Primus Wept
Title: Primus Wept
'Verse: 2007 movieverse AU
Rating: T/PG-13
Characters: Jazz, Prowl, ensemble.
Warnings: dark fic, major character death, established Jazz/Prowl
Summary:
There are things that, once heard, cannot be unheard.
Disclaimer: This work of fan fiction is derived from the 2007 movie "Transformers", directed by Michael Bay and based on the Hasbro franchise of the same name. Characters and situations are used without permission, and not for profit.
Author's Note: I seem to be writing fairly dark stuff at present. This is darker than most - be warned. Continuity is post-2007, but AU in that it is not consistent with RotF and DotM. Prowl's appearance is based on the movieverse comics by IDW. Similarly, my Jazz may well have been, in part, influenced by the comic story Dark Spark…
Comments always welcome.
Primus Wept
Recalling Jazz from the Well should have brought nothing but joy, and it did...
... for a while.
Jazz should have been his familiar, playful and insightful self, grateful for his return, and it seemed he was...
... just for a while.
A silver frame curled into its companion, delicate sensory finials resting on scarlet chest panels.
Opinion was still divided on whether Prowl's arrival on Earth had been a good thing for Jazz, or a disaster. The Ops mech had fooled them all, even Prime's concerns assuaged by the solid facade his lieutenant adopted. They'd noticed Jazz was quiet, his mood swings harder and faster since his untimely demise. Nodding in tolerant understanding, they'd thanked Primus there was nothing worse. Then Prowl unfolded from cometary form, took one alarmed look at his bondmate and asked what was wrong. Jazz's mask shattered. The lithe silver form fell to his knees, hugging himself as thin keens escaped him. Prowl had taken his lover in his arms, cradling him against the red-trimmed chest.
He hadn't let go since.
"Primus!" Sideswipe exclaimed, and no-one but Prowl noticed Jazz flinch.
Sam Witwicky chuckled, dropped his bucket and watched the swordsmech dance around, fishing ice cubes from his armour. They didn't ignore the couple on the sofa out of malice, just habit. Only so many greetings could be met with Jazz's blank stare, only so many invitations rejected in Prowl's soft voice. The boy scarcely glanced at them as he dropped into a human-scale chair.
"So, Bee's never said. Who is this Primus guy, anyway?"
Sitting nearby, Bumblebee shrugged. "God."
"Y know?" Sideswipe threw out his chest-plates, raising an arm in rhetorical flourish and speaking in a resonant tone. "Go, Optimus Prime. Set my people free!"
"Primus doesn't sound like that." It was barely more than a shaped breath. Bumblebee's helm and Sideswipe's swung around, wide optics fixing on their stricken lieutenant. Bumblebee's door-segments flared. Prowl's black-armoured arms tightened, his expression bleak.
It was unusual, these days, for Jazz to respond even to a direct question. For him to volunteer information, to speak aloud to anyone but his bondmate, brought his fellow Autobots to their pedes.
Then they processed what he'd said.
"Jazz?" Bumblebee, ducking forward in an attempt to catch his friend's visored optics.
"His voice... Oh, Lord Primus, your voice..."
Sideswipe's wrist swords spilled into his servos and then retracted, his plating ruffling. His optics cycled, his expression aghast.
"You... you heard Primus speak in the Well? What did he say? Jazz? What did he say to you?"
The silver mech keened softly. His visor dimmed, his face buried against his bondmate's plating. Prowl's doorwings rose, a warning flash of pure white. He stood, pulling his partner with him.
"Please excuse us." The words were polite, the tone uncompromising. Prowl guided Jazz by the hand, as if leading a child. The saboteur followed passively, visor dim, expression lost and forlorn. The mechs stared after them, Sideswipe's servos reaching out as if to pull them back.
"Jazz! What did he say?"
"Do you believe it?" Ironhide's scowl and folded arms spoke of his own opinion.
Ratchet vented, mirroring Ironhide's posture but setting his faceplates instead in an uneasy look. "The crew believe it." The medic scowled. "Last thing the mech needs - devoted 'disciples' hassling him to speak Primus's words like some kind of prophet."
"But what does Jazz need?" Optimus Prime turned away from the sunset. His bright optics surveyed his two old friends - two of the four he'd trust with his spark - and grieved for those absent. War had robbed them all of so many things, so much of what they were. Was it too much to pray that some of those losses might yet be reclaimed? Pained hope coloured his expression. "Is it possible, Ratchet? Could Jazz have communed with Primus in the Well? Is it losing that state of grace that's done this to him?"
"Your territory, Prime, not mine, remember?" Ratchet threw up his servos in disgust. They dropped, his posture slumping. "Dragged back into this war... who knows? I've told you: he experienced something. Something that pushed him too far. I don't like the way he collapsed like that, or the way he was able to mask it before. That kind of disassociation... there's something broken in his processor, Optimus, and I don't think I can fix it."
"He has Prowl," Ironhide rumbled. "Mech has a bondmate to pull him back."
Ratchet's saw-blades rotated. He shook his helm and voiced his true fear for the first time. "Unless Jazz pulls him over the precipice first."
The thought earned him sharp looks. The gears and mechanisms of Prime's face-structure shifted into a frown, one servo coming up to rub his chin.
"We need to know. If Primus has guidance for his lost children, I must hear his words."
"No."
They turned. For vorns, Jazz's vast personality had masked his short stature. Encircled by Prowl's arms, visor dim and gaze cast downwards, he'd never seemed smaller. Then the saboteur looked up and, just for a moment, his friends glimpsed the strong mech they loved and missed.
"No. What I heard... it's not just for a few. Not just Autobots or Decepticons." Jazz paused, his vents stuttering after his longest speech for months. His visor burned too bright, its fire as cold and distant as his voice. "All or nothing, Prime. I tell everyone, or no-one."
"Jazz." Optimus Prime took a step forward, servos extended. Jazz's visor turned away. The mech keened and no one missed Prowl's doorwings flaring in protective threat. Prime's servos fell. "Jazz," he repeated.
Prowl half-turned, sheltering the smaller mech against him. The tactician shook his head, golden optics bright. "Saying this much was hard for him, Optimus. Don't push. Please."
Their Prime could do nothing but let them go.
It took five years.
That it was arranged even that quickly was widely seen as a miracle… literally, at the hands of Primus's prophet.
Megatron stood to one side of the hillock, Starscream at his shoulder. The Seeker's servos rested on his hips, his glares aimed at Soundwave, Shockwave and the other Decepticons Jazz had specified, as much as the delegation opposite.
The Autobots mirrored them. Ironhide and Ratchet flanked Prime, Sideswipe - now a full lieutenant - just behind. Roadbuster stood a little back, together with Ultra Magnus and a handful of other warriors. Of the command staff of both factions, only Thundercracker and Hot Spot were absent - incapacitated by chance accidents in the days before the meeting, and stricken to miss the long-awaited revelation.
Every optic followed Jazz as he climbed the hillock. No one so much as glanced Prowl's way when he activated the weapons-suppressing field the pair insisted upon. They only shivered, pressing forward to hear the most anticipated words in Cybertronian history.
Jazz stood straighter than he had five years before. He'd regained some of his confidence, though never the smile that once defined him. He extended a servo and Prowl came to him, the two sharing the burning gaze of bondmates, their helms bowed forward to touch.
"Well?" Megatron's foot tapped, his snarl shattering the tender moment.
Jazz leaned into his mate and then pulled away. The tactician nodded, their servos still intertwined. Jazz's vocaliser whined with disuse, straining to project an echo of his once-vibrant tones.
He nodded to Megatron. "Twelve years ago, you sent me to the Well of All Sparks." And Optimus. "A year later, you brought me back."
Jazz's helm bowed, and Prime flinched at the unspoken accusation. The saboteur took a step forward, his clawed servo still linked with Prowl's but his frame no longer in his mate's shadow. He glinted silver in the sunlight, lithe and graceful.
"It's taken me a long time to understand what I heard there. To accept what I must tell you."
"What?" Starscream's harsh voice cut across Jazz's whisper. The Seeker threw up his servos in disgust at the looks he got from mechs of both factions. "Just get on with it, Autobot! What did Primus tell you?"
"Nothing." Jazz raised a sharp servo before the massed protest could escape their vocalisors. Prowl glared, doorwings flaring. Silence returned, every mech straining to hear the words. "I heard Lord Primus's voice. I felt his spark, permeating the Well. I..." His servos sketched abstract shapes in the air. "He spoke no words, but I heard him. And I understood, better than I've ever understood anything..."
There was a moment of stillness before Optimus Prime stepped forward, servos spread in front of him. "Understood what, Jazz?"
"Understood what grief means. How far we have strayed from his path. How broken we have become... how far beyond redemption." Jazz didn't release his mate's servo, or react to the rising noise. "My spark was one with the Well, and the Well was overflowing... filled with Lord Primus's tears."
The saboteur shuddered, visor distant.
"It is a terrible thing to hear your god weep."
The flat, almost emotionless, words fell into silence.
"All I once was drowned in those tears. And then I was pulled back, born again, washed clean." Jazz's visor refocused. Prowl met his gaze, his expression as distant and broken as his bondmate's. Jazz nodded to himself, voice clinical and cold. "That's when I knew what I had to do."
The two shared an intense, almost joyful, look. Jazz smiled, faceplates creasing in the almost-forgotten grin of times past. The Autobot lieutenant straightened, and - for the first time in years - all present were struck by just what this mech was. They looked into a bright blue visor and a pair of golden optics that blazed with deranged fervour.
Megatron cried out, wordlessly. Prime rocked on his pedes, torn between stepping forwards and turning away. The command staff of two armies stood, frozen with realisation and horror, as the finest saboteur in Cybertron's history pulled out a device they all recognised.
Jazz stood on the tips of his pedes, laying a kiss on his bondmate's lips. He ignored the mechs breaking from both groups, trying to flee the detonator's range. They wouldn't get far, Prowl's force-field would see to that.
"Time for a new start," Prowl murmured, still embracing his insane lover.
Jazz's smile softened. He leaned against Prowl's chestplates and relaxed for the first time in years.
"Time for the crying to stop," he whispered, as he pressed the button.
The End