Chapter Text
Sitting in the brig of the Decepticons’ warship stationed somewhere over Kaon was decidedly not how Prowl thought he would be spending the past few joors. Not that he ever thought he’d be captured by the Decepticons. He’d always known it was a possibility (43%), sure. But sitting on the cold metal floor Primus knows how many clicks away from base was a surreal experience.
It was odd, definitely. It was everything about his situation. The fact that he hadn’t been taken in for questioning yet. Or that no one had come to torture him, or that no one was even guarding his cell. Of all the things he’d expected to happen if he were to ever fall into Decepticon custody, being left alone in a cell was not one of them (0.000001%).
He’d run countless (2,271 specific, 13,021 general) predictions (98.6% during off-shift hours) over the course of the war to what would happen if he ever got captured. 64% of the simulations involved him being tortured for information. 21.5% of his calculations said that he would be used as a bargaining chip against the rest of Autobot high command. 11.2% of the calculations involved the ‘Cons (most likely Shockwave) just ripping his helm open and plugging into his Tacnet to use him as a high-tech battle computer. And less than 4% involved the Decepticons just offlining him right then and there.
None of those scenarios were ideal, so Prowl had made a point to avoid getting captured.
It had originally started as simple self-preservation. It was basic logic: don’t get captured by the enemy because they will torture and kill you. And Prowl, like most (92.5% of the Autobots he personally knew, likely closer to 96% of the Autobots total) bots, wasn’t exactly looking forward to his deactivation.
But as he’d ranked up from a temporary tactician to Chief Tactical Officer, and every position in between, the need for staying off the front lines grew, and the risk of him getting captured with it. With every promotion, the risk of injury grew, along with the disadvantage of his potential capture. Not to mention what would happen if the Decepticons gained his intel. Battle plans that had taken orns to develop, Spec Ops plans, stats on each individual member of their army, and enough security information to make Red Alert blow another gasket. Not to mention every other miscellaneous piece of data his processor stored. The vorns of tactical experience and training he had from Praxus.
He sighed; he supposed that one of the few good things about Praxus falling was that of the survivors, 75% (not that four was a very large sample size (somewhere in the back of his processor he prayed to Primus (not that he was even sure if Primus was real anymore) that somewhere out there, there were other survivors of Praxus)) of them went to the Autobots. Prowl couldn’t imagine a world where the Decepticons had not just one, but multiple Tacnets at his disposal. Just the notion made his door wings twitch.
He didn’t know what he should do so that the ‘Cons didn't get access to his computer. He didn’t know if the Autobots would ever be able to recover from such a blow; not just the loss of himself, but the gain for the ‘Cons. Being realistic about it, he had no way of preventing his intel from going into Decepticon servos.
He had the normal firewalls that all mechs had. He had some interrogation experience from back in Praxus. He had a battle computer that was known to be hostile towards other mechs when they tried to connect to his systems. But none of these were actual precautions to protect himself.
He didn’t have real interrogation (torture) training, at least not recently, let alone any field experience. He didn’t have Spec Ops training or modifications. And as morbid as they may be, he didn’t have any suicide codes to delete the data.
As loath as he was to admit it, Prowl was vulnerable. He was weak. The moment they decided to actually do something with him, he would be completely at the Decepticons mercy.
He shuddered, forcing his processor to stop this line of thought. He cradled his injured servo against his chassis.
As Jazz would put it: this sucked.
He was oddly grateful for every breem he had in the cell, because it meant he wasn’t getting his processor melted out of his audials. And yet, with every click of his chronometer, his paranoia grew. What would they do to him? What would they make him do to his fellow Autobots? Would he even be himself by the time they were done?
This was frustrating. Maybe that was a better way to put it. To push aside his paranoia and fear and to turn it into anger. To have every klik he spent in this stupid cell build up his rage, rather than the oncoming processor crash.
Primus, was being captured really getting to him that badly? He let his fans cycle as he took a moment to calm down. He was being ridiculous.
And to think, he’d only been under Decepticon custody for a few joors. Not for decacycles, with no torture; for frags sake, his fuel levels were still in the green.
How Spec Ops did this was added to the growing list of questions he had for the team. Maybe he should treat them to a cube if he gets back to Autobot base.
He sighed again, when he got back to base. He loathed the saying, the cliché that he was giving in to. And yet there was a small, Jazz-adjacent voice in his processor telling him that if he just waited this out, he’d be fine.
Jazz had been the first person he’d heard the saying from. And though the mech did acknowledge that his stupid little saying was incredibly corny (‘the type of thing you hear in those old war movies,’ Jazz had said), he had also claimed that it had some merit.
It was something that Jazz had told to his whole team. “It’s because ‘Ops missions are tough. ‘Cause you don’t actually know when you get to go home, if you do at all. But you have to keep going with the notion that you will get home, otherwise the ‘Cons will just break you faster.” Jazz had once shared with him over a cube. "'S a tough job, you gotta be tougher.” He explained.
Prowl was, by his own admission, not a “tough” mech. He was smart, a tactical genius, a decent shot, but not tough. There was a reason why he worked in tactical, and besides the obvious, it was because he couldn’t handle the front lines.
He’d had problems during the beginning of the war, back when the Autobots had so few forces that anyone who could hold a gun was put in the field. Back when they didn’t have proper barracks, let alone private quarters, when he slept in the hallway outside of the common room for almost half a vorn (4 stellar cycles, 8 decacycles, and 9 cycles). When energon was in short supply, and everyone was on a half ration. Back when they didn’t even have a proper tactical team, it was just bots doing what they could.
Way back then, when he was a fresh refugee from Praxus. When he woke up with a scream sitting heavy in his voicebox, when he spent most nights working on military strategies that no one would ever see.
He would never forget his first battle. At the time, he’d reasoned that it couldn’t possibly be that different from being an enforcer. But enforcers didn’t kill, at least he didn’t. He’d only ever arrested actual criminals, never chased down innocent mechs just because… because what? Because they were on a different side than him?
Back before there was a right or wrong. Before there was any real difference between Autobots and Decepticons. When did it change so that red was good and purple was evil? Hadn’t they always just wanted the same thing?
And at some point he changed too. Nearly every mech he knew did. Friends were lost, Amicas, Conjunxes, sparklings. Some became hardened, some paranoid. Some fled, others rose to the occasion.
Were those mechs he knew always capable of such actions, or were they being pushed until they broke?
Would he break?
Maybe it was after that first battle, when he came back to base with half his back blown up, the sensors on his doorwings sending pure raw pain directly to his processor until he had been knocked unconscious by whatever sedative Ratchet gave him. When he had been the only Praxian on the battlefield. When he was shot at, he shot back at the other mechs.
Maybe it was after the first time he ever killed a mech. When he’d cried every night for a decacycle.
Maybe it was later, when he knowingly sent a mech on a suicide mission. When, directly after he gave that poor ‘Bot the order, he purged his tanks on his office floor.
Maybe he was always just like that. Maybe the war hadn’t made him cruel; it just gave him an excuse.
He rubbed tiredly at his optics, the motion doing nothing but messing with the sensors. His chronometer told him that two more joors had passed. No one had come to rescue him, but no one had come to torture him either.
Huh.
To think just how much had changed over all that time.
He wasn’t stuck in the field anymore (he was eternally grateful for his position, flaws and all). His position in tactical had granted him safety; it had allowed him to prove his worth. It had spared him from seeing any more horrors on the field; it had allowed him to get his processor under control. To reassess and to finally find his place in the Autobots.
He rubbed at his temples with his one good servo, trying to get his Tacnet to stop for a klik so that his processor would cool down. Primus, he was tired. Oh, how he would give anything for some coolant, or a proper defrag. As worn out as he currently was, Prowl would do sme admittedly embarrassing things for a cycle off and an oil bath.
And his helm still hurt.
He debated the risks of going into recharge. On one servo, he’d be exponentially more vulnerable than before. An unfortunate drawback of his Tacnet was that coming out of recharge took significantly (5-8 times) longer. And he wasn’t sure if being completely vulnerable while also being a Decepticon prisoner was a good idea.
On the other servo, he was exhausted. His processor ached something fierce; he was also likely overheating (85%). And no one had come to take him yet. He didn’t even have guards. And though he was fairly sure that there were cameras outside of his cell, Soundwave wasn’t omnipotent, meaning that there was a good chance no one was actually watching him. If no one had come to get him, there was an 86.8% chance that he had the next joor to himself (71% two joors, 52.5% three joors).
The floor wasn’t very comfortable, but he’d rather the cold floor than a cold medberth. Or an interrogation chair, or Shockwave’s lab.
He shifted slowly, being mindful of his doorwings as he rested his back against the metal wall, still cradling his injured servo. He was facing the entrance, slightly left of one of the room's corners. Giving him the best view of both the room and the door, along with the best tactical position if anyone were to come into his cell (19% chance of victory (any other part of the cell was less than 16%, the lowest reaching 0.9)).
Prowl cycled his optics offline, letting his helm fall back to rest on the cool metal. Hopefully, he would wake up to his rescue (11%).