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When Jazz was two cycles late in returning from a mission in Kaon, Prowl began worrying. When he was for cycles late, everyone else began worrying. When the saboteur failed to return after an entire meta-cycle, Optimus Prime had given Prowl a consoling pat on the shoulder and signed the data file that officially declared Jazz deactivated.
The knowledge that the saboteur would simply be abandoned to his fate opened up a void in his spark. Prowl understood the need—they couldn’t expend resources on a rescue operation for a mech that they had no proof was still alive. And if he was still alive, they couldn’t risk troops to extract Jazz from a situation that even he couldn’t get out of.
But until the words that sealed Jazz’s fate had been spoken, Prowl hadn’t realized just how much the saboteur had really meant to him.
They held a small memorial for the lost mech. It wasn’t much, just an intimate gathering with other members of the Special Ops unit and a few of Jazz’s friends. Prowl had stood through the ceremony, his face hard and unreadable and his emotions in turmoil. Blaster had tried to console him, but Prowl hadn’t allowed it.
He hadn’t wanted to seem weak in front of the other troops; couldn’t let them know how deeply wounded he really was.
Once the ceremony had ended, Prowl had retreated to his quarters. To mourn in private and try and sort out his own feelings. After several rechargeless cycles, the tactician could only come to one conclusion; at some point, he had fallen in love with Jazz.
And now, he would never be able to tell Jazz how he felt.
He curled in on himself in his berth and wished he didn’t feel like his spark was going out.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
“Prowl, you have to stop this.”
Prowl froze, startled at the comment. It was something Jazz would have said, and the statement coming from Blaster instead bothered him. “Stop what, Blaster?”
“You gotta stop hiding from us, man.” Blaster’s face was worried. “It’s not good for you to be alone all the time.”
“I wasn’t aware that I was hiding,” the tactician said mildly.
“You’re hiding,” the communication specialist replied. “You’re hurting, but you don’t want us to see that you’re hurting because it will hurt the unit’s morale even more, so you hide from us. You’re cold and unapproachable during the day and you lock yourself in your quarters at night. If that’s not hiding, I don’t know what is.”
Prowl looked down at his hands. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, Blaster was right. Jazz’s loss had been a horrible blow to the unit—almost as much as it had been to Prowl himself—and he hadn’t wanted to make things worse with an open display of his sorrow. He also hadn’t wanted the looks of sympathy Bluestreak would direct toward him or the almost-pity Mirage was giving Bumblebee, who was being very vocal about his mourning.
He hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that Jazz was really gone, if he could get away from it.
“I can’t.” There was a universe full of denials in Prowl’s words.
“Slaggit, Prowl, we’re all worried about you. Please, let us help you.” Blaster’s expression was so sorrowful and his optics so full of true concern that the tactician finally understood what Jazz had always seen in the communication specialist as a friend.
“I can’t.” He repeated, turning away.
He tried to pretend that he didn’t notice how sad Blaster looked at his refusal.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
The war continued and the army moved on without Jazz. Everyone was careful not to mention how much darker things seemed to be without the lightsparked saboteur or how hopeless things seemed without him at the head of special ops. Blaster did his best to combat the falling morale of the unit, but nothing seemed to help.
Prowl had begun patrolling the perimeter of the base at the end of the work-cycle, needing to be away from the other Autobots and their depression. He had enough of his own sorrow and didn’t want to deal with theirs as well. After patrol, he was often so exhausted that all he could do was fall into recharge and it was exactly what he wanted.
It kept him from having to think about Jazz.
He knew every square centimeter of his patrol route perfectly, so he immediately noticed the signs of recent travel across his path. He was no tracker, but the trail was clear enough for the tactician to follow without assistance. Prowl hesitated as he thought about what that might mean and radioed for backup before following.
The trail led him into a wrecked building. The structure creaked ominously, threatening to fall at any moment. Prowl stepped inside anyway; he needed to know if there was some new threat to the Autobot army before he could set his processor at ease.
He shook his head when he saw the mech collapsed in the corner. Even in the dim lighting and with the other figure partially obscured by debris, he could tell the other mech was in horrible shape. His armor was cracked and dented—and completely missing in places—and he was visibly leaking energon from at least two places that Prowl could see. This stranger was most likely a neutral who found himself on the wrong side of the Decepticons and had managed to run away.
He sent a second communication to the base, requesting that his back up bring Ratchet along as well. He, like the medic, would be damned before he let a mech deactivate in front of him without trying to help. After he received confirmation of his request from the base, Prowl walked carefully to the injured mech’s side.
He froze when he recognized familiar red and blue striping. “No!”
The injured mech lifted his head weakly and turned to look at him. One of his optics was covered by the broken remains of a bright blue visor; the other was bare—and broken out. “Prowl?” The injured mech’s voice crackled in the middle of his name.
“Yes, Jazz.” the tactician wasn’t sure how he kept his voice steady, but he knew it wouldn’t do the saboteur any good to hear him sounding like anything less than his usual calm self.
“I made it?” Jazz’s words were almost unintelligible through the crackling static his vocalizer was generating.
“You made it to my patrol route, at least,” Prowl said gently. “Ratchet is on his way.”
Jazz nodded—at least Prowl thought it was a nod—weakly. Then the injured mech began pulling himself laboriously over to the tactician and forced himself to his knees once he was close enough to touch Prowl. Jazz was obviously aggravating his injuries, but Prowl wasn’t sure if he should stop the other mech; Jazz seemed determined to carry out some specific action.
Prowl tensed when the saboteur fell against him with a pained whimper. Jazz didn’t seem to register the pain however, and wrapped his arms around the tactician’s waist. “If you’re not real,” the injured mech rasped, “I hope I deactivate before I find that out.”
Carefully, terrified of compounding Jazz’s injuries, Prowl returned the embrace. “If I’m not real, I don’t want to know either.”
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Ratchet had sworn violently at Jazz’s condition when he saw the saboteur and immediately knocked the injured mech offline to ease his pain. Jazz’s frame had gone frighteningly limp and Prowl was suddenly afraid he would lose the other mech again, just after he had regained him.
He wasn’t sure he could survive that a second time.
They carried Jazz back to base inside Ratchet’s alt. mode and in deepest secrecy. Prowl hadn’t told the base who he had found, and Ratchet, Red Alert and Inferno didn’t think it would be a good idea to let any of the other Autobots know his identity. Optimus Prime would be told after Jazz had been isolated in one of medbay’s ICU areas.
Prowl was grateful that Red Alert remained silent about the probable security risk Jazz now represented, but he didn’t miss the calculating look the security chief had given the offline saboteur. Once he was functional enough to survive the procedure, Jazz would be undergoing as many security scans and tests as Red could get authorization for—and possibly a few that he couldn’t.
Prowl prayed that he hadn’t gotten a second chance with Jazz just to lose him to a sleeper program or worse.
“I want to stay with him.” The words surprised everyone present when they came out of Prowl’s vocalizer.
Ratchet hid his surprise with a growled, “I don’t need you underfoot while I’m trying to put him back together.”
“I will stay out of your way,” the tactician assured him. “Please?”
Ratchet glanced at Red Alert and Inferno. Prowl wasn’t sure if he was looking for help defending his position or if he was just too confused by the request to make the decision on his own. Red gave him a brief nod and Ratchet made an annoyed sound.
“Fine. You can brief Prime while I’m working, then. He’ll want to see Jazz with his own optics anyway.” The medic turned to Inferno, completely ignoring Prowl now. “Go find Wheeljack or Perceptor; I’m going to need help with a lot of this.”
Inferno nodded and ran off. Red Alert turned to Prowl and gave him the same calculating look he had given Jazz earlier.
“This had better not be some kind of plot,” the security director said firmly.
“Its not,” Prowl replied. Softly, he added, “I love him.”
Red looked taken aback at the confession, but he didn’t say anything. The tactician was grateful for the reprieve; he didn’t want to say the words again until he said them to Jazz.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Jazz didn’t look anything close to good when he came out of Ratchet’s surgery bay, but he was stable and he was alive. Prowl appreciated both of those facts much more than he would have appreciated having Jazz’s broken optic immediately replaced or his paint touched up. The medic had promised that he would fix the remaining damage as soon as Wheeljack could scrounge up the needed parts.
Optimus Prime had been and gone, as well. The tactician couldn’t say for certain, but he thought that he had seen true joy cross his leader’s face when Optimus saw Jazz on Ratchet’s operating table. He had asked for a report in a relieved tone, and Prowl had been happy to give it to him.
Prowl understood Red Alert’s need to be suspicious of Jazz’s sudden, unexpected return but he was glad that someone else was as elated to see the saboteur as he was.
The faint twitching of Jazz’s hand in his alerted Prowl to the saboteur’s onlining process. He was surprised that Jazz was coming back online so quickly after sustaining so much damage. When he thought about it, though, it made sense that the saboteur’s programming would be altered to keep him active as long as possible in hostile environments.
“If I online my optics,” Jazz said softly, “Will I be in the Pit or the Matrix?”
“That depends on how you want to define Ratchet’s medbay,” Prowl replied with a small smile.
Jazz onlined his optic and smiled up at the tactician. “I thought that was just a hallucination back there. But you’re really with me.”
“I’m really here,” the tactician assured him. He resisted the urge to say more than that.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” the saboteur said. “And all I could think about for cycles was how many things I hadn’t gotten to tell you.”
“Jazz?” Logically, Prowl knew what the words meant but he was afraid to hope.
“I never got to tell you how much you meant to me. Never got to tell you how much I loved you.” Prowl’s spark ached at the way Jazz broke optic contact with him as he was speaking.
“Jazz.” The tactician put just enough force in his tone to make the saboteur look at him.
Jazz lifted his optic again, but he didn’t say anything.
“After Optimus… After you went missing, all I could think were the same things. I didn’t realize before, but I love you, Jazz. You complete me.”
Jazz stared at him in wonder. “You love me?”
“Yes,” Prowl affirmed.
The tactician let the saboteur pull him down into an embrace. It felt good to have Jazz hold him. It felt right, like he was exactly where he belonged.
“I love you,” he said again.
Prowl could almost feel the brilliance of the smile he could hear in Jazz’s voice. “I love you, too.”