and museum are down here, but there is a smaller, more secluded shrine if you follow that path.”

Jazz craned his head to see. “Hey, isn’t that…?”

“Yes. The river runs alongside it most of the way.”

Prowl was somewhat envious that Jazz didn’t have to actually climb anything as they started up the mountain. In keeping with the symbolism of the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom being a difficult one, it was not a particularly easy path to follow.

Naturally that difficulty meant substantially fewer people visited the shrine than the main complex. They passed only one other couple coming down on their way up, and when they reached the top they found themselves alone.

“Oh, wow.” Prowl turned and saw Jazz looking back down over the path, gazing out across the grand, sweeping vista of the sparkling city of Praxus. “It’s so big.”

“I suppose it is.” The size of the city wasn’t what drew Prowl’s attention to the view. He felt much more drawn to the ghost taking it all in… and, strangely, to the mountain behind them.

“Even if there’s nothing else here, it was worth coming for this,” Jazz said reverently. “I’m glad we came.”

“So am I.” Though the longer they stood there, the more he felt… “Jazz. I think I must be going crazy.”

“Hmm?” Jazz turned to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“I feel like,” Prowl struggled to find the words to describe the sensation. “Like I did in the garden before I knew you were there. Like I can hear the mountain singing.” He shook his head. “I sound crazy, I know I do.”

“No you don’t.” The expression on Jazz’s face was serious, but also curious. “Where’s it coming from?”

Answering out loud was too difficult. Prowl walked toward the shrine, trying to pinpoint the source of the not-quite-music he sometimes heard in his dreams. Maybe it was all in his head now too; it was too ridiculous to even consider that Kup could have possibly been—

“—rowl? You really need to see this.”

Prowl reset his optics and found himself staring at a blank stone face. He looked around for Jazz, trying to orient himself in the process. He’d wound up behind the shrine, tucked up against the stone it was carved from. Jazz was nowhere in sight.

“Jazz?”

“Here.” Jazz appeared from inside the mountain, phasing through the stone like the phantasm he was. “This isn’t a wall, it’s a door.”

It was? “How does it open?”

“I can’t see very well in here, it’s too dark, but I think,” Jazz disappeared again briefly, only to stick his head back out a second later, “the mechanism is somewhere around here.”

Prowl felt along the rock, searching for something he both couldn’t believe was really there and simultaneously was certain existed. “No,” he said slowly, letting his hands wander, “it would be… here.” With another flash of vertigo and a quiet click! Prowl knew he had found it.

The door separated itself from the mountain, sinking back into the surrounding stone with hardly a whisper of sound. Jazz stood in the dim passage, watching him. He looked concerned.

“Are you alright?” he asked, sliding sideways as Prowl moved forward. “You look a bit wobbly.”

“That would be because I am,” Prowl said, each step less sure than the last. “My balance and my vision are not functioning properly.” He should probably find that alarming, but he felt oddly detached as reality continued to blur with whatever was at the edge of his processor.

“Maybe this was a mistake,” he heard Jazz saying somewhere beside him. “Come on, let’s go back outside before you fall over. I can’t help you if you collapse in here.”

“You can get help,” Prowl pointed out, trailing his hand along the wall to steady himself. He could see his own backlit shadow on the floor, leaning heavily to stay upright. “Smokescreen and Wheeljack are still at the chapel. You could return there and tell them what happened.”

“Okay, yes, maybe, but I’d still feel a lot better if you’d just come back outside for a bit.” Jazz sounded anxious, and Prowl felt the humming of the augmentor hiccup. “At least sit down before you fall down and hurt yourself,” he pleaded.

“I would rather you not have to,” Prowl assured him, deciding that perhaps sitting down was a good idea. He managed to get to his knees before the world spun around him, sending him the rest of the way to the floor in a limp sprawl. “Just… give me… a minute…”

“Prowl!”

Jazz’s frantic voice echoed down with him into the dark.

Chapter Text

Prowl walked through the series of well kept, sunlit rooms, fully aware he was dreaming. The space was too fuzzy around the edges, too vague in the corners, for it to be real. Unless it had been real at some point in time, and he was remembering it imperfectly now. It had the feeling of a place he’d been before, despite being completely unfamiliar.

He wasn’t sure why he was here. Thoughts moved slowly through his processor, matching the languid pace of his steps, but the ones he managed to hold onto long enough to contemplate told him he belonged somewhere else. So what was this place?

Fragments of conversation drifted around him, just muted enough to be incomprehensible. Yet despite not being able to make out the words, the voices were ones he knew: one belonged to someone he knew, someone trusted and respected, and the other… was his own.

The recognition seemed to speed things up, and now every time he turned his head his surroundings changed with no pretense at transition. Had he been in this simple garden before? This quiet room lined with shelves of scrolls and stands of armor? What about this space, a wide, open area that could only be a traditional dojo? He couldn’t think of a single time he’d ever been in any of them, but his voice continued to whisper from the walls as though imprinted in them over the course of many long hours spent there.

He started to feel ill, disoriented almost to the point of pain. Prowl shuttered his optics against the visions and covered his audials, hoping to block out whatever was trying to force its way into — out of? — his head.

It didn’t make the voices quieter; if anything they became louder, but also gradually began to change. Then, like a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds after a storm, the indistinct sounds resolved into words he could understand.

“That’s done it, he’s coming back now. Woah, hang on, no need to rush! Just sit up slowly, alright?”

Prowl risked bringing his optics back online and was relieved to find he was awake this time. He still didn’t recognize his surroundings, but they were solid, unmoving, and that was definitely Wheeljack leaning over him while Smokescreen knelt anxiously at his side.

“Hello,” he said carefully, momentarily worried that speaking and hearing his own voice would trigger the visions again. Fortunately, it didn’t. “When did you both get here?”

“About half an hour ago,” Smokescreen answered, and Prowl only now realized he was holding his hand as he gave it a gentle squeeze. “I was starting to think we should have called a medic.”

“A medic wouldn’t have been able to do anything all the way up here,” Wheeljack said for what was obviously not the first time. “Especially since they wouldn’t have known what they were dealing with. But I,” he crowed, helm fins flashing like a miniature supernova as he held the equally bright ghost detector triumphantly aloft, “have finally figured you out!”

Prowl brought his free hand up to shield his optics from all the light. “What are you on about now?” he asked, letting Smokescreen help him sit up and scoot away from the exuberant scientist. “I have said it before and I will say it again: I am not a ghost!”

“Of course you’re not! That wouldn’t make any sense at all.”

“Then what does make sense? Because right now I am in agreement with Smokescreen about seeing a medic. My processor—”

“Your processor is fine,” Wheeljack cut him off. “I know, I know. You started hallucinating and passed out and then had a bunch of weird pseudo-memory purges, right?” He paused just long enough for Prowl’s surprised stare to confirm his words. “None of that has anything to do with your processor. The problem, or, well, not exactly a problem, but the source of those things isn’t your head. It’s your spark.”

There was something wrong with his spark? “I am calling a medic,” Prowl announced, searching for a signal to make the call. There wasn’t any, but he remembered now that he’d walked into the mountain behind Yoketron’s shrine; all he needed to do was get up and go outside.

His frame had other ideas.

“Told you not to rush getting up,” Wheeljack said when he only got as far as kneeling before he collapsed again. Smokescreen caught and steadied him. “You just had a pretty intense spark flare. Give yourself time to recover.”

“If I am having spark flares then I need medical attention to stabilize them,” Prowl insisted, but didn’t try to get up again. “It is dangerous to leave them untreated.”

“There’s nothing to treat. The reason you’re having them isn’t medical, it’s supernatural!”

“Wheeljack…”

“Look, I know you don’t want to believe me, but hear me out! You know how the ghost detector keeps going off around you? Well,” Wheeljack rushed ahead before Prowl could say anything derogatory about the faulty device, “it does that because you,” his finger came so close to his face as he pointed that Prowl leaned away from it, “are a reborn spark.”

Prowl’s first thought was to ask Wheeljack if he was in collusion with Kup. “Are you telling me,” he said slowly, “that somehow, without knowing it, you invented a reincarnation detector and that I just happen to be the reincarnation of… who, precisely? Are my hallucinations supposed to give me clues? Show me my past life?”

“Pretty much,” Wheeljack nodded as though Prowl had meant every sarcastic word seriously. “Though you shouldn’t expect clear visions or anything. The most a reborn spark is capable of is recognizing things that are familiar and imparting vague impressions. Complete memories don’t survive the Well even when the spark carrying them manages to maintain its integrity, which it does by becoming a ghost inside the Well.” He chuckled gleefully. “Reincarnation detector indeed. It’s such a fringe subject I never spent any time on it. Reborn sparks are really rare, and the ‘experts’ who study them are all philosophers, not scientists. They claim that once the spark is called into its new frame there’s nothing to detect, but I showed them! The metaphysical evidence is right there plain as day with the right equipment. Another victory for the Wheeljack Ghost Detector™!”

Prowl felt Smokescreen snicker. “Does that mean I have a ghost cousin after all?” he asked, only laughing harder when Prowl smacked him for his inane comment. “I’m kidding! I know you’re not a ghost… anymore.” Prowl hit him again, to just as little effect.

“He’s not wrong,” Wheeljack said, patting the ghost detector as he clipped it back to his side. “You still have residual ghost energy around your spark from all those millennia in the Well. That’s what’s been setting off the detector. And setting you off, when you encounter something familiar from your past life.”

“What past life?” Prowl was afraid to hear the answer, despite a growing sense on a spark-deep level that he already knew it. “I want to live my life.”

“You are living your life! Just because you share the same name — which is a massively unlikely coincidence, by the way — doesn’t mean anyone’s going to start drawing parallels or comparisons between you and Lord Prowl.”

“Lord Prowl? The same one from the chapel? Really?!” Smokescreen’s reaction was much more excited than Prowl’s. “Are you sure that’s who he is?”

“I am not Lord Prowl, I am just Prowl,” Prowl stressed, pushing away from his cousin. “If you start going around saying that, I will—”

“Relax! I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to,” Smokescreen promised, backing off and giving him a critical look. “He’s right though, isn’t he? You believe him.”

He didn’t want to believe him, but now that it had been put in words, he couldn’t ignore the truth. “It is why I can see and hear Jazz,” Prowl said, looking almost desperately up at Wheeljack. “Correct?”

Wheeljack’s optics dimmed sympathetically. “Yeah.” He sat down beside Prowl, not close enough to crowd, but close enough to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Figuring out who someone was in a past life is always a bit of a guessing game, but given everything you’ve responded to, there’s really no one else you could have been.”

“Ohmygod he kept his promise,” Smokescreen whispered, looking like he was about to vibrate out of his plating. “Lord Prowl really did come back for Jazz — as you.”

Prowl felt his spark constrict. “I do not remember making that promise. I know only what promises I have made now based on what I feel.” Feelings that were suddenly even more confused than they had been before. “You said no one would compare us, Wheeljack, and for the most part you are right. After the way he was erased from history, how could they? But Jazz knows he existed. Jazz was in love with him. And he… I…”

“Your feelings are your own,” Wheeljack said, the hand on his shoulder patting gently. “Your circumstances are completely different, and that makes you your own person. Remember what I said about reborn sparks? They don’t remember details, they only recognize familiar things. You remembered Jazz enough to interact with his ghost, but it’s those interactions that formed the relationship you have with him now. Whatever they shared in the past is in the past.”

“But Jazz still remembers that past. What if he suspected who I was all along?” It wouldn’t surprise Prowl if he had, but if that was the case, “Who does he even see when he looks at me?”

“You. He sees you, you idiot.” Prowl jerked around to stare at Smokescreen as his cousin returned his earlier harmless slap. “You remind him a lot of the young lord, and I guess we know why now, but he knows you’re not him.”

“You cannot know that for sure.”

“Kind of can, seeing as he straight up told me once.” Smokescreen shrugged. “I’d give you the details, but you should really just ask him yourself tomorrow.”

That brought home the fact that Jazz wasn’t with them now. “He did go back to get you,” Prowl said, looking around for the augmentor. Wheeljack passed it to him, the crystal unsurprisingly still and quiet. “I did not mean to worry him. Is he alright?”

“Other than being scared for you, he’s fine. I promised I’d signal you were alright when we got back into the city, since I knew we’d be too late to talk to him. Want to camp out in the RV again with me?”

“Yes.” He needed to be there when the legal office opened too, but talking to Jazz was more important. Even if the prospect of the conversation they needed to have terrified him. What would Jazz think? What would he say?

…What was Wheeljack doing?

“Wheeljack?” The mech had gotten up after giving him the augmentor, but instead of moving toward the exit he was walking deeper into the mountain. “Are we not going to leave and signal Jazz?”

“Of course we are. I just thought I’d take a look around while you finished recalibrating.”

“Wait, what if you find something that sets him off again?” Smokescreen covered Prowl’s optics as Wheeljack shone a light on the back wall of what Prowl briefly saw was a large cave lined with shelves and boxes, the two largest of which were in the middle of the room only a few feet away from him.

“I do not imagine that is likely,” Prowl said, moving Smokescreen’s hand. “Not now that I know what is going on.”

“Technically it could still happen,” Wheeljack admitted, making his way slowly along the shelves. He didn’t try to pick anything up though, either in deference to Smokescreen’s concern or out of respect for their ancient contents. “Understanding what the flares are doesn’t actually prevent them, especially if you stumble across something really significant from your past.”

“But after I have stumbled across something significant and reacted to it, there are no subsequent flares,” Prowl said confidently. “Otherwise I would not be able to go anywhere near the chapel, much less stand in it.” He wondered now if his initial disorientation upon entering it had been spark related on top of the sensory overload, but whether it had been or not, the point was he no longer experienced any difficulties there. “I am not going to collapse again over anything in here.”

“Because you already know what all this stuff is?”

“Of course he doesn’t,” Wheeljack said before Prowl could say anything. “He’s never been here before. The other Prowl died before Yoketron did.”

“But he knew Master Yoketron. He was his student before his exile, and his friend after.” Prowl still wasn’t so sure that made him the sage’s ‘true disciple’, but that was irrelevant for the point he was making. “This place is not familiar, but its contents are.”

“Then… you do know what all this stuff is.”

“Of course I do,” Prowl said, daring Wheeljack to preempt him again with a look. “But not because I have been here before, in any lifetime. I know because I was told.” Though he hadn’t believed it at the time. He still felt a degree of disbelief, in fact, because really, how was this his life? Massively unlikely coincidence didn’t even begin to cover it. “This room contains the treasures and secrets Master Yoketron did not want his unscrupulous final pupil to steal. And, I suspect,” he pointed to the large boxes, “the master’s remains as well.”

“Wait, you’re saying those are caskets?” Smokescreen looked between the boxes as Wheeljack turned his light on them. “Why are there two of them then?”

“Only one way to find out!” Wheeljack examined them both. “This one is locked, but the other isn’t.”

“Open the unlocked one,” Prowl said. Despite what he’d told them, he made sure to brace himself so he wouldn’t slump over where he sat in case he became dizzy again. “Gently.”

It was with a care bordering on reverence that Wheeljack lifted the lid of what proved indeed to be a casket: resting inside in peaceful repose lay the fragile gray frame of the former sage.

“Wow,” Smokescreen breathed, staring in awe. “It’s really him.”

Wheeljack, however, was looking at Prowl. “Anything?” he asked, and Prowl suspected he was pointing the ghost detector at him again from behind the lid of the casket.

“Yes and no.” Yoketron’s face was familiar, but, “It is like recognizing someone from a picture rather than from having seen them before. I know him from my studies, the same way Smokescreen does. Nothing more.”

“Hmm.” Whatever the ghost detector was showing must not have been very interesting either, because Wheeljack shrugged and turned his attention to Yoketron’s frame. “He’s in remarkable condition, given his age. I wouldn’t want to be the one who tries to move him though. His armor probably wouldn’t lose its shape, but the joints and connections have decayed to the point that pieces could fall off.”

“Maybe you should close it then,” Smokescreen said with a grimace. “Reeeally slowly so you don’t disturb him.”

“Agreed.” Wheeljack gingerly lowered the lid back down. “I think we can leave that to the historical society.”

“Shouldn’t we leave all of it to the historical society?”

“Eventually, yes, though I would ask you both to allow me to handle that later,” Prowl requested. “As fascinating and important a discovery as this is, it has kept this long and will continue to keep until the fate of the chapel has been sorted out.”

“Can’t blame you for wanting to focus on one thing at a time,” Wheeljack nodded. “But since we’re already here…?”

“If you wish to continue looking around until I am able to leave, I will not stop you. As long as you are careful,” Prowl said, though he knew the warning was hardly necessary. “I do not plan to linger, however.”

“Okay, you know what?” Smokescreen stopped him as he tried to get up again. “I get it, you want to hurry back so Jazz doesn’t have to wait to know you’re alright, but that is not an easy path down the mountain even when you’re not recovering from weak and dizzy. If I promise to go on ahead and give the signal, will you promise to take as long as you need to get back safely?”

Prowl relented. “Thank you, Smokescreen.”

“Sure thing. I’ll call when I get there, and if you’re still out of signal range I’ll leave a message. Let me know when you make it to the RV?”

“I will.”

With that worry off his processor, Prowl was able to sit quietly while Wheeljack snooped around the shelves, occasionally exclaiming over a find. “All the people who’ve made an actual dedicated study of this stuff are going to lose their minds when you reveal this place,” he said after a while. “I only recognize a handful of these things, and all of them are amazing artifacts.”

“He spent a lifetime acquiring them, by all accounts.” Truthfully this was an even more important historical find than the chapel; so important Prowl didn’t feel up to the task of dealing with it right now. Yoketron’s legacy deserved more consideration than he had to spare. His thoughts were too busy elsewhere. “Were you able to finish mapping the foundation?” he asked, completely changing the subject.

“Huh?”

“In the chapel. Jazz and I decided to inform the library of its existence in the morning, which means we will be losing unrestricted access to it for the foreseeable future starting tomorrow.” Potentially even all access to it, at least until the proceedings were over. “You did not happen to find his anchor before he interrupted you, did you?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’d just finished the mapping and was repositioning sensors when Jazz showed up rather spectacularly. I was able to record him reappearing, but I haven’t had a chance to go over the data. Figured I’d do that tonight in the RV.”

“‘Spectacularly’?”

“The whole place rang like a bell struck by lightning. Smokescreen just about jumped out of his plating,” Wheeljack chuckled. “Jazz calmed down enough to tell us what had happened without the translator looping, then chased us out with a lightshow.”

That didn’t sound very funny to Prowl. Wheeljack seemed to notice. “I’m sorry, I was laughing remembering Smokescreen’s reaction, not Jazz’s. I know he was upset, not being able to come with us. That’s why I suggested the signal as we left.”

“And I am grateful for that. I only wish…” Prowl sighed, hanging his head. “I suppose I am feeling somewhat overwhelmed. So much has happened in so little time, and there is so much still to do.”

“Prowl?” Wheeljack left the shelves and came back to kneel beside him. “Take my advice. Leave all that ‘to do’ stuff for tomorrow. You’ve got every reason to feel overwhelmed, and you need to give yourself time to process. Finding out you had a past life is a lot to assimilate, even though it doesn’t really change anything. Actually, that’s part of the reason it’s so hard — you feel like it should change something, but it doesn’t.”

“I know it does not change anything for me. I am afraid it will change things for Jazz.”

“Nah. He’s way too reasonable for that,” Wheeljack said easily, then offered him his hand. “Think you’re ready to try standing yet?”

With Wheeljack’s help, Prowl made it to his feet. Once he was sure of his balance he tried taking a few steps, and was pleased to find he remained steady. “I think I am nearly ready to begin the descent, though I may need to stop periodically to rest.”

“That sounds about right. Don’t worry, we’ll stop as many times as you need.”

“At least this transit line runs late.” Even if it took until sunset to reach the main temple, they would still be able to catch a train back. Much better than worrying about whether or not he’d feel up to driving.

He paused beside Yoketron’s casket, reaching out to just barely rest his fingertips on the lid. The voice in the visions had been his; the voice of a mentor, a teacher. A friend. The echoes left him with a vague sense of missing a mech he’d never met.

“You okay?”

“Yes.” Prowl took his hand back. “You are right. I feel as though I should feel something, but even when it almost seems I do, nothing materializes when I pursue it.”

“So don’t pursue it. If something draws you, acknowledge the pull and realize where it’s coming from, but evaluate what you find from the standpoint of the life you’re living now instead of what it might have meant in the past.”

That wasn’t a bad approach; framed that way, Yoketron seeming familiar and significant without actually being either of those things wasn’t nearly so disorienting.

“His remains are not the only thing I feel a connection to here,” Prowl said after a thoughtful moment. “Whatever is in this,” he laid his hand on the other casket-sized box, “makes me feel the same way I did when I encountered the crest ornament that once belonged to the young lord.”

Wheeljack looked between the ornament at the center of the augmentor and the box. “Want to open it before we go?”

Prowl hesitated, torn between wanting to leave things as undisturbed as possible for the experts to eventually sift through and his curiosity. “Yes,” he decided. Just looking inside would hardly damage anything.

It was locked, as Wheeljack had noted earlier, but not with a key or a code. The mechanism was more akin to a puzzle than a true lock, and after a couple of minutes they had it open.

“Moment of truth,” Wheeljack said, and together they raised the lid.

“What… is it?” Prowl asked, not sure what he was looking at. His first thought was that it was another body, but while the form inside the box was gray, it wasn’t the gray of death. Somehow, even though it had obviously been here since Yoketron’s passing, it was the bright silver-gray of new metal. Roughly the same shape and size as a mech, it wasn’t quite detailed enough; no kibble to indicate an altmode, no features on its face to give it expression. It was just a blank mannequin.

Wheeljack’s optics, meanwhile, had gone so bright Prowl was starting to worry he’d blow one out. “What is it? Oh, Prowl, this — this is a protoform! A real, unactivated, viable protoform from thousands of years ago! Do you have any idea how incredible this is?”

“Ah. To an extent, yes.” Now that Wheeljack had labelled it, Prowl knew enough to appreciate that it was highly valuable. Protoforms could only be obtained by petitioning the city; a lengthy, arduous process that involved lots of forms, background checks, and processing time. Creators who wanted to kindle a newspark sometimes had to wait upwards of a century just for the initial approval. It took a carrier a bare fraction of the time required to obtain a protoform to bud off the new spark crystal it was needed to house. “It does not look like I thought a protoform would.”

“You’ve never seen one before? Well I have,” Wheeljack said, confirming what Prowl had already guessed, “and they don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Modern protoforms come pre-molded, limiting their potential, but this… this could become anything.”

“Somehow I imagine this is what Master Yoketron’s last student was really after then. It would have made him a fortune.”

“Without a doubt.” Wheeljack turned to look at him. “Yoketron’s last student?”

“The mech who directed us to come here told a story of Master Yoketron being betrayed by his last student. The mech left him as his teacher, then came back to steal from him. The master stopped him but was mortally wounded in the process, and so he hid his treasures away to protect them until his ‘true disciple’ returned from the Well.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve heard that story. I have a friend who’s really into the scholarly debate over who Yoketron’s successor is supposed to— wait. Stop. Hold it right there. You just found this place, didn’t you?”

“Because I was told where it was.”

“Really? Told exactly where it was, or told to come up here so your past-sense could figure out the rest because past-you was really Yoketron’s successor?”

“Put that away!” Prowl groaned as Wheeljack ignored him and pointed the ghost detector at him anyway. “What do you think it is going to tell you? Lord Prowl only studied under Master Yoketron while he still went by that name. The Hidden Prince was a parable, not a disciple.”

“What if he was both?” Wheeljack countered, pulling the detector away when Prowl made a grab for it. “You don’t know. He could have been Yoketron’s disciple and died unfortunately before Yoketron did, or Yoketron could have thought of him as his disciple even if he didn’t think he was, or—”

“Or Master Yoketron could have meant for someone else to find this place, and my discovering it was a fluke. Does it really matter?” Prowl’s doorwings swept back in agitation. “I am not interested in speculating on this.”

“But… what if you’re the rightful owner of all this stuff?”

“I am much more concerned with determining the rightful owner of the chapel.” If he was supposed to be evaluating things in the context of his current life and priorities, nothing rated higher than Jazz. Prowl reached up and closed the lid firmly over the protoform, sealing it away once more. “We can revisit this later.”

He would have to revisit it later, but that was the key word: later.

With a deep sigh, Wheeljack holstered the ghost detector and held up his hands in surrender. “You’re right. This can wait.”

“Thank you.” Feeling much stronger now, Prowl strode confidently toward the exit. “I find it somewhat surprising that you are not even more eager than I am to return to the RV. After all,” he said with a wry smile, “there is ghost data to analyze.”

Wheeljack beat him out of the cave.

***

This time Prowl didn’t just accept a sedative from Wheeljack, he asked for one. He needed the recharge to finish dealing with the day’s revelations anyway, and of course there was nothing to do if he stayed awake besides wait. Wheeljack promised he’d do his ghost stuff quietly so Prowl could sleep.

When Prowl woke up, he found Wheeljack asleep over his workbench. He thought about waking him, if only to move him, but then he saw that the library had already been open for ten minutes. Grabbing the augmentor, he let the sleeping scientist lie and hurried across the street.

“Oh thank Primus,” he heard Jazz say before he even got all the way through the hedge. “I saw the signal that you were okay, but I still needed to see you!”

“And I, you.” Prowl walked directly into the chapel before turning to meet Jazz in the crystal. “Thank you for sending them.”

“Thanks for reminding me I could before keeling over,” Jazz said drily. “I’m not sure I would’ve been able to think of it on my own after you collapsed, I was so worried. And so sorry.”

“Why should you need to feel sorry? It was not your fault.”

“I’m the one wanted to go up there.”

“And I am the one who agreed. Unless you knew something might happen and chose not to warn me…” Prowl’s fingers curled against the window. “Did you?”

Jazz’s reflection flickered beneath his fingers, then moved to an adjacent window. “I… I wondered. I swear, I didn’t think it would affect you like that! But I thought that maybe, just maybe… you’re so much like him.” The rainbow crystal shivered, taking on a deeper blue hue. “I didn’t need Kup dropping all those hints to think you might be a reborn spark.”

It was almost like telling Jazz what his name was all over again, worrying how he would respond. “I am,” Prowl said, feeling his doorwings droop. “Wheeljack confirmed it, though even if he had not I would be forced to concede the truth after what I experienced.” What he now knew, in hindsight, he had experienced multiple times to varying degrees. “…I am sorry.”

That wasn’t what he’d meant to say, and Jazz seemed as surprised by it as he was. “Wha— you’re sorry?” Prowl found himself looking at Jazz again as the ghost reappeared in front of him. “For what?”

“I feel as though I should be,” Prowl said, trying to articulate his jumbled emotions. “For not being him.”

“Prowl. Don’t apologize for being who you are.” Jazz pressed himself as close to the surface of the window as he could. The crystal seemed to bow outward as the colors shifted around him. “No, you’re not him. And if you think I want you to be, you’re dead wrong.” Prowl tried to stifle an inappropriate laugh at the wording, but Jazz noticed anyway and smiled. “I know, I know, I’m the one who’s dead. But I’ve thought about this a lot and, strange as it sounds, I realized I was ready to move on — not to the Well, but… well, with my life.”

“You might have met him in the Well, if not for me,” Prowl couldn’t help pointing out, but his doorwings suddenly didn’t feel quite so heavy. Was it too much to hope for, that Smokescreen had been right? That Jazz really did see him?

“No. I’ll never regret knowing him. Or loving him,” Jazz said, and Prowl felt another shiver run through the chapel. It felt like a sigh of release. “But that love had its time, and that time ended. Knowing you share his spark doesn’t make me resentful.”

“Then what does it make you?”

“Honestly? Relieved.” Jazz ducked his head almost shyly. “I was starting to feel kinda guilty for liking you so much. Now I know he won’t be angry with me for wanting to be with you.”

The crystal was trembling when Prowl touched it. Or was the trembling in his fingers? Maybe it was both. Between his EM field and Jazz’s resonance the air was so emotionally charged it felt like it should have been throwing sparks. “My desire to be with you does not offend then?”

“Hardly!” Jazz let out a breathless laugh that brightened the whole chapel. He lifted his face to look at Prowl, and his smile made Prowl feel like he was the one floating off the ground. “So… does that mean…?”

“It means,” Prowl said, hardly able to believe he was saying the words, “that I would be honored if you would accompany me on a date.”

“To the astonishingly romantic library legal office?” Jazz teased, and Prowl laughed.

“Only to start with. I am sure that, together, we can find something better to follow it.”

Chapter Text

They decided to go back to the restaurant with the outdoor terrace after making their presentation to the library’s legal team — literally the whole team, as the paralegal they spoke with first had them stop and wait while he called everyone else in. Jazz admitted afterward that it was distinctly odd having so many people in the chapel. Unavoidable, of course, but also very odd.

“It’s like having people invite themselves over,” he said while Prowl snuck a sip of his drink. “I can’t control when they show up or when they leave.”

“I wish there were a way it could be made less invasive.”

“I can’t imagine how. Not when they won’t be able to see or hear me most of the time.”

“All I can offer is what I have already promised: that I will visit and bring you outside as often as I can.” Which it looked like he would still be able to do, to some extent. Leaning on the story that Jazz’s ancestors had worked on the chapel when it was built and that he’d come to see it for himself (explaining Prowl coming to know about it through Jazz asking him for legal advice when it turned out the library didn’t know it existed), they had asked that they be allowed to visit it even if it remained closed to the public due to his personal connection. The legal team had preliminarily approved the request, pending approval from the board of trustees.

“It’d be nicer if Wheeljack can get me out of there so I can come live with you instead. Unless I’m going too fast, talking about moving in together on our first date,” Jazz said with a playful smile.

“Since we had already discussed you moving in before I even asked you out, perhaps it would be more accurate to say we are doing things backwards rather than too fast.” Prowl slid his hand across the table, meeting Jazz’s fingers in the middle. Jazz shifted his hand so his fingertips weren’t overlapping Prowl’s. “Though I think you being a ghost tops everything else for unconventional.”

“Probably.” Jazz looked wistfully at where their hands weren’t-quite-touching, then shook his head. “You shouldn’t let me distract you so much you don’t finish that,” he said, pointing to the cube of energon swirling with copper-mercury bubbles and tungsten shavings in front of Prowl. “How soon do you have to go?”

“Sooner than I would like.” Talking with the library lawyers had taken a long time, leaving them with only a short window before he would have to leave for the hall of justice for his internship. “I have asked Wheeljack to meet us, so you do not have to go back right away.”

“Thank you. Wheeljack’s research is pretty interesting, you know.”

“I would say unless you are his subject, but,” Prowl gave Jazz a pointed look, and they both chuckled. “I am glad it does not bother you, but I would prefer if he stopped trying to study me.”

Jazz shrugged. “Being his subject isn’t inconvenient for me the way it is for you. I’m not doing anything else, so he’s not interrupting with his experiments. Plus, the results’re pretty beneficial to me. Makes listening to the long, rambly science stuff worth it, even if I don’t understand most of it.”

“Fair enough.” Wheeljack working with Jazz actually stood to make a difference in his quality of life, and Prowl had no objections to that. “I wish I knew how to properly express how grateful I am to him for all he has done.”

“You could always start by telling him,” Jazz said, ‘nudging’ Prowl’s cube at him again. This time Prowl picked it up and actually took a drink. Compared to the relatively plain silver-laced midgrade Jazz had ordered, the combination of elements popped just like the bubbles. “I must’ve said thank you at least a hundred times by now, and I have no intention of stopping.”

“I have thanked him. Not as many times as that,” Prowl grinned, “but I have thanked him. I just meant that I would like to do more.”

“As long as it doesn’t involve lettin’ him study you?”

“Yes. As long as it does not involve him studying me.”

They changed the conversation to lighter topics after that. Prowl pulled out the datapad he’d been using to keep track of all the places Jazz wanted to see, and they spent some time reprioritizing and adding to the list. It felt good to be making plans, even if most of those plans had to remain partially incomplete. Until they had a better idea how easy it would be to get Jazz out of the chapel now that more people were involved, they couldn’t be sure of making any events with set dates or times.

Wheeljack turned up just as they’d agreed it would be nice to go back to the mountain and see the whole temple complex. Jazz spotted him coming up the street and waved. “Up here!” He grinned as Wheeljack looked up at them. “We’ll be down in a sec!” Wheeljack waved back, and Jazz regarded the two drinks on the table. “You have to finish at least one of them,” he insisted.

“If this is stemming from a concern that I will collapse again because of insufficient fuel, then may I remind you that last night’s incident was entirely non-fuel rela—”

“Tell me you had something last night and I’ll let it go.” Jazz stood and crossed his arms, resolutely blocking Prowl in his seat. “Otherwise, you’re going to have to go through me.”

Prowl gave him an arch look.

“Okay, maybe that’s not a very effective threat when you can literally walk right through me,” Jazz said, still refusing to move. “But if you do that,” he whispered ominously, “people will see.”

That was a much more effective threat. Prowl picked up his cube and finished it in one long swig. “There,” he said, putting the empty cube down. “Happy?”

“No, because you just admitted you didn’t refuel last night.”

With a sigh, Prowl took what was left of Jazz’s drink and polished it off too. “Now will you let me out?”

“Yes.” Jazz stepped aside graciously, gesturing for Prowl to precede him. “After you.”

They met Wheeljack outside the restaurant after settling the tab. “Thank you for coming,” Prowl said, passing him the augmentor.

“Sure thing. Sorry I missed you this morning. He snuck out on me,” Wheeljack said to Jazz, mock-affronted. “Just left me laying there passed out over my workbench!”

“Sorry,” Jazz drawled back, affecting an air of complete indifference, “but you’re not going to hear me complaining that he didn’t come straight to see me without stopping to wake you up.”

Wheeljack laughed. “Good thing I wasn’t counting on an apology then. Alright you,” he said to Prowl, “get going so you aren’t late for work. Jazz and I are headed back to the RV so I can finish what I fell asleep on last night.”

“Will I see you again tonight?” Jazz asked.

“If you are still with Wheeljack, then yes,” Prowl said. He would be busy until the end of the workday; possibly later, depending on what the judge assigned him after they finished reviewing the cases he’d been researching. “I will call him and ask once I am free.”

“Okay.” Jazz couldn’t squeeze his hand, but the way he started to reach for him made it look like he wanted to. He stopped short though, letting his hand fall back to his side instead. His visor darkened to a deep blue, matching the color shift in the augmentor. “Drive safe,” he said.

“I will.” And he did, and even managed to focus on his work when he arrived at the hall of justice. Mostly. Judge Camber commented that he seemed somewhat distracted after a while, which wound up derailing part of the afternoon as Prowl shared the details of what was going on with the library with him.

His offer to find out who was handling the case and see if there was anything he could do to facilitate things was reassuring.

The only downside to the diversion was that the judge insisted on finishing everything else they were supposed to get done that day. Prowl couldn’t argue with the decision, since it was perfectly reasonable, but it did mean that it was much later than he’d planned when he was finally free to call Wheeljack.

::I was starting to wonder what was keeping you!:: Wheeljack said when he picked up. ::Jazz was too — yes, he’s still here, before you ask. We’re at the public gardens, since they’re open late.::

::Shall I meet you there?::

There was a pause. ::Yeah, Jazz wants to stay a bit longer. He’s been talking with some of the gardeners about endangered crystals.::

::Alright. I will be there soon.::

The sun was setting when Prowl arrived at the gardens. Lights were coming on to illuminate the paths as the sky darkened, making shadows dance over the crystal formations as people walked by. The overall effect was quite pretty, and Prowl indulged in moving his doorwings just to play with the light as he made his way to where Wheeljack and Jazz were waiting.

Sure enough, Jazz was thoroughly engrossed in a debate over the proper way to develop lattice hedges with one of the gardeners when he arrived. Wheeljack was sitting on a nearby bench, watching. “I hoped this would distract him when I brought him here,” he said when Prowl sat down beside him. “Looks like that was a success, at least.”

Prowl felt his spark sink. The way he had said that, the tone of his voice… “It cannot be moved, can it?”

Wheeljack sighed. “No. Not without the kind of construction equipment we couldn’t have snuck in even if you hadn’t already gone to the legal department.” Absently scratching his side, Wheeljack pulled out a datapad and handed it to Prowl. “It’s a schematic of the chapel’s foundation,” he explained when Prowl powered it up. The three-dimensional model showed all the blocks and slabs beneath the floor, with one block in particular highlighted. “Do you know anything about the construction of religious buildings?”

“Is it not the same as regular construction?” Prowl couldn’t see where he was going with this. All he could see was that the highlighted crystal block was both large and situated at the very bottom of the eastern corner of the foundation. “This is his anchor? This… this load-bearing corner stone?”

“More than a corner stone — the cornerstone,” Wheeljack said. “It’s the very first piece set in the foundation when construction began. And because it’s a religious building, it’s not just structurally significant for being the piece everything else was built around and on top of. There would have been a ceremony to bless it, and through it, the chapel as a whole.”

Realization struck. “They blessed it so it would remain standing. So it would endure, like Jazz has,” Prowl said, and Wheeljack nodded.

“Exactly. This piece of crystal was already metaphysically charged before Jazz died, and it drew his spark to it when his frame expired. I actually had my suspicions when I narrowed down the location of his anchor to the eastern corner,” Wheeljack admitted, “but I wanted to confirm it before I said anything.”

“What is significant about it being in the eastern corner?”

“East is the direction of the sunrise. It’s associated with creation, life, new beginnings, that kind of thing.”

“Ah.” Knowing that, it was easy to imagine how a ghost desperate to cling to life would have been drawn to it over other parts of the chapel as an anchor. Prowl looked up at Jazz. “This means we cannot get him out,” he said, struggling to keep his voice steady.

“I mean, at this point I’m pretty sure he’d stay anchored to the cornerstone if the rest of the chapel were lifted up off it,” Wheeljack said, still scratching his side. “But I don’t think we’d be allowed to remove it.”

“Barricade would certainly not allow us to deface a historical monument by substituting something else for so important a piece of it.” And while they probably wouldn’t be as insulting about refusing them as Barricade, the historical society would doubtless share his position. “You told him all of this already?” he asked, watching Jazz argue animatedly with the gardener. He looked like he was having a great time. “How did he take it?”

“Not as badly as I was afraid he would. He didn’t snap back to the chapel, but he did set every single crystal component in the RV to shaking for a few seconds.” Prowl frowned; Wheeljack didn’t seem to be aware he was doing it, but he was going to rub his plating raw if he kept scratching at it. “Then he went really calm and said he’d be fine. As long as things don’t get any worse, he said he’d deal with things the way they are.”

“He is not happy with the way things are.”

“He’s not the only one.” Prowl couldn’t see Wheeljack’s expression perfectly in his peripheral vision, but he could feel something almost akin to pity buzzing in his EM field alongside a solid determination. “I’m not giving up, Prowl. I told Jazz I’m going to keep working on the augmentor, see if there’s a way to make it more versatile while you two make sure the library gets possession of the chapel.”

“There is not a great deal we can do to influence that, beyond what we have already done,” though of course Prowl was willing to do anything he could if the opportunity arose. “But I will not give up either.”

Jazz’s argument wrapped up right as their conversation petered out. He did a double take as he looked over at the bench, obviously expecting only Wheeljack to be there. “Why didn’t you say something when you arrived?” he demanded, waving goodbye to the gardener and coming over to join them. “How long have you been here?”

“Long enough for Wheeljack to tell me what he found.” Prowl felt his spark twist at the sadness on Jazz’s face. “I am sorry,” he said solemnly.

“Yeah. Me too.” Jazz’s words were stiff with suppressed emotion. Some of what didn’t make it into his voice manifested as harmonics in the garden’s crystal in response to the augmentor’s increased whine. “Guess you’ll just have to keep visiting me at my place.”

“Whenever possible,” Prowl promised, and was pleased to hear the sour notes in the crystal around them fading. He didn’t blame Jazz at all for being upset, but it wasn’t pleasant to listen to, anymore than Wheeljack’s continued scratching was. “Is something wrong?” he finally asked, unable to ignore it any longer. “You have been worrying at that same spot since I arrived.”

“Since before you arrived, actually,” Jazz chimed in. “Are you sure you didn’t pick up a rust infection from somewhere?”

“I didn’t think so,” Wheeljack said, trying to look down at his own plating and failing miserably. “It’s not going red, is it?”

“Let me see.” Prowl got up and moved around for a better look. He wasn’t surprised to see several surface-level scratches, but none of them were rusting along the edges. “There is no rust,” he said. He reached out and pushed Wheeljack’s hand away from the site, careful not to touch it. “Is it painful?”

“No, just itchy. It keeps moving around though.” Wheeljack tried to pull his hand free, and Prowl wasn’t going to let him — until he felt one of his knuckles start to tingle. That had him letting go immediately, and jumping back for good measure. “What’s the matter?”

“I think I may have solved your problem,” he said, carefully edging away a little bit more. “Do you have the ghost goggles with you?”

“Of course!” Wheeljack produced them with a flourish. “Never leave home without ‘em!”

Prowl held out his hand for them, then held them up to look through the lenses. Just as he’d suspected, there was a small, ghostly ball of silver teeth floating around at Wheeljack’s side. “I have two questions,” he said, lowering the goggles. “One, why did you bring the scraplet with you, and two, how did you forget that you had?”

“Scraplet?” Wheeljack sounded completely baffled. “I didn’t bring it. The dog collar is back in the RV.”

“Well the scraplet is here,” Prowl said, handing the goggles back to him so he could confirm. “You are itching because it is trying to chew a hole in your plating.”

“No, it can’t be!” Things started coming off the utility belt he always wore. The ghost detector, something Prowl assumed was a radio transmitter, and what looked like a partially unwound tangle of cables were all laid out on the bench for Wheeljack to examine. “I don’t see it anywhere,” he muttered, brushing at his side absently.

Jazz and Prowl shared a look. “Maybe it’s the belt, not the stuff on it,” Jazz suggested. “Or maybe it’s just latched onto you and you’ll have to perform an exorcism on yourself.”

“But I never did an exorcism on the collar!” Wheeljack took the belt off and laid it down as well. “It should still be attached to… well. Would you look at that.” He backed away from the bench, curiosity so thick in his field Prowl swore he could feel the drag when he shifted his doors. “There it is! But how did it get there?”

“Don’t look at me,” Jazz said, though Wheeljack wasn’t looking anywhere but at the utility belt. “You’re the expert on this stuff.”

“It shouldn’t be possible,” Wheeljack continued, seemingly not hearing Jazz. “It’s behaving like the belt is its anchor now… not that it could still be anchored to the collar and also be here, we’re too far away for such a little ghost…”

“Why is it being anchored to the belt so impossible?” If that was what had happened then it obviously was possible in Prowl’s mind, but it was clear Wheeljack hadn’t thought it could be. “I can easily imagine why it would prefer the belt to the collar.” What self-respecting scraplet wouldn’t find following a source of living metal around better than being left behind in the lifeless RV most of the time?

“It’s not a matter of preference, it’s a matter of ability. Ghosts don’t just trade anchors like that. When they let go of their anchor it’s because their connection to this plane has weakened enough that they can’t hold on anymore,” Wheeljack said, half-answering Prowl and half-talking to himself. “They don’t have the strength to do anything but follow the pull to the Well.”

“And if it voluntarily let go, rather than waiting for the connection to weaken? Then it would have the strength to forge a new tie, would it not?”

“It shouldn’t! But who knows? Maybe it would! Yesterday I would have said a ghost categorically cannot relinquish an anchor in favor of a new one, but today is suddenly full of possibilities!” Wheeljack picked up the belt and, of all things, hugged it. “This is fantastic! Just look at all the new discoveries I’m making studying you!” He stroked his fingers over a patch of empty air. “And you,” he pointed at Jazz. “You two are my new MVGs.”

“MVGs?”

“Most Valuable Ghosts!”

Jazz laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Wait. Wheeljack.” Prowl’s processor raced, searching for a flaw in his reasoning. “If the scraplet was able to move from one anchor to another then—”

“—then it should theoretically be possible to do the same for Jazz,” Wheeljack finished the thought, catching his meaning seamlessly. “We don’t need to take the cornerstone anywhere. We just need to take Jazz out of the cornerstone and put him in something else.”

Slowly, Prowl and Wheeljack both turned to look at Jazz. Jazz stared back, mouth hanging partly open in shock. He looked like he wanted to say something, but couldn’t form the words.

Then the crystal around them broke the moment of silence. Note by note the shrubs along the path and the statues and sculptures behind them started to sing, building sweetly into song. It wasn’t a powerful song — the volume stayed low, nothing like what Jazz had coaxed from the crystal of the chapel — and it wasn’t perfect — Prowl could feel the lack of control in the trembling phrases — but it did perfectly encapsulate the barely-contained hope, happiness, and even fear Jazz couldn’t give voice to any other way.

“…wow,” Wheeljack said when it was over. Prowl could hear other people whispering over the marvel as well, though none of them were aware of the source of the phenomenon. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard an EM field that way before.”

Jazz smiled sheepishly. “Sorry,” he said. “I just… there was just too much to talk through.”

“Don’t be sorry. After all the emotional ups and downs you’ve had today, I’m a little surprised you didn’t just vanish back to the chapel. Which you should probably do soon anyway,” Wheeljack said gently. “We’ve got a long way to go to get from theory to application, and you’re going to need your strength.”

“Who needs strength when I’ve got hope again?” But Jazz seemed to have taken his meaning to spark. He walked up to Prowl, reaching up to ‘lay’ his hand on his shoulder. “I’ll see you soon, right?”

“Yes.” Prowl mirrored him, his hand hovering just above where Jazz’s shoulder should have been. “I will be there tomorrow, if only to say hello.” Maybe more, if they had the place to themselves long enough for Jazz to activate the augmentor again. “Rest well.”

“You too.”

With a careful look around, Jazz ducked into the shadow of a branching crystal tree, and was gone.

“Can you really?” Prowl asked Wheeljack. “Can you really do it?”

“Don’t know yet,” Wheeljack answered honestly. “First I need to figure out how this little guy managed it. Just give me some time, and I’ll regale you with my findings,” he said with a wink.

“In more detail than I could possibly need, I am sure,” Prowl chuckled. “Good luck.”

The next day Prowl got an automated message when he called to check in with Wheeljack saying he was deep in research, contact for emergencies only. He pictured him working happily away, helm fins flashing with excitement as he pioneered a new breakthrough in ghost research.

Jazz agreed he was probably having the time of his life when Prowl was able to meet with him. “How’s that for something to thank him with?”

“I am glad for him, though of course my primary interest is what this development means for you.”

“For us,” Jazz smiled. “Do you have time to go out today?”

“For a short while, yes. I have a lecture this evening.”

“There’s no one coming,” Jazz said before he had even half-turned to look. “Set it down and keep watch?”

Prowl missed standing in the chapel while Jazz sang, but he’d encountered one of the paralegals leaving just as he’d arrived. If he came back, he needed to be able to delay him until Jazz was done.

Fortunately it turned out to be an unnecessary precaution. They left the chapel without running into anyone, though they very nearly ran into Barricade on their way out of the library grounds.

“What’s he doing here?” Jazz whispered while they hid, waiting for him to pass so they could make a clean getaway.

“I imagine he has learned of the claim the library has filed for the chapel.” Barricade looked calm enough, but Prowl knew better. There was no way finding out things weren’t going according to his plans would have made him anything but furious. “We do not want him to see us.”

“Will this help?” Prowl watched as Jazz sank down into the ground until only his head was showing. “I’m more conspicuous than you, but he can’t see me if I’m down here.”

“He will not be able to see you anyway once he is inside,” Prowl said, holding back laughter at how comical Jazz looked grinning up at him. “Either come back up or pull your head down so no one else sees you like that.”

“What, you don’t want to explain being trailed by a disembodied head?” Jazz ducked the rest of the way underground. “Let me know when it’s clear to come up. Don’t worry,” he said before Prowl could ask, “I don’t need to be able to see you to follow you.”

Right. Of course he didn’t. “Try not to say anything, or people will think I have left my comm on speaker.”

Jazz was obligingly quiet.

Prowl was able to get away from the library faster without Jazz visibly at his side. The ghost had a way of attracting casual conversation with passersby, whereas Prowl seemed to repel it.

He went a couple of streets over from the library opposite the direction he guessed Barricade would leave by, then ducked into a hidden recess between two buildings not quite big enough to be called an alley, but large enough for two mechs to stand. “You can come up now,” he said, tapping his foot on the pavement.

Jazz rose up in front of him, and their sudden proximity made Prowl realize what others probably used this little nook for. He tucked his doorwings back, feeling a bit awkward. What he wouldn’t give to be able to pull Jazz close, to hold him…

“So?” Jazz asked, unaware of the direction his thoughts had taken. “Where to?”

Prowl shoved his wistfulness aside. “I did not have any particular destination in mind. Was there anywhere you were hoping to go? Hold on, I should answer this,” he said as his HUD lit up with a call. “Think about things you would enjoy doing while I talk to Smokescreen.” Prowl picked up the line. ::Yes?::

::So, um, first let me say that I haven’t told anyone about the tomb and I wasn’t going to,:: Smokescreen began in what sounded like thoroughly not-reassuring attempt to reassure him. ::I wasn’t followed this time, I checked.::

This was altogether too much like the time he had called from inside the chapel, panicking about the ghost he wasn’t supposed to find out about. ::What,:: Prowl ground out, ::did you do?::

::Nothing! I didn’t do anything! I just found something I think you need to see.::

::Do not remove anything,:: Prowl snapped. ::Nothing is to leave that tomb, do you understand?::

::Why do you think I’m calling you?:: Smokescreen said, completely unphased. ::I knew you wouldn’t want me to bring it to you, so you need to come up here.::

“You don’t look happy,” Jazz commented, unable to miss his irritation even without being able to hear what Smokescreen was saying.

“He went and started poking around the tomb by himself,” Prowl sighed. “He wants me to come look at something he found.”

“Sounds like Smokey alright,” Jazz chuckled. “Do we have enough time? I wouldn’t mind getting to see the place myself.”

Prowl took a moment to consider. If Jazz didn’t mind… “We do not have time to view the entire complex, but visiting the tomb would be possible.”

“Then let’s go!”

::Prowl? Are you still there?::

::I am on my way,:: he informed Smokescreen, then hung up. “We have a train to catch.”

Prowl timed how long it took for them to traverse the mountain path and reach the shrine, setting a reminder for himself of when they would need to leave. “We will not be able to stay too long,” he cautioned Jazz, noting with at least some satisfaction that Smokescreen had closed the hidden door behind him.

“That’s okay. I’d rather come back again later than make you late for class.”

“Jazz? That is you, isn’t it?” a voice whispered from the rock. A second later the mountain opened, revealing Smokescreen. “Sorry, I didn’t know you two were already doing stuff.” He actually looked a bit apprehensive as they joined him in the cave, and Prowl got a short-range ping a second later. ::What I found actually involves him too, but I wanted you to see it alone first. It’s kind of… personal.::

::Are you worried he will be upset?::

::No. Maybe. Actually,:: Smokescreen dipped his doorwings in apology. ::I’m a little more worried about you. I wanted you to have a chance to react without an audience.::

Now Prowl was starting to feel apprehensive too. Perhaps they should just look at some of the other things on the shelves this time and he could come back later. He was about to ask if Smokescreen had left whatever it was where Jazz could see it, but a sudden gasp from Jazz ended their secret conversation.

“Prowl, you have got to see this!”

He didn’t sound upset; if anything, he sounded like Wheeljack when he’d first seen the protoform — which, as it turned out, was exactly what he was looking at. The second casket was open, and Smokescreen had left a light shining on the silvery form inside. “I can’t believe it. These are incredibly valuable!”

“I am aware,” Prowl said cautiously, watching as Smokescreen surreptitiously snatched up a packet of what looked like letters. “Wheeljack informed me that this one is more valuable than most, in fact.”

“Wait, you already knew this was here?” Smokescreen sounded betrayed. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“When did I have the chance to tell you?” Prowl countered, surprised. He’d thought Wheeljack had told him for sure.

“You just didn’t think it was important,” Smokescreen huffed, giving Prowl a light shove. The glint in his optics and the way he used the gesture to mask passing over the letters was enough for Prowl to figure it out. “What makes it so valuable?” he asked Jazz, turning his back on Prowl.

Letting Smokescreen distract Jazz, Prowl quickly started flicking through the flimsy acetate sheets. It was immediately apparent why Smokescreen had wanted him to see them. It was a collection of personal correspondence, and every single letter was addressed to him. Or, rather, they were addressed to Lord Prowl. The signatures were all the same too — Yoketron.

He started skimming through them, trying to get a feel for their contents. They were formatted as letters, but Prowl suspected they had never been sent. They read more like a diary, and there were no replies; only Yoketron’s words to Prowl. The lack of any kind of pull or recognition made him even more sure his long lost relative had never seen any them. He was the first (second, after Smokescreen) other than Yoketron himself to read them.

The familiarity, fondness, and frankness in the letters supported Wheeljack’s suggestion that, whatever the historical Prowl might have thought, Yoketron had viewed him as someone special. Someone who embodied his philosophies in spirit, despite not being a member of his school. True disciple, indeed… The exact words weren’t there, but the sentiment certainly seemed to be. Prowl shook his head. He didn’t want to deal with that right now, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t handle it, and it had nothing to do with Jazz. What had Smokescreen been so worried about?

He found it on the last page: My time, at last, draws to its end. I write these words with the hope that we shall soon meet again. For all that Primus is welcoming, I find it easier to imagine a familiar spark waiting to greet me on the other side of this life. Forgive me that I never found someone to entrust your treasure to. I fear I was too cautious, never certain the opportunity was right, and so held it back until it was too late. It is one of my few regrets that I must seal it away with me now, never to house the life it should as you and Jazz intended.

Prowl stopped, his hands shaking. Jazz and Smokescreen were still talking about the differences between ancient and modern protoforms, the words a muted buzz behind the sudden whirring of his processor. Running a deep, even vent cycle, then another, he went back over the final letter in its entirety. No wonder the protoform felt so familiar; Master Yoketron had been keeping it for Lord Prowl at his request, awaiting a couple to bestow it on because the former lord no longer had any use for it. He had meant to use it to create with Jazz, then Jazz was gone.

Only, he wasn’t really gone. Which meant that, by all rights, the protoform belonged to him.

Jazz hadn’t recognized it. Did that mean he hadn’t known? How could he not have known?

“Prowl?”

Prowl’s head snapped up. Jazz and Smokescreen were both watching him. They looked concerned. “Yes?”

“You dropped something,” Jazz said, pointing to the floor. Sure enough, one of the sheets had slipped from the bundle and Prowl hadn’t noticed. “What are those? You were just standing there staring straight through them.”

“They… are letters Master Yoketron wrote to Lord Prowl. According to the last one, that protoform belonged to him. And you.”

“Me?!” Jazz looked between Prowl and the casket, his gaze finally settling on the protoform. “You mean he actually… Primus. He said he could find a way to get one, but I didn’t really believe him.”

“But you did talk about creating with him,” Prowl prompted, not accusing, but he needed to know. “You had planned to, together.”

“Yes and no. We talked about it at one point, yes, when we were imagining a future together. Nice as the thought was though, it just wasn’t practical. Like so many other things about our relationship.” Jazz stroked his fingers over the protoform’s blank face. “He never told me he had this.”

“Would it have changed things?” Prowl knew they had decided, for both their continued safety, to end things. Tragically, they had been caught out and Jazz sentenced to death the very night that was supposed to have been their last date. “Would you have argued to stay together, if you had known?”

“It… might’ve made things more difficult. Letting him go was the hardest thing I’d ever done,” Jazz admitted. The pain that decision had caused him was plain on his face when he looked back up at Prowl. “But it was the only way to protect him, and he felt the same way. He must have, or he wouldn’t have hidden this from me.”

“Perhaps he did not want you to feel pressured to stay.” Prowl could easily see hiding the existence of the protoform from Jazz if they had already started talking about breaking things off by the time he managed to get it.

“Or he might not have known about it either,” Smokescreen said, pointing out the other possibility. “Whatever wheels he set in motion to acquire it, it might have taken until after he was exiled for it to come through.”

Prowl winced, and saw Jazz do the same. That would have been a painful reminder for him to come across. “We may never know exactly what happened,” he said, determined to leave the past in the past. “But we do not need to. Going forward, all this means is that Jazz should be the one to determine what happens to the protoform.”

“Agreed,” Smokescreen nodded. “It is yours, after all.”

Jazz smiled at them both, and Prowl imagined that if he’d had a field to sense, it would have been filled with gratitude. “Thank you. But let’s finish worrying about things at the chapel first, shall we?”

“Agreed,” Prowl said, once again firmly closing the casket. The protoform could wait.

Chapter Text

A few days later, both Prowl and Smokescreen got a message from Wheeljack requesting a meeting in the park. The message was woefully lacking in details, but the excitement in the recorded voice gave Prowl reason to hope.

They had to wait another day for everyone to be available, agreeing to meet in the afternoon. Prowl arrived first, coming directly from the hall of justice after a session with the judge. Smokescreen was supposed to be there already with Jazz, but a quick check-in revealed they were on their way now. Prowl went to wait for them by the large fountain at the center of the park, distracting himself with the sparkling flow of water over the various crystal formations. Unlike at night, when it was lit up from underneath and within, in the full light of day the crystals took in the sun and created swathes of glittering color all around the base of the fountain. Those colors formed specific pictures at different times of the day. Right now the stylized representation of one of the city’s oldest leisure tracks was just coming together with the movement of the sun.

The picture had just started to skew out of focus when Smokescreen and Jazz made their appearance. “Sorry we’re late,” Smokescreen said, the slightly elevated humming of his fans evidence of the haste he’d exercised. “I had to wait for the place to be clear so I could sneak in. Apparently they don’t really want me going in there by myself.”

“I have not encountered that problem.” Prowl frowned. “I hope they are not going to start insisting on Jazz accompanying us all the time.”

“I would if I could, believe me,” Jazz said with a twist of a smile, “but I can only really accompany you out of the chapel, not into it.”

“The way they said it, I think you might still be okay,” Smokescreen told Prowl, “since you’re the one Jazz supposedly unofficially contracted for legal counsel. It sounded like my lack of a real connection to the case was the main issue.”

“That, at least, we can continue to work around.”

“With any luck we won’t need to for long,” Jazz said, looking around for the missing Wheeljack. “He wouldn’t have called us all here if it was more bad news, would he?”

“I doubt it.” Smokescreen joined him in scanning their surroundings. “Aha! There he is!”

“Hey, you’re all here already! Perfect,” Wheeljack said as he came around the other side of the fountain, half-hidden behind the wheeled cart the ghost dispenser usually sat on. What it was carrying now looked like it might have started its life as a shop vac, but now had far too many hoses attached to it. “Let’s find somewhere a little more secluded and I’ll show you what I’ve been working on.”

Once they were situated in a less publically trafficked alcove, Wheeljack set the parking brake on the cart and rounded on them with a bright flash of his helm fins. “Ta da!” he announced, giving the contraption a proud pat. “Meet my latest and possibly greatest invention: the Wheeljack Ghost Converter™!”

“What does it convert?” Prowl asked, wondering which side was supposed to be the front. All four sides (and the top as well!) had hoses and cable bundles sticking out all over the place, weaving in and around each other to form a bizarre, loose knot around the box at the center.

“It converts ghosts,” Wheeljack said, predictably enough. “I took what I normally use to sever a ghost’s connection to its anchor as a base, then modified it so that instead of just dispersing the energy, it forms a pathway to a new anchor and creates a sort of astral shell around it.”

“Oh, so the ghost has nowhere to go but the new anchor?” Smokescreen didn’t seem as confused by the device, and was looking it with undisguised interest. “How does it attach them together?”

“It doesn’t; the ghost itself has to do that.” Wheeljack held up his wrist, which Prowl only now noticed he’d looped the dog collar around like a bracelet. Light scoring criss-crossed the paint on his forearm above it. “That’s why I just used the collar again. I figured it’d be easier if the object was familiar after doing all the math, and sure enough, the little guy came through for us again! It worked!”

“Really?!” The garden chimed around them with Jazz’s excitement. “Then what are we waiting for? Convert me next!”

“Now hold on a minute, there’s still some things that haven’t been fully worked out yet—”

“Yeah, like picking your new anchor,” Smokescreen said, talking over Wheeljack with as much enthusiasm as Jazz. “You should pick something classy, something with significance—”

“Something practical,” Prowl interrupted, much more interested in substance than style. “Durable. Portable.”

Jazz’s visor brightened. “Wait. Wait.” He turned to Wheeljack. “What about something mobile?”

Wheeljack tilted his helm curiously, whatever he’d been trying to say earlier effectively forgotten. “You mean something you could move yourself, rather than having someone else carry it?” He gave a thoughtful hum. “I could try to build an automaton you could operate by channeling, but it wouldn’t be—”

“That’s not what I meant,” Jazz said in a rush. “You don’t need to build one. We already have one.”

Prowl had to reach out to Smokescreen for support as the realization hit him hard enough to knock him off balance. “The protoform,” he whispered, ignoring his cousin’s startled squeak. “We could anchor you in the protoform. We could… that would…” He couldn’t even finish the sentence. That would do more than just get Jazz out of the chapel, it would give him a body. A body Prowl could hold and touch; one that could touch him back.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Wheeljack said hesitantly into the expectant silence that had descended over the alcove, “but a protoform isn’t really feasible as an anchor.”

“Why not?” Jazz’s voice popped with static as he fought to keep the augmentor running smoothly. “Who says? You said only a few days ago I would be trapped in the chapel forever and you were wrong about that.”

“Yes, I was,” Wheeljack said, fully owning the mistake. “And technically yes, we could try to anchor you to the protoform, but you wouldn’t be able to activate it.”

“Why not?” The popping was improving, but Jazz didn’t sound any less desperate. “I’m still a spark, aren’t I?”

“Of course you are! But that’s all you are, and that’s the problem. Sparks need a spark crystal to contain them and channel their energy effectively into their frame. Without one, they just pour their energy out uselessly until they burn out.”

“So put me in a spark crystal!”

“I can’t! Ghosts can’t anchor in crystal, only—” Wheeljack stopped talking abruptly mid-sentence to stare at Jazz like he was seeing him for the first time. “You. You aren’t a normal ghost. You’re already anchored in crystal. One way too big to put in a protoform, but still!” He took a step toward Jazz, then spun and grabbed Prowl instead. The giddy excitement in his field made him even more dizzy. “I might actually be able to do it!”

Smokescreen chuckled. “Just wait till your colleagues hear you revived a ghost.”

“Assuming I’m successful, they’ll never be able to outdo me again!” Wheeljack gave Prowl a comforting clap on the shoulders before looking back to Jazz. “I can’t make any promises, but if you’re willing to give me access to the protoform, I will do everything I can to figure out a way to put you in it.”

“Deal,” Jazz said, holding out his hand. “Let me know when and what you need me for along the way.”

“You got it.” Wheeljack ‘shook’ on it, then skipped over to the converter. “Don’t worry, I won’t disturb anything else when I move the protoform.” He gave the brake a jaunty kick, sending the cart veering around toward the path. “Do I have any volunteers to help me sneak it out of the mountains?”

“Right here,” Smokescreen said, already at his side. “Have fun you two! See if you can remember how to talk sometime this afternoon, Prowl.”

But Prowl didn’t need to talk. Neither did Jazz. Overflowing with emotion, Jazz started to sing. Prowl fanned his doors to catch the echoes from the garden as Jazz danced around the alcove with a smile brighter than the sun sparkling off the crystal.

Prowl was smiling too.

***

This time Wheeljack didn't block off his comms and isolate himself as he worked. Unfortunately, while he very much wanted to help, there wasn't a whole lot Prowl could do. Smokescreen was able to take several hours a day to provide a sounding board and assist with the equipment, and Jazz could hang around all day to be on-call for any tests that needed him, but Prowl had neither the time nor expertise to be of any use.

Jazz insisted he didn't need to feel bad about it. Making sure he didn't fall behind in his classes, or with his internship, was important, and there was no way around it being time consuming. “Smokescreen's going to have to stop spending so much time with us soon too,” he confided one morning as Prowl did the one thing he was able to contribute: providing transportation for Jazz out of the chapel. “He said he's got something coming up at work that he's not going to be able to put off to play with ghost stuff for a while.”

“I still wish there was more I could do,” Prowl said, checking traffic before crossing the street to the RV. “Something that would help you.”

“Trust me,” Jazz said. “You're helping. When's your next day off?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

“Perfect. The day after tomorrow, you can take me to the street faire they're having over on the north side.”

“I was going to offer to assist Wheeljack,” Prowl said, confused when he saw Jazz shaking his head. “Has he said something? Does he not want me there? Is it because the residual ghost energy in my spark causes interference?”

“No, no, nothing like that! You spark doesn't cause any problems,” Jazz promised. “But I've spent the last week doing nothing but sitting in the RV. I want to do something else for a change. Something with you.” He smiled hopefully. “Call it a date?”

Oh. Oh! Prowl's doorwings flicked in embarrassment. “I would like that very much,” he said, trying to work out how to apologize for not thinking of that himself.

“Good. It's settled. And if you're thinking about saying sorry right now, don't,” Jazz said before he could come up with the words. He was still smiling. “I know all about your habit of fixating on things until they're finished. I don't mind being the one to remind you from time to time that it's okay to take a break.”

What else could he say to that? “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now go make sure nothing gets in the way of our date!”

Prowl did just that.

His day off dawned free and clear of responsibilities. Prowl got to the library early enough that he didn't run into anyone picking up Jazz, and the two of them left together, looking forward to a day of exploring and window shopping. They took transit to get to the north side, since Jazz couldn't keep up with Prowl driving. It was too far to have walked the whole way, but they still got a bit of a stroll in from the station to the block where the faire was being held.

“I have not been to one of these in a long time,” Prowl said, standing at the edge of a veritable sea of stalls and tents. “The ones I remember could get quite crowded.”

“Smokescreen said this one probably will too, later in the day. I figured we'd sneak off somewhere else when things started picking up, then come back again when the crowds thinned out again.”

“Fortunately it does not look like we are in danger of that any time soon.” Not when the foot traffic was still so sparse. Some of the vendors were still setting up,even. “What do you want to look at first?”

Jazz looked around, then pointed. “That!”

‘That’ was a tent filled with wind chimes in every size, shape and material Prowl could imagine. The tiniest ones were small enough to fit in his hand, with four to six simple chimes arranged in a ring around a basic clapper. Most of these were made of thin metal strips and weren't very expensive, but they also weren't very musical. The individual chimes were out of tune with each other, and Jazz quickly passed the stands displaying them for the ones holding the larger, more elaborate creations.

“Come closer to this one,” Jazz said, waving him over to a fanciful chime made of cut crystal hung on strands in a spiral. This one didn't have a clapper in the middle, but it didn't need one. The individual strands were close enough to chime against each other. “Doesn't it sound nice?”

It was quieter than Prowl expected it to be, a gentle rustling of sound rather than a loud ringing. And, he noted, in tune. “It does,” he agreed, reaching out to gently tap the ring at the top. Sound bounced off the crystals as they bounced off each other.

“I bet it costs a fortune,” Jazz sighed wistfully as he searched for a price. “Huh. That's not as bad as I thought it'd be,” he said when he found it.

“It would cost more if it was handcrafted,” the vendor told him, noticing his interest. “That model uses mass-produced, laser-cut crystal. The material's high quality, so you still get a nice sound, but it's a lot more affordable.”

“Got any that are handcrafted? Just so I can hear them?”

“Sure.” The vendor led them over to another display. “They may look simple, but just listen,” he said, taking hold of the windcatcher hanging inside a ring of twelve tube-shaped chimes of varying lengths. Each one let out a sweet, pure tone as he ran the clapper around in a circle, and Prowl heard Jazz sigh again beside him as the notes kept ringing, blending together into chords before slowly fading away. “Beautiful, isn't it?”

“Absolutely.” Jazz looked so enamored of it Prowl started to worry about being asked to buy it. “Wish it wasn't so far out of my price range.”

Prowl breathed his own quiet sigh of relief. “Something to remember for another time?” he suggested.

“Oh, I won't be forgetting that any time soon,” Jazz said, smiling at the vendor. “Thanks for showing me.”

“My pleasure. Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with.”

They spent some time wandering among the chimes, trying out all sorts of arrangements of bells and gongs. None of them compared to the simple tubular chimes. “I'd love to have those someday,” Jazz said, looking back at them one last time. “They're magnificent.”

Prowl couldn't disagree. “Such is the nature of window shopping, however,” he reminded Jazz. “We didn't come here to buy anything.”

“Not today, maybe,” Jazz smiled. “But who knows? I might just be able to get it someday.”

That seemed to be Jazz's prevailing mindset as they continued from stall to stall, admiring the different goods on display. Right now he was a ghost, but someday — maybe even someday soon — his situation would be different.

“Do you think I'll be able to get a job?” he asked, pausing in front of a display of custom kitchen accessories; one of the few vendors they’d encountered so far selling something other than purely decorative statues, paintings, or trinkets. “I'll need a way to earn money before I can start spending it.”

“I am sure you will be able to get a job,” Prowl said, confident that Jazz's knowledge and skill with crystal was still relevant, even if he was lacking in other areas from being out of touch with the world for so long. He could become a consultant, a broker, a gardener, even an artist. Jazz could probably make things like the chimes he so admired, and do pretty well for himself at it. “Though you will have to save for a long time to afford all of this,” he teased, brandishing the wish list he'd been constructing of all the things Jazz had fallen in love with. It already had a pretty hefty bottom line, and they weren't even halfway down the street yet!

“I'm not going to buy everything at once,” Jazz laughed, miming a swipe at the datapad in Prowl's hands. “It wouldn't be very smart to blow my first paycheck all in one fell swoop now, would it?”

“Is that what you two are doing here? Looking for ways to spend your first kickback?”

Prowl and Jazz turned in unison at the familiar, unfriendly voice. Standing across the booth from them, on the other side of the long table, was Barricade.

“What are you doing here?” Prowl countered, already searching for an exit. How had he not seen him until he was right there? “Hoping to find another precious antique among the modern arts and crafts?”

“You'd be surprised,” Barricade drawled. “I’ve found all sorts of unexpected things in places like this.” He started making his way around the table. “And unexpected people.”

Jazz started carefully edging away. “Is he trying to start something?” he whispered.

“I hope not,” Prowl said quietly, also moving away as Barricade advanced on them. It didn’t sound like he’d planned on running into them, but it wouldn’t be like his brother to pass up the opportunity now that he had. “I suggest you turn your focus back to things,” he told Barricade anyway, even as he followed them out of the tent. “We are not interested in talking with you.”

“Really? That’s a shame, because I have something I’d like to discuss with you.” His predatory gaze shifted to Jazz. “Particularly you.”

“Not interested,” Jazz said. Prowl saw him searching for a place with fewer people where they wouldn’t have to worry about anyone accidentally walking through him and angled them toward a less populated section of the street.

“This won't take long,” Barricade said, continuing to close the distance between them. His amiable veneer cracked a little as he almost growled, “Especially if you're willing to be reasonable.”

The subtle threat only galvanized Jazz. “You know what? Fine.” Leaving Prowl scrambling after him so the next words out of the augmentor still sounded believably like they were coming from him, Jazz ducked into the space between two nearby stalls. “Say your piece, then leave us alone,” he said, striking a confident pose. “We've got plans you're keeping us from, and I'm sure we're interrupting your busy schedule.”

Barricade stopped right in front of them, attempting to stare Jazz down. Prowl wished Jazz had picked somewhere else to make a stand; it took them out of the crowd, yes, but there was only one way out, and Barricade was blocking it.

After a few tense seconds, Barricade apparently decided to ease off. “I know you’re working with the library on their case rather than pursuing ownership yourself,” he said smoothly in what Prowl recognized as his negotiating voice. “You want to see the chapel preserved by the city’s historical society, and that’s an admirable goal! But there are other ways of achieving it. If, for instance, you were to support my bid for it instead… I am, after all, a well known historical preservationist. I would do everything within my means to care for and maintain it as the marvel that it is, if the courts granted it to me.”

“The library has considerable means at their disposal to do the same.” Jazz's lack of EM field made his words less biting than Prowl knew he meant them to be. The angry hum he felt coming from the augmentor wasn't strong enough for Barricade to sense. Not yet, anyway, which surprised him since he was already furious. How could Barricade even think of trying to ingratiate himself while simultaneously being so aggressively insulting? “Why would I help you when they've already promised everything I could ask for when it comes to the future of the chapel?”

“Whatever they've offered you to make it worth your while,” Barricade said with a sly smile, “I'm prepared to outdo them.”

“Meaning you want to pay him off,” Prowl translated, unable to keep a lid on his own emotions. “You want to bribe him to assist you instead of continuing to work at cross-purposes.”

“Oh, is that what you meant by a kickback?” Jazz laughed in Barricade's face. “You think the library's paying me to help them beat you? Mech, I'm not going to see a single cent from them for this. And before you go getting any ideas about how much easier that makes things for you, let me clear something up. You. Can't. Buy me.” There must have been crystal of some kind in the crates of boxed merchandise on either side of them, because the air around them began to buzz ominously with Jazz's indignation. The augmentor's hum increased in pitch and volume, loud enough now to draw a glance from Barricade as Jazz continued. “Your house gave up their right to that place a long, long time ago, and I would sooner die again than help you get your hands on it!”

“‘Again’?” Barricade's doorwings tucked back defensively against the onslaught of crystalline vibrations, but his mouth twisted into an unpleasant smirk. “So that's what’s going on.” Then, too fast for Jazz to dodge or Prowl to block, he lunged. Outstretched fingers swept through Jazz's insubstantial form, rippling through the augmentor’s projection without encountering any resistance. With a harsh laugh he rounded on Prowl, ignoring Jazz completely. “I wondered what that crackpot scientist was doing, hanging around! He’s the one behind this, isn’t he? He wants the chapel for his ‘research’ and he's duped you into helping him.”

“No one duped him into anything!” Jazz hissed, and Barricade zeroed in on the augmentor as the source of the sound.

“Think carefully,” Prowl warned as he reached for it. “Take it and I will charge you with theft. Damage it, and I will charge you with destruction of property.”

“It won't stick. Not once the judge sees you're delusional.” But Barricade withdrew his hands. “Did he tell you there was a ghost in the chapel? A spirit that would only be able to rest in peace if you helped him ensure the city got the rights to the place? He's the one getting the kickback, isn't he, in the form of a research grant no sane official would ever award him otherwise.” He snorted derisively. “I never imagined you could be so gullible.”

“I am not delusional, gullible, or any other such thing.” Prowl drew himself up to his full height, flaring his doors aggressively, and advanced, driving Barricade back. “Wheeljack did not invent Jazz to deceive me into helping him get a research grant.” Prowl was the one who had told Wheeljack about the chapel in the first place. Jazz was real! “Go. Now. Leave us alone.”

“‘Us’, is it?” Barricade retreated farther still as Jazz growled, filling the small space with enough subsonic static to be borderline painful. “Fine. I'll leave you with your ‘ghost’, if that's what you want to believe. I guess even a hack scientist can program a pretty convincing AI, though I doubt it will hold up once I draw back the curtain on his little charade.” Still ignoring Jazz, he waved goodbye to Prowl. “I hope when this is all over you get the help you need.”

Prowl might have believed he was genuinely worried about him, if not for the smug air of triumph radiating off him as he slipped out into the crowd. Barricade cared more about using this to try and get the chapel for himself than anything else.

“Slagger,” Prowl heard amidst a stream of other profanities as Jazz's growl continued to build. He winced, doors shaking with the feedback.

“Jazz, please,” he said, almost begging. “I understand you are upset, but you are hurting me.”

“Oh no!” The sound vanished, lifting like the pressure of a storm after the rain. Prowl sank to his knees in relief. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! Are you okay?” Jazz appeared in front of him, hands reaching for him before drawing back to clench into useless fists at his sides. “I'm sorry.”

“I will be fine,” Prowl said, cycling his sensors through a quick reset. “Do not worry. The resonance merely caused discomfort, not damage.”

“That's a relief. Still sorry though.”

“I know.” Prowl got to his feet, checking their surroundings. Miraculously, the crates of merchandise had hidden the confrontation from the occupants of both tents. No one was staring at them or watching with concern. “I am too.”

“For what? I didn't see him either, and you're not the one who went and spilled the beans,” Jazz said, looking miserable. “I didn't mean to, I just…”

“Shh. I know,” Prowl repeated. He brought his hand up to Jazz's face, the not-really-a-touch a sad substitute for the comforting hug he wanted to give him. “I do not believe there was a good way out of that conversation, no matter what you did.”

“Maybe not, but that doesn't mean I needed to do the worst thing possible.”

“You did not do the worst thing possible.” Close, maybe, but not the worst. That would have involved injuring instead of just inconveniencing Barricade and the subsequent assault charges. “But we do need to deal with this. Now.”

“How? How do we even begin to fix this?”

Prowl wasn't sure they could, but they had to try. “We contact Wheeljack and have him meet us, let him know what happened, and go from there.”

“…Okay.”

Judging by the look on his face, Jazz wasn't so sure of their chances of fixing things either.

Wheeljack wasn’t able to offer much hope once they explained the situation. “I’m sorry,” he said, spreading his hands helplessly. “Barricade’s version of events is a lot more believable than the truth. Even if we can convince some people that Jazz really is a ghost, the majority aren’t going to buy it. Not when a quick search on my name and body of work will return condemnations from practically every prominent scientist on Cybertron and just enough trouble with the law to be problematic.”

Prowl didn’t ask. He didn’t need to know what else Wheeljack had on his record besides attempted breaking and entering. “I do not believe discrediting us will help my brother as much as he would like as far as the final verdict is concerned,” he said, reviewing everything he knew about the case so far. “The library is not relying on Jazz to legitimize their claim to the chapel, or on my legal counsel.” Scant comfort, but at least it was something. “Unfortunately, we are reliant on their goodwill for continued access to it.”

“Goodwill that’ll probably evaporate when they find out we’ve been lying to them,” Wheeljack nodded. “At this point I’d say you might be better off if people believe I did trick you, because they might still let you at least visit the chapel to talk to Jazz that way.”

“But that would still eliminate any chance of moving him. They would never allow me to bring in the ghost converter, even if I knew how to operate it.”

“Not to mention what being saddled with a reputation for believing in hoaxes’ll do to the future of your career,” Jazz said shrewdly. “Especially if they insist you get some sort of treatment for it.”

Prowl hadn’t been about to bring that up, but he couldn’t deny he’d thought of and was worried about it. “Short of convincing everyone you really are a ghost, I do not know how to avoid that particular outcome.” Barricade had already laid out how people would see him: gullible, or delusional. “And I cannot imagine how we would accomplish that.”

“Sorry,” Wheeljack said again. “I don’t have a miracle for you on that one. If I knew how to convince people ghosts were legit science, I’d have done it by now and we wouldn’t have this problem.”

“So forget convincing them I’m a ghost.” Jazz floated over to the protoform laying on the recharge berth at the end of the RV. “Let’s convince them I’m alive instead.”

“What? You mean you want to try it now? I still need to tweak a bunch of stuff,” Wheeljack said, taken aback. “And what about the other tests we were going to run?”

“Don’t need ‘em,” Jazz said firmly, but Prowl wasn’t as confident.

“What other tests?” he asked. “If it does not work—”

“Oh, we know it can work. There’s just no guarantee it’ll work.” That seemed like a pretty big issue to Prowl, but Wheeljack, as usual, continued as though it was a challenge rather than a problem. “The biggest sticking point is the new anchor. I’ve narrowed down some of the conditions I need to create to improve the chances of it ‘taking’, but if Jazz can’t manage to establish himself before the converter’s containment field shuts down, there’s a good chance he’ll be drawn into the Well.”

Like a radical new procedure for treating a terminal illness that would either save or kill the patient then. “How likely is that outcome? How many tests have you already done?”

“So far? One, when I moved the scraplet back to the collar. We have a one hundred percent experimental success rate!”

Prowl scoffed. “That is a meaningless statistic and you know it.”

“I can’t give you a meaningful one,” Wheeljack said. “I don’t have the data. That’s why we were planning on more tests. The trouble is the time it’d take to do them. I’ve only got the one test subject,” he gestured to the possessed dog collar, sitting in a containment cube for once, “and he’s been through a lot lately. Pretty soon it’ll be time to let him go to his well-earned reward.”

“Look,” Jazz said before Prowl could protest, “all the talking and testing in the world can’t fully prepare me for the moment he flips the switch and I have to figure it out for myself, so why waste time we don’t have?”

“It is too big a risk.”

“Actually we don’t really know how big a risk—”

“It’s my risk,” Jazz cut Wheeljack off, still speaking to Prowl. The edges of his voice wavered. “Don’t make me watch while associating with me ruins your life too.”

The unexpected parallel with his past life had Prowl closing his mouth on what he’d been about to say. “You are right,” he said instead after a spark-wrenching moment. “It is your choice. One I would never ask you to make.”

“I know you wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t be making it either if I didn’t think it was worth it.” Jazz ‘patted’ the protoform beside him. “Well? What do you say, Wheeljack?”

“I say I still have to finish the adjustments to the converter I started yesterday,” he said thoughtfully. “And for the best chance of this working, I really need to set the crystal up in the protoform in advance. That’s the second challenge,” he said to Prowl. “Technically we’re dealing with a two-step process, transferring Jazz to a new crystal, then using that crystal activate the protoform. Only, of course, we’re not using a regular spark crystal.”

“Because you do not have one,” Prowl said, but Wheeljack shook his head.

“Actually it’s because a spark crystal would be harder for Jazz to attach to than one that’s already become attuned to his energies, and is the same type of crystal he’s already anchored in.” Wheeljack tapped the crystal in the augmentor as he picked it up and brought it over to Jazz and the protoform. “And also because I don’t have one,” he tacked on with a wink.

“So your plan is to use the crest ornament.” There was something poetic about that. “But,” Prowl asked, joining them at the end of the RV, “how do you use a crystal like that to activate a protoform?”

“Carefully.” Prowl groaned while Jazz and Wheeljack chuckled. “No, really, it’s doable,” Wheeljack assured him a moment later. “There’s ‘real’ science behind this one: medics have a procedure they use to patch in synthetic crystal to bridge the connection between spark and frame in cases of severe spark crystal trauma, and I’m going to repurpose it. Yes, I realize I’m no medic,” he said with another chuckle, “but I won’t be working around a live spark I need to worry about losing as long as I install the crystal in the protoform while Jazz is still in the chapel.”

“How quickly can you do all of that?” It sounded like a lot of work to Prowl, and there wasn’t much time to work with. “We have until tomorrow afternoon at best before someone is sent to investigate us. Tomorrow morning is more likely.”

“Then it will be my pleasure to pull one final all-nighter on this project! I’ll have everything ready to go first thing in the morning.” Wheeljack raised the augmentor again. “I am going to have to dismantle this, I’m afraid.”

“Prowl?”

“I will join you,” Prowl promised. “Go. I will be there soon.” He waited until Jazz was completely gone before asking Wheeljack, “How are you going to sneak everything in?”

“Do you really want to know?” Wheeljack’s helm fins flickered merrily at Prowl’s silence. “Exactly. Plausible deniability. Now go,” he waved him at the door. “I’m going to keep a low profile until tomorrow. Meet you at the library in the morning.”

Prowl didn’t let his thoughts dwell on whatever Wheeljack was planning to do as he drove back to the library. If there was anything he could have done to help, Wheeljack would have asked. All he could do now was trust him to come through.

No one gave him any funny looks or tried to stop him walking through the garden, which was a plus. Even better was the chapel being empty when he arrived, except for Jazz. He waved from the window when Prowl stepped through the hedge, beckoning him inside.

He didn’t say anything right away, but Prowl knew Jazz well enough to read his uncertainty in the muted colors of the chapel. For all he’d said he wanted to go through with this, and Prowl didn’t doubt for a second that he meant it, he was obviously nervous. Prowl couldn’t blame him. Personally, Prowl was downright afraid. One way or another, everything was going to change in the morning, and there was no way to know whether that change would be for better, or for worse.

“I am staying,” Prowl blurted out as the thought that this could truly be the last time they would ever have together crossed his mind. “When the library closes, I will stay.”

“Really?” The windows warmed, brightening the whole room with color and hope. “You’ll spend the night with me?”

“Yes.” He would find somewhere to hide and sneak back after everyone left if he had to. For now though, he simply walked up to the softly humming crystal to lay his hands over Jazz’s. “May it be the first night of many.”

Jazz leaned in close, pressing his forehead to the inside of the crystal. Prowl mirrored him, watching the light play across his visor. Mere inches apart, yet there were still miles between them. “I’m scared, Prowl,” Jazz whispered. “I want this to work so badly.”

“So do I.” Prowl angled his doors to pick up the echoes of their words, straining to record every last detail. The way Jazz’s emotions played through the crystal, the way his voice could coax melodies of sensation from the scintillating facets… He would miss this. Even if they were successful, Jazz would lose that ability along with his connection to this place. “Can I ask a favor of you?”

“Sure. Anything.”

“Would you sing the crystal again for me? One last time?”

Jazz smiled. “I can’t think of a better way to spend the night.”

Chapter Text

Prowl didn’t get much sleep that night. He did doze off at one point, when Jazz was singing a slow, soothing, languid piece. His chronometer revealed he’d taken a little over an hour nap when he woke up. Jazz had said he didn’t mind, but Prowl refused to let himself fall asleep again after that. He didn’t want to miss any of their time together.

He was still awake when the first rays of the morning sun came streaming in through the hedge enclosing the chapel. Jazz had been singing softly again, but the moment the light struck the crystal he switched to a new melody, perfectly capturing the energy of the dawn in a display of colors and harmonics so invigorating it pulled Prowl to his feet. He stood at the center of the chapel, unable to spot Jazz in the windows but able to feel his presence all around him, inside him. Jazz’s voice welled up from the vaulted chambers of the mirrored floor, reverberating up Prowl’s legs to meet the notes raining down on his head, shoulders, and doorwings. His spark synchronized with the song like a metronome, swirling in time with the music as Jazz ushered in the new day.

It all must have become too much in the final crescendo, because Prowl missed the moment when he went from standing there alone to looking at Jazz in front of him. The projection generated through the chapel was as solid and convincing as the one the augmentor produced, at least at first. All too quickly it began to fade, however, diminishing with the charged echoes of the song slowly ebbing away.

“Good morning,” Prowl said quietly, reluctant to disturb the lingering sound.

Jazz smiled at him. “Good morning.” He looked around, tilting his helm like he was listening for something. “I don’t hear anyone outside yet.”

Prowl checked his chronometer. “The library will not be open for a little while yet. I doubt we will see Wheeljack before that.”

“Sometimes there’s people in the garden in the morning though.” Employees, probably. “I hope no one finds you hiding in here before they arrive.”

“They?”

“Smokescreen’ll be here too,” Jazz said confidently. “Someone has to help Wheeljack get all the stuff in here. Besides,” his expression softened, becoming more vulnerable, “he’s my friend.”

“Yes he is.” Prowl felt a little silly. Of course Smokescreen would be here for Jazz, even if he wasn’t helping Wheeljack. “I am glad the two of you get along so well.”

“You are now,” Jazz said with a hint of humor. “I know it wasn’t easy for you at first.”

Prowl’s wings flicked with embarrassment. “I had hoped I had been discreet about that. I have no right to dictate who you choose to spend your time with.”

“Smokey said you were jealous and didn’t realize it.” There was still amusement in Jazz’s voice, but also a little bit of embarrassment of his own. “Talking with him helped me a lot, you know. He’s really insightful.”

“He is, much as I might sometimes wish otherwise.” And yet, annoying as he could be, Prowl had to admit Smokescreen’s spark was always in the right place. “As I said, I am glad you became friends.”

“After the introduction we had, I’m glad it was even possible!” Jazz laughed. “He’s a lot of fun to scare though. Like the time he took me to the cineplex. They have crystal elements in the projectors there that I was able to mess with juuuust enough that people started saying the theater must have been haunted. He got so sucked into it he totally forgot it really was with me there.”

“He never told me this story.”

“Probably because he didn’t want to admit how good I got him. So he forgets I’m a ghost, right?” Jazz looked down at his fading form and lack of reflection in the mirrored floor sardonically. “Well, it was real dark in there, so I knew no one would see me. I waited for Smokescreen to focus on the movie, then floated through the back of my chair and slid into the row on his other side.”

Prowl chuckled, seeing where this was going. “And at the opportune moment, said something to startle him, I assume.”

“You assume correctly.” The chapel echoed with mirth as Jazz remembered. “He was so startled he jumped right up out of his seat! Made everyone turn and stare at him for interrupting the movie, and of course he couldn’t say what had happened. It was hilarious!”

“For you.”

“For him too, later in the day when the wound to his pride wasn’t quite so fresh.”

Prowl laughed again. “You will have to find new ways to pull pranks on him in the future. It would be a shame to stop even though you will not be able to pass through things anymore.”

“Maybe, but not being able to pass through things is nothing compared to being able to touch things again.” Jazz’s smile turned sad. He reached for Prowl with barely-there fingers, only to vanish just before he reached his plating. Prowl looked down and saw him coalesce in the floor facing his reflection, hand still outstretched. “I never dared to dream I could have that again, but one by one you and Smokescreen and Wheeljack have granted every single one of my wishes; to be seen, to have someone to talk to, to be able to leave this place, all of them.” His arm dropped to his side, his gaze downcast. “Is it too much to ask for one more miracle?”

“If it is, then I am guilty of being greedy too.” Jazz wasn’t the only one wishing for one more miracle. “I want to hold you,” Prowl whispered. He sank to his knees and pressed his fingertips to the floor, trembling as Jazz twisted around so their palms met, pressing back with a weight Prowl only felt across his doorwings in the crystal resonance, not against his hands. “I have wanted to be able to hold you for so long.”

“It won’t be much longer, right?” Jazz glanced up at the ceiling, at the sun. “They’ll be here soon, won’t they?”

Prowl checked his chronometer again and nodded. “Soon,” he agreed. “The wait is almost over.”

It was only a few minutes after the library opened that Jazz announced someone in the hedge. “Smokescreen, I think,” he said as he and Prowl both went to the front of the chapel. “Whoever it is, they’re carrying something awkward.”

Sure enough, Smokescreen came through the hedge a moment later, struggling with a long, heavy looking box. Prowl went out to assist and, at Smokescreen’s direction, helped carry it around behind the chapel rather than bringing it inside. Jazz followed in the windows, watching curiously.

“What is all this?” Prowl asked after setting the box down. It hadn’t been so much heavy as unbalanced, with lots of things shifting around inside.

“Wheeljack rigged the converter to disassemble,” Smokescreen replied, shaking out his arms with relief. “This’s part of it. I need to go get the rest, while you,” he flipped open the box to reveal a tangle of familiar looking hoses, “start laying these out.”

“And just what am I supposed to say if someone else shows up and asks what all this is?”

“That it’s gardening equipment? Lots and lots of very weird gardening equipment.” Smokescreen gave him a cheeky grin, then dumped several additional components into the box from his subspace. “Don’t worry, the legal office isn’t even open yet and the groundskeeper is up at the front of the garden talking with Kup, which means he isn’t going anywhere any time soon.”

Kup? Prowl shared a look with Jazz, and Jazz shrugged. “He’s helped you before. Wouldn’t surprise me if he somehow knows what we’re doing and decided to run interference.”

Prowl found he wasn’t particularly surprised either. “Be careful,” he said anyway, and Smokescreen gave him a quick salute before disappearing back through the hedge. “As if anyone would believe for a second that this was gardening equipment,” Prowl muttered.

“Depends how knowledgeable they were and how fast you talked. I mean, you probably couldn’t convince anyone it was standard gardening equipment,” Jazz said, floating up to the next tier of windows to watch Prowl spread things out on the ground. There wasn’t a whole lot of space between the wall of chapel and the ragged edge of the hedge to lay things out fully, but Prowl did his best, coiling the separate hoses into neat piles. “You could always say you custom built it yourself.”

Prowl snorted. The part about it being custom built was true at least. “And what, pray tell, would I have custom built it to do?”

“Suction up micro-debris? There’s more than enough hoses to make a custom vacuum unit believable. Or you could pretend it’s a sonic oscillator for training inclusions. Or maybe a catalyzer would be more convincing, with a garden like this — like it is now, I mean, not like when it was first seeded. Using a catalyzer is a totally legit method of developing color, and it’s waaaaay faster than pretty much anything else, but it’s not ‘natural’ so the house would never have stood for it.”

“It did not stand for it.” Maybe it was a bit dark to joke about, but Prowl couldn’t help being somewhat amused at the way things had played out. “The house fell, leaving open the option for gardeners to be pragmatic rather than pretentious.”

Jazz apparently found it funny as well, and laughed. “They wouldn’t think the garden’s beautiful anymore. They’d be appalled to see it now. But it is beautiful,” he said. “Not the way it was, no, but it’s a garden. It’s alive and growing and changing. Its beauty should grow and change too.”

That. Prowl smiled down into the now-empty box. It was things like that that made Jazz the most beautiful part of the garden to him.

Smokescreen came back one more time by himself with another awkward box — more converter parts, including the large block that made up its core — then returned again with Wheeljack, this time carrying what looked like an unconscious mech wrapped in a tarp between them.

“Lucky no one stopped you for kidnapping,” Jazz joked as Wheeljack unwrapped the protoform.

“Jazz thinks it looks like you hit some poor unsuspecting mech over the head and made off with him,” Prowl said, impressed that they hadn’t been stopped for carrying something so suspicious. “Did anyone see you?”

“Nope! We made a clean getaway! Or get-in, I should say,” Wheeljack chuckled, looking up at Jazz. He did a pretty good job of guessing where he was even without the ghost goggles, which were hanging from his belt. “The actual getaway should be pretty easy, since theoretically you’ll be walking out with us.”

Prowl could have done without the reminder of the uncertainty of their whole venture, but Jazz brushed it off. “What do you need me to do?” he asked, the color of the crystal around him bright and hopeful.

“What should we be doing now?” Prowl translated, seeking instruction for himself as well.

“You,” Wheeljack pointed at Jazz, “are on guard duty. Let us know if anyone starts climbing through the hedge. We won’t be able to hide everything, obviously, but a warning will let us get the hardest things to explain out of sight. As for you,” he turned to Prowl, “help Smokescreen finish reassembling the Wheeljack Ghost Converter ™!”

“Yessir!” Jazz said, then vanished from the window. Prowl wasn’t sure if he’d moved to a higher one or if he’d dropped the manifestation entirely to focus on listening for people in the garden outside, but he didn’t waste time looking for him.

Smokescreen didn’t waste time giving him directions either. “These all need to be connected on that side,” he said, thrusting several hoses and cables at Prowl. “The ends are all marked. Just match up the ports and plugs and make sure everything’s screwed in tight.”

That was simple enough, though the number of connections and the hasty nature of the markings meant making matches took longer than Prowl would have liked. At least he could tell he was making a difference. Smokescreen worked faster than he did thanks to his familiarity with the device, but four hands were better than two.

Instead of sitting on a wheeled cart, the converter now had wheels spot welded directly onto its base. Once the majority of it was assembled, Smokescreen had Prowl help him push it up to the eastern corner of the building where Wheeljack had laid out the protoform. Prowl realized the still-trailing components had been left on purpose to hook up with what Wheeljack was had set up around and inside the protoform’s opened chassis.

“Does the converter need contact with the cornerstone too?” he asked, concerned by the sight of the leads attached to the stripped crest ornament sitting where a spark chamber would normally be.

“It does,” Wheeljack confirmed, pausing to fish in his subspace and pass a vaguely power-drill-shaped thing over to Smokescreen when he found it. “Fortunately we don’t have to expose the whole thing, since that would involve a lot of digging! A single point of contact is enough.”

“Hold this for me?” Smokescreen said, hooking a loop of cable from the converter over Prowl’s arm before he could answer. He fed the free end through the hollow bit on the end of the drill and locked it in place, testing what proved to be a telescoping probe to make sure the cable would stay in place before moving up to the side of the chapel right above the cornerstone. “Okay… hey, Jazz?”

“Yes?”

Prowl still couldn’t see him; Jazz’s voice echoed inside the empty chapel, buzzing along the window beside them. “He’s listening,” he said for Smokescreen’s benefit.

“Let me know when you feel this, alright?” Smokescreen flipped out a viewfinder on the side of the drill, then angled the bit against the ground. “You should be able to tell when I make contact.”

“Gotcha.”

At Prowl’s nod, Smokescreen pressed the button to begin extending the probe down toward the cornerstone. Prowl watched its slow progress on the simplistic rendering of what was beneath the ground displayed on the viewfinder with him.

“I can feel the sonar it’s using to make that picture vibrating the crystal,” Jazz said, this time actually appearing again in the window to watch too. “Don’t bother telling him that, I know it’s not what he meant. Wheeljack told me the electricity’d feel like sunlight hitting the chapel, only more concentrated.”

Much more concentrated, apparently. Prowl heard Jazz’s gasp of surprise right as the viewfinder showed the probe reaching the hard edge of the cornerstone, and the chapel flashed bright enough that Smokescreen’s doors flinched. “I’ll take that as an indication you felt that,” he said, disconnecting the drill from the probe.

“No kidding!”

“Does it hurt?” Prowl asked, though Jazz didn’t sound like he was in pain. He hoped he wasn’t in pain.

“It’s— no, it doesn’t hurt, but it’s—” Jazz fumbled over his words. “I’m not sure how to describe it.”

“His anchor has been shielded from any sort of external environmental stimuli since his death,” Wheeljack said, also answering Prowl. “It shouldn’t be painful, but the novelty of it’ll definitely make it feel weird.”

“Weird is right! Let’s just say I’m really glad my new anchor will be tucked away inside a frame the same way!” Jazz’s reflection didn’t waver, but Prowl felt a slight shiver in the crystal. “Are you almost ready?”

It couldn’t be much longer now, right? Prowl checked his chronometer. “How soon will you be ready?” he asked.

“Just a few minutes, actually.” There was a note of sympathy in Wheeljack’s field as Prowl received a short range comm burst. ::I don’t want to say you should say your goodbyes, but maybe you should say something. Just in case. Not because I don’t think this is going to work, but because I don’t want you to have any regrets.::

Right. Prowl stood and went around to the missing window. He walked slowly across the mirrored floor, noting the places where tracked dust and dirt from all their comings and goings marred the illusion of standing on nothing inside a perfect rainbow bubble. Idly he wished he had something to polish it with.

“You okay?” Jazz asked, appearing beside him in the floor when he came to a stop. “You’d better not be about to tell me not to do this.”

“Not at all.” Prowl raised his arms, embracing nothing as he turned so his reflection was ‘holding’ Jazz. “I just wanted to say, you can do it. I know you can do it,” he said, silently sending a prayer to Primus for that one last miracle, “and I will see you when you wake up.”

“When I wake up, huh? I like that.” Jazz raised his arms too, wrapping them around Prowl’s reflection. The subsonic resonance in the air thickened, creating a sort of imitation-hug that pressed against his sensors. “I want to wake up in your arms.”

No regrets… “I love you,” Prowl said past the thickness building in his vocalizer. Jazz’s visor flashed with something like surprise, and the humming of the crystal stilled for the space of a sparkbeat. Then it came rushing back, louder and more layered than before as Jazz beamed up at him.

“I love you too,” he said softly, sincerity ringing from every facet of the chapel with an acute sense of gravity.

They weren’t saying goodbye.

That spell, that moment, could have gone on forever. Prowl was surprised to see it had only been a couple of minutes when Wheeljack appeared at the entrance to the chapel and announced, “It’s time.”

“What do we need to do?” Prowl asked, delaying just a few more seconds.

“You need to come outside, and Jazz needs to pull back into his anchor. The less you’re channeling through the chapel when I hit the switch, the less disorienting it should be.”

Jazz stepped away from Prowl in the floor, drifting eastward toward the cornerstone. “Go,” he said, his image fading and leaving only his voice. “I’ll see you when I wake up.”

Wheeljack held out his hand. Prowl took it gratefully when he reached him, leaning on his support until they reached Smokescreen, who reached out and wrapped him in a solid hug. “He’ll be fine,” Smokescreen said, pulling him to sit beside the protoform while Wheeljack took his place at the converter’s controls. The ghost goggles and ghost detector both came off his belt to assist him in scanning the chapel. “You’ll see.”

Prowl just nodded, unable to say anything in response.

The colors of the crystal seemed to dim as Jazz withdrew his energies from the chapel. Prowl didn’t need the technological assistance Wheeljack did to know when he was ready. “Alright! Let’s do this thing!” Wheeljack exclaimed with all his usual energy and enthusiasm. Prowl flinched as he threw the switch, unprepared for the noise — both audible and electromagnetic — as the converter powered up.

“It’s supposed to do that,” Smokescreen said beside him, though he’d tucked his doorwings back against the feedback too. “Now that the containment fields are in place, it’ll disconnect Jazz from the cornerstone, and…”

“And?”

“And we wait and see what happens,” Wheeljack finished, flicking a second switch. Prowl felt a strange twist in his spark, and told himself he’d imagined it. “It’s all up to Jazz now. I’m really looking forward to hearing what the experience was like from his perspective. Doing this with a sentient ghost means I’ll be able to ask about all the things I can’t observe with my instruments. The scraplet can’t exactly fill out a questionnaire for me, after all!”

Wheeljack babbling on about ghosts was a good distraction. Prowl half-listened as he listed all the things he planned to ask Jazz and how his answers would completely revolutionize the future of ghost research, letting the stream of buoyant, confident words keep him from fixating entirely on his chronometer. The converter was on a countdown, and that countdown wouldn’t go any faster for staring at it.

That didn’t stop Wheeljack from counting along with it the last few seconds. “Ten… nine… this is it! Six… five… don’t expect anything to happen right way, it’ll take a little bit of time to… three-two-one!” he said in a rush, catching up just in time for the converter to shut itself off. The bubble of electromagnetic energy around the protoform evaporated along with the whine of the thing’s motor, leaving the air full of nothing but anticipation.

The rainbow crystal resting in the protoform didn’t appear any different to Prowl, but he wasn’t able to get a very good look. Wheeljack was quick about disconnecting the converter’s leads and triggering the compartment to close up, hiding it from view. “Everything’s in place for the crystal to connect to the protoform,” he said, training the ghost detector on Jazz. “As long as he’s in there, he just needs to gather enough energy to start channeling again.”

Prowl would settle for enough energy to register on the ghost detector. He leaned forward, hoping to see some sign that Jazz had established himself in the crystal. The device blipped at his proximity and Smokescreen pulled him back, ignoring the low growl that garnered him. “You’re interfering with it,” he said. “Also, you should probably open your vents again at some point before you overheat and pass out.”

With another frustrated rumble of his engine Prowl took his advice, and immediately felt less light-headed.

“Better?”

“…better,” he managed, feeling no less anxious. Wheeljack kept fiddling with the settings on the detector, shifting his optics between it, the protoform, and Prowl whenever it flickered. Prowl was torn. The detector would get a better reading if he backed farther away, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. He’d promised Jazz he would wake up in his arms, and Jazz had promised too. They’d promised!

The ghost detector chirped again. Wheeljack shook it, not trusting the reading, but Prowl surged forward, batting away Smokescreen’s restraining arm. The protoform’s color! It was changing!

“Jazz!”

“Primus,” he heard Smokescreen whisper behind him, only audible because it preceded Wheeljack’s triumphant whoop of glee as they both registered the change as well. Gingerly Prowl laid his hands on the protoform’s — on Jazz’s! — darkening shoulders, watching as formerly uniform silver transitioned through gray into black down his arms and legs, while other areas brightened into a gleaming white. Basic shapes began to shift, plain curves taking on edges and detail as Jazz’s spark infused it with identity and life. Patches of silver and blue took hold across his frame as Jazz’s face emerged from the blank, featureless oval beneath the darkening helm. A familiar visor solidified above newly defined cheeks, nose, and lips.

Prowl drew in a sharp vent as light flooded into it, turning it a brilliant blue. For the first time he registered Jazz’s EM field, faint but growing stronger as brand new systems activated one by one, cycling vents and flushing lines so he could function. A whirlwind of wonder, confusion, determination, and joy expanded outward, followed by a rush of what could only be love when Jazz’s gaze sharpened and focused on Prowl. “—i,” he said weakly, struggling with the newness of his body to talk. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Prowl’s response came out somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Jazz smiled, and Prowl took the time to reset his vocalizer while he helped Jazz sit up, supporting and balancing him and finally, finally, winding his arms around him in a hug they could actually feel. “Hi, Jazz,” he said, voice still shaking from the strength of his emotions. “Good morning.”

There were slight, silent tremors running all through Jazz’s frame. Prowl couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying or both. “Mornin’,” he exhaled, still quiet as he leaned into Prowl. He tried to raise his arms and whined softly when they barely moved. “Wanna hold you too…”

Prowl shifted so he could help him, bringing Jazz’s arms up over his shoulders so Jazz could link his fingers behind his head. He fumbled again at first, then, with a triumphant little purr, squeezed back gently. “You kept your promise,” he said with a bit less of a slur. “Y’were here when I woke up.”

“Always.” Prowl dipped his helm and instead of cool crystal met warm metal. He brushed his nose against Jazz’s as Jazz pressed their foreheads together, his strength and coordination improving by the second. “Thank you for keeping yours.”

Jazz chuckled, a deep, rich, grounded sound with no echoes of crystal. “Wasn’t easy. I was lost without any point of reference at first. Then I did have a point of reference, and that point was a pull I knew I needed to stay away from!”

“And how did you do that? What did you use to orient yourself to the new anchor? Did channelling through it before make a difference? We’d theorized it would be more recognizable but—”

“Ignore him,” Smokescreen said, cutting Wheeljack off with a light cuff to his shoulder. “Ghost stuff isn’t important right now.”

“Ghost stuff is always important!”

“We owe a debt of gratitude to your ‘ghost stuff’.” Prowl tightened his arms around Jazz. “This would not have been possible without you. Thank you.”

“What he said,” Jazz seconded with a contented sigh. “Thank you so, so much.”

Wheeljack’s helm fins glowed with pride and affection. “Happy to help,” he said, then waved the ghost detector at them again. “And thank you! Working with you has been absolutely groundbreaking!”

“Speaking of groundbreaking,” Smokescreen said, flicking the cable running down into the ground, “we should probably start clearing all this up befooore, oh scrap.” He knelt swiftly and yanked up the probe with a sharp jerk and kicked loose dirt over the hole before detaching the cable and shoving the thing in his subspace. “I was going to say before it’s too late, but it’s too late.”

Sure enough, Prowl looked over at the hedge and saw shadows moving in it. “Wheeljack?” he asked nervously, pulling Jazz to his feet as he stood.

“Stall them!” Wheeljack was already rolling the tarp from the protoform around a pile of stray components and tools to shove in his subspace. “We’ll hide what we can!”

“I can stand,” Jazz said, nudging Prowl while Smokescreen hurriedly dragged the converter around behind the chapel to start taking it apart. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right behind you.”

Prowl reached the gap in the overgrown crystal hedge right as their visitors did. One by one the head of the library’s legal department, Barricade, and a third mech he didn’t know but suspected worked for the judge handling the case lined up in front of him. Jazz was plainly visible beside the chapel as they looked around, and while Smokescreen and Wheeljack were out of their direct line of sight, the translucency of the crystal and the noise they were making meant all they were hiding was their actions, not their presence.

“Somehow I’m not surprised you’re all here,” Barricade said, affecting a sense of resignation that Prowl didn’t believe for a second. “I should have known you wouldn’t come to your senses.”

“I already told you. Wheeljack did not invent Jazz to manipulate me. Nor were we attempting to manipulate you into granting us special favors,” Prowl said earnestly, shifting his attention from his brother to the library lawyer. “Although we do appreciate your allowing us to be here.”

“We granted permission for you and Jazz to be here,” Wrangler said, glancing over at Jazz suspiciously. “However, I’m afraid we’re going to have to rescind that permission.”

“Whatever else might be going on,” the third mech interjected, “in order to simplify matters, the court has decided that, for the duration of this case, no one is to be allowed on the contended premises.” He produced a datapad and showed it to Prowl. On the screen was a motion from the court barring anyone without official dispensation from entering either the chapel or the hedge surrounding it. “You’ll have to come with us.”

“Just outside the ‘contended premises’ though, right?” Prowl tensed as Jazz stepped away from the chapel, worried that he might fall, but he didn’t. Slowly but surely he walked across the small clearing to stand at his side. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Come out now,” Wrangler called past them, ignoring Jazz in favor of focusing on Wheeljack and Smokescreen. “And bring everything you brought in here out with you.”

“Coming!” Wheeljack replied cheerfully. “We’re—” there was a loud, unpleasant grinding sound “—ost done!”

“No. You’re not almost done, you are done.” Wrangler stomped over to physically drag them out, only for Smokescreen to pop around the side of the chapel with one of the long boxes balanced on his shoulder.

“I’ll just show myself out,” he said, edging around Wrangler carefully so he wouldn’t hit him with the box.

“Don’t you worry, we didn’t leave anything behind,” Wheeljack added, joining him with the second box. “See for yourself!”

“I intend to,” Wrangler grumbled, pushing past them to make sure. He came back a moment later, apparently satisfied with at least that much. “What is all of that and what were you doing with it?”

“Other than generating imaginary ghosts,” Barricade sneered.

“I’m not a ghost.”

“Which one of you is hiding that projector Prowl had the other day?” Barricade continued, talking over Jazz like he wasn’t even there. “This is an awfully cruel trick to play on your own cousin, Smokescreen.”

“I’m not a ghost!” Jazz repeated, louder, and took a step forward. “There’s no tricks, no holograms, no nothing.”

“Really?” Now Barricade addressed him, but with a mocking tone like he was humoring him. “Then how do you explain this?”

The shock and utter disbelief on Barricade’s face when his hand connected with solid metal was almost comical. What he’d expected to be a harmless swipe through an insubstantial hologram wound up being a ringing backhand, leaving his fingers smarting and sending Jazz staggering back into Prowl’s waiting arms.

“Wow! Rude much?” Prowl could feel the suppressed laughter in Jazz’s frame and the flash of triumph! in his fledgling EM field. He didn’t seem to be hurt by the hit he’d clearly planned to take. “Looks like you’re the one who has some explaining to do.”

“But— you—” Barricade shook out his hand, looking between it and Jazz like he didn’t understand what had happened. “How?!”

“A better question might be ‘why’,” Prowl said, taking no small pleasure in hugging Jazz again as he watched his brother’s confusion. “I know I, for one, would like to know why you decided to start spreading falsehoods and assaulting people.”

“So would I,” Wrangler said, looking at Barricade with undisguised irritation.

“Explanations can happen outside the hedge,” said the other mech, motioning with his datapad for everyone to start moving. “This area is off-limits until the proceedings are complete.”

“Just so you know, you’re the one I’m considering banning in the future right now,” Wrangler said to Barricade. “Out.”

“Does that mean the ruling’s going to be in the library’s favor then?” Jazz asked, waiting happily where he was while Barricade, Smokescreen, and Wheeljack all made their way out under Wrangler’s stern optic and unarguably pointed finger.

“The verdict isn’t final by any means,” the court official said, double checking that nothing really had been left behind either in or around the back of the chapel, “but that is looking like it will be the outcome, yes.”

“Perfect.” Jazz sought out Prowl’s hand and this time, instead of only being able to press their palms together, he threaded their fingers together and squeezed. Prowl squeezed back. “It belongs with the library. The nobility it was built for is gone. Everyone should be able to enjoy it.”

“A beautiful sentiment,” the official said with the first hint of a smile he’d shown since arriving. “However, for the time being…”

“Yeah, I know. It’s time to go.”

Prowl moved first, leading Jazz to the crack in the hedge. Ahead of them he could already hear Barricade trying to make his excuses while Wheeljack spun stories about studying crystal properties and attempting to develop a new long-distance communicator and holoprojector. It was turning into quite a lively argument, but he wasn’t concerned. Explaining everything away wasn’t going to be easy, but the truly hard part was over. All the worrying and waiting was over.

He and Jazz shared one last look back at the chapel, the unspoken agreement that someday they would be back hanging between them. It was still beautiful. Still special. But while the sun still streamed down through the windows, creating a soft play of color and light, the crystal was quiet.