Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Light filtered through the slats of the vent grates, illuminating the dust particles floating in the air duct. They swirled around him as Jazz made his way through the duct system, the uneven light catching glimpses of his matte black frame. He turned up his audio occasionally to try and catch any useful conversation, but nothing important caught his attention yet.

He shimmied his way through the complex system, pausing here and there to check the map on his HUD and ignoring the comms Mirage was sending him. He knew this was a bad idea, he didn’t need Mirage in his audial yelling that at him. If anything, he was overreacting. Jazz had done stupider things before, he knew what he was doing. He was the Head of Spec Ops for a reason, thank you very much! So he continued on his way, making a few more turns before he got to his destination.

He peeked through the grate into the control room. Rows of computer consoles filled the large space, datapads scattered across the desks and half empty energon cubes strewn across the room. He vented silently while he waited for a breem or two, running scans and waiting to see if the coast was clear. He couldn’t sense any spark signatures. It was late in the dark-cycle, and everyone seemed to be off shift. When he was satisfied the room was empty, he pushed the grate until it popped out, careful to set it inside the duct before silently dropping to the floor. He crouched down, completely still for a few kliks before making his way around the room, searching.

He looked around the room, glancing at the many doors leading to offices and supply closets, then at all of the terminals. Whatever software the Council was using was somewhere in this room, he was sure of it. It was the most fortified and guarded room in the entire Temple. Slag, getting any info about it at all had taken a few decaorns of digging. One thing was for sure, the Council did not want anyone messing with this stuff.

Jazz started messing with stuff, rifling through drawers and hacking into computers, trying to find the system that had been hindering them for vorns. It had taken quite a few bribes and threats to one of the building’s technicians to find out what it was. According to the little fragger it was a highly advanced AI system capable of running all of the Council’s jobs practically for them. Every part of Iacon, from the city’s enforcers to its economic trades, from traffic lights to sanitation systems; all of it was coming from one source. Including the Council’s plans to stop the Autobots and Decepticons.

He was technically supposed to be at the top of the Temple getting information about the Council’s latest scheme to stop the resistance going against them. But if this AI was the root of most of their problems, then Jazz wasn’t wasting a golden opportunity to get rid of this thing. Besides, Mirage was a competent agent that could handle a little B&E by himself. Jazz winced a little. He would kill Jazz later, sure, but that was a Future Jazz problem. He did feel a little guilty leaving with little more than a “You got this!” and a thumbs up, but what can you do?

He plugged into yet another monitor, scanning the files for anything resembling the source of the AI. His armor flared a little, panic slowly rising in his spark as he shuffled through the files. This thing was no joke. Everywhere he looked statistics, plans, contingencies, and backups were supplied for every system imaginable. Jazz watched as numbers were altered and plans shifted to accommodate for delays and changes. He unplugged and went from one console to another, seeing the same thing happening on every one of them. He dug deeper into the systems, bypassing firewalls and codes to try and get to the actual AI itself, but he couldn’t find a direct pathway to it. He let out a frustrated vent as he unplugged from the last console detailing the city’s upcoming construction projects. He needed to find the source of this thing and he needed to destroy it.

He looked around the room, eyeing the office doors and trying to decide which one he should try first before his gaze landed on a door in the very back of the room. It didn’t have any plaques on it like the other office doors, and it was too big for a supply closet. It also had a heavy duty keypad and lock on it, much to Jazz’s delight. He loved getting into places he wasn’t supposed to. That’s where all the fun stuff was. Jazz made his merry way to the door and started to hack into the keypad. It was a good lock, really high security. Jazz appreciated the challenge. One breem later the pad’s light turned green as the lock disengaged. Jazz stood, shuttering his optics and stretching as he got up. A twinge of unease started to grow in the back of his processor. This was going way too smoothly for his comfort. No alarms had sounded, no emergency comms, no close calls. It made him uneasy. He sighed as he braced himself for something to go wrong as he opened the door and froze in shock.

It was a small room, with every inch of it was covered in wires and cables that snaked through the walls and the ceiling, leading to who-knows-where but all stemming from one point at the back wall. One horrifying point. A cradle of sorts was embedded onto the wall, straps and cables holding a limp frame upright inside of it. Thousands of wires and tubes poked out from all sorts of points in the faded black and white armor, the majority emanating from the back of the mech’s slumped head. Jazz stared into dull and lifeless optics underneath a stunning red chevron. He didn’t seem to be venting, which begged the question of ‘Why were they hanging dead frames in random closets?’

He opened up his comms to tell Raj the situation when the mech stirred, making Jazz nearly jump out of his plating, bringing his weapons systems online. He stayed completely still while the mech raised his head, onlining dull optics to stare right at him, confusion flitting across the mech’s faceplates. Okay, this is creepy. Jazz stared for a klik, unsure of what to do when the mech suddenly stiffened, jerking against the straps holding him. He keened a little and Jazz realized he was seizing. Frag! He was having a seizure!

Full on panicking now Jazz stepped towards the mech, unsure of what to do. Frag frag frag fragging frag it! He only had basic first aid training (enough to get out of somewhere alive, anyway) and had no idea what to do with the restraints and all of the wires embedded in the mech. He wracked his processor for something to stop the increasingly terrifying event happening in front of him. Coming up blank, he opened a comm link to Ratchet.

:Jazz, you had better be dying or I swear to Primus-:

:Love ya too, Ratch! Quick question though! What do you do when someone is having a seizure? Also they’re attached to the wall. With a frag ton of wires and slag attached to them.:

:...WHAT!?:

The mech started to jerk and thrash against his restraints, eyes blank and staring into nothing as he shook. Jazz was REALLY panicking now.

:Gonna be completely honest here Ratch, I’m freaking out so-:

:Can you get him on the ground?:

Jazz looked at the wires and straps encircling the mech.

:Don’t think so, no. He’s kinda stuck on the wall.:

:Just stay calm and wait it out. It’s going to look bad but that’s the best thing you can do right now. Where are you?: Ratchet demanded.

:In the lower levels of the Temple.: The mech seemed to be stopping, sagging limply as he hung, venting hard. :I think he’s done. Listen, I still have to-:

:No, Jazz. YOU are going to stay put and make sure no one comes fraggin’ near him, got it? Send Mirage or whoever to do whatever you need to, I’ll be right there. Don’t move and whatever you do DO NOT move him!: The comm cut off before Jazz could say anything. Jazz looked at the mech and scanned him to make sure he was still kicking. The spark signature was weak, but there.

Jazz sighed and pinched his olfactory. This wasn’t great. Ratchet technically wasn’t aligned with either the Autobots or Decepticons for the sake of his patients on both sides, so he might get away with coming here. Jazz however was screwed. If an angry CMO came barging into the depths of the Temple to help whoever this guy was, then people would ask questions of how Ratchet knew about him. Which would alert the Council to someone breaking in. And it would either be traced back to the Autobots or Decepticons or be blamed on them anyway. And that would alert Orion and Megatron that he had gone a little rogue with the mission. Add that to the fact that he hadn’t been able to stop the Council’s AI system…yeah, Jazz was screwed.

He groaned as he pinged Ratchet his coordinates and checked the security feeds he had hacked into. No one was near the basement level he was on, and checking his comms proved that Mirage was almost done with the original mission. He closed the door to the creepy-wire-room and brightened his visor, illuminating the small space with green-hued light. He took a closer look at the mech, optics once again turned off, venting barely there. His lavish black and white plating was accented with lines and splashes of crimson that matched his chevron, dull but not rusted or neglected per se. He had some striking doorwings peeking out from the forest of wires, drooping as low as they could go. Looking at his faceplate, Jazz would bet that in a better (and less objectively horrifying) situation, he’d be pretty good-looking. Handsome even.

Jazz narrowed his eyes at the mech. Something about him was almost familiar. He stared hard at him, wracking his processor. His frame was way too fancy to be a common mech, maybe he was on Council? But he kept tabs on all the Councilors and didn’t recognize him. Maybe a Tower mech, or a- Wait. His optics widened with shock and he took a startled step back as realization hit him like blaster fire. His thoughts started spiraling, his vents stopping as he tried to think of why. Why is this happening? What was happening? Why is the fragging-

A muffled and furious pounding jolted him back to the present as sounds of sirens filled his audials. He opened the door he realized he was leaning against and ran across the control room. He started hacking the door code as a furious medic shouted through the reinforced metal.

“Open this slagging door you little fragger! And get away from me! If you think that you’re going to stop me, then you can go shove your helm up your-” The door whizzed open and Ratchet wasted no time storming towards the open door at the back of the room, a few disgruntled guards and a babbling cleric running after him. The guards faltered when they saw Jazz, but he quickly made his way to Ratchet’s side.

“Thank Primus you’re here! I was cleaning the room and I noticed the door was open and I found him like this! I didn’t know what else to do!” he spluttered. Ratchet gave him a patronizing look, but hey, Jazz wasn’t about to blow his cover. He could play the clueless and pitiful janitor if he needed to.

Ratchet stopped in the doorway for a click, shock spiking in his EMF before he hurried towards the limp frame. He started taking scans as the cleric scurried forward.

“This is a gross breach of protocol and downright disrespect towards the House of Primus! I demand you desist and-”

Ratchet whirled on him and growled in a low voice, “If you want me out of here then you’re going to have to drag me out or kill me. He’s dying, and unless you want that then I suggest you back. The frag. OFF!” The cleric paled and stepped back, the guards looking uneasy themselves.

Jazz turned his back on them, making sure his scanners were trained on them as he commed Mirage.

:Raj, time to leave.:

:Jazz! I have been trying to comm you for the last 20 breems!:

:Yeah, things just got complicated. Don’t worry about me. Just take the info and get out.:

:Yes, sir. Mirage out.: He sounded disgruntled, but he knew better than to argue after an order like that.

Jazz focused back on the present to find Ratchet plugged into the mech’s medical port and carefully pulling wires. The cleric made a few noises of protest until Ratchet glared at him with enough venom to kill. It took a few breems but Ratchet finally got all of the wires and tubes disconnected and ordered Jazz to brace the mech’s frame as he got to work on the restraints. He felt an odd hum where their chassis met, but he didn’t have much time to worry about it as the (surprisingly heavy) frame dropped onto him. He lowered the mech to the floor, careful of the doorwings as Ratchet started fussing over him. He finally straightened and motioned for Jazz to help him lift the black and white frame. They carried him into the hallway (Primus, this guy was dense), setting him down as the cleric hurried forward.

“Now I must insist-” Static blatted out of his vocalizer as he dropped to the floor, the guards falling right after.

“We have about 5 breems till they wake up or someone notices what happened,” Jazz stated as he lowered his blaster. Ratchet transformed, doors open for Jazz to load the guy into him. As soon as the doors slammed shut he raced off, Jazz on his heels. They made it out just as the alarms started blaring, racing down the steps and onto the streets. Ratchet kept his sirens off as they headed into Lower Iacon, and a few breems later he hurtled into an alleyway. They dashed around corners until they screeched to a halt in front of a nondescript transport, no doubt summoned by the medic. The doors flew open and Ironhide and Hound jumped out, wasting no time with questions as they loaded the mech into the transport, Ratchet and Jazz climbing in after them.

Jazz felt the transport start to drive away as Ratchet started to hook up a portable scanner to the mech. Ironhide and Hound stared down at the motionless figure before them for a while before Hound finally said in a quiet voice, "Ratchet, is that…”

Ratchet sighed as he looked up at them. “Yep. Say hello to your Prime.”

Chapter Text

Jazz tapped his pede on the ground, staring at the ceiling as the breems dragged by. He sighed as he slouched further, trying to get comfortable in the hard chair of the waiting room. It had been a few joors since Ratchet had shut himself in one of the surgical suites at the back of the Medbay and Jazz was starting to get antsy. Sitting still for this long was hard enough, but add what was going on in that room, as well as the fact that he had yet to tell Pax what had happened… Yeah, Jazz was a bit restless.

He wasn't stalling! He just wanted to be there when Ratchet came back out. He found the guy, it was his responsibility to make sure he was going to be okay. He was being responsible. And if that just so happened to give him time to figure out what he was going to say to keep him out of too much trouble, then that was a totally unrelated bonus. Nope, definitely not stalling! The door to the suite opened and Jazz quickly stood and hurried over to Ratchet as he stepped out, typing something on a datapad.

“Is he alright?”

“About as alright as he can be,” Ratchet sighed tiredly. He rubbed his optics as he stepped over to a terminal, turning it on and typing rapidly. “How much have you told Orion?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. About that, um. So, I figured with the whole ‘patient confidentiality’ thing I’d wait for you to-” Ratchet abruptly stopped typing and turned to face Jazz slowly.

“Jazz, Ratchet said slowly, “Are you telling me you haven’t told Orion Pax, the leader of this faction, your direct superior, that we just hauled the fragging Prime into his Medbay?” He asked, voice rising with each word.

“...Well when you say it like that it sounds bad.” Ratchet’s eye twitched.

“OF ALL THE SLAGGING- No, you know what? It’s not my problem! That’s Pax’s mess to sort out. You-” He jabbed a finger at Jazz “-are his mess to sort out. Me? I’m staying out of it,” Ratchet grumbled, turning back to the terminal. “In fact, he’ll be here any minute and you can fill him in when he gets here.” Great.

Jazz opened his intake to say something in his defense, but the words died as the Medbay doors slid open and Orion Pax walked in, Ironhide at his side. He looked around the Medbay until he spotted them, narrowing his eyes a little when he saw Jazz. Scrap. Pax stopped in front of them, crossing his arms over his chest as he leveled his best disappointed look at Jazz. He hated that look. He hated the fact that it worked even more. 

“Jazz, would you care to explain to me how a quick intel gathering mission became a ‘save the Prime’ mission? And why I had to find out from Ironhide, Mirage, and Ratchet before my TIC?” he calmly asked.

“Okay, so short version of the story, I was checking out some intel I got about the Temple and accidentally found the Prime all hung up in a closet in the basement,” Jazz said, shrugging. Orion narrowed his eyes further, his frown hidden by his battlemask. 

“I look forward to hearing the full story in my office after this,” he sighed, irritation in his EM field. It took a lot to get Pax irritated. Oh, Jazz was screwed. Orion turned to Ratchet. “So what’s the situation?”

“Well, due to patient confidentiality-” He shot Jazz a look “-I can’t go into too much detail, but what I can tell you is that he’s going to be here for a while. He’s weak and is going to need constant medical support for a number of things. I put him in stasis for the night, but he should be fine enough to talk for a bit in an orn or two.” Orion nodded, a thoughtful look crossing his face.

“Did anyone else besides you three and Hound see him?” 

Ironhide shook his head. “It was late enough that only the patrol shifts were on duty, and we kept him locked up in Ratchet until we got here.” Orion thought for a moment before he spoke.

“Let’s keep this between the five of us until we decide what our next course of action will be. No need to spread rumors about the Prime being here until we know what to do.” They all nodded, and Orion and Ironhide turned to leave, pausing after a few steps to wait for Jazz. Jazz sighed, slumping in defeat as he walked behind the two. This was going to be a rough few joors.

———

“Pax, this had better not be a joke.” Megatron growled, glaring through the vidscreen in the conference room. 

“You know I would never joke about something this serious, Megatron.” Orion said calmly. It had been a stressful morning. Over the last joor, he and Jazz had filled the High Command members of both factions in on the situation. It had been a long joor. 

“If we have the Prime in our custody, then I say we use him to our advantage. A ransom, or perhaps using him as bait for the Council…” Starscream suggested loftily. His wings were drooped in boredom but his optics burned with intensity. 

“Perhaps we should wait until he wakes up and talks with us to even suggest such an action,” Orion said, tone filled with warning.

Megatron laughed. “Pax, you can’t be serious! The glitch sided with the Council! You saw the broadcasts when he was first announced, parading around with those idiots. You can’t seriously be trying to protect him right now!”

Orion glared at the screen. Sometimes the Decepticon leader could be much too callous. “Megatron, you heard Jazz’s report. Do you really think he was in that… situation willingly? He was practically fading when Ratchet found him. I don’t think we should make any decisions until we hear his side of the story.”

“Forgive me,” Megatron all but sneered, “I just thought you would be a little more cautious of Primes after-”

Everyone around the table flinched as Orion slammed his fist down, causing a few cubes of energon to tip over and spill. “I do not need you to remind me of the dangers of trust, Megatron,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. Nyon was still fresh in everyone’s mind. Especially his.

Megatron paused before he spoke next, settling his flared plating. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to go that far, but you have to admit I have a point. We shouldn’t trust what he’ll say to save himself.” 

Orion sighed, settling back in his chair. “I understand your trepidations. Precautions will be made, but I will not condemn someone without first hearing their side. Prime or not.”

Megatron huffed. “Fine. I will be there by nightfall. Then we can see what this Prime has to say.” The video feed cut off with a click and Orion wiped a servo down his face.

“That was a fragging low blow,” Ironhide growled, his plating still ruffled, fists clenched.

“I must admit that Megatron does have a point. We do not know whether we can trust this new Prime, or what he will tell us,” Ultra Magnus pointed out, sitting stiffly in his chair.

“Well, I don’t care what he says, nobody’s doing anything to him until I say so,” Ratchet grumbled, still looking tired from last night’s events.

“Of course not, Ratchet. I understand everyone’s concerns, but everyone deserves a chance to defend themselves before a judgement is made,” Orion stated. 

“Hey OP, you knew the mech before he was Prime, yeah?” Jazz asked, pedes up on the table, much to Ultra Magnus’s distress if his glare was anything to go off of. Orion thought for a moment before answering.

“I had met him a few times, yes. That was back when he worked for Zeta, so it was a few vorns ago. He was stiff and a little cold, if I remember right, but he was good at his job. We didn’t speak much beyond business, so I don’t know much about him as a mech, or about what he did before that. Jazz, can you see what you can find on him before he wakes up? And-”

“Sure thing, Boss,” Jazz said, getting up and shooting out of the room before Orion could finish asking him to stay after the meeting. He still hadn’t given him his punishment yet. Orion sighed internally. Jazz was a good TIC, an amazing agent, and a wonderful friend, but Primus he could be so frustrating. Stubborn too. He dismissed the meeting and walked back to his office. He needed time to think. And maybe a small drink of highgrade. It had been a long morning.

———

Jazz slid into his office, sighing as he sat down in his chair. He didn’t like his office. It was too formal. Too restricting. But it was secure, and he needed all the security he could get. He entered his password and went to work trying to find out who exactly this Prime was. 

No one knew too much about him. He had become the Prime after Zeta had kicked it at Nyon, although he had only made a few public appearances in the few short vorns afterward. Then there had been an assassination attempt that had left him critical for the past two vorns, shut away from the public eye in the Primal Palace’s medical wing. The details were kept top secret, though the Council had wasted no time in blaming the “violent and apostate insurgents” for it. The public had been real upset about that. Hadn’t been great for recruitment. Or morale. But what could you do? All of their efforts to find the truth had come up empty, so they decided to let it go and take the Prime’s state as the advantage that it was.

He was about to start his search when a comm ping popped up on his HUD. 

:Hey Bee! What’s up?:

:Hey Jazz! Mirage just asked me to try your comms. He said his aren’t going through to you.:

:Oh really?: He grabbed a datapad from his desk, making a hasty dash to the door and ignoring the list of missed comms from Mirage. :Huh, maybe something’s wrong with his comm system? He might want to get that checked out.:

:...He says he wants me to let you know that, um. When he finds you he’s gonna… um. So I’m not gonna repeat that but, safe to say he’s slagged off.:

:Thanks for the heads up, Bee! Gotta run! Bye!: He cut the comm off as he skidded to a halt in front of the Medbay doors, taking a few vents before calmly walking in. First Aid looked up as he came in, waving.

“Hey Jazz! Ratchet just stepped out to get some sleep, do you need anything?”

“Nah, just gonna visit a friend real quick,” Jazz said, making his way to the rooms in the back.
 He stopped in front of the door, hand poised over the keypad. “Hey, if Raj comes in, maybe don’t tell him I’m here, okay? I kinda want some privacy, y'know?"

“Oh, of course! No problem, Jazz,” he said in a sympathetic tone. Aid was a good kid. A little naive sometimes, but a good kid at spark. He keyed in his override and slipped inside the dim room, making sure to lock the door behind him. He looked at the prone form on the berth, half covered in meshes and bandages, and hooked up to all sorts of monitors, drips, and equipment. He felt a little bad about hiding out here, but the guy was in stasis, what was he gonna do? Tell him to get out? Plus, Orion never said they couldn’t visit him. So he sat down in the visitor’s chair, careful not to bump the bed in the small space. He turned on his datapad and went to work. Time to find out just who this mech was. Prowl Prime, formerly known as Prowl of Petrex.

———

Three joors later he  threw down the datapad on the side table in frustration, crossing his arms and huffing. This mech’s records were wiped clean. Or he was just a slagging boring person with no accomplishments. Besides the time he spent working for Zeta and Sentinel Prime (and all of that info was barebones paperwork), Prowl was practically non-existent. No origination records, no job registration, not even any taxes filed! He had checked every database in Petrex, Iacon, and any city within a hundred mile radius. Even Praxus, since Praxians had similar frame types. He had checked the dark web and some reliable contacts. Nothing! So either this guy had been homeless and wholly unimportant before becoming the lieutenant to two different Primes, or someone didn’t want his past to be known. It was fragging annoying. 

He groaned long and dramatically before picking up the datapad again, looking at his records from working for the previous Primes. Just a few breems of that proved Orion right. This guy was good at his job. After Sentinel had hired him, his missions’ success had practically doubled, and it didn’t slack after Zeta took over either. It looked like this guy was a Pit of a tactician. Shame he worked with those slaggards. He glared a little at the comatose mech next to him. Sure, Sentinel and Zeta had tricked a lot of mechs, the Autobots included, but this Prowl was their lieutenant! There was no way he didn’t know what was going on behind the pretty lies and scrap everyone had fallen for. Plus he had still sided with the Council, even after Nyon. He couldn’t believe a good hearted or innocent mech would do that.

Jazz didn’t try to fight the growing resentment inside him as he turned to search for the broadcasts of him that the Council had put out. He clicked on the formal announcement proclaiming Prowl as the Prime, watching the video as a parade ran through Iacon, mechs lined the roadway, throwing confetti and cheering. The procession ended at the Primal Temple, where Prowl stepped out of the overly gilded transport to ascend the steps, a regal crimson and gold cape flowing behind him that matched the red on his frame. His armor was polished, the sharp angles accentuated by the red lines running over the bright black and stunning white of his plating. The camera angles switched to a more close up shot of his face, set in a stern expression, icy blue optics set ahead as he held his helm high. Pit, he was handsome like this. Y’know, when he wasn’t practically dying in a closet of horrors. 

Jazz caught himself staring a little too hard and quickly switched to a different video of Prowl’s first official address to the public. It was about something boring (something about the economy or some boring slag like that), and he only listened to a few kliks of it before he straightened and zeroed in on the Prime’s body language, vorns of habit from Spec Ops missions taking over. Prowl was stiff, joints locked and his doorwings held rigidly into a neutral position, his optics overbright. His digits were gripping the sides of the podium tightly, shaking slightly from the strain he was putting on them. He was nervous. Huh, he didn’t strike Jazz as the kind who got nervous doing this kind of slag. He seemed fine in the other video. Jazz flipped through the few other videos and pictures of Prowl Prime, seeing the same kind of nervousness in his frame getting more and more noticeable, seeing his optics getting dimmer and his armor getting just a little duller as time went on. 

Jazz sat there for a klik, wondering about the implications of what he had just seen. A few things could be at play here. Maybe the responsibilities and pressure of being a Prime was getting to the guy. Maybe he had some health issues. Slag, maybe the whole “assassination attempt” had been a slow poisoning and he was just seeing the effects. He looked over to the medical berth and saw the mech laying on it. Even with the meshes and bandages covering most of his frame, it was easy to see just how bad his condition actually was. His dull plating hung off of his protoform, his paint dull and flaking in some places. His face was gaunt and his venting shallow. Yeah, he wasn’t exactly the healthiest mech on Cybertron. Add that to the whole sequence of events that led up to this, Jazz had the feeling that something strange was going on. 

Jazz got up and turned to leave, planning his route to Orion’s office to best avoid Mirage when a monitor in the room started beeping. He looked, and saw it was flashing red. Probably not great. A few more monitors started beeping too, and he saw Prowl’s hand twitch. Definitely not great!

:Hey Ratch? Something’s happening with the Prime.:

Prowl’s whole arm twitched and his frame jerked. The beeping was more frantic now and Jazz was fully panicking. Again. 

:Ratchet! I think he’s waking up or something! Should I get First Aid or-:

Prowl jerked again, tensing before he started screaming. Jazz’s energon chilled in his lines as he heard the agonized sounds being ripped from the bot’s vocalizer. 

:RATCHET!:

The door slammed open and Ratchet shoved Jazz out of the way, whizzing around the monitors and immediately plugging into Prowl’s wristport. His screams carried through the open door and Jazz heard a few mechs start shouting, wondering what was going on. He flung the door shut and slammed his back against it, plating rising as the agonized shouts filled his audials. Ratchet hurried around the monitors, finally grabbing a syringe and jabbing it into the fuel line in the mech’s neck. 

Prowl jolted and continued to thrash, though the movements were starting to slow down. After what seemed like an eternity, he quieted, the screams dying off into labored pants until eventually he sagged back and went still. The monitors stopped their frantic beeping, and Jazz felt his plating slowly relax, his frame releasing tension as his spark slowed its frantic spinning. “What happened? I thought he was in stasis?” Jazz asked quietly.

Ratchet was still flitting from monitor to monitor, a tense expression on his face. “He was. He got himself out of it.”

Jazz stared in disbelief, intake falling open in shock. “Are you telling me got himself out of a medically induced coma?”

Ratchet let out a frustrated huff. “That’s the only explanation I can think of. It wasn’t a problem with the equipment. Either way, it looks like we’ll have to use sedatives from now on. Heavy sedatives,” Ratchet said, stopping to look at his now peacefully recharging patient. Jazz stared too, the pain and fear filled screams still bouncing around in his processor. 

Chapter Text

His TacNet was active, giving him every probability of what could be happening. Terror washed over him. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t feel. It was happening again. He couldn’t let it. Not this time. He had to wake up. He threw himself into the effort, cutting through the codes dampening his movements, his sensors. Him. He could feel the phantom pains in his chassis, in his helm. He could feel the ghosting of digits against the back of his helm, the servos trying to pry away the plating on his chest, trying to reach it. He tried to fight them off, tried to get them away. He tried to make them stop but they just. Kept. Going. It was pointless. It was always pointless. He felt his terror hit its peak as immense pain started to course through him. He screamed. It was all he could do.

———

Prowl could feel himself coming online, slowly. One by one his HUD lit up with the commands to bring his internal systems back online in the same order it always did. He waited patiently for the pain to come. It always hit fast and hard when his sensors were brought back to functioning. 

(-Sensornet Status: Online-) He shuddered as he waited. And waited. Confusion washed over him as he continued to wait. Were his sensors damaged? It would not surprise him. He was not exactly at optimal functioning. Hadn’t been for vorns. He waited for his TacNet to finish loading, interrupted percentages, scenarios, and equations immediately springing into the forefront of his processor the klik it became operational again. He terminated most of them; he had bigger issues to deal with. 

First, he ran a quick diagnostic to see what had been done. He ignored the fear and the probabilities lurking at the back of his mind. When it was done he looked at the results and paused. That couldn’t be right. 86% of his systems were online, and his sensornet was fully operational, though being blocked by a small strand of code. Prowl looked closer at it. It appeared to be a pain blocker. Oh. They didn’t normally bother with those anymore. 

Panic rapidly flooded his processor. They used pain blockers for bigger operations. Had they attempted it again? He felt his throat constrict and his frame start to shake. Surely they wouldn’t after the last time had gone so poorly? (75% they would; 92% if they found a more plausible way to do it.) 

He jerked, terror gripping him as he felt a servo land on his arm. No no no no! Please, no…

(-Optical Systems Status: Online-) Prowl kept his optic shuttered tightly. He couldn’t bring himself to look, to see what they had done, as if keeping his optics shut would change anything.

(-Audio Status: Online-)

“-hear me?” The voice was gruff, and if Prowl had any hope left, he’d have said it sounded a little worried. He cut that thought off, focusing on the beeps and chirps filling the room instead. He had given up hope a long time ago, and he wouldn’t give into delusions now just to have them shattered later. It hurt a little less that way.

“Kid, any sign of consciousness would be great. A wave, a grunt, telling me to frag off… Anything? Besides the shaking, anyway.” Prowl didn’t know the voice, but that wasn’t too surprising within itself. What was surprising was the gentleness of the touch still on his arm, and the casual way he was addressed. He had never been called ‘kid’. Or any name besides his own.

The mech sighed as he took his servo away. “Kid, I can see your systems are online, I know you’re awake.” Prowl braced himself. What’s done is done, it won’t change or go away if you avoid the inevitable. With a grimace, Prowl unshuttered his optics and promptly flinched back in surprise at the face inches away from his own.

The red and white medic smiled wryly. “Ah, he lives!” He straightened and backed away a bit, giving Prowl room to vent and glancing at the spark rate monitor beeping a little faster than it had been before. “‘Bout time. I was starting to wonder if I needed to add processor damage to the list.” Prowl ignored him, running a more in depth diagnostic as he anxiously surveyed his frame. It… seemed fine. Other than the bandages and welds crisscrossing his plating, it looked the same. He looked down at his chassis, relief washing over him to see no evidence of tampering beyond repairs. His diagnostic scan came back clear and he felt… fine. What had they done, then? 

He threw a suspicious glare at the medic, who was watching him with critical optics, arms crossed. “This is the thanks I get for saving your sorry spark? Typical,” the medic huffed and he pulled out a datapad. “Well, you look coherent enough, so let’s get this over with. Feelin’ any pain?” He looked at Prowl expectantly. …What?

“I gave you one Pit of a pain blocker, so you shouldn't feel anything, but after that stunt you pulled I would rather be sure. So, any pain?” The medic asked, digit poised over the datapad. What was this? Why was he treating this like this was a regular appointment? Was this some sort of sick joke? Prowl cast his optics over the room. It looked like a regular recovery room; a visitor’s chair sat by the berth, the walls were painted a soothing blue, a painting of a sunset hung on one wall. Prowl furrowed his brow and looked at himself once more. He was covered in several soft looking meshes and was (to his growing surprise and bewilderment), untethered. No straps or cuffs over his wrists, no magnets keeping him still… Prowl looked at the medic again. He was watching Prowl with growing concern. Oh. Oh. Prowl felt like his helm was spinning. This was a regular medical clinic of some sort (83%). This was a regular medic (92%). He felt a different wave of fear grip his spark.

How in Primus’s Holy Pit did he get here?!?

“Hey hey hey! Focus on me! Look at me!” Prowl’s optics snapped to the medic, who looked very concerned now. “Listen, you have every right to be freaked out by all of this, but you are not, I repeat, NOT! Passing out on me again. You hear?” the medic commanded. “You are out of the Temple, you are in my Medbay, and you are safe.” Prowl almost laughed at that. He wasn’t safe. He never would be. The absurdity of the statement did serve to calm him down enough that he focused on the other part of the statement. He was, in fact, out of the Temple and in some sort of Medbay. That was an improvement, he supposed. Though he still did not trust this mech.

“...Who are you?” Prowl managed to rasp. He hadn’t bothered using his vocalizer in a while, and his throat felt raw. The medic looked at him for a few more kliks before nodding to himself, apparently satisfied that Prowl wouldn’t ‘pass out on him’ again. Wait, again? 

“Name’s Ratchet. And I assume you’re the Prime?” Prowl thought for a moment. It would be pointless to lie. He was recognizable enough from his few public appearances, and he doubted the medic had missed the extra energy signature in his chest. 

“...Yes, I am.” Prowl stared hard at the medic, anxiety squirming its nasty way into his spark. Ratchet? “You are the CMO of Iacon General Hospital, are you not?” This was bad. If he was in the main hospital of Iacon, then either the Council knew where he was, or it would only be a matter of time.

The medic snorted, shaking his helm. “Used to be. Got the notice this morning. Let go on account of ‘aiding and abetting the insurgents and committing treason’ or some slag like that. It was only a matter of time at this point. Surprised they waited till I helped steal the fraggin’ Prime.”

“...You stole the Prime?” Prowl asked. He paused. “Wait. You stole me?”

The medic shrugged. “Stole. Rescued. However you want to put it. Either way, you’re stuck on the Autobot’s base for the foreseeable future.” That… wasn’t good. The Autobots were famously against the rule of the Primes.

“So… I am a prisoner of war?” He asked cautiously. That would probably be the best scenario for him. Other avenues (execution, prisoner exchange, using him as some sort of bait) would be less than savory, but he couldn’t complain. Cybertron was at war, no matter what the Council lied to the public. He was the enemy and a high value prisoner. With how volatile the Autobots and Decepticons could be towards the Council and those who stood with it, he couldn’t accurately gauge what decision they would pick.

The medic snorted and started typing on the datapad. “Listen, I don’t know what they’re gonna decide to do with you. What I do know is that right now, you are my patient and the only thing happening until you recover is you keeping your aft on that berth.” That wouldn’t be a problem, seeing as Prowl couldn’t currently feel his legs. The medic finished typing and looked at him. “Look, Orion Pax and Megatron are coming to talk to you after I clear you for conversation, but I want to go over everything wrong with your, well-” The medic gestured to his frame. “-everything, beforehand. Got it?” Prowl slowly nodded. “Good. So, the jist of it is, you’re royally fragged up. Heat damage to your internal circuits, stress fractures to your frame and plating, some slight rusting, emaciation, mineral deficiencies, internal leaking, and a weak spark. Not to mention whatever the Pit was happening with those wires and slag-” Prowl shuddered to even think about it. The feeling of the wires spliced into his electrical systems, the nauseating sensation of energon being pumped directly into his tank- No. Focus. Don’t think about that now.

“-all of which can be fixed for the most part. You will need to be hooked up to a spark-support system for a while, until I’m 100% sure you won’t fade on us.” Had Prowl really come that close to deactivating? He did not quite know how to feel about that. “The bottom line is, you’re in really bad shape and you need to stay here and do nothing for a cycle or two. Got it?” 

Prowl thought for a bit. If the medic wasn’t lying (54%, he didn’t know where the medic stood in regards to that authority) and they wouldn’t do anything to him until his condition improved, then he had plenty of time to figure out what to do. He shuttered his optics for a moment. Primus, he was tired. “I understand.” He opened his optics in time for a knock to sound at the door. 

His spark raced and he tensed. He expected to see the two rebellions’ leaders come in and decide his eventual fate. Not to hear the medic spit out some of the most creative curses he had ever heard before throwing the datapad down onto the chair, storming to the door, opening it halfway and reaching out to smack whoever it was on the helm, earning him a clang and a yelp from the bot on the other side. “Jazz, for the last time he’s fine! Unless you’re dying I don’t want to see you near the Medbay for the rest of the orn! Got it?” Jazz? As in the Autobot’s TIC, Jazz?

The mech outside the door huffed. “Jeez, Ratch! No need to get physical! I’m just worried about the slagger, that’s all. He wasn’t exactly doing the greatest last time I was in there.” Prowl frowned. How many bots had been in this room while he was unconscious? The thought made him uneasy as he clamped his armor a little tighter to his frame. 

“Like I said the last five times you asked, he’s fine! Now scootch! Go visit Smokescreen if it shook you up that badly,” the medic gruffly ordered. Prowl frowned. Something had scared the mech out there? Something to do with him?

“I am not shaken up!” The mech sounded indignant. “It’s just not everyday you get jump scared by a mech pulling himself out of fraggin stasis and hearing him scream his head off in the comfort of your own base! I’ll be fine.”

“...I’m sorry, I did what?” Prowl asked and immediately regretted it. The medic sighed as a black helm and a bright blue visor popped in between him and the doorway.

“Oh! You’re awake! Ratch, you didn’t tell me you woke him up!”

“I wasn’t planning on telling anyone until I was good and ready,” the medic grumbled, moving to push the mech’s helm back through the door, but the mech quickly slipped past him and came to the side of Prowl’s berth. Prowl flared his plating a little, glaring and shifting away as best he could (which wasn’t very much), wary of the newcomer. 

The mech’s field filled with apology as he backed up a little. “Sorry, mech. Just wanted to see how you were doing! You looked pretty rough when we found you, and that whole thing a few joors ago kinda freaked me out, not gonna lie.”

“What ‘thing?’” Prowl asked, even more leery than before. What had happened? Had they tried to do something? The medic walked over and cuffed the back of the shorter mech’s helm, earning him a quick “Hey!”

“We had you in stasis for recovery, and you pulled yourself out of it. It scared Jazz here half to death,” Ratchet said, ignoring Jazz’s protests that it didn’t scare him, it surprised him. Prowl thought back and an unpleasant, fuzzy memory surfaced.

“I… think I might remember that.” It hadn’t been an enjoyable experience, to put it lightly, and he probably wouldn’t have achieved it without TacNet's ‘help’. The computer needed a lot of power to run in general, and had such a high output that regular stasis and sedatives rarely worked at shutting it down completely. He was usually at least partially conscious during both, though not enough that any medics had said it was worth worrying about. He couldn’t feel anything. Usually. 

Prowl brought himself out of his thoughts to find the two mechs staring at him. 

“What do you mean you remember it?” the medic growled. 

Prowl’s plating flared a bit more before clamping back down, doorwings shifting in their thick bandages. “I mean that I can vaguely remember a recent time when I was semi-conscious and in an incomprehensible amount of pain. I assume that that would be the event you were referring to,” Prowl snapped back, feeling rather defensive. It wasn’t his fault he was like this. He was aware he was a ‘medical nightmare,’ as many medics had told him on multiple occasions. 

The medic narrowed his eyes. “Don’t get snippy with me. This is just the first time I have ever heard of anyone being even partially conscious in stasis, let alone feeling enough to get out of the highest setting.” He glared at Prowl. 

The black and white mech beside him tiled his head in thought. “Do you know what could have caused it?” He asked, looking at Ratchet. 

The mech paused, glancing at Prowl before answering. “I have a few theories, but unfortunately for you, I’m not telling you any of them.” The visored mech, opened his mouth to say something before the medic cut him off. “Patient confidentiality,” he said with a smug air. The visored mech looked mildly offended by that (odd) but shook his head.

“Well, in any case, Meg’s is gonna be here any breem now. Is he cleared to talk to them?”

Prowl felt worry fill him as Ratchet looked at him thoughtfully. “Probably not. I might give it another orn before-”

“Actually, I’d prefer it to happen sooner rather than later.” Prowl interrupted. The medic narrowed his eyes at him. “I would prefer to get it over with instead of having to sit with the expectation of it happening any longer than I need to.”

“Prowl, you’re still really weak. I don’t want anything bad happening cause you get worked up over talking to them.” Ratchet argued.

“With all due respect, Medic Ratchet, the probability of me reaching that point either today or tomorrow doesn’t quite make much of a difference. I would like it to happen sooner.” Prowl said, tilting his helm up a little. The likelihood of him getting worked up over the course of the ‘conversation’ held only a 5% difference in favor of the next orn. Logically, this was the best course of action. It just held the benefit of matching with his preference.

Ratchet looked hard at Prowl for a few kliks before throwing up his hands. “Fine! But when you inevitably pass out again, don’t expect me to come rushing to help you.” He stormed out of the room, grumbling all the way and leaving him with the visored mech. 

“Don’t worry about him, mech. He won’t let anything happen to you.” Jazz said, leaning his hip against the berth. “He’s just worried, s’all. Uh, not that there’s anything to worry about, of course!” He said quickly. “You’re just kinda all… well, you’ll be fine! Don’t worry!” Silence filled the room for a few kliks, Prowl glaring at the mech, wishing he’d leave. He would like some time to collect his thoughts before what he imagined was going to be a very unpleasant ‘talk’.

Jazz had other plans, apparently. “So, you’re the Prime, huh?” Prowl sighed. So much for that.

“Yes, I am.”

“Cool, cool. Just making sure, y'know? You could just be someone who looks exactly like the Prime or something.” That was highly unlikely, knowing the… situation they had found him in. And seeing as Jazz was a member of Autobot High Command, he would most likely have been informed of all of the details of Prowl’s circumstances. Prowl looked closer at the bot next to him, a thought forming in his head as a memory came to the forefront of his processor: Prowl onlining his optics, hearing the door slide open (off schedule, so something noteworthy was happening) and onlining his optics to the slightly blurry image of a mech in black, matte paint staring at him with a green visor, shock written on his face. It had been unusual, this mech was not one of the few authorized to enter the room, though Prowl did not have much time to dwell on it before his processor finally overheated and he started seizing, the mech’s plating flaring in alarm as he fell into unconsciousness.  

He stared hard at the mech next to him, belatedly realizing he was still talking, though not quite caring to listen. The paint was different, the white plating having accents of royal blue and a bright red, and the visor was a brilliant blue, not the dull green of the memory. The kibble was different as well, but Prowl had a suspicion. He set TacNet to the task and watched as a few simulations presented themselves to him, each one detailing a different way that a plating shift, or added kibble, or a combination of both as well as paint would yield a result similar to his memory. This mech was probably a Special Operations agent then. It would make sense with how they were able to find him in such a deep and hidden part of the Temple.

He was quite convinced he was correct when there was a quick and polite knock at the door, and he saw the mech’s plating ruffle in much the same way the black mech’s had when a voice with an accent (96% this mech was from the Towers) and an unhappy tone drifted through the door. “Jazz, Ratchet told me you are in here! Come out before I get Pax to drag you out!” Jazz slowly and silently backed into the corner of the room, slowly turning towards the wall. “And don’t even bother with the vent, I already blocked off the exits. Just come out and we can talk.” Jazz scowled up at the offending vent before slumping his plating in defeat, and turning to Prowl. “Well, it was nice talking to you, Prowl! Maybe next time you could join in the conversation, yeah?” Jazz gave a small wave before he turned and with a dramatic sigh slipped through the door. Prowl heard the yelling begin a few kliks afterward. 

What a strange mech.

Chapter Text

Jazz picked at a rough spot on his plating as he listened to the briefing Ratchet was giving them all in the waiting room of the Medbay. The whole place had been cleared of anyone still conscious and able to move, and the rest were temporarily moved to private rooms for the remainder of the ‘ornly medical inspection.’ All that was left was Ratchet and First-Aid, who Ratchet had briefed just in case another emergency happened, Megatron, Starscream, Orion Pax and Jazz. They had wanted to keep the visit down to as few bots as possible, seeing as Ratchet wasn’t entirely sure the Prime wasn’t going to keel over at any moment. Ultra Magnus had been a little nonplussed at being left out, but Ratchet had insisted that since Jazz had already met the guy and his personality was less …intense (for lack of a better word), he would be a better choice. Jazz was happy with that. He liked being in the loop. He preferred his information to be received firsthand. Less chance of missing anything that way.

He looked up at Ratchet, who was threatening them all with what he would do if anything went wrong. “So to reiterate; he’s weak, he’s scared, and he’s a little pissy. Do NOT provoke him, or I will drag your sorry afts out of here and weld the door shut. Got it?”

“Oh, please, Ratchet. We have more diplomacy than that,” Starscream drawled, turning his servo this way and that to stare critically at his claws. Ratchet rolled his eyes and led them to the door of the Prime’s room. He knocked and went inside for a few moments before opening the door wide and waving them in. Jazz took a deep vent before following Orion inside. This was going to be interesting.

———

Prowl looked up at the knock on his door, his doorwings perking up as much as they could in their bandages. Their sensors were turned off while the stress fractures healed, so the motion was more out of habit than actually collecting any useful environmental data. Ratchet slipped through the door, looking Prowl over once before saying, “They’re waiting out there. I’ll bring them in whenever you're ready.” 

Prowl tried to sit up a little more against the pillows propping him up, venting a little before he nodded. He would have liked to be more presentable for this, but he couldn’t justifiably complain when they appeared to be helping him. It wouldn’t be polite. “I am ready.” Ratchet opened the door and waved the waiting party in. Orion Pax, a mech Prowl knew well from the Council meetings, was the first to step in, followed by Jazz. The mech gave him a small wave and a half smile. The next mech to walk in was Megatron, a bot everyone on Cybertron knew by sight, his glare boring into Prowl. He stared back with a blank expression. He was determined to not give any of these mechs the pleasure of getting a rise out of him. He wasn't a newbuild that could be intimidated so easily. Starscream, the Decepticon SIC, slid into the room after his leader, optics roaming curiously over Prowl’s frame. It made his plating itch.

It was a tight fit in the room, leaving Ratchet to stand in the doorway, a younger looking medic looking over his shoulder and staring at Prowl. Pax spoke first, tone surprisingly gentle and low. “Prowl Prime, my name is Orion Pax, leader of the Autobots, as I am sure you know. This is Megatron, leader of the Decepticons, and his SIC Starscream. I have been told you have already met Jazz.” 

Prowl dipped his head respectfully. “I have, yes. It is a …pleasure to meet you, though I wish it was under different circumstances.”

Megatron scoffed. “And what circumstances would that be, exactly? Seeing our deactivated frames littering the-”

“I agree that the situation is less than ideal,” Orion Pax cut in loudly, continuing on while ignoring the death glare shot his way. “However, it is the one we are in. We are here to civilly discuss what our next steps forward will be.” Prowl nodded, features schooled into a perfect mask of apathy born from centivorns of practice. He understood that he held little power in this situation and prepared himself for the worst. Orion paused as he appeared to be gathering himself for what he would say next. “Though, before any formal decisions are made, I would like to understand what events led to you being here. If I may ask, what exactly were you doing in the Temple?” 

Prowl’s optic twitched minutely. He was unsure of how to answer that. What was he allowed to say about it? How much did he want to say about it? He didn’t necessarily want to tell them anything, but he knew they wouldn’t be satisfied with his silence on the matter. And he would prefer to stave off any forceful interrogations for as long as possible (the back of his neck prickled at the thought), so he supposed the question was: how much could he tell without them being able to use that information against him? He looked to Orion, “As Prime, it is my job to oversee the running of affairs in Iacon, and Cybertron as a whole.” A fact well known by the general populace. “It was decided that my supervision over those matters was required more … directly, for a time.” That was a very poor and vague way to frame what had happened, but hopefully it would suffice. 

“So they hung you up and wired you into a giant control system to do that?” Jazz said suspiciously, the light of his visor dimming as the optics behind it narrowed. “That seems more than a little unnecessary.”

Prowl glared at the visored mech. “I do not expect you to understand how anything like that would work,” he retorted, feeling defensive. Jazz’s plating flared in offense.

“Then maybe you can explain it to us. Please, enlighten us on why you're the only Prime that has ever, to my knowledge, needed to be connected directly into such a system to do their job,” Starscream said scathingly.

Prowl felt his anger flare at the insult. “I didn’t need to do that. It was, however, decided to be necessary-”

“Decided by whom?” Orion interjected, tone serious.

Prowl paused for a klik, thinking over his reply, making sure it was acceptable while still devoid of too much information. “It was a unanimous decision based upon the added efficiency the order would ensure.”

“The order?” Wait, he didn’t mean to- scrap. “Do you mean to tell us that the Council ordered you to do that?”

Prowl was starting to mildly panic now, exhaustion creeping into his mind and making it harder to think. He was too tired for this, he wasn’t thinking right. “It was officially formatted into what one would consider an order, yes. However, it was ultimately my decision to go through with it.”

“But if you didn’t want to, you’d technically be disobeying a direct order from the Council. You’d be committing treason,” Jazz pointed out. While a Prime held a seat on the Council, and they typically had a lot of influence with the other members (though that wasn’t really the case with Prowl in particular), they were still subject to Cybertronian laws and ordinances. The laws and ordinances the Council made. So yes, technically it would have been treason. Not that that had been the biggest factor at the time. Prowl opened his intake and shut it several times, eventually falling silent. Curse his addled processor. What could he say to fix this?

Silence filled the room for a few kliks. Ratchet was the first to break it. “Are you saying that they hooked you up to all that slag and kept you there against your will?” Ratchet growled, his field blanketing the room with a seething rage. 

This was all going from bad to worse very quickly. Prowl’s spark rate quickened. “...I. I-”

“Primus, mech! They had wires connected directly into your processor! They were connected to your thoughts! To you! Without your permission! And all you have to say is ‘yeah, I didn’t like it but hey! Orders are orders’?!” The medic yelled, throwing his arms up.

Prowl stared at him, uneasy and unsure of what to say. Ratchet let his hands drop, an incredulous look on his face. Megatron chuckled darkly. “It seems like even the great Prowl Prime isn’t immune to the Council’s depravity.” 

“Megatron!” Orion snapped. Prowl clenched his servos into fists. He was well aware of what the Council was. If he had a choice he would’ve-

Prowl hissed as pain shot through his spark, machines starting to beep rapidly around him. Ratchet shoved his way over to him, ignoring Starscream’s indignant complaint and immediately plugging into his wrist port. “Okay, time’s up! I want everyone out of here within the next two breems.”

“Clearly there is more going on here than we realized,” Orion said, deep in thought. He turned to Prowl, a look of pity in his optics. Prowl stiffened. He didn’t need pity. “I think we should wait for a final decision on what to do until you are in a better condition. Until then, you will stay here under Ratchet’s authority.” He turned to leave, pausing a beat before adding “I sincerely hope you feel better soon. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.” They filed out one by one, the two Decepticons with matching withering looks. Jazz stopped at the door, giving him one last glance before waving and disappearing into the Medbay beyond. 

Ratchet stayed for a few breems, fussing over him and messing with the machinery and sensors attached to him until the monitors calmed their activity and Prowl was stable, another pain blocker docked into a port and a sedative slowly dripping its way through his IV. Ratchet gave one last huff before ordering him to rest and walking out. Prowl laid there silently for a few moments. His TacNet was whirring with activity, feeding off of his anxiety and telling him all the way that the last few breems could result in worse and worse outcomes. He groaned and shuttered his optics, feeling his exhaustion and the sedative overcoming his worry and fear as he fell into recharge. 

———

“Well, that was quite interesting,” Starscream said, lounging in his chair at the table. They were all back in the meeting room, all more than a little disturbed by what had just happened. 

“That’s one way to put it,” Orion said, rubbing his optics. This whole situation was getting more complicated than he had hoped, though he supposed that it wasn’t going to be easy no matter what. “It’s abundantly clear that there is more to this than meets the eye. If the Council was willing to do something that horrendous to the Prime, then who knows what else they might have done, or were planning to do with him.”

Ratchet huffed. “I’m more worried about how he’s reacting to it. Seemed to think it was a-o-kay as long as they decided it was.” 

“Exactly. Which leads me to think that maybe he didn’t exactly have a choice on the matter. He seemed hesitant when he told us it was the Council’s order. Maybe he is less inclined to agree with them than we originally thought.”

“And what are you suggesting here, Pax. That we recruit him to the cause?” Megatron laughed uproariously. His mirth died at Orion’s silence. “Oh Primus, you are. Pax, you cannot be serious here! He’s the Prime! He sided with the Council! Just because they slagged him over doesn’t mean he’s going to turn around and join us!”

“Or maybe it does. It can’t hurt to make the effort.”

“Perhaps Pax has a point,” Starscream said, wings flicking in thought. “It would be quite advantageous to have the Prime on our side. It would certainly make overthrowing the Council easier to have ‘Primus’ Chosen One’ backing us. Imagine the support we would have if we could get him to publicly denounce them.”

Megatron glowered at the Seeker. “And how do we know that we can trust the glitch!”

“It’s a chance that I think would be quite worth taking,” Orion said. “We will take precautions when the time comes. However, his recovery should take precedence for the time being.”

Megatron growled. “Fine. I will allow you to play nursemaid to the Prime for the time being, but I insist we put a guard on him. We can’t let him out of our sight, or who knows what he’ll do.”

“‘Let him out of our sight?’ He can’t even walk!” Ratchet scoffed. “Besides, if we station guards by him, mechs will start asking questions. The last thing I need is more bots wasting my time in my Medbay.”

“Ratch’s right. We should keep this on the down low as much as possible. The less who know about Prowl being on base, the easier it’ll be for us and safer for him,” Jazz mused. He had been in deep thought since their little chat with the Prime. 

Orion smiled beneath his battlemask as an idea struck him. “I agree with both of you. It would be best to keep an eye on Prowl while also being discreet. We need a reason for the guard to be in the Medbay for regular periods of time. Ratchet, I’m sure you have plenty of work you could use help with?” Ratchet nodded his agreement. “Then it’s settled. We will station guards through the guise of punishment details. Jazz?” Orion watched with quiet satisfaction as Jazz’s face fell. “You will have the privilege of being the first bot in rotation.” Jazz’s intake fell open, indignation filling his field as satisfaction filled Orion's own. Serves him right, the little fragger.

Chapter Text

Jazz huffed and thumped the back of his helm against the foot off the medical berth. He was so slagging BORED. He had been sitting on the floor of the small room sorting scraps and wires for Ratchet for two joors, and the Prime was still asleep! Ratchet had said he would wake up around the one joor mark. The liar . He hadn't moved a nanometer the entire time Jazz was there.

He thought about the instructions Orion had given him after the declaration of his punishment, or as he put it: his “opportunity’’. This was a chance for Jazz to get to know the mech personally, to fill in all of the gaps they had on him. With how little he was able to find before, Jazz could see this for the opportunity it was. And if he was able to get the Prime to side with them? All the better! Jazz was pretty confident he could do it. Sure the guy was cold and standoffish, but who wouldn’t be after all that scrap. He probably just needed time to adjust. Besides, Jazz was awesome! Practically everyone on base loved him, getting on this guy’s good side would be a breeze. It just sucked that it meant he needed to stay on base and off other missions for the time being. Jazz liked going on missions, he liked going places. Now he was stuck sitting here for Primus knows how long waiting for Sleeping Beauty to wake up.

He slumped against the berth, sliding a little across the floor and bumping the scrap bins with his pedes. His digits started tapping a rhythm on the floor and Jazz started to hum, then sing softly. It was one of the latest songs he and Blaster made that Jazz particularly enjoyed, one about the hardships and hopes of life. It had a softer beat to let the vocals and harmonies really shine. He started to softly sing to himself as he sorted the last bits of metal into their correct compartments, eventually giving the song his full voiced baritone towards the end as he finished the last of the impressive pile.

Jazz let out a long, slow vent before he got up, shuttering his optics and stretching his arms out and humming to himself. He twisted his helm this way and that, trying to get rid of the crick forming in his neck cables. Turning around he unshuttered his optics and froze, staring at the icy blue gaze settled on him. He stood there for a few kliks before clearing his throat and looking away.

“...So. How long have you, uh, been up?” Jazz asked awkwardly, staring at the painting on the wall.

“Approximately seven breems,” Prowl replied. Jazz heard shuffling and turned his head to see Prowl leaning forward, trying to sit up. Jazz started to reach out to help him and the mech stiffened, freezing in place. 

Jazz immediately dropped his arms and took a step back. “I’m sorry, you probably don’t trust me enough to touch you, huh?”

Prowl glared at him. “I do not like being touched at all. If I need assistance, I would prefer a medic to do it.” He continued his awkward and slow progress until he was fully seated and leaned forward, letting his doorwings slowly stretch as much as they could in their wrappings. They settled into a neutral position as Prowl side-eyed Jazz warily. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, just helping Ratch with some chores. He’s a busy mech and I had nothing else to do,” he said with a casual wave of his servo.

Prowl narrowed his eyes further, irritation and suspicion flitting through his EMF before he clamped it tightly to his plating. “And you needed to do that in here?”

Jazz shrugged. “What can I say? I enjoy the riveting conversations we have.” Prowl gave an unimpressed look. “Nah, I'm just messing with ya. I just needed somewhere quiet for a bit.” 

Prowl continued to stare at him. “...You are here to keep an eye on me, then.”

Jazz thought for a klik before nodding and leaning back against the wall, crossing his arms and giving Prowl a smile. “Yeah, I ain’t gonna lie to you, mech. You’re looking at one of your guards for the foreseeable future. Not that we’re worried about you doing anything while you’re… well, you know. Just taking precautions.” Jazz shrugged. “Plus, now I can make sure you won’t get assassinated or some slag like that.”

“Is that a concern?” Prowl asked, raising an optical ridge. 

“Nope! Don’t worry, we got top-notch security here. It’s just another precaution, what with all your history and all.”

Prowl furrowed his brow. “My history?”

“Yeah, you know, the whole assassination attempt.” Prowl stared, uncertain. How many times had this guy almost been assassinated? Did he need to be more specific? “The whole ‘took you out for two vorns before we found you’ one?”

Prowl was silent before his optics brightened slightly and he straightened, clearing his throat. “Yes, that… was unfortunate. I- er, thank you for your consideration towards my safety.”

“Yeah no problem, happy to help! By the way, what happened with that whole thing anyway? They never released the details beyond who they thought did it. Which, for the record, we didn’t.” Jazz shifted to face more fully towards Prowl, tilting his head in curiosity.

Prowl scowled at him, his doorwings twitching a little. “Forgive me, but I do not wish to give sensitive information about my near death experience to you.”

Okay, so it looks like the direct approach wasn’t going to work. That was fine with Jazz. He’d had plenty of experience gathering intel in the field and from suspicious and stubborn informants to know when to stop pushing a mech. Sometimes you had to go slow, build a rapport before you started pushing again. And Prowl was clearly tired of being pushed.

Jazz held up his hands. “Sorry, didn’t mean to pry, just curious is all.” He pushed off the wall and sat down on the end of the bed, crossing his legs and earning himself an optic twitch and a glower. Primus, this guy was fun to annoy. “Since we’ll be spending plenty of time together, I was thinking we could get to know each other. Build up some trust, y’know?” 

Prowl gave him an irritated huff. “If this is an example of your usual interrogation attempts, then I worry for your career,” he said with contempt. Okay, that was rude.

Jazz laughed. “It ain’t like that, mech. It’s just gonna be fraggin boring if we’re sitting in silence the entire time I’m here. Let’s see, what’s your favorite color?” He waited for Prowl to answer him, but the mech was very pointedly ignoring him. Too bad Jazz was hard to ignore. “Alright, I’ll guess then. Let’s see…” He leaned forward suddenly, causing the mech in front of him to jerk back, optics wide and wings hiked up. Jazz squinted his eyes before sitting up. “It’s red,” he proudly proclaimed.

Prowl’s face scrunched in confusion. “It is not.”

“Well, you have red all over your plating. So, using the clues at my disposal, the obvious choice is red.”

“Just because a mech’s plating is a certain color does not mean it is their favorite, it is just what they were created with. Unless they painted over it. Besides, I have much more black and white coloring, so one could argue that that one of those would be a more logical choice,” Prowl argued, his wings relaxing a bit.

Jazz shrugged. “Alright then, it’s black.”

Prowl scoffed. “No. I don’t have a favorite color.”

Jazz tilted his head, leaning back to rest his weight on his servos. “Why not?”

“It is an unimportant preference that I never deemed necessary to set.”

Jazz chuckled. “All you gotta do is look at a color, think ‘hey, I like that one a lot’ and bam! In two kliks you have a favorite color. See mine personally is a nice bright blue.” He shifted till he was laying across the foot of the bed, staring up at the ceiling with his legs hanging off the other side. He turned his head to look up at the Prime glaring at him. Jazz wondered if he ever turned that glare off, or if the resting glitch face was a permanent fixture. “It’s all just a bit of good fun.”

“‘Fun’ is also unimportant.”

Jazz laughed again. “Alright, Mr. Hardaft. Next you’ll tell me you don’t have any favorites at all.” Awkward silence filled the room. Jazz propped himself up on his elbows, disbelief filling his field. “Seriously!? Nothing? Not even a favorite food? Favorite music? Favorite anything? ” More silence. “That’s really sad.” Even Ultra Magnus had a favorite kind of music! And Prowl had… nothing?

One of Prowl’s servos fidgeted with the mesh covering his lap. “... As I said, it was unimportant-”

“It doesn’t have to be important, it’s just fun .”

“A Prime doesn’t have time for fun,” Prowl said stiffly. He looked away again and Jazz caught a flit of an emotion pass through his field before he pulled it even closer to himself. Was he… ashamed?

“Well, it seems to me like you have all the time in the world now.” Jazz gave him a smile. "Don't worry, mech. We’ll figure out all your favorites in no time!”

Prowl opened his intake, ready to say either something cutting or even more depressing when they heard loud voices outside of the room. There was a huge bang on the door and Jazz was up, slightly crouched and weapons systems primed and ready. Prowl sat up, fully alert and doorwings in a stiff V. There was frantic and muffled shouting and scrabbling on the other side and Jazz got ready to move forward and see what the commotion was.

———

-A few breems earlier-

“Come on, Sunny! Hurry up! Ratchet will be back any moment!” Sideswipe hissed over his shoulder at his brother. He peered back into the hallway in front of the Medbay as if the grumpy medic would materialize in front of him at any moment. Honestly, if someone said that Ratchet was able to teleport, Sideswipe would’ve believed them. The medic seemed to have a knack at showing up just in time to get them in trouble.

“If you want to try and do this yourself, then be my guest! And don’t call me that!” His brother spit at him, careful to keep his voice down. He focused back on his task, carefully picking the lock on the door to the private medical room in front of him, growling in frustration. This was the fourth door he had tried and still no luck.

“You know, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this. If Ratchet catches us, we’re dead,” Bluestreak said nervously, pacing the room in between the twins. His doorwings were flicking rapidly with nervousness.

“Don’t worry, Blue. We’ve done way worse and gotten away with it. Besides, we promised Hot Rod we’d spring him out in time for movie night,” Sideswipe pointed out. 

“Should we even be doing that? If Ratchet says he needs to stay and rest, then maybe we should just wait for the next one.” 

“Oh please, it’s just a broken arm and a few cracked support struts. Besides, Ratchet just said he needs to ‘sit still for once in his slagging life.’ No reason he can’t do that in the rec room.”

Bluestreak groaned and started fidgeting with his servos. “Fine. But if Ratchet catches us, I’m throwing you all under the bus.” Sideswipe grinned. Bluestreak threatened that every time they roped him in on what Pax had so kindly dubbed as their ‘escapades’. They had only gotten more wild and more frequent when Hot Rod had come on base, much to both Bluestreak’s and everyone else’s dismay.

Sunstreaker finally got the lock, opening the door and voicing his frustration as yet another empty berth came into view. He grumbled as he gathered his picks to go to the next door.  He got up and made his way to the next one when Sideswipe got a ping from Cliffjumper. 

:Sides, Ratchet’s headed your way! You have maybe three breems.:

Sideswipe cursed as he turned to the other two. “He’s coming back! We have three breems!”

“We have three doors left. That’s only time for one!” Bluestreak panicked, doorwings rapidly flapping with anxiety. 

Sideswipe pointed at the one on the far end. “I saw Ratchet coming out of that one a lot earlier, so someone’s definitely in there. Do that one!”

Sunstreaker ran over to the room as Cliffjumper sent Sideswipe another comm.

:He’s almost there! Get out of there!:

Sideswipe could hear the sound of someone stomping down the hallway now. Scrap! He shot across the Medbay, grabbing Bluestreak on the way and slamming against the door to stop himself. “He’s coming! Get this thing open now!” He leaned against it, Bluestreak chanting hurry up in an increasingly faster and higher pitch next to him. 

“What does it look like I’m doing, you slaghead!” Sideswipe was about to respond when the door slid open and he fell in, dragging a yelping Bluestreak down with him as he hit the floor, grunting when the Praxian fell on top of him. He opened his optics and saw a pair of black and white legs in front of him. He slowly looked up and let out a nervous chuckle when his gaze met a bright blue visor.

“Heeeeeeeyyyy, Jazz!” He started to get up, helping Bluestreak at the same time. “We were just, uh, dropping by to see Hot Rod and-”

“Hey, no worries!” Jazz interrupted, straightening and walking forward to start herding them out the door. “You got the wrong room though so if you could just-”

“IS THAT THE FRAGGING PRIME!?!” Bluestreak yelled, frozen in place, optics wider than Sideswipe had ever seen. He frowned in confusion, wondering if Blue had hit his helm in the fall before he looked over Jazz’s shoulder and froze. Sitting in the berth, glaring daggers at them, was, in fact, the fragging Prime. He stared in shock as Jazz let out a groan. 

“No, this isn’t. This is-”

“Looks like the Prime to me,” Sunstreaker said gruffly from his place in the doorway. “Wasn’t he supposed to be all holed up in the Palace after the whole assassination attempt fragged him up?”

“I mean, he isn’t exactly looking too hot right now,” Sideswipe observed. The Prime looked offended at that.

Jazz rubbed a hand over his faceplate. “Listen-”

“Did we save him from being assassinated? Why is he here? Is he a prisoner?” Bluestreak gasped. “Is he joining our side? Is he-”

“Hold up, Blue! This is a complicated situation that-”

“JAZZ! YOU HAD ONE FRAGGING JOB!” All five of them flinched as Ratchet’s voice boomed through the Medbay. “Keep people away from him! And what did you do?! You let these fragging idiots in!”

“Hey-” Sideswipe let out an undignified yelp, ducking the wrench thrown at his helm as Ratchet stormed up to the doorway.

“Don’t say a word! I don’t even want to know what you three were doing in here despite the very clear ban I put on you the klik you dragged that reckless menace into my Medbay this morning!” He pinched his olfactory ridge. “I’m calling Orion, and he can deal with this cause I have absolutely no patience for this.” He pointed to the larger Medbay beyond. “Now get out of here and sit your afts down until he gets here. And not a word, whisper, or comm about the Prime, or whatever punishment Pax decides will be a dream compared to what I’ll think up.”

All three troublemakers sulked into the Medbay, not without sneaking some last looks past a resigned looking Jazz before Ratchet closed the door. They flinched at the yelling emanating through the metal as they headed over to the waiting room and sat down. They stayed silent for a few kliks before Sideswipe broke it. 

“...What the frag just happened?”

Chapter Text

Prowl flinched as Ratchet slammed the door behind Jazz, running a servo down his face as he grumbled to himself. Jazz had received a very loud and thorough lecture from the medic and seemed more than happy to leave at the end of it. Prowl had sat there awkwardly the entire time, unsure of where to look. He had never been the best at social situations in general, and while he had been present for and received many of Sentinel's and Zeta's displeased tirades, it was still uncomfortable to witness.

Ratchet let out a deep vent before turning to Prowl, looking exhausted. "Well, let's get started then."

Ratchet went to work, checking Prowl's bandages and welds and grumbling when he found spots of energon from the metal patches on his frame. Prowl sat stiff and motionless for the whole examination, clamping his EM field tightly to himself, hoping his fear didn't bleed through. He had no delusions that Ratchet couldn't see his discomfort, but he didn't want to look any weaker than he had to. Though he couldn't hide his flinch when his doorwings were checked. Even with the sensors turned off, rendering them completely numb, he couldn't stop the spike of terror at them being touched.

Luckily, Ratchet was quick and it was over soon. Prowl silently let out the vent he hadn't realized he was holding, sending out manual commands to his frame to relax his plating. That wasn't so bad, he thought, trying to convince himself. He looked at Ratchet, typing on his datapad. He didn't seem worried, and his field didn't have any anger in it. That was a good sign. Prowl hoped that was it for today, he really didn't want to handle any more excitement.

"Well, it looks like your frame is healing alright. A little slowly, but that's to be expected with your systems current state, so nothing to worry about there." He set the datapad down and headed over to one of the machines in the room with a small monitor. He began unspooling a cable from it and Prowl immediately froze, dread spreading through his frame. "I do want to run an in depth scan on you though," Ratchet said, back turned to Prowl. "I've only been doing surface scans so far. I didn't want to go too far in without you being lucid for it, but I need to check your coding for any viruses or malware-" He turned around, looking up at Prowl and falling silent, worry filling his field. "Prowl? You okay?"

No, Prowl was not okay. His thoughts were spiraling in his processor, the TacNet spitting out worse and worse scenarios as his optics stayed locked on the cable in Ratchet's hands. Fear ripped through him as he went through each scenario thrown his way. He was vulnerable. He couldn't run. He could try to fight, but it wouldn't make a difference. As soon as Ratchet plugged in, he held all the power imaginable against Prowl. He would have access to all of his coding, his frame. Ratchet would have pure, unadulterated access to Prowl. And he couldn't do a thing about it. He was stuck, locked in imagining the many ways Ratchet could ruin his life all with a single, unassuming cable.

He flinched back, snapping back to reality as Ratchet snapped his digits right next to his audial. "Snap out of it Prowl! Listen, I know this is a very invasive procedure, and I promise you I won't do anything you don't give me clear permission too, got it?"

Prowl hesitated, trying to vent again, trying to calm down. Ratchet hadn't done anything to hurt him so far. In fact, he actually seemed to be concerned about him. If Prowl were more naive he would've almost labeled it as genuine concern for his well being as a bot. He knew it wasn't though. Prowl was the Prime. He was an incredibly useful asset to the Autobots and Decepticons. They needed Prowl to stay alive for now. Ratchet was just insuring their advantage stayed uncompromised and in one piece.

Ratchet was staring at Prowl with intensity. "Prowl, this needs to be done, but we are going to take this as slowly as you need. You deserve to be comfortable with the medical care you receive. I am not going to hurt you."

Prowl almost wished he could believe that. He wished it wasn't the same lie he had heard a thousand times.

Ratchet sighed. "Trust me, I don't want to do this to you. But if you have any spyware or anything hidden in your coding we need to find it as quickly as possible." He stepped back from Prowl, crossing his arms and sending reassurance through his field. "I could give you a sedative-"

"NO!" Prowl shouted, raising his doorwings and flaring as much plating as he could.

"Hey hey hey, it was just an option. Not saying you need to be sedated, only if you want to. We're doing this you're way Prowl. If we need to do it tomorrow, then we will. Just tell me when you're ready."

Prowl hated this. He hated the medic for pretending he actually cared about Prowl. About how he felt. He felt like fighting back, refusing to let the medic near him, but he knew that would end badly. They would just restrain him and tear through him regardless of what happened. That's how it always went. There was no logic in letting his fear get the better of him.

Prowl glared at the medic, throwing some numbers TacNet's way and letting it run his chances at escape. With his current knowledge of the situation (which wasn't a lot), and his knowledge of the base he was trapped in (next to nothing), and his condition (which was bad), his chances currently stood at a bleak 3% chance. He would need more information, more time, and most importantly, these mech's trust to raise that number to any acceptable degree. Fine. If they were pretending to care about him, to try and make him trust them, then he would play along. He would cooperate if it meant any chance of him getting out of here increased.

He shuttered his optics, gathering himself before he opened them and looked toward Ratchet. "…Very well. Let us get this over with."

Ratchet didn't seem too happy with his answer, but he grabbed the cable from the machine again, going slowly and advertising his movements the whole way as if Prowl was a spooked cybercat. Prowl swallowed and opened the medical port at his side. The port at the back of his helm would've granted faster and easier access, but Prowl wasn't even going to try and entertain that idea. He cautiously glanced sideways at the medic to gauge his reaction. Ratchet hesitated only a klik before lining up the cable and slowly plugging it in, narrating his actions as he went. Prowl couldn't suppress the shiver that traveled his frame as it connected with a dull click.

Ratchet turned back to the monitor, facing it so both he and Prowl could see the screen. "Okay, I'm gonna start the program. I'm going to go past your firewalls one at a time, then I'll stop after each and see how you feel. You can tell me to stop at any point, okay?"

Prowl nodded reluctantly. Ratchet typed something into the terminal and soon Prowl could feel a foreign presence start to slowly fill his mind. He immediately hated it and had to lock his joints to stop from ripping the cable out. Maybe restraints weren't such a bad idea. Ratchet was watching him closely, and waiting patiently until Prowl stiffly nodded his permission for the next step. At Prowl's nod Ratchet narrowed his eyes but typed some more in the terminal. He could feel the program creeping up to his first firewall, probing at it gently. Every instinct Prowl had was screaming for him to stop this intrusion. Begging for him to fight it.

His vents started to stutter as his fans turned on, nervously whirring as he felt panic grip him in it's cold servos. As he sat there, sensing that Pit-spawned program hovering at the edges of his processor, looking for a way in, he started to feel anger worm it's way into his spark. This was pointless. He wanted this to be over now. Going slowly would only prolong this horrendous feeling.

Ratchet must've noticed Prowl getting progressively more agitated. "Okay, you know what? Maybe we should do this another day," The medic said gently. He reached over for the cable. "There's no need to push yourself-"

Prowl abruptly let all of his firewalls down all at once, gasping and shuttering his optics as the program suddenly flooded his processor, searching for his coding. It felt wrong. It felt familiar in the worst way possible. It felt like-

"Scrap, kid! You can't just-" Ratchet cursed, exasperation flitting through his field as the monitor started to beep. "Well, what's done is done I guess. Let's just get this over with, then." He turned towards the screen as it started to fill with the coding that made up Prowl's very being. He grit his denta, opting to keep his optics closed. He didn't want to be here. He didn't want this to happen. "You're doing great, kid. Just a few breems of this and it'll be done."

He was typing on that blasted terminal, the sound grating in Prowl's head as he was forced to let this thing enter his head, baring his entire processor and frame to the mech in front of him. "Almost there kid, just a little more to go…" It was too much. It was too much! Prowl was panting now, his joints screaming at him as they scraped against each other, trying to unlock themselves. He needed to run! He needed to move!

"Okay, it's done-" Prowl jerked into action, crying out in pain as he ripped the cable out, the program scattering his thoughts at being disconnected improperly. He didn't care, he needed to get out. TacNet was screaming at him, confused at the sudden loss of intrusion, spitting out nonsense and further addling his pounding head. He barely registered the dull thud when he hit the floor, scrabbling blindly in his tangled sheets as he tried to get… somewhere. Anywhere but here, really. Which was easier said than done when his legs were currently useless.

Someone was shouting, and a pure rush of dread and anger surged through him when he felt someone grab him. He swung his arm back, grimacing at the pain and feeling a sense of dull satisfaction at the grunt he heard as his elbow connected with the face behind him.

"Primus slagging- Prowl! You need to calm down. It's over, you're fine," Ratchet said, impressively calm for having just been elbowed in the face.

Prowl didn't want to calm down, however. So he didn't. Instead he thrashed harder, attempting to free himself from his predicament while trying to wriggle away from the medic's grip, succeeding in flipping onto his back. It was a losing battle, though. His frame was shaking with exhaustion and he led his helm fall to the floor with a dull thud, glaring at the ceiling while his fans worked overtime trying to cool his frame down from overheating.

Ratchet was kneeling next to him, servos firmly but gently holding Prowl's arms still while energon dripped from his busted olfactory, decorating Prowl's sheets with vivid pink spots. He waited a few kliks before venturing to ask, a little nasally, "You done?"

Prowl fixed him with a hard stare. "…Yes." Ratchet narrowed his optics warily before slowly letting go. When he was satisfied that Prowl was actually done, he shifted and started to lift him up. "Wait, I-" He let out an undignified yelp when the medic quickly lifted him up bridal style and deposited him on his berth. He was painstakingly careful with settling Prowl in, much to his growing embarrassment, rearranging the meshes and checking over his loosened bandages.

"Well, I think that went just as good as it was going to," Ratchet said, dabbing at his olfactory with the back of his hand as he started to reattach the monitoring equipment to his patient. "I'm going to bring in my nurse First Aid to help change these bandages while I patch myself up. You okay with that?"

Prowl sunk into the berth, feeling drained. "Yes." He honestly didn't care. He was too tired and anxious to care. Ratchet nodded , looking off a little as he commed the nurse, and soon the other medic Prowl barely recognized slipped quietly into the room.

"Aid, get started on changing the loose bandages. He's probably popped some welds too, so get ready to patch them up," Ratchet ordered, taking a rag from his subspace and dabbing at the steady trickle of energon flowing down his face.

First Aid hesitated a klik before moving towards Prowl, nervousness and awkwardness palpable in his field. "Um, hello Mr. Prime… Sir? Oh wait! Am I supposed to bow? Or something? I've never met a-"

"That will be unnecessary," Prowl impatiently cut off. Usually he would be more of a stickler about proper address and honorifics, as he was trained to be, but he just wanted some quiet right now. His processor was still rearranging itself back to normal and his TacNet was sending him very unhappy percentages of how stupid his little stunt was (they were not appreciated).

The nurse hesitated, but got to work. Prowl watched him with detached interest as he went about expertly removing and swapping the loose fitting wrappings for new, more snug ones and staunching any drips of energon with quick efficiency. It was… more than a little disturbing to see all of the welded spots beading his frame, filling the holes in where hundreds of wire were once embedded. Prowl felt a shiver run down his spinal strut as he thought back to that. It had only been a few orns since they had taken him away from that Primus-forsaken room, but it felt like it had been forever ago.

Ratchet had staunched the bleeding from his slightly crooked olfactory and was now parsing through the previously forgotten code littering the small monitor, looking up here and there to check First Aid's work. He scrolled through it, humming at different points and pausing for long periods at others. Prowl could feel his nervousness increasing as Ratchet's expression became more grim the longer he continued. Finally he stopped and straightened up, turning to stare at Prowl, his face etched with lines of anger. Oh scrap.

"Aid, you can leave now." First Aid, who was in the middle of preparing more gauze, turned to reassure Ratchet that he was fine with finishing, but the words died in his intake when he saw the medic's furious look. He cast a worried glance at Prowl but obeyed, quickly hurrying out the door and plunging the room into tense silence with a click of the lock.

Prowl swallowed hard, keeping his optics locked with the medic. He looked ready to explode, and while Prowl was unsure of what he had done to elicit that reaction, he tensed up, preparing for the worst.

"What did they do to you?" Ratchet growled.

———

"I don't know what you mean," Prowl replied icily. He looked slagged off, tired optics narrowed into thin slits and shoulders hunched. His doorwings gave him away though. Praxian frame types were a rare sight outside of Praxus so most mechs didn't bother to learn how to read the cues the doorwings gave. Though Smokescreen had made sure that Ratchet could understand the Praxian specific body language after Bluestreak showed up on base. The kid could talk circles around anyone to hide how he was feeling, but was slag at masking the emotions shown through his doorwings. You could tell exactly what Bluestreak was feeling at any point by looking at them, if you knew what to looking for. It was nice for when he had to patch the kid up, and an even nicer tell for when he got into trouble with the Twins.

Prowl's wings were telling a fragging story. They were held high, trembling slightly and flicking with nervous energy in sporadic spurts. Ratchet doubted he knew what they were doing with them being numbed, but that worked just fine for him. They told him that the Prime was fragging lying.

He worked to slow the anger building in his lines, taking a deep vent in and out before settling his gaze on the mech in front of him. "Prowl. You don't need to be a genius to figure out what's going on. You obviously don't trust me, you look like you want to kill anyone who touches or comes near you, and I can see you fighting yourself during any procedure or exam I put you through. You nearly had a spark attack at the thought of a deep scan and threw yourself off the berth afterward! Not to mention the obvious physical neglect and abuse you've been through and the fact that I have never, in all my years as a medic, seen anybody's internal coding have that much tampering in it!" Ratchet struggled to keep his voice at a reasonable volume as his fury surged with every word. It was made even worse as Prowl's wings stilled and started to droop slowly. "Almost every single line has evidence of an attempt at revising, removing, or dampening your code in some way, Prowl. Whoever did this tried to alter you entirely! The only good news in this situation is that it thankfully didn't work!"

"…What does it matter if it failed to work?" Prowl's voice was low and carefully void of emotion.

"Because whatever slagheaps did this deserves to rot in the Pit!" Ratchet snarled, anger winning out. He roughly turned the monitor so Prowl got a clear view of it. There were rows and rows of the green lines of his base coding, overlapped with ugly additions and overwrites in red text. There were very few spots that were left untouched. Code-editing wasn't unheard of (especially in war), though the most common and successful kind was temporary, causing small changes that were difficult but not impossible to undo.

Permanent code-editing was a very invasive medical procedure used as sparingly as possible due to the incredibly high chances of side affects and the chronic and irreversible complications it could leave a mech with (personality shifting, imposter-frame syndrome, and in many cases, complete insanity and deactivation). It was used only as a last resort and Ratchet could count the number of times he had attempted it on one servo. It horrified him beyond belief to know that someone would even think about doing this on this scale. It was a Primus-fragged miracle that none of it seemed to have stuck.

Prowl sat motionless, staring at the screen as he slipped back into a mask of apathy. It made Ratchet furious. This mech had been to the Pit and back, and his only outward reaction was veiled terror or complete indifference. This was a mech used to shutting down as a defense mechanism. Though with the few times Ratchet had seen him break, he could only guess at what was lurking in that mech's mind. This was a mech used to pain.

His spark twisted, his medical coding urging him to help fix what was wrong with the Prime. He gave a heavy exvent. It wasn't going to be easy. He knew that Prowl wouldn't make it easy. But he was determined to help this stubborn afthole of a mech, no matter what.

His shoulders slumped in exasperation. "Fine. For now, it doesn't matter. We'll focus on physically healing you up first before we dive into the other scrap you've got going on. But we will be revisiting this issue." Prowl seemed to minutely relax at that, though he was still on edge. While Ratchet very much didn't want to drop the issue, he didn't want to shut Prowl down completely. He'd have a nice yelling-and-drinking session later to get rid of the wrath still swirling in his frame. "Since you're still awake, I've got a lot of blanks in your file I want to fill."

Ratchet sighed at Prowl's immediate bristling. "Oh for the love of- it's all confidential! I'm a fragging medic! I took the medical oath you fragging scraplet. No one will see this scrap but me, not even First Aid." Of course, Prowl didn't seem to believe him, raising an optical ridge in disbelief.

Ratchet rolled his optics, picking up his datapad and clicking on Prowl's practically blank file. "This will help you more than anything else. Makes giving you the right treatment a whole lot easier. Now, any sensitivities or allergies?" he asked, looking up at the gaunt black and white frame in front of him. Prowl hesitated, seeming to think the question over. Probably trying to see if Ratchet could use that information against him somehow. It was incredibly saddening to see a bot reduced to such a suspicious state over such a mundane question.

Prowl nodded once, as if reassuring himself that it was fine and said, "It is not an allergy per se, but I get nauseous and lightheaded when I consume cobalt additives."

Ratchet nodded, quickly adding that to the file. "Great. How tall are you?" Of course, Ratchet already knew, but asking what he considered as 'safe questions' could ease Prowl into getting more comfortable with heavier questions. Not that Ratchet wanted to push the mech much harder than he already had today, but he didn't want to lose the momentum of progress he had. Besides, distracting the mech with simple inquiries seemed to be helping him calm down.

Prowl's wings twitched with a hint of irritation as he answered reluctantly. "… 33 feet."

"And how tall before the whole Prime thing?" Ratchet asked, raising an optical ridge in curiosity.

"… 32."

"…"

"…"

"… You... You grew a foot after becoming Prime." If looks could kill, Ratchet would be six feet under. "Sentinel grew 6 feet after he became Prime. Zeta grew at least 8!" It was incredibly amusing now that Ratchet thought about it. Sure, everyone knew Prowl was on the shorter side for a Prime, but everyone had assumed he'd just been a smaller mech to begin with seeing as Primes usually got much taller after the transformation, and no one could find pictures of the lieutenant from before. He hadn't even noticed that Prowl was technically shorter than him, though he supposed he'd never seen the Prime standing on solid ground. Either way it was obviously a sore spot for Prowl, the mech letting his field loosen enough for Ratchet to clearly feel the irritation oozing off of him.

"There's nothing wrong with being around the average height, Prowl. I'm just surprised is all." He chuckled, typing into the datapad. "Anyway, let's get on with this. When were you constructed?"

A loud crack echoed through the room as Prowl clenched his fist so hard his digits cracked.

Chapter Text

Prowl stared down at his servo. Three of his digits had a myriad of splintered cracks running through them, energon slowly oozing it's way down his servo. Thankfully, whatever painkillers he was on left what should have been an incredible amount of pain a steady pulsing ache.

Prowl kept staring at his servo. He didn't want to see Ratchet's reaction. He had slipped up, letting his surprise get the best of him. He just… hadn't expected that. A heavy silence settled over the room as Prowl kept his head down. His energon was dripping onto the berth now, further staining his sheets. Ratchet hadn't said anything, hadn't moved. His field was completely blank too. Prowl could feel his nervousness reaching a peak. He tentatively looked up.

He expected the medic to be angry or upset. He didn't expect the medic to look so utterly confused, intake hanging open in shock as he stared at Prowl. They stared at each other for a few more kliks before the medic threw up his arms.

"What the frag was wrong with that question?!" Prowl didn't answer as the medic ran a servo down his face before he pulled the cart of supplies closer to the berth. He subspaced his datapad and held out a servo. "Alright, give it here."

Prowl reluctantly reached his hand out, turning his helm away as the medic got to work, turning on a small welder as he went. "You mind telling me why you just did that?" Ratchet asked gently. Prowl furrowed his brow in irritation. He didn't need to be spoken to like a newbuild. He stayed silent though. His spark was still racing and he didn't entirely trust himself to speak. The medic sighed a little. "Look, I get that age can be a touchy subject for some bots, but it's important for a medic to know-"

Age? That wasn't the- Wait. Did the medic think that he was freaked out about someone knowing his age? That was ridiculous. He couldn't care less about someone knowing how old he was. He knew there were some prejudices surrounding a bot being younger and more inexperienced, but he didn't care about that. No one respected him anyway, and it had nothing to do with his age. He turned his head slightly so he could watch Ratchet in his periphery.

"-Now, seeing as your frame has been reformatted, it's a little harder for me to gauge that without being more invasive, which I'm not gonna do. It's easier for everyone if you just tell me. You don't even have to give me your exact construction date-" Ratchet cut off, optics flicking past Prowl's shoulder. Prowl felt a lance of panic as he realized. His doorwings. Scrap. He quickly locked them into a neutral position. He usually kept them locked to avoid giving away any emotion, but without being able to feel them he hadn't noticed that they had most likely been moving this entire time (98%). And if the medic knew what to look for…

"Prowl," the medic paused his work, straightening to look at him more fully. "Is this all because I know you're a Cold Construct?"

This is bad. This is bad. Thiswasbadthiswasbadthiswas-

"That's it?"

Prowl could feel his processor screaming to a halt out of his spiral. He looked at the medic perplexed. "What do you mean, 'that's it?'"

Ratchet looked just as confused as Prowl felt. "I mean that it's not something to be injuring yourself over. It takes a slag medic to not notice when someone's a CC."

"So," Prowl started slowly, "you knew what I was since the beginning?" That didn't make any sense at all. The medic shrugged and started back on his digits.

"Yep. I've treated enough bots to know without a scan at this point."

"But, you- you aren't..." Prowl stammered, trying to make sense of this. It didn't make sense, and he didn't like it at all.

Ratchet looked up at him again, an almost bored look on his face. "Kid, you're gonna crash if you keep thinking this hard. I can practically hear you processor burning."

"But it doesn't make sense!" Prowl snapped, anger quick to take his earlier anxiety's place. "You're treating me like-" He cut himself off, shuttering his optics as he invented as he tried to calm down. This was probably what the Autobots wanted, for him to slip and give them information or a hint of a weakness. He was absolutely determined not to give them anything of the sort. He was mad, in mild amounts of pain, and he didn't want to be here. He briefly considered shorting out his vocalizer, but quickly decided against it. They would just resort to hacking him (86%), and he didn't want that. He wasn't going to be playing any games with them though. He was tired of those.

He opened his optics and saw Ratchet had stopped again, staring at him with a hard look on his face. "I'm treating you like what? A normal bot? You really believe in that whole 'Cold Constructs are inferior to Forged mechs' scrap the Council spits out?"

Well, yes. To put it simply, that's what everyone believed and that was how the world was. Prowl didn't say that though. He could feel the medic's field teasing against his plating, and it was filled with a lot of emotions that he didn't want unleashed on him. He had seen the medic's ire and didn't want to be the subject of it. But he was also nearing the end of his already frayed patience.

So instead he said "I understand that this is some kind of strategy you are employing to get on my good side." He narrowed his optics as he continued in an icy voice. "Unfortunately for you, I find it frankly demeaning and useless. We both know what I am, and it won't do you any good to continue the charade that you care about me. We both know it is a lie. So if you could finish what you are doing and leave, I would very much appreciate it. And when you next come in, you can drop the act."

Ratchet's field flared and his optics brightened with anger. "This isn't an act, Prowl. And the sooner you get it through your thick helm that I am actually here to help you, the better this is going to be for you! My job is to make sure that morons like you stay in one piece and don't die, and that's what I am trying to do here! It doesn't matter to me if your a 'prisoner', and it sure as slag doesn't matter if your a Cold Construct!" He waved his free servo dramatically at the room. "This base belongs to the Autobots. The Autobots who are fighting for equality for all bots! Including fragging CCs! If anything this is the best possible place for you to be in for Primus' sake!" He pointed at the door. "Plenty of mechs out there are Cold Constructs! And you know what? NO ONE FRAGGING CARES! Because they're bots just like anyone else!" He jabbed his digit at Prowl. "Including you! Who care's where or how someone was made! Pit, no one can fragging tell unless they're a medic, it makes no difference!"

Prowl felt his own fury spill over. "It makes a difference when that is how my entire functioning has been! It is a fact that Cold Constructs are treated as inferiors to Forged bots. It is a fact that that is what the majority of the population believes! Unless you were built instead of forged then I do not expect you to understand what it is truly like!" He was shouting now, and he could hear his TacNet telling him this wasn't the best idea, but he didn't care. A lot of feelings were being brought to the surface that he hadn't let himself feel since he onlined. Feelings of injustice, helplessness, and righteous fury all buried under vorns of experience and heavy resignation. "The only reason you are treating me like you would a Forged bot is either because I am important to you or you have not actually seen what life is like outside of a Medbay filled with fools and idealistic dreamers who wish for the impossible!"

Ratchet straightened, letting Prowl's servo drop to the berth. "Or maybe I truly believe that all that slag is just that. Slag. Just because it's the way the world works now doesn't mean it's how it's meant to be." He grabbed Prowls servo again, ignoring his attempt the pull it away as he bandaged the now mended digits. "Whether you want to see it or not, that's what the Autobots and Decepticons are fighting against." He finished, double checking Prowl's monitors and coolant drip before facing him fully. "Your origin isn't going to matter here, and I know you won't believe me, but all the same you don't have to worry about me telling anyone. We'll keep it a secret."

With that he left, leaving Prowl to sit with all of the emotions he was feeling. So the medic knew about his construction, and despite his attempted words at reassurance, he could assume that Pax and Megatron at least knew. This was entirely undesirable. Though if they were going to continue to insist on their little charade (72.3%), he could assume that they would still pretend to be unaware and would treat him more favorably than what he assumed was the standard here. So in essence, his position had not changed. That was good, he supposed.

He flexed his bandaged digits as far as they could go. Luckily, it was his nondominant servo, though it was still a bad slip up. He would have to be much, much more careful with his emotions from now on.

———

Jazz looked up from his chair near the door as Ratchet stalked out of the med suite, murder on his faceplate. "So, I assume everything went great?" Ratchet glared at him as he continued on to where Pax was still giving the trio their lecture. Jazz had zoned out around the bit about following orders and not breaking and entering, though he had perked back up when the muffled shouting had started in the room at his back. He had been sorely tempted to dial up his audials and eavesdrop, but that seemed like a huge overstep with it being the Medbay and all. Besides, if it had been anything besides medical stuff, Ratchet would tell Pax.

He got up and followed behind the irate medic to where Orion was finishing with a 'I'm very disappointed in you' that had Bluestreak squirming guiltily, Sideswipe looking the tiniest bit abashed, and Sunstreaker barely holding back an eye roll. Pax looked over at them as they stopped. "Well, looks like we have some new guards for our guest. Though they will be outside the room." He gave them a pointed look and Jazz swore that Bluestreak was going to offline right then and there. The poor mech hated being in trouble, though he couldn't seem to stay away from the twins long enough to keep out of it. "You three can go."

The troublemakers shot from their seats and booked it out of the Medbay with a speed that could rival Blur. Jazz chuckled and Ratchet scoffed, turning to Orion. "Fine. But they better be on their best behavior or I'm going to smelt them all myself," he said with a little too much heat.

Orion furrowed his optical ridge. "Is everything alright? They swore they didn't hurt him or anything."

"No, they didn't." Ratchet sighed and rubbed his olfactory ridge. Jazz noticed with curiosity that it looked significantly less straight than before. "Pax, it's much worse than we thought. He's fragged up in all the ways I could think of a bot being fragged up, and probably more that I can't even imagine." He looked Orion dead in the optics, engine revving. His voice had so much heat that it could melt tungsten. "I don't know what you or Megatron plan to do with him, but he is NOT going back to that Council! I'm not going to let him."

Orion looked about as taken aback as Jazz felt. Sure, Ratchet was protective of his patients, but this was leaps and bounds above his normal level. It only served to launch Jazz's curiosity even higher. What in the Pit was the Prime's deal? He needed to know, and the lack of information was aggravating.

Orion placed a placating servo on the medic's shoulder. "You mean we won't let him. I don't plan on giving him back to the Council, and I promise that Megatron doesn't want that either." Oh, Jazz was sure that's the last thing good ol' Megsy wanted. Though, probably for less noble reasons than these two. "You're his medic, is there anything more we can do to help get him… 'unfragged up?'"

Ratchet seemed to calm down a little, bringing him to only moderately slagged off. "I've got a plan for Prowl's physical recovery, but a lot of his slag is gonna be psychological. I was thinking of bringing in a psychiatrist when he's ready, but he's gonna need a lot more time before he even considers agreeing with that," Ratchet huffed in irritation. "He's pretty convinced that we're all just waiting to slag him over the first chance we get. It's gonna take a lot of effort to gain even a little of his trust."

"Yeah, I figured that was the case," Jazz shrugged. "But hey! You've got the best bot for the job! He's gonna like me whether he wants to or not."

Ratchet rolled his optics and Orion chuckled. "I'm glad to see your confident, old friend." He turned to go. "Now, I have to inform the others about the new guards," Orion winced. "Wish me luck." Jazz waved as he left, not envying the shouting that was soon to be heard half across base. Putting the Terror Twins and Bluestreak in charge of guarding the most high profile 'guest(?)' they had was not going to be a popular decision. Though at least if they stayed outside of the room then Ratchet could keep an optic on them. Pair that with Hot Rod's medical leave and at least the base would get a nice reprieve from their mischief.

"Jazz, I think you should stay out of there for the rest of the orn. Prowl's gonna need a Pit of a break for a while."

Jazz tilted his helm, but nodded. He wanted to know why, but he knew better than to bother Ratchet with things he didn't want to tell. Especially when he was still mad. He moseyed his way over to his chair (he might need to bring his office chair down here, that thing was harder than rock) and plopped himself down in it. He still had a few joors to go on his guard shift, so he busied himself by pulling up his encrypted comm channel and sending over a message to a certain mech. It grated on him to do this, but he needed more information, and he didn't have the necessary connections to get it. But he did.

:Hey, Sounders! You got a minute?:

Chapter Text

Jazz sauntered into the rec room, searching around for the mechs he was looking for. It was early enough in the morning that the space only held a few bots at the moment, all still rubbing recharge out of their optics and trying to wake up with a cube of warm energon. He waved to a few as he passed them, getting a warm greeting from Hound and the bird from Astrotrain.

He smiled widely as he spotted a blue and yellow mech sitting at a table in the corner studying a datapad with rapt attention, a still sulky Bluestreak sitting next to him and staring at his untouched cube. He made his way over and slid into the seat across from him. "Smokey, my mech! How's it hangin'?"

"Hey, Jazz! Give me a klik, I'm just ironing out some last details…" Smokescreen said with a twitch of his doorwings, not even bothering to look up.

Jazz leaned forward with interest. "Oh? You got a new bet going?"

"No, I'm finishing up an assignment. Honestly, Jazz, I'm hurt that you'd even think I'd do something so degenerative and unprofessional as setting up a betting pool," Smokescreen lamented, putting a servo to his chassis in mock offense.

"Ultra Magnus get on your case again?" Jazz asked with amusement, raising an optical ridge.

"Yep," Smokescreen said with a pop, still not looking up. "Something about how I shouldn't organize bets on how long it'll take Ratchet to realize Deadlock likes him or something like that." He shrugged. "Apparently he didn't see it for the good clean fun it is."

"Deadlock sure didn't," Bluestreak said, perking up. "You should've seen his face when Swerve blabbed to him! He was SO mad I thought Smokey was a goner! Then Ultra Magnus waked in and Swerve told him everything and he was so mad too it was kinda funny but then he started going on about rules and regulations and I zoned out a bit and-"

"Long story short-," Smokey cut in, typing away, "-you can expect your shanix back by the end of the decaorn." That was a shame. Jazz was sure he had a fighting chance placing his bet on 3 millennia. Say what you will about Ratchet, he wasn't very observant if he still wasn't getting the hint after centuries of flirting.

"That's cool. Hey, I did want to ask you guys a question though." Bluestreak straightened as curiosity filled his field. Smokescreen flicked a wing to show he was listening. "What kinds of fuels do Praxians like?"

Smokescreen looked up, doorwings drawing forward. "Why do you need to know that?"

Jazz shrugged, sitting back nonchalantly. "Oh, just wanting to treat a friend to some fuel and wanted to put some thought into it, y'know? Thought I'd ask around to get some different opinions."

Bluestreak leaned forward eagerly. "Oh, I personally like a lot of mercury in mine! I think a lot of us do, it's always popular in the cafes back in Praxus. Smokey likes manganese more though, something about the 'mouth feel' but that doesn't really matter to me at all I mostly care about the taste like zinc since it has that tang but nickle is nice too especially when you add it with the zinc then it has a nice kick to it but-"

"A friend? Or a friend?" Smokescreen set his datapad down with a sly grin, attention fully on Jazz now.

Bluestreak looked confused before realization came to him and he leaned forward even more till he was halfway across the table. "Ooooh, this is for a friend?" He said, wings wiggling excitedly.

Jazz laughed easily, waving his hand. "Nah mechs, you got it wrong. He's just… I don't think he's been out much and I wanted to show him some new stuff. Broaden his horizons by taking the experience to him, y'know?"

Smokescreen tilted his head, optics searching Jazz's faceplate for something. Unfortunately for him Jazz wasn't giving him anything to go off of, keeping an easy smile on his face. "Is he Praxian? Cause if he is I'd stay away from certain fuels," he said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms across his chassis.

"Oh? Like what?"

"Cobalt, beryllium, and vanadium. Of course it's up to individual preference, but it's common for us to be sensitive to those three in particular."

"Oh, I hate beryllium!" Bluestreak cut in. "It makes me all nauseous and light-headed, it's terrible. Once, our mentor accidentally put it in our cubes and we all got so sick that Smokey-"

"Okay! No beryllium, got it," Jazz interrupted, moving to get up. As much as he would love to hear the end of that lovely story, he was supposed to get to his fun new assignment soon.

"So he is Praxian?" Smokescreen asked innocently.

Jazz rolled his optics, moving his helm with the motion so the gambler could see him do it. "Yes, Smokey. But to save you a lot of trouble and a lot of misplaced bets I'm gonna tell you now: we aren't dating, you don't know him, and no, I'm not telling you anymore about it."

"I have no idea what you mean," the psychologist said with a smirk. Jazz chuckled as he glanced to the side and had a horrible moment of realization about the same time as Bluestreak seemed to. He had forgotten the young mech had actually seen the Prime and would know he was a Praxian frame type. Whoops. Bluestreak's jaw dropped and he looked like he was about to say something-

"Well, gotta run! See ya Smokey!" he said casually as he quickly snatched Bluestreak's arm and started hauling the bot with him.

"Hey, where are you-"

"Orion just commed asking me to bring Blue to his office. It'll just be a few breems," he lied over his shoulder pauldron. He could feel Bluestreak stumbling as he tried to keep up but he didn't slow down. He gave Smokescreen a quick salute as he slipped out the door and dodged around a yawning Thundercracker, all but dragging the grey sniper behind him until he reached a convenient looking closet. He quickly shoved the mech in it with a startled squawk, closing the door behind them. "Sorry bout that Blue, but ya can't be telling anybody, and I mean anybody, about this whole thing we got going on. Especially Smokescreen."

Bluestreak ducked his head in embarrassment. "I know, I'm sorry! It's just this is all so exciting and I was caught up thinking about different additives and stuff that your friend might like that it caught me by surprise when I realized who you were talking about and I know Orion said to stay quiet about it but I'm not that great with secrets and I usually tell Smokey everything anyway even if I'm pretty sure he isn't listening all the time I mean I know he tries but I know I can ramble on and on and-"

"Blue-," Jazz interrupted, putting his servos on the mech's pauldrons,"-mech, I need you to focus, okay? You can't tell anyone about this. Not even the smallest detail. If you feel the need to talk about it then you can talk to me in my office, and only in my office, got it?"

Bluestreak nodded, clamping his intake closed. Jazz stared at him a little longer before he sighed and let go. "Good. Now go make yourself scarce for a half a joor so I don't look like too much of a liar."

———

Jazz hummed as he walked into the Medbay carrying a tray full of cubes of energon, each one with a different additive or mix in it. First Aid greeted him cheerfully as he made his way to the back of the bay. "Hi Jazz! Ratchet's back in there so you might have to wait a bit."

"Alright, thanks Aid!" Jazz stopped in front of a dozing Sunstreaker sitting on the floor by the med suite's door. He was surrounded by stacks of old cans of polish Ratchet had given him relabel. Jazz lightly nudged the gladiator's pede to rouse him as he sat in the chair next to him, earning him an irritated grunt. "Y'know, the floor's an interesting choice."

Sunstreaker grumbled as he got up, stretching to loosen up his probably very sore struts. "Apparently, Ratchet considers the chair a privilege I haven't earned yet."

"I'd have more pity for you kid if you hadn't made the conscious choice to be a cretin," Ratchet said as he emerged from the room. He stopped to look at Jazz's tray. "That for Snappy in there?"

"Yeah, thought it'd be fun way to start the morning. He hasn't fueled yet, right?"

Ratchet shook his head. "I had him on a drip til last night. He should be fine drinking it himself now. Just don't go overboard, he's still touchy from yesterday."

"Noted. Thanks Ratch!" The medic held the door open for Jazz as he walked in. He barely had time to open his intake for a greeting before Prowl raised his helm to look at him and immediately groaned, flopping back onto his pillows. Jazz stopped in his tracks, mildly offended. "What was that for?"

"I had hoped that I would have at least some peace this morning before someone came to ruin it." He narrowed his eyes at the ceiling. "I had also hoped that it would not be you."

Jazz glared behind his visor, definitely offended now. "Jeez, Ratchet was right. You are touchy today."

That seemed to offend Prowl, who managed to glare even harder (really, it was a talent at this point). "Well pardon me. Whatever you have planned to bother me with, just get it over with." REALLY touchy today. Oh, this was going to be fun.

Jazz smiled as he nudged the empty medical cart over to the visitor chair with his hip and set his tray down. He made a show of shifting the chair into an acceptable position, making minute adjustments and brushing off the seat before he (carefully) plopped himself down on the edge of the med berth. He beamed at the very irritated Holy Leader of Cybertron. "Fine, since you don't want to have any fun we'll do this quick." Jazz grabbed a cube of energon with technetium flakes in it and presented it to Prowl with a flourish.

Prowl stared at it. He looked at the other cubes. There were fifteen in total (Jazz had wanted a good variety). "I'm not going to be able to drink all of this."

Jazz rolled his optics, once again making a show of it. "Duh. You're not supposed to finish them all. This is the first installment of what I'm dubbing as 'Prowl Discovers Normalcy' time, and we're finding your favorite energon today."

Prowl gave Jazz a deadpan look before he looked down at himself and started messing with the monitor wires and cables hooked to his chassis, lightly tugging on them. "Um, whatcha doing there, buddy?" Jazz asked.

He looked Jazz dead in the optic. "Looking for my life support."

Oh, so he was a comedian now. Jazz batted his hand away from the setup. "Har har. I didn't know comedy was a Primely requirement." He narrowed his optics as he noticed the new bandages on one of his servos. Interesting. "Look at it this way; the sooner you do this, the sooner you could get me out of here and you can get back to brooding or whatever you do in here." Another sharp glare. Jazz was racking those up. He offered the cube again, tilting his helm and giving the mech an encouraging smile.

Prowl seemed to think it over before he sighed and started to sit up. Jazz scooted away a little and remembered to keep his servos away this time. It took a bit, but the Prime finally managed to sit up with minimal grunts of discomfort. He glared at the cube in Jazz's servo before he took it. He held it up and examined it for a bit. "What's in it?"

"Technetium flakes," Jazz supplied, swinging his legs back and forth over the edge of the berth. "I didn't know what you liked so I asked around for some ideas. Those are my buddy Blaster's favorites, straight from the mech himself." Prowl looked at the cube suspiciously. "It ain't poisoned or nothing of that's what your worried about," Jazz informed.

"Forgive my skepticism of your 'honesty'," Prowl replied waspishly.

Jazz laughed. "C'mon mech, I know you're not stupid. If we wanted to poison you we would have done it by now, and in a much easier way than handing it to you and hoping you drink it."

Prowl glowered at him, mulling that information over before huffing and taking a small sip. He immediately scrunched his olfactory and thrust the cube back to Jazz. "That is foul!"

"Yeah, I never understood why Blaster likes that slag."

Prowl looked at him in angry bafflement. "If you knew it was disgusting, then why did you give it to me?"

"Call it payback for the attitude earlier," Jazz said with a satisfied smirk. "Besides, you're kinda weird so you might've liked it. And anyway, at least the rest of them will taste a lot better by comparison."

"That is childish," Prowl snapped, still grimacing and swallowing to try and get rid of the taste. Yeah, that stuff was nasty. Jazz had no regrets.

"Yeah, it is. Anyway, here's the next one: cerium infused." Prowl frowned. "I promise the rest of them are fine," Jazz laughed.

It took a few more breems of convincing, but eventually Prowl began to try them all. Turns out he had one Pit of a poker face, and Jazz couldn't tell how he felt about any of them until he told him (albeit very reluctantly). He had hoped he could gain a clue with the mech's doorwings, but they were motionless behind him the entire time. Jazz didn't know much about doorwings, or the frame language attached to them beyond knowing when someone was happy, sad, scared, or fragged off. He knew it was more intricate than that and decided to enlist Bluestreak to help him learn. Though, he didn't know what good it would do if Prowl's wings didn't move. He wondered if he could lock them like any other joint. Another thing to ask Bluestreak about. That was bound to be a long conversation.

What he did find out was that all of the blends were new to Prowl. All of them. He considered each one carefully before getting his feedback wheedled out of him, even with the most basic copper or tin blends you could find literally everywhere. That was baffling to Jazz. Had this mech never had anything but plain energon his entire functioning? He couldn't have been too young since he had served under Sentinel, making him at least one million. That was plenty of time to try a few energon flavors here and there no matter how busy a bot was, though Jazz thought he was probably older just based on vibes alone. Once again, Jazz deduced that either A) Something deeper was going on here, or B) Prowl was just a really really boring mech. Though with Ratchet's declaration last night, he knew which one he was leaning towards. Primus he hoped Soundwave got back to him soon, he was itching to make some concrete progress on this little mystery.

The experiment ended when Prowl tried the last cube (mercury), taking a moment to think before handing it back to Jazz. "That one was… pleasant," he relented. It almost looked like it pained him to admit it.

Jazz set the cube back on the tray with the rest. "Alright, what's the verdict?"

"You are still annoying."

Jazz snorted. "I mean if you want to be stuck with technetium flakes then I could mention something to Ratchet…"

Prowl gave a long-suffering sigh. "…I found the manganese to be the most enjoyable, I suppose," he grumbled.

"And look at that folks! We have officially found Prowl Prime's first favorite thing! Up top!" Jazz held out his servo. Prowl stared at it (he sure stared a lot) unimpressed, making no move to high five Jazz. "K, we'll work on that," Jazz brought his servo down. "But you see how easy that was? Trust me, with some time and some more episodes of 'Prowl Discovers Normalcy,' we'll get you so many favorites your helm will spin."

"Wonderful," Prowl said in the most bored voice imaginable. "Now that you've done… whatever that was-"

"'Prowl Discovers Normalcy'"

"…"

"It'll catch on. Trust me."

"…Right. But now that you are done, you can leave now."

Jazz plopped down on the berth so that he was parallel with Prowl, his helm resting by the other's pedes. "Nah, I think I'm good."

"What?! But you said-"

"I said, 'The sooner you did it, the sooner you could get me out of here.' I never said I would get out of here," he interjected, wiggling a little to get more comfortable. He raised his helm a little to peer at the incredibly enraged mech before him. "So when does the brooding begin? Is it before or after you curse me out?"

Turns out it was after.

It also turns out that Prowl knew a lot of curse words.

Chapter Text

"This is it. This is the orn. Mark it on the calendar, Starscream. As of today, Orion Pax has officially gone insane." Orion thought that was a little dramatic, and more than a little unfair.

"Megatron, I understand that this is not a very favorable result, but I believe that-"

"No. No, I am not listening to another thing that comes out of your demented processor," the grey mech interrupted. He pinched his olfactory ridge. "There is no way in all of this Primus forsaken galaxy that you thought assigning the Terror Twins to be the Prime's guards was a good idea! Wait. No, I'm wrong. If anyone were to ever make a decision as dumb as this, it would be you."

Orion bristled his plating a bit. "It was not a dumb decision, it was the best decision. The Twins had already seen the Prime. Now that they know of his existence, the best way to ensure they keep the secret is to give them direct stakes in this. Now that they have official orders to keep this quiet and to keep others away, they are more likely to obey."

"More likely being the key phrase there," Starscream chimed in. "Last time I checked, those little menaces don't have a record of following orders."

"You don't have to remind me," Orion sighed. Sometimes running the army felt a lot more like mentoring a bunch of deranged teenagers than he would like it to. "But all the same, it was either this or just telling them not to say anything." It was a very lose-lose situation in his opinion, but what was done is done. "Besides, we needed more mechs for the job and now we have more than just Jazz on rotation."

Starscream sneered. "I noticed that this roster is very Autobot heavy."

"This is Autobot HQ. Of course it is."

"Starscream makes a good point. What's the matter, Pax? Do you not trust us Decepticons with this responsibility?" Megatron challenged.

Orion stared at him, unimpressed. Sometimes dealing with the ex-gladiator was just plain aggravating. No, actually it was most of the time. "Not at all. If you would like to add some of your own mechs, I'd suggest you take it up with Ratchet. It is his Medbay after all." Megatron hesitated at that. Even the Decepticon's fearsome leader didn't want to bother the medic who had very vocally and publicly tore him a new one the last dozen times a Decepticon had trashed his Medbay. He had already placed a flat ban several of them, the last being Skywarp when he had accidentally warped into the middle of a surgery. Though in his defense, he did have a concussion at the time.

Megatron growled. "I will let this go as long as any new additions are agreed upon by both of us."

"Very well," Orion agreed. He really wanted to escape back to his office and take a few joors before the next thing went inevitably wrong.

"I still don't like all three of the guards being Autobots," Starscream sniffed.

"So, it's four, actually… Bluestreak was with them." Both Decepticons stared at him for a long, long moment.

Megatron groaned. "This is officially the worst idea you've ever had."

———

"This is officially the worst idea you've ever had!" Bluestreak whisper yelled at Sideswipe. He was leaning against the door to the Prime's room, grinning at him.

"No it's not, and you know it. Besides, it can't be a big deal if Jazz is allowed in."

"Jazz didn't break to try and hide from Ratchet the first time!" Bluestreak hissed, trying to keep his voice low. "Besides, I don't want to spy on the fragging Prime just because your curious."

"Come on, Blue," Sideswipe pleaded. "We both know that if you're caught that you have a lot better chance of getting away with it."

"It's still a hard no." Bluestreak half turned away from him, crossing his arms. He didn't say no to the Twins nearly as often as he should, but he wasn't going to mess around with the Prime involved. Or official orders directly from Pax. He wasn't dumb enough for that.

Sideswipe stepped towards him. "Blue-" He cut himself off abruptly as Ratchet stepped out of his office/habsuite, muttering as he stalked towards them. "Sideswipe, if you aren't bleeding then I suggest you walk right out of here before I put you to work. The floor tiles could use a thorough scrubbing." At the mention of extra chores Sideswipe beat a hasty retreat with a quick goodbye slung Bluestreak's way.

Bluestreak wilted as the medic grabbed a cart standing nearby and started bustling around the otherwise empty Medbay. "I'm gonna have to do that, aren't I?"

Ratchet grunted as he loaded up the cart. "Nah, I got something else I need help with at the moment. I'll save that for when he comes back," he smirked. He took a few breems to finish collecting what he needed and wheeled the cart towards the back room. "Alright, let's see how Snappy's doing."

"Snappy? I thought his name was Prowl?" Bluestreak asked, wings tilting in a curious cant.

Ratchet scoffed. "Yeah, but I can't say his name out loud without blowing this whole thing, and it seems to fit him well enough." He unlocked the door and opened it, pushing the cart inside. Bluestreak looked away as he did, unsure if he was allowed to look inside (probably not), and was caught by surprise when Ratchet grabbed his arm and dragged him into the room. He whipped around to stare at Ratchet in confused terror, but his optics caught on the piercing blue gaze of the Prime sitting up in his berth. He looked mad. Was he mad at Bluestreak? What had he done? Ratchet had dragged him in here, something he had been trying to prevent Sideswipe from convincing him to do since he had switched Jazz out and now he was in deep trouble cause Orion had told him very explicitly to stay out of the room and-

He yelped when Ratchet flicked him on the chevron. "Jeez, kid. Deep vents. By the Pit, you'd think I just murdered your entire family the way your reacting."

Bluestreak was mildly panicking. "But Orion told me to not go in here at all and to stay out and I was trying and you-"

"First," Ratchet held up a digit, "I dragged you in here, so if anyone will be getting in trouble it'll be me. And I won't. Two," he held up another, "I needed help with this and you were the only option available, so here we are." He turned back to his cart and started laying things out neatly. Bluestreak was still incredibly nervous about all this and was trying to avoid staring at the Prime, who seemed really pissed now.

"What do you mean you needed help? With what? And why him?" The Prime's voice was filled with venom and it terrified Bluestreak a little. He could feel his wings lowering and coming together. The Prime's optics flicked over to him for a brief moment before turning back to Ratchet with unsettling heat.

Ratchet fully ignored the glare the Prime was trying to kill him with, turning to him and stating calmly, "Your frame's seems to have healed well enough for me to start working on the problems I've had to put off while you were still too weak." The Prime flared his plating at the last word and Bluestreak took a step back. Even with his haggard state, the mech was very intimidating. He looked very very unhappy about all of this. "I want to start on your legs, but what I need to do is a lot easier with two sets of servos. Now, I would have liked to call in First Aid but he's taking a few personal orns off to be with a visiting friend, and none of the other medics know about you, so that limits me to the morons who do." He hooked his thumb at Bluestreak. "That's Bluestreak." He turned to Bluestreak and gestured lazily at the Prime. "That's Prowl. Now, let's get this started."

Bluestreak flared his doorwings in alarm as his nervous field clashed with the Prime's enraged one. "No! You aren't going to get started! He's not a medic!"

"Yeah, Ratch, I am definitely not qualified to help you with this."

The Prime thrust his arm out and gestured at him. "See? Even he admits it!"

Ratchet sighed. "Blue, did you finish your first aid training yet?"

Bluestreak furrowed his optical ridge. "Yeah, a decaorn ago but-"

"That's qualified enough for me." Prowl opened his intake. "And the law, as long as a certified medic is present and he doesn't do any major part of the procedure. Besides, he won't be doing too much more than handing me stuff."

Prowl growled, his engine revving a little. "I do not give my consent for him to assist you with working on me. It would be a direct confidentiality breach to tell him anything further."

Bluestreak looked at Ratchet, who shrugged. "Well then, I guess we'll have to wait until Aid gets back for you to walk."

Prowl visibly stalled at that. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "You are going to get me to walk again?"

Ratchet nodded. "Well, the first step would've been today, and tomorrow we could've started on getting you actually moving a bit. But we can wait a few orns for that, no big deal." He grabbed the cart and walked towards the door. "Move it Blue." Bluestreak was all to happy to whip around and reach for the control panel.

"Wait."

Bluestreak paused with his servo held up and Ratchet turned back to look at the Prime, who seemed marginally less angry than before. "How long will it last?"

"About 2 joors."

The Prime hesitated for a few more kliks before he turned his hard gaze on Bluestreak. He swallowed hard, still fearful of the icy blue optics boring into him. "…I will… try it, if you are adamant about this. But the klik he makes a wrong move or a mistake, I want him out."

Ratchet pushed the cart back and turned to Prowl. "Just say the word and he's gone."

He started getting the supplies ready and Bluestreak looked longingly at the door. Sure he was curious to know more about all this, but it made him nervous to be in the small room with the black and white mech. Plus, he had just finished his first aid training and probably was probably not the best candidate for the job. That also made him nervous. "You sure you don't want someone else to help?" he asked hopefully.

"Truly, your confidence is inspiring," the Prime snapped sarcastically, making Bluestreak droop a little.

"Oh- I didn't- I mean I don't think I'm gonna mess up or anything. Really, I'll try my best but I just figured that someone else with more experience would be better like… well okay I don't know who's allowed in here and you probably wouldn't want Sunny or Sides to try but maybe Orion or Jazz or maybe you should wait for First Aid to come back I mean what's a few more orns in the long run I mean I guess not being able to walk would really suck and no one likes staying in the Medbay too long and-" He snapped his jaw shut when he noticed the Prime's expression. He looked surprised and a little freaked out. Well, at least he wasn't mad anymore. "Sorry! I know I can be a lot, especially when you first meet me since I talk a lot and-" He jolted when Ratchet gently tapped his arm. "Sorry Ratchet! I'll try to be quiet." His armor clamped down in embarrassment.

Ratchet chuckled. "Nah, kid. You're fine, I just need you to move back from the door."

"Oh, sorry!" Bluestreak shuffled out of the way, trying not to bump anything. Primus, there was a lot of monitors and other stuff in here.

"Again, you're fine. Just need to grab some more stuff." He shot a warning look at his patient. "I'll be back in a few breems. Be. Nice."

———

Prowl glared at the door as the medic left. He didn't need to be told to be nice. It was patronizing. And useless. He wasn't nice. He had been told that many, many times, usually followed by a colorful selection of nicknames. He looked at the grey and red mech at the far end of the room who looked equally unhappy with this latest development, though he was thoroughly more panicked than Prowl was. His doorwings were hiked in a sharp V and he looked mildly terrified. Good. Prowl didn't need more mechs being comfortable around him. It usually led to them being dismissive of him or falsely friendly. Or in some bot's case, incredibly irksome.

He elected to ignore the other mech's presence as he looked at the medial equipment Ratchet had dragged in here. It all looked equally sinister to him and he quickly looked away as he felt trepidation creeping up on him. He probably should have waited for the nurse. Even if they did give him the use of his legs, he would still be confined. Possibly even restrained now. But his odds of escape greatly increased if he could walk (up an additional 10%, so still bad but better nonetheless), and he honestly didn't want to wait. Maybe next time Jazz sat on his berth he could kick him off. That thought was a definite motivator.

"Soooooooo….." Oh Primus. "I'm sorry, I really didn't want to come in here, but Ratchet dragged me in. I get that you aren't really happy with me or something and you probably hate me-" Not necessarily, but that could quickly change. "-but I promise I'll do my best to help," the mech (Bluestreak, TacNet supplied) said, keeping his optics down and picking at the plating on his arm. Prowl looked at the bot. He was a Praxian. And definitely on the younger side. That was good. Unless he was a really good actor with his body language (23% likelihood with his age), Prowl could probably tell a lot about him by his doorwings. They seemed very expressive, almost staying in constant motion. Which meant he would most likely have at least one or two obvious tells. He wondered if he could get any good information out of him. He had seemed to like to talk a lot with his earlier chattering.

"It is fine. I understand that you do not want to be here, and I will not hold it against you," he said, aiming for a neutral voice to hopefully ease the bot into a sense of calm. It appeared to work staggeringly well as Bluestreak perked up with impressive speed.

"Oh, good! I was kinda worried you'd be really mad at me since you're so scary and all, so I'm really glad you aren't! So since you're the Prime, what do you want me to call you? Cause I've just been thinking of you as 'the Prime," but Ratchet said your name was Prowl and I don't know if you want any titles or anything like that since you are technically the highest ranking bot in all of Cybertron-"

Prowl cocked an optical ridge as the monologue continued. He was honestly surprised that he wasn't entirely annoyed with it yet. He decided to interrupt the flow of one-sided conversation before it got somewhere thoroughly unhelpful. "Prowl is fine. Your name is Bluestreak, correct?"

"Oh! Yeah! My mentor named me that since I like talking so much, he says I 'talk a blue streak' all the time! So does my older brother, Smokescreen. He's on base too, oh! Maybe you could meet him some time! There aren't a lot of Praxians on base and I bet he'd be really glad to talk to someone new. He likes new people. Although, fair warning, he might think you're dating Jazz." WHAT? "He's already got a betting pool and everything-"

"I am not dating Jazz!" Prowl snarled. Bluestreak hunched up a little, taken aback by his outburst. "Why would anyone think that? Did he say we are?! Because we most certainly are NOT!" What kind of strategy is this?! What could he gain from this?!?! As he understood it, his presence here was supposed to be secret. Was it just some new way of pissing him off? If it was, it was working. He could feel his plating ruffling. Even the thought of being romantically involved with that idiotic, annoying-

"No no no, he didn't say that! Actually he said you weren't. Smokey just kinda assumed that you were cause Jazz asked about what fuels Praxians like and Smokey got all curious and Jazz said he wanted to help a friend try some new things and Smokey didn't believe him that the friend was really a friend and not a friend and Jazz said to drop it and I only know it's you because I saw you and-" Oh. Well. That solved that, he guessed. It also explained the whole fuel trial (he wasn't calling it that stupid name) earlier that orn. It was still odd though. Why bother with finding out Praxian preferred energons when he could have just chosen any at random and Prowl wouldn't have known the difference. It did correlate with his running theory of the Spec Ops agent just trying to get on his good side. Yes, that was most likely it.

"-and- Oh, I'm sorry, I've been talking a lot. I'll stop," Bluestreak said, blushing slightly, his doorwings tilting down with embarrassment. "You probably don't want to hear all that."

"No, it is fine. Please, continue." To say the young mech was ecstatic was the understatement of the vorn. He immediately launched into a new spiel that led into a dozen different topics. Prowl thought that he would quickly get fed up with all the chatter, but he found himself oddly enjoying it. It was a nice change of pace to the previous silence he had suffocated in for vorns prior. It also vaguely reminded him of walking through the Senate buildings with all of the idle chatter and hushed conversations that would happen around him. It was… familiar in a way. His TacNet certainly liked it. It happily grabbed onto each word the mech spoke and dissected it for information at a rapid pace it seemed very pleased with. It was stimulated in a way it had been lacking since his… forced liberation (he was unsure if it counted as a capture if he was not entirely sorry it had happened) that occupied it nicely, freeing up more of Prowl's processor for his own thoughts. He listened to the one-sided dialogue about Bluestreak's friends (Prowl's other guards and another who seemed incredibly accident prone), absently looking through TacNet's analysis for any useful information.

By the time Ratchet got back and cut the elated bot off, he had gathered some contextual clues about the base and the bots in it. Mostly about the bots in it. Mostly about Bluestreak's friends. Nothing he could concretely use just yet, but it was a good foundation for future details regarding an escape, or at least a way to integrate with the bots immediately around him to build a rapport he could exploit. And if he enjoyed listening to the grey and red mech before him… well he certainly wasn't going to admit it.

Though Ratchet was absolutely stunned to walk in and not only find Bluestreak happily prattling away, no longer scared and thoroughly enjoying himself, but also Prowl's monitors telling him the mech was the most relaxed he had been in orns.

———

:Jazz. Soundwave: has what you have requested. Soundwave: will send it immediately. Jazz: should expect it within the next orn.:

:Thanks Sounders! You're a lifesaver, mech.:

Chapter Text

Jazz groaned as he walked down the hallway, rubbing his shoulder strut and craning his neck cables to try and loosen them up. Mirage walked smugly beside him, rubbing at the scuffs in his paint and happily humming to himself as they made their way to the rec room. "Are you certain you don't want to see Ratchet? That dent in your leg looks deep."

Jazz glared at his friend who knew all too well how deep that dent was. "Y'know you could've gone a little easier with the whole revenge thing. It's been orns mech."

"And yet I am just starting to forgive you," the former Towers mech sniffed haughtily. "And to think, you could be walking around dent free if you had just told me where you were going in the first place."

"It wasn't that simple, Raj. And I already said sorry," he grumbled, still more than a little annoyed. Usually he was able to tell when Mirage was sneaking up on him, but he'd been a little lost in thought at the time and didn't notice him until his aft was on the ground and an 'impromptu sparring session' had begun. The only thing barely keeping his dignity intact was the fact that Mirage hadn't won. Even if it was because Ironhide had found them and pulled them apart before they could finish.

"And I still haven't accepted your apology yet." Jazz huffed as they walked inside, grabbing some cubes before heading to a booth near the back wall. They started to drink in silence until Mirage said, "So, what's this I hear about you having a boyfriend?"

Jazz choked and started coughing roughly. "Excuse me. What!?"

Mirage shrugged, having little empathy for his dying friend. "Smokescreen seems to be under the impression that you have one. He's started a bet."

"'Course he has," Jazz coughed, finally not dying anymore. "Well, he's wrong."

Mirage narrowed his optics suspiciously. "So it's not that bot you keep visiting in the Medbay?"

Jazz laughed, playing it cool even as the energon in his lines ran cold. "Mech, I'm in there as a punishment. I'm not visiting anybody."

"Really? Bee seems to be under the impression that you keep going into one of the backrooms every orn. He says he can hear shouting coming from it when you're in there."

Jazz scrunched up his face. "What's Bee doing in the Medbay?"

"He sneaks in to visit Hot Rod." Frag it Bumblebee. "He says no one but you and Ratchet go in that room." He sipped his cube demurely. "So I can only assume that's who Smokescreen is referring to. Are they a new recruit?" Oh, this was bad. He knew they couldn't keep this whole thing secret forever, but he had hoped it would take more time than this. Though, if anyone were to get suspicious, it would be Spec Ops. Frag, maybe he shouldn't have shown Bee how to sneak around the vents in the base. Though, he probably would've figured it out himself anyway.

"Raj, listen to me. It's not what you think," he said in a hushed tone. "I can't tell you specifics, but just know I'm not-" He cut off as comm from Orion popped up on his HUD. "Oh, you know what? I just got called to a meeting so I have to go, sorry!" Jazz said, entirely not sorry to have to leave. Mirage gave him a look as he left, but he didn't bother to think too hard about it as he made his escape.

He was going to have to have a nice little chat with Smokescreen later.

———

Orion banged his helm against his desk, letting it rest there for a moment as he tried to wrap his processor around what the frag he just heard. "Jazz, I sent you in to befriend him. What do you mean he said he 'fundamentally hates you and everything you have and ever will do in his presence'?"

Jazz shrugged, seemingly unbothered as he sat in his chair, ignoring Ratchet's disapproving look. "That's just what he said, along with a lot of other things. I know my methods don't seem like they'll work, but trust me. They will."

Ratchet snorted. "Really? Cause Bluestreak seemed to do just fine with him."

Both Orion and Jazz whipped their helms around to stare at the medic. "What do you mean Bluestreak? I specifically ordered him to stay out!" Orion asked, frustration building.

It was Ratchet's turn to shrug. "I needed help, Aid's visiting Ambulon, and Bluestreak was right there." He chuckled. "I left them alone for a bit hoping he wouldn't do anything too traumatizing to the kid, and by the time I got back Bluestreak was yapping away happy as a scraplet in a scrapheap, and Prowl was so relaxed I thought the monitor was gonna record him flat-lining." Orion stared in disbelief. That was… wholly unexpected. He didn't think the ornery Prime would be okay with the chattiest bot in the force staying in there. But then again, it was not an unwelcome outcome.

Jazz seemed to disagree.

"That slagger! I try to play nice to him and he calls me all the known swear words in the galaxy, plus a few extra! Then Bluestreak walks in and he's A-Okay with him? What the scrap!" He slumped in his chair, indignation wafting through his field.

"Well Bluestreak doesn't tease the scrap out of him. Or push his buttons till I come in and kick him out. Or sit on his berth and invade his personal space," Ratchet said pointedly.

Jazz glared at him. "Or maybe Prowl's not stupid and is a little suspicious of the Autobot's Third in Command and Head of Spec Ops coming in and trying to buddy up to him. He probably thinks I'm trying to get him to slip up and tell me some information or something. Which, he's not wrong. It's just gonna take more time for me to get close to him." He threw Ratchet a dirty look. "And just because you don't understand my methods doesn't mean they won't work."

"Right," Ratchet said, rolling his optics. "All the same, I'm gonna keep letting Blue in there. If he can get him more comfortable here then I see no reason to stop it."

"I agree. In fact, it might not be a bad idea to expose him to some more bots he could get along with as time goes on." Orion paused. "How's his recovery coming along?"

Ratchet hesitated. "It's… slower than I'd like. I thought it would speed up but he's plateaued in his progress. I'm working on getting him able to walk again, but he's not gaining strength. He's not putting on weight and his spark isn't getting any stronger." His field flitted with worry and frustration. "It's almost like something is keeping him from getting better, but I can't dive in too deep without wrecking what little trust he has in me. I need to go in, but he won't let me yet."

Orion sighed. "I understand your frustrations, old friend. However, we knew this road was going to be rough and long. We just need to be patient, and go on his own time."

———

Prowl stared at the ceiling. He hadn't moved a nanometer since the medic had left. It had taken him a joor and a half to work on his legs, and he could at least feel them now. It didn't matter though. Ratchet had stayed behind after Bluestreak had left. He could still hear his words ringing in his audial. Your frame and spark are still too weak. You should be recovering faster than this, and I don't know what's slowing it down. He had wanted to do an examination. The medic had backed off quickly after Prowl refused, and had left after one last check to his bandages.

Prowl shuttered his optics. He wanted to ignore his TacNet spitting out the probability- no, the certainty of what was wrong. He didn't want to think about it, but the infernal tactical suite wouldn't stop giving him scenario after scenario of how it would go. They'd find out (95%). He'd be put under and they'd do whatever they liked (no), or he'd be strapped down and they'd pry him open, letting watch it all happen (no!), or they'd decide he wasn't worth the trouble and they'd trade him back to the Council (NO!). All were unacceptable and not happening (he didn't have a choice)... They wouldn't care and they'd do something to him anyway, even if they played nice about it. It was just a matter of waiting for it.

Then don't wait.

His optics snapped open and looked down at his chassis. It was a bad idea. It was a terrible idea. And yet he didn't discard it. He turned it over in his mind, cocking his head to the side just a bit. Even with the fresh pain blocker it would hurt. It would be agonizing. But he'd felt worse. He fed the idea to his TacNet, watching as it rolled it over and gave him a few different ways it could go wrong. After a breem it was apparent that neither he nor the TacNet knew exactly what could go wrong, there were too many unknowns. He got the general idea though: spark failure, disabling, circuitry damage, etc. All of it with high enough probabilities to render it out of the question.

He hesitated only a moment before he opened his chassis. Dull, white-blue light filled the room as his chest plates parted to reveal the Matrix of Leadership. The light pulsed just as weakly as it always had. Stories were reverently told of it's radiance, of the power that could be felt from the holy relic. Prowl had never felt it. Most orns he couldn't even tell it was there. It had sat in his chest since Zeta Prime's death and not once had he felt any guidance, power, or help from the thing. It was frustrating, and it only served to perpetuate the opinions that it wasn't supposed to be Prowl's. That there had been a mistake. Prowl was never supposed to be Prime. He had always agreed.

He reached a tentative servo to touch it. It was cold, and he could barely feel a slight buzzing underneath the crystal chamber in its center. He moved around, feeling for it until his digits brushed against the rougher metal. It was a relatively small but thick disc settled behind the Matrix. Prowl had often wondered what it was. Maybe it was a tracker, but it had never read as one on any scans as far as he knew. It could be a way to try and control him or subdue his coding, but it obviously hadn't worked if it were. Though with Ratchet's worries, he had a new theory that TacNet seemed to think was solid. It must be an inhibitor of some sort. A way to dampen the Matrix and its power. And if it extended beyond that to where Prowl's spark lay behind it (whether intentional or not), then that would explain his weak spark and lack of healing. Which meant the obvious way to remedy that would be to remove it.

The only problem was that it was attached to Prowl's spark chamber. He traced a digit along the edges, feeling where it was infused to the outside casing of his chamber. It felt weird to touch his own spark, and the longer he had his servo inside his chassis the more trepidation he felt. He almost stopped himself, but then a nasty little voice inside his head reminded him that it would either be him or Ratchet doing this. That made up his mind.

He had to maneuver his servo into an awkward angle before he could get a good grip on it, gently tugging to test the strength of the attachment. It sent some sharp spikes of pain through him and he grit his dentae, but he estimated that with a bit of pulling he could get it off just fine.

He vented steadily, counting to 3 before he began to really pull. He stopped immediately as he cried out in immense pain, his spark burning as he stopped the pressure. Slag. He knew it would hurt, but it was worse than he imagined. He steadied his venting as his spark throbbed. One of his monitors was beeping. He didn't have a lot of time. He hesitated. Maybe he should… No. The thought of Ratchet reaching inside of him… them reaching inside of him, more pain, more damage, more-

Prowl closed his optics and started again. He tried to lock his jaw until he couldn't help but scream. This was a pain worse than anything else. Every nerve, circuit, and wire in his frame was screaming in silent harmony with his own anguished voice. He was dying, he had to be. But he couldn't stop. He dully registered someone banging on the door, shouting in alarm. He didn't care. His TacNet was panicking, telling him all the ways he was probably killing himself. He didn't care. He could feel it giving, slowly. Either it would be gone or he'd be dead. He was fine with either. Both ways meant that the pain would stop.

He pulled harder, screaming until his vocalizer shorted out, spitting harsh static. He kept pulling, hearing the monitors all beeping and screeching in a loud cacophony that faded into the background as Prowl focused all his attention on the inhibitor. He gave a final wrench and finally it came free just as his door burst open.

He fell back against his pillows, panting frantically and letting his servo drop. His vision was fading to black and he could feel himself losing consciousness to the pain still coursing through every inch of him. Slag, he was tired. His optics shot wide as a shadow fell over him, over his still open chest plating. He lunged, snarling static as he grabbed onto the mech with enough force to dent plating as his chassis closed with a clang, rage competing with his immense hurt.

He bared his dentae in a snarl, stifling his pain and staring into a bright blue visor as he held himself halfway off the berth from the mech's shoulder pauldron and throat. The mech stayed still, servos braced on either side of him. He didn't move, didn't talk, he just waited. Prowl waited. He waited until he started shaking from the effort and let himself drop back onto the berth, one servo still holding onto the mech's shoulder as his vents whirred and his chassis heaved with the effort to cool himself off.

The mech (Jazz, TacNet offered) stayed where he was, looking down at Prowl and projecting calm through his field. Prowl let it wash over him, feeling his exhaustion deep in his struts. His spark throbbed, and everything hurt and he wanted it to stop. He felt a silent sob escape him as coolant began to pool in his optics. He distantly heard Ratchet come in, sirens wailing as he immediately started checking Prowl. He couldn't make out any words, he couldn't focus on anything but that bright, sky blue visor. He flinched when he felt something jam into his port and sighed in relief as his pain eased away, along with his consciousness.

———

Jazz stared down at the unconscious form below him, finally daring to vent as he felt the crushing grip on his pauldron loosen, falling away. He let his defense systems cycle down, still feeling the phantom of Prowl's servo on his throat and the brief but hot hatred in the mech's optics. He felt a pit of dread in his own spark as he could still clearly see in his mind opening that door and seeing Prowl ripping what looked like a piece of his spark out of his chest, past the Matrix of Leadership embedded in his chassis.

He snapped out of it as Ratchet bodily moved him out of the way, quickly working at plugging himself in and scanning Prowl's chest, quickly cursing at what he saw. He moved around the room and grabbed a few tools before placing his hands on the Prime's chest. He hesitated, and Jazz could feel his hesitance and guilt as he manually opened the panels. Jazz couldn't help but stare at the Matrix, glowing a bright and steady blue that filled the room as Ratchet tried to maneuver around it, looking at the spark. "Jazz! Hand me that welder!"

Jazz snapped into action and quickly handed it to him, glancing down and seeing a ring of jagged and half melted metal on Prowl's spark casing allowing some blue light to peak through, wincing in empathy as he imagined Prowl's pain. He then blushed furiously and quickly looked to the side, embarrassed and slightly mortified at seeing something so intimate as Prowl's spark, even if this was a medical emergency situation. He did his level best not to look the rest of the time as he continued to hand Ratchet things and eventually help him reset the monitors and get a fresh coolant drip going.

Ratchet huffed as he looked at the (thankfully) still knocked out mech lying on the berth. "What on Cybertron was that idiot doing?" he asked softly, sadness and exhaustion clear in his voice.

Jazz glanced at the floor, noticing the object Prowl had dropped when he came in. He bent down to grab it, turning it over in his servo before offering it to Ratchet. "I think he was taking this out."

Ratchet took it and turned it over, examining it with an increasingly grim expression. He handed back to Jazz. "Get that to Wheeljack. I want to make sure it's what I think it is." He cast one last look over the ragged frame before him. "Primus, this just keeps getting worse."

Chapter Text

Jazz stood in front of Wheeljack's lab, staring at the closed door. He stood there for a while, just thinking about what he had seen. He had rushed out of Orion's office as soon as Ratchet had, beating him to the room and pushing past a panicked Sideswipe. He had hoped it wasn't another freak out like before. Turns out, it had been much worse than before. He glanced down at the object in his servo. Prowl had ripped this thing off his own spark. His spark. Jazz could only imagine how that had felt. He'd been screaming static and his field had nearly overwhelmed Jazz when he went in. Ratchet had been very closed off about what exactly was wrong with Prowl, and Jazz had just assumed it was his severe trust issues and wariness. But there had to be something else going on. No one risked their life like that lightly, not to mention the fear and pain his field was raging with-

Jazz snapped out of his thoughts and sidestepped as the lab door whizzed open and a very alarmed Wheeljack rushed out, nearly colliding with him. "Oh, Jazz! I was just looking for you! Ratchet just commed and said you had something really important for me to look at."

"Sorry, Jackie. Just lost in thought." He slipped past the engineer into his lab, waiting for the bot to follow and the door to close before holding out the thing to him. "This thing came off of someone's spark and we need to know what it is."

Wheeljack's optics shot wide as he grabbed the disc, inspecting it. "It came off of someone's spark?" He made his way over to one of the many cluttered work benches near a wall, zig-zagging through the mess of scraps as he went. "Who's? Are they alright?"

Jazz followed, looking over Wheeljack's shoulder as he began scanning it with various tools. "It's confidential, but they'll pull through no problem." Hopefully. Wheeljack nodded, relief turning into concentration as he got to work, carefully opening it up and taking it apart, humming and hawing as he went. Jazz sat down at the end of the bench, careful to steer clear of anything mildly explosive looking. He waited, letting his thoughts wander and seeing memory flashes of what had happened before Wheeljack whistled low. "Talk to me Jack, what've you got."

Wheeljack held up a part of the device. "Short and sweet version of it: it's a power inhibitor. Honestly, it's an impressive design. Compact enough to be carried on the spark no problem but still super powerful. Turn this baby on and I bet you could stop a transport's entire engine full stop."

Jazz grabbed at another piece of it, visor brightening as his optics widened. "It's that strong?"

Wheeljack shrugged. "With the right power source, it can be." He held up the outside shell that still had bits of spark casing stuck to it. Now, Jazz had seen much, much worse than that, but something about looking at that made his plating crawl. "Since it's so compact, it's designed to siphon its power from an outside source instead of carrying its own. I'm guessing in this case the source was the spark it was attached to. Smart, but really gruesome if you ask me."

Jazz turned over the piece in his servo. "So basically, this inhibitor was meant to stop something large and powerful while taking the energy it needs to run from the spark it was stuck to."

Wheeljack nodded. "A real messed up way to do it, but with the wear on it, I'd say it worked fine for quite a while." He looked at Jazz. "You said the mech this came from was gonna be fine?" Jazz nodded. Wheeljack looked skeptical. "Jazz, with the amount of power this thing was taking, they should be dead. Long dead."

Jazz shrugged. "Well, they aren't. It's a weird situation all around." He hopped off the bench. "I'd better go tell Ratchet the news. See ya around Jackie! And by the way, this thing stays between us, got it?"

"Got it, bye Jazz!" Wheeljack waved before turning back to the device he would most likely be obsessing over for the next few decaorns. Jazz almost made it to the door before Wheeljack called out, "Hey, Jazz? This thing also has a tracker on it."

Jazz swore he got whiplash from turning his helm so fast.

———

Prowl onlined slowly, not bothering to unshutter his optics. Checking his chronometer showed he'd only been out half a joor and he wanted to go back to recharge. He was exhausted and while his pain was now a dull, constant aching, it seemed to sharpen with every vent he took. He wanted to fall back into the welcome blackness of recharge and avoid feeling what he'd done. Avoid thinking of what he'd done.

Unfortunately, he had a medic next to him that seemed content to let his field very plainly portray how slagged off he was. "Prowl. Open your fragging optics. Now." He sounded slagged off too. It checked out. Prowl knew he'd be angry.

However, he didn't frankly care. "No."

"I'm slagging serious Prowl! We are going to talk about what the scrap just happened whether you like it or not!"

"I'll pass." He wanted to recharge, Primus slag it.

"You could have died! I'm not letting you off that easy!" The lights turned on all the way and Prowl scrunched up his face at the brightness, turning his helm away. "This is twice now! Twice you've had a medical emergency while you were alone and this one was self-inflicted!" Prowl cracked open an optic to glare sidelong at the fuming medic. "Oh don't you go glaring at me. This is on you."

Prowl turned to fully face him, wincing as he did so. "I am alive and as functional as I can be at the moment. I understand that you are 'concerned' for me but-"

"No! Don't you start with that scrap!" Ratchet yelled. Prowl tried hard not to flinch. "I do care about your stupid aft and I want to fragging help you! I don't know what happened that you'd rather rip something off of your spark instead of letting your medic know about it, but I know this has to stop!"

Prowl growled. "You aren't my medic."

"That's the slagging point!" Ratchet pointed angrily at himself. "What have I done to make you think I'm like whoever screwed you over before? I've honored your requests, gone at your pace, and when you told me no, I've listened." He threw back is head in frustration and ran his servos over his face. "What's it going to take for you to finally understand that I want to help you?"

Prowl clenched his fists. "Nothing. There is nothing you can do to convince me you are here to help because you aren't. You can lie all you like but the moment I'm more useful dead or thrown in some cell somewhere you won't care. I'm a bargaining chip that you are all just waiting to use, and the moment you can use me you'll-"

"WE WANT TO RECRUIT YOU FOR PRIMUS' SAKE!" Prowl's jaw snapped shut. "To the Pit with it. Pax wanted to try and befriend you first, to build up rapport with you or some slag but your so fragging dense-" He cut himself off, visibly taking a deep vent. Prowl stared at him, processor blank. His TacNet hadn't booted up yet and he was struggling to tell if the medic was lying or not. "You want to look at it from a paranoid idiot perspective? Fine. You are far more valuable to us alive and away from the Council. They can't use you if you're here and if you join us then we'd have not only the Prime's backing support but also a lot of the public's. We could use you, we could kill you, we could trade you, but we are choosing to try and work with you. You're just making it frelling difficult."

Prowl stared at him. That wasn't what he suspected. He tried to hasten the TacNet's awakening. He knew it was a lie, a deception to further the charade, a- Prowl froze as something stirred in his chassis, optics wide. It felt like a warm feeling, almost reassuring. It felt… safe. It felt foreign.

It freaked him out.

"Prowl?" Ratchet came closer, servo outstretched. "What's wrong-" He stopped as the sound of a blaster firing sounded past the door, followed quickly by shouting and the sound of metal on metal. He cursed as he rushed to the door, stopping as he opened it to be greeted by a blaster pointed at his face.

"Hold it right there, doc. How 'bout you come out here and we can sort out this… misunderstanding?" Prowl couldn't see the mech from where he was, but he knew the voice. It sent a chill down his spinal strut and his plating tensed.

Ratchet didn't move. He looked stoically past the barrel of the blaster and scoffed. "And what makes you think I'd listen to an ugly fragger like you?"

The mech chuckled. "Cause if you don't, your friend over there is gonna get a blaster to the face, same as you." Ratchet turned his head a little and cursed under his breath. "Now, get out of my way. I have someone I need to see." A servo reached out and roughly shoved Ratchet out of the way as a large black and blue mech came into view. He stepped into the room, cutting off Ratchet's yelling as the door closed behind him. He looked Prowl up and down, making his plating itch, though he didn't move. "Wow. You look terrible."

Prowl stayed silent, old habits slipping their way back into him along with a very familiar sense of fear and loathing. He was heavily aware of the blaster still in the mech's servo as the mech came closer. He chuckled. "What? Not gonna say anything to an old friend? Even all prettied up and with a fancy new title you still know your place, huh?" Prowl flinched as his servo darted out and grabbed his face, roughly pulling it to look fully at the red optics brimming with amusement. "Good." Prowl winced as the tips of his claws pierced into his plating, drawing pinpricks of energon.

He kept his face neutral as he tried to speak. "Killshot-"

He grunted in pain as the mech shot into his shoulder, digging his claws further into his face. "Did I say you could speak, drone? 'Prime' or not, you're still beneath me." Killshot growled in annoyance as he looked at the frantic monitors at his side. "Look at that. They trying to help you?" He asked mockingly, laughing as he let Prowl's face go to grab onto his throat, claws hooking into his neck cabling. Prowl swallowed down his fear, trying not to pay attention to TacNet's frantic assessment of how exactly he was going to die right now (being shot in the face, 78%) (thank you, that is ever so helpful)).

Killshot turned and shot the monitor, raining glass everywhere as the beeping stopped. "That's better. It'll be so nice watching you grey without the distraction." He turned the blaster to Prowl's face (96%) as he yanked him closer by the throat, excruciating pain causing Prowl to give a strangled yell. Killshot sneered at him. "Let me guess, that fancy little computer of yours is telling you exactly how this will go, right? I'm curious, how likely does it think it is that I'm here to rescue you?" He shoved the blaster closer to his face, putting it right above his right optic. "Well?" he prompted.

Prowl swallowed roughly, trying to find his voice. "…3%."

Killshot laughed harshly, amusement clear in his field. "Nah, I can tell you right now that it wasn't even an option." He tilted Prowl's helm up to look him in the optic, grim satisfaction clear on his faceplate. "Trust me, drone. No one was gonna pass up the perfect opportunity to get rid of you." Prowl didn't doubt it. He didn't move, didn't try to escape or defend himself. All he did was take what comfort he could in the fact that his death would be relatively quick. At least everything would finally be over.

A shot rang through the air.

———

Jazz raced through the hallways, scattering bots as pushed himself harder to reach the Medbay. Neither Ratchet or Sideswipe were answering their comms and he had a really bad feeling something was going to happen. He turned the final corner, narrowly avoiding running over several bots as he screeched to a halt and transformed in front of the Medbay doors. Medbay doors that should have opened as he approached. He banged against them as he called for Ratchet and Sideswipe, not hearing an answer. He cursed as he looked at the entry pad by the doors. It had the emergency lock on. He quickly entered in his officer override code and launched himself inside as soon as the doors opened only to stop dead in his tracks.

Ratchet was over by Prowl's room being held in place by a blaster to his head held by a green femme. Sideswipe had been tackled to the ground by a bigger rust colored bot, energon slowly pooling from underneath him and a nasty dent marring his faceplate. The bot held a blaster to his chassis, snarling at Jazz from the ground. "One more step and they both die!"

Jazz held out his servos placatingly, trying his comm and mentally cursing when it stayed silent. They must have a blocker in here then. He opened his intake to say something when a muffled blaster shot sounded from Prowl's room, making his spark stop. No. Sideswipe tried frantically to get the larger bot off of him to no avail, and Ratchet looked ready to do something until the green femme pointed her blaster at Jazz. "Nobody move!" Sideswipe's captor shouted, snarling angrily as Sideswipe heaved himself enough to slam him into the door of the medsuite two rooms down from Prowl's.

Jazz was trying to find some way to save three bots at once, trying to figure something out and hoping that Prowl wasn't dead already when the door behind the rust colored bot opened and a blazing blur tackled the bot, making him shriek as a flaming Hot Rod grappled onto his plating, giving Sideswipe enough room to throw him off. The femme whipped her blaster around to the fiery mass of wrestling mechs but dropped it as Jazz whipped his own blaster out of his subspace with practice ease and fired, just as Ratchet tackled her to the ground.

Jazz wasted no time in shooting towards Prowl's room, opening it and firing at the dark figure he saw looming over the berth. He bot grunted, stumbling back at the pain in his torso and letting go of Prowl's throat as he fired at Jazz. Jazz ducked, the blast barely missing his helm as he lunged, grabbing a dagger from his subspace, not wanting to miss and shoot Prowl. He aimed for the mech's neck cables, barely missing and having to stumble back to avoid the next blast the mech fired before grabbing his arm and twisting it. He heard a crack as the mech cried out and dropped his blaster. The mech grabbed for Jazz but he slipped away before darting back in low and slashing the cable at his knee joint, causing him to crash down before springing at the mech and tackling him to the ground, pinning him down and bringing his vibroblade at his throat.

"Nice try, mech," Jazz growled, snarling at him. The mech just laughed a little before his optics suddenly went dark and his frame went limp. Jazz cursed in frustration as he looked at the already greying frame below him. Scrap, he hated kill switches. He would've like to get some information from the slagger, though he could probably guess most of what happened.

He got up and looked over at Prowl who was staring at the frame on the ground, a haunted look in his optics. His face was bleeding from multiple points, and energon and coolant were also running down his neck cables. His shoulder was also leaking energon from a nasty looking blaster wound, still smoking. He was lying on his side and almost hanging over the edge of the berth, his wings drooping low. He looked up at Jazz, optics brightening and brows furrowing.

Jazz stared back before once again being bodily shoved out of the way by Ratchet as he started fussing over Prowl, kicking the greyed frame on the floor out of his way with no remorse. He immediately started patching up Prowl's neck cables, cursing and muttering the whole way. For once he got no complaint or resistance from the mech, still quietly staring at Jazz with a contemplative look on his face. Jazz opened his intake to say something before being interrupted by a very confused Hot Rod looking in from the doorway.

"Is that the fragging Prime?"

Chapter Text

Alarms started to blare as Jazz got off his comm with Orion, trying to block out the evacuation order blasting over the speakers and looking over to where Ratchet was still patching up Prowl. Prowl was still quietly taking all of Ratchet's ministrations, still staring at Jazz. It was getting a little unsettling. "Ratch, Pax says to take Prowl and meet him in Hangar B."

Ratchet grunted, still not looking away from patching up Prowl's shoulder. He glanced back over his shoulder at the doorway where Sideswipe and Hot Rod were gawking. "Let me check on those two and we'll head out," he said, straightening up. He moved toward the door, trying to usher the two bots into the Medbay beyond.

Hot Rod wasn't having it apparently, flaring out his plating as his initial shock wore off. "Hold up! What the scrap is the Prime doing here?! Why are you helping him? Why did you save him?!" He yelled angrily as he glared at Prowl, who turned his helm away from Jazz to stare back. "Did I just help save him? Cause if I'd have known I would've helped the slaggers finish the job-"

"HOT ROD! OUT!" Ratchet shouted, grabbing the racer by the arm and dragging him out of the room, the red bot letting out a string of curses before the door slid shut.

Jazz stayed still, a little shocked by the outburst until Prowl's hoarse voice sounded from the berth. "I take it he does not like me then?"

Jazz looked at him, sighing a little as he answered, "Eh, don't take it to spark. Hot Rod's from Nyon. He was never really fond of Primes and slag in the first place, but Zeta kinda sealed the deal in his processor that there is no such thing as a good Prime." Jazz couldn't blame the kid for his reaction. What had happened at Nyon was horrible for anyone there, but to Hot Rod… It had been the end of his world. Zeta had not only caused the destruction of the city and all it's people, but Hot Rod had been the one forced to actually pull the literal trigger. While no one else blamed him for it, he certainly did. The only other bot's he blamed was Zeta and everyone who stood with him. Zeta, the Prime who was supposed to help, who was supposed to protect had taken everything away from him. And with Sentinel coming before that, they didn't exactly have the best luck with Primes. Yeah, Jazz didn't blame him one bit.

Prowl was staring down at his servos, not saying anything. Jazz felt a little bad for him. It wasn't his fault Zeta sucked. "Hey, it'll be okay. I mean, Hot Rod might not like you, but so what? It's not like you did anything to him." Jazz looked to the door as he heard some new voices in the Medbay, missing the way Prowl's wings lowered and his servos clenched for just a moment.

Bluestreak's helm popped into the room. "Jazz! Prowl! Are you okay? What happened? I was hanging out with Sunstreaker when he got all worried and said Sideswipe was in trouble and we came here as soon as we could and now Sideswipe's hurt and you're hurt and there's an evacuation order and- is that another dead body!?"

"Yep! Failed assassination, right?" Jazz looked at Prowl, tilting his head. "That makes, what? Number two?"

Prowl thought for a klik before shaking his helm. "This would be the twenty-second."

"You've already had twenty-two?"

"That was only counting the plans that were actually attempted. I estimate the complete number to be much larger." Prowl looked between Bluestreak's shocked expression and Jazz's amused one. "What?"

"Slag, mech. Who'd you piss off?"

"Yeah, that's a HUGE number!"

Prowl frowned. "It is not. By the time Sentinel deactivated he had forty-seven full attempts on his life."

"Yeah, but he was the Prime for vorns. And you're only on your, what? Sixth?" Jazz pointed out. "Let me guess, not that popular beforehand?" That seemed to strike a nerve because Jazz had to duck the handheld welder that was thrown with great conviction at his helm. "Hey!"

Ratchet walked in then, gently nudging Bluestreak out of the way. "Jazz, knock it off!"

Jazz fluffed up his plating in indignation. "Me? He threw it!"

"I'm sure he had good reason," Ratchet scoffed, rolling his optics. He stopped in front of Prowl, who's doorwings hiked up a bit. "Alright, let's get a move on."

"Wait, don't-" Prowl protested as Ratchet lifted him up bridal style and carried him out of the room, the Praxian's faceplate growing blue and muttering a lot of choice curses along the way. Jazz snickered silently as he took an image capture. Oh, he was going to use that later. Bluestreak was smothering his own laughter as he followed them out of the room, but Jazz stayed behind. He looked to the grey frame at his pedes, and bent down. He took a capture of it to reference later, and started to rifle through his subspace. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything inherently helpful in there, just another blaster, a comm disruptor, and a few cubes of energon. He swiped it all into his own subspace and slipped into the Medbay beyond, searching the other two frames on the floor as Ratchet instructed Bluestreak on how to properly support Hot Rod's weight, a now silently bristling Prime still in his arms. Hot Rod seemed to be enjoying Prowl's humiliation and even Sunstreaker was cracking a little smile.

"Well, how do we want to do this Ratch?" Jazz asked as he came up, slipping the last of the useless slag in his subspace and taking a few more captures of the moment for good measure.

"I don't want to go ahead and leave these idiots-," Hot Rod gave a little 'hey' at that "- without a medic, but I don't see any way we can keep him out of sight without me transforming and being no use to them."

"Listen, you can take him ahead and come back and meet us after you drop him off. I can't see any other way we can keep this a secret-"

"Wait, we were supposed to keep this a secret?"

Everyone turned their helms slowly to look at Hot Rod. "Hot Rod," Jazz said slowly. "What did you do?"

Hot Rod had the grace to look sheepish. "I may or may not have already commed a few bots. Not a lot! Just Bumblebee and Arcee… and Cliffjumper… and Deadlock… and-"

Ratchet cursed as Jazz facepalmed. "Well, that's fraggin fantastic." He could hear the lecture now. He turned towards the door as it opened, letting in an out of breath and soon very confused and shocked looking Hoist. After a hurried explanation and a few very choice words from the other medic, they decided he would stay with the others and Jazz and Ratchet would ride ahead. Prowl didn't seem thrilled to be put in the back of Ratchet's ambulance, but he ultimately decided against being carried in root mode the entire way to be gawked at.

They made their hurried way to Hangar B, passing frantic bots running to their assigned hangars, arms full of equipment and datatpads. Jazz led the way, already triggering the remote data wipe for his office terminal. He had plenty of fragmented and encrypted copies of all his data stashed here and there, and had no doubt Soundwave had some sort of copies for the more important slag. Well, the important slag he knew about. He wasn't worried.

They made it to the hangar to be greeted by both sets of High Command. Ultra Magnus and Starscream looked more than a little stressed, barking orders into their comms, trying to help organize everything. Orion looked a little worried and stressed, Ironhide was explaining the situation to a confused Skyfire, and Megatron looked as happy as ever. "What the scrap did you do!"

Jazz transformed and immediately went behind Ratchet. Not because he didn't want to deal with an angry Megatron right now, oh no! He just wanted to get Prowl so they could get going quicker. See? He was being responsible. Having Ratchet in between them as a barrier was just a plus. Ratchet opened his back doors as Jazz came around and he had to lunge to catch Prowl as he tried to stumbled out, which ended up with him having the deceptively heavy Prime drag them both to the floor as he wrapped his arms around Prowl's waist. "OW!"

"Get off of me!" Prowl snarled, trying to shove Jazz off of him.

"Yeah, sure. I'll leave you on the floor and Ratchet can carry you everywhere from now on," Jazz shot back. Prowl thwacked him in the face with a doorwing, which, OW! Jazz was sorely tempted to actually leave the grumpy fragger on the floor. If he didn't want help, then fine. But sadly, they were on a bit of a time crunch, and Jazz was a good bot and he wasn't going to leave the mech on the floor like the aft he was. So Jazz just grunted and hauled them both upwards, slipping under Prowl's arm and trying to finagle his arm around the Prime's doorwings.

He could feel Prowl's engine rumble angrily as the Praxian leaned against him, and felt his vents hitch when Jazz's servo brushed against his side. Jazz winced and tried to avoid any bandaged spots on the mech, which was… okay that might not be feasible in his current state, but he did try. Ratchet, now back in root mode moved to Prowl's other side to help stabilize him.

Megatron had finished stomping over at that point, pointing an accusing digit at Jazz. "How on all of Cybertron did you miss a tracker! HOW?!"

"Same way Ratchet did," Jazz said, smiling at him while keeping his annoyance out of his field. Seriously, he wasn't an amateur. He had checked Prowl a dozen times before and after getting him to base. "It wasn't a normal tracker. Wheeljack was taking a look at it, but if it dodged both me and Ratchet and all his fancy medical scrap, then it was something heavy duty."

Megatron revved his engine, anger swirling around him. "That's it? We have an entire base compromised and your explanation is that it was 'heavy duty?'"

Orion walked up beside him, placing a servo on the tank's arm. "Megatron, this situation is incredibly complicated, and we know what the Council is capable of. It was a mistake we won't repeat-"

"A mistake?" Megatron jerked his arm away. "A mistake that will cost us greatly!" He glared at Prowl, who glared back just as fiercely. "How do we know this wasn't the plan all along? What if this was his pathetic attempt at getting rescued."

"Yeah… that wasn't a rescue." Jazz shifted a little, trying not to strain under Prowl's weight. Seriously, this guy was heavy. "That was an attempt at 'tying up loose ends.'" Both leaders stared at Jazz for a moment, then looked at Prowl who was pointedly glaring at a far point on the opposite wall.

"…Oh," Orion said, unsure of how to proceed. "I am very sorry-"

"So the Council doesn't want you? Then why the frag are we keeping him?"

Orion looked mad now. "Because we aren't-"

"Because you still need me." Everyone looked to Prowl, who was still looking away. "The public's opinion of you is low, especially after the… previous assassination attempt you were accused of. You need my endorsement if you want to make any real progress with them and in turn fighting against the Council." He turned his helm to stare Megatron directly in the optic. "The Council has shown what choice they have made. It is now your turn. Either use me to your advantage or get rid of me before they get another chance."

Megatron looked taken aback for a moment, before stepping forward and opening his intake, getting cut off by Ratchet. "If you are all done now, my patient needs to lie down and we need to get out of here!" He moved forward, pushing past Megatron as he made his way over to a bewildered looking Skyfire at the waiting loading dock.

———

"I hate all of you! ALL OF YOU! I'm gone for ONE CYCLE and you guys KIDNAP THE PRIME AND LOSE A BASE ALL IN THE SPAN OF FIVE ORNS!" Now, Jazz had seen Red Alert mad, angry, panicked, scared, panicked, annoyed, and panicked, but he had to say this was the first time he'd seen visceral rage from him. Good for him, trying new things. "HOW?!?!? HOW ON ALL OF CYBERTRON DO YOU DO THAT?! DID NONE OF YOU LOOK AT MY PROTOCOLS?!" He was sparking something fierce and Inferno was trying to calm him down. Trying.

"I know no apologies will make up for this-" Orion tried placatingly.

"NO! THEY WON'T! THIS IS SO- SO- AUGH!" Red Alert dropped his helm and started banging it against the table forcefully. Inferno tried to stop him while Soundwave calmly moved a cube on the table away from his him. It had been a very interesting call with the Head of Security (and Inferno) and the Decepticon TIC. The two Autobots had been at the main Decepticon base in Koan to help with their security measures, something Red Alert had insisted doing himself and Soundwave was left in charge of overseeing. Some of the crappiest timing in a while in Jazz's opinion.

"I mean, it's not like we lost our main base-" Ironhide chimed in.

Red Alert's helm snapped up. "DO NOT SAY ANOTHER WORD! NOT WITH HIM IN THERE!!!!" He pointed to Prowl, who was propped up in the far corner with Ratchet plugged into him and Jazz on his other side.

Orion raised a placating hand. "What is done is done. The base will be scrubbed of anything important and we will arrive in a few joors where we can discuss this in person. While this is a huge setback-" Megatron snorted from the other half of the screen. Ratchet had immediately vetoed him joining them on the flight over, saying Prowl's stress was too high and Megatron's presence wasn't helping. They had argued for a while until Ultra Magnus had pointed out that having most of both High Commands on the same shuttle was a bad idea in case something happened to them on the way, so both Megatron and Starscream ended up calling in to the 'meeting' from Astrotrain. "-we have dealt with worse, and we will bounce back just like before."

That did not in fact seem to ease Red Alert's mind as he proceeded with his very loud ranting. Jazz tuned it out as he looked back at Prowl, who was currently getting the holes in his face bandaged up. "So, you wanna talk about what happened?"

Prowl narrowed his optics as best he could. "I was not aware you were a psychologist," he said sarcastically.

Jazz shrugged. "I'm not, just figured you'd probably want to talk to someone about your latest near death experience."

"I assure you, I do not."

Jazz slid down the wall a little, getting comfortable. "I mean we could get you a psychologist if that's what you're used to."

Prowl flicked a doorwing. "I have never been to one."

"Yeah, I can tell."

Prowl jerked his face in Ratchet's grip, earning him a grumble of disapproval. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Jazz chuckled. "Nothing, you just don't seem like the type to go to therapy, that's all." Prowl didn't say anything back, merely giving him a dirty look before Ratchet turned his face away while giving Jazz his own look. Jazz smiled back. "Alright, alright! I'm done teasing. We do have to have a conversation though." He turned more towards Prowl. "So who was the guy who tried to kill you?" Prowl stayed still, doorwings flickering briefly before locking in place. Jazz sat up a bit. "If you want to wait until we get to base I'd understand, but I gotta figure this out and I'm gonna have to ask you either way."

Prowl didn't answer for a while, and Jazz was about ready to drop it for now when he spoke. "His designation was Killshot. He was a mercenary for the Council."

"Killshot, eh? I've heard of him. Nobody too important but a real piece of work from what I hear." Prowl grunted, getting a far off look in his optics. Jazz tilted his helm. "…You sure you're good Prowl?" He looked at his face, his patched up neck cables, his freshly bandaged shoulder. "Looked like he did some damage." Prowl stayed silent. Jazz got concerned, and he could see Ratchet side eyeing the Prime. "I wasn't entirely joking about the whole psychologist thing you know. We have mechs you can talk to, like Smokescreen-"

"So they can try and 'befriend' me as well? So they can help manipulate me in seeing you all in a better light?"

"What? Mech, no-"

Prowl jerked his face out of Ratchet's hold to glare fully at them. "I will not be so easily coerced into-" he stopped and jerked back, looking down at his chassis with wide optics, doorwings unlocking stiffly to raise in alarm.

Jazz sat up fully and Ratchet quickly looked down at the monitor still hooked into Prowl's port, brow furrowing. Prowl seemed to be getting more and more freaked out, and Jazz didn't want him to spiral into a full panic right now, so he did what he normally did when Bee or one of his other agents was having a panic attack. He grabbed something out of his subspace, grabbed Prowl's servo and handed it to him. Prowl looked down, confused. "What are you- what is this?"

Jazz shrugged. "You tell me."

Prowl looked infinitely more confused now. "It… why did you hand me a crystal?"

"No reason. What color is it?"

"It… blue?"

"The texture?"

Prowl turned it in his servo, rubbing his thumb across it's surface. "It is smooth, with slightly rounded edges." He squinted at it. "It is Dumortierite." He looked at Jazz. "I do not understand. Why did you give me this?"

Jazz smiled. "It's a grounding technique I use for my agents. You focus on something physical you can see and touch and it distracts you and calms you down."

Prowl looked back at the crystal, then back at his chassis. "Oh. I see." He held it out to Jazz. "Here."

Jazz shook his helm. "Nah, you can keep it. I have a feeling you could use it." He leaned back against the wall, eyeing the monitor in Ratchet's servos. It was unfortunately spilling out a bunch of medical jargon whose meaning he couldn't parse. "You want to talk about that?"

"No." Prowl continued to stare at the crystal in his servo, tracing one of the edges. Ratchet seemed content with what the monitor was reading cause he set it down and silently got back to work, going slow as Prowl got more and more flinch-y and reactive to what he was doing.

Time passed like that for a while; the three of them sitting there, Orion and the rest of High Command getting yelled at by an increasingly hoarse Red Alert, and Jazz tapping away at the floor to the beat of his internal radio. Eventually Jazz started to get bored. All his agents had checked in and were on their way to various bases, everything looked as clear as they could make it from the evacuation, and Jazz had nothing to do but wait for the next few joors. He hated waiting. He could do it, sure. He could be patient and he could be still, but he didn't want to be. Besides, if he got up now, Red Alert would probably spot him and he'd be dragged into a whole new lecture.

He turned his head to Ratchet, who was dozing against the opposite wall, and Prowl, who was very much still awake and lost in thought. A sly grin grew on Jazz's face and he scooted closer to Prowl, who turned to glare at him and raised his doorwings. Jazz ignored him, settling in close to the Prime so they weren't touching but he was definitely in his space. "Whelp, I think it's time for a new episode of 'Prowl Discovers Normalcy,' don't you?" Prowl opened his intake and Jazz cut him off before he even had a chance to argue. "Just kidding! You don't have a choice. Now, I think it's the perfect time to figure out what your favorite game is."

Prowl frowned. "And why is that?"

Jazz nudged him gently on a non bandaged part of his arm. "We're on a road trip! Now's a great time to figure that out cause boy do we have joors to kill." They did. Kaon was a good six joors ride from their base, and they'd only spent about one in the air so far. Jazz pulled out an old, basic datapad out of his subspace. "We can't do any physical games, but we can do the digital versions. What will it be? A card game? Board game? I bet you'd like something all boring like a crossword or chess or something."

Prowl canted his wings to the sides. "And what makes you think I will play with you?"

Jazz smiled and leaned in close. Prowl defiantly didn't pull away and their olfactories nearly touched as Jazz grinned wolfishly. "Why? Scared you're gonna lose to me?"

Prowl turned out to be quite competitive. And annoyingly good. And smart. Despite not playing any of the games before (seriously, Jazz's living under a rock theory was looking more plausible by the klik), he did in fact win most of them. Though Jazz did win a few, mostly the games he had spent most of his functioning playing that he knew the tricks of. And if he was trying extra hard to get under Prowl's plating to distract him or throw him off, well. No one could prove that. It was around joor four when Prowl abruptly said, "This one. I like this one."

Jazz looked up from where he was currently losing on the chess board, shocked to hear an actual answer from the mech with no prompting. "Really?"

"Yes. It is more complex than a most of the other games, and I like the strategy involved." He looked at Jazz, giving him an ever so small but incredibly smug smile. "I also like how I am winning."

Jazz snorted. "Only cause I'm going easy on you." He wasn't. "Plus, beginners' luck is on your side. Next time we play it won't be so easy." It probably would be.

Prowl flicked a doorwing dismissively. "You are lying. I have an 86% chance of winning this round, as well as the next few if our current streak of 0:3 is anything to go off of." He looked back down at the board currently dominated by Prowl's black pieces. "Additionally, I do not see any evidence to indicate 'beginner's luck' to be a true variable in the equation. I just think you are bad at this game."

Jazz stared at him, optics narrowed. "Can you seriously just do that?"

"Do what?"

"Y'know," Jazz said, vaguely gesturing at him. "The whole numbers thing. I mean I know you were a tactician or something before this but Primus, I've never heard anybody just spitting statistics like that. It's kinda odd."

Prowl stared at him for a long moment, an emotion Jazz wasn't quick enough to catch flicking through his field before the Prime clamped it down so tightly, he could've passed for a dead mech before trying to shuffle away from Jazz. Scrap! He felt like he was actually getting somewhere this time! Fix it! "Hey, I didn't mean to-" He was interrupted by a loud screech from Red Alert, who was still on the call.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT HIM NOW!?!?!?!?!?!"

Chapter Text

"I didn't mean it in a bad way! I swear I wasn't trying to insult you!" Prowl really wished Jazz would just shut up. He'd already been trying to apologize for the past thirty breems and Prowl had ignored him the entire time, but it didn't seem to matter. "I meant that it was impressive! How many mechs do you know that can just calculate something like that of the top of their processor? I meant it as a good thing." Prowl glared at a point at the opposite wall, trying his best to convey his disinterest in the Spec Ops agent's explanations. "C'mon mech! I've already apologized a dozen times, what do I need to do?"

"Shutting up would be a fantastic start," Ironhide grumbled from where he was trying to doze off in his chair after Soundwave had finally taken pity on all of them and ended the call. "I know I'd appreciate it."

Jazz ignored him as he scooted around Prowl, trying to face him. Prowl moved his face away until he couldn't anymore, then switched to the other side facing the front of the shuttle. Jazz huffed dramatically before falling backwards onto the floor with a thunk. "You're being really petty right now, you know that?" Prowl did know that, seeing as that was his goal. "Is it cause I said it was odd? Cause no offense, but it kinda was."

Prowl said nothing as Ironhide scoffed and Orion Pax rubbed his optics, Ultra Magnus watching impassively from where he was standing. "Jazz, I'm really trying to see how this is helping. I really am."

"It would be helping if he wasn't an aft!" Jazz called petulantly from the floor. Orion buried his face in his servos and Ironhide laughed. Prowl didn't see what was funny. He let his doorwings visibly rise a few degrees to show his irritation. Not that anyone would know what that meant seeing as Ratchet was still asleep and he highly doubted anyone else here knew doorwing body language.

"I think all of our emotions are a little high at the moment and that you two should take a moment to calm down." Orion gave Jazz a look. "Away from each other."

Jazz rolled over to his front, propping up his helm on his servos. "Aw, come on Boss, I promise to play nice if he will." He looked over his shoulder to smile deviously at Prowl, and Prowl silently thanked Ratchet for fixing his legs enough to be able to kick Jazz in the shin. Hard. Jazz sat up and scooted away from him. "Fragging OW!" He glared at Prowl. Probably. With the visor it was a little hard to tell. Prowl raised his head smugly as Ironhide laughed again. This time Prowl understood what was funny and agreed with the sentiment.

"You know what, Pax? I like this guy!" The red mech said.

Orion looked about done with life in general when their transport (Skyline? Skyfall? Sky-something) spoke. "Sir? We're going to land in a few breems."

"Thank you, Skyfire." Oh. Prowl was close at least. "Jazz, perhaps you should wake Ratchet so we can get ready to transfer Prowl to the Medbay when we arrive." Jazz grumbled as he got up, rubbing his shin and nudging Ratchet with his other pede. Prowl didn't pay attention, instead trying to listen to what was happening in the front of the transport. He knew they were going to a Decepticon base, but he didn't which one. If he knew the location (and assuming they didn't move him to a different one again), then his chances at escape increased. He turned his audials up and reflexively stretched out his wings, internally cursing when he remembered they were offline. It wasn't preferable. It felt like having one of your senses taken away or an optic blinded. He felt exposed without them giving him environmental feedback, but he knew the pain he would be in would be intolerable if they were active. He would have to make do.

He unfortunately couldn't make anything useful out before he felt someone grab his pede. He yanked his leg away and lurched to the side and whipped his helm around to stare at Ratchet, spark racing. Ratchet held out his servos, shifting his weight as he crouched down further. "I didn't mean to startle you. I said I was going to look at your pede, I just thought you were ignoring me on purpose." Prowl glared at the medic, trying not to hiss in pain as he shifted so that he was sitting on his pede. Ratchet frowned at him. "Prowl, I just wanted to make sure you didn't dent it. Give it here."

Prowl's optical ridge twitched as he thought for a klik, then he raised his wings warningly. He watched Ratchet (and Jazz, who was right behind him) closely, waiting to see what they'd do. With all of Autobot High Command in here, this was a good opportunity to see how much they would let him get away with in front of Pax, and in turn how he would react to Prowl's resistance. Was it a necessarily smart thing to do? No. But he was still annoyed and wanted to do it.

Ratchet just sighed and got up as Jazz moved his helm in an exaggerated eye roll to make up for the one blocked by his visor. Ratchet leaned against the wall and gestured vaguely at Prowl. "This is what I'm talking about." Prowl frowned and looked back to the others. Ironhide seemed amused, Ultra Magnus had a blank expression and Orion Pax looked… concerned?

Pax took a slow step closer. "Prowl, I understand that you were startled but I assure you, Ratchet merely wants to help."

Prowl glared harder. "And? I do not want him to at the current moment."

Ironhide chuckled again. He seemed to do that a lot. "Yeah Jazz, I can see the 'feral cybercat' thing now." Prowl turned to shoot an unrepentant Jazz a heated look. Primus, that mech grated on his nerves.

Orion didn't have much of a chance to scold anyone as they began landing. Prowl begrudgingly let Ratchet help him into a standing position after Skyfire had settled, the medic looking down to check his pede as he did. Jazz moved to help support him at his other side, blatantly ignoring Prowl's engine growling. They made their way into the much dingier hangar of the Decepticon base, being greeted by the sight of Megatron, Starscream, a sparking Red Alert, and the firetruck from the meeting call.

Megatron waited until they were all off before striding forward, opening his intake and getting cut off as Red Alert marched past him and got right up to Prowl, stopping inches from his face. "Are you sure this is the Prime and not some spy?" He glared at Prowl with intense suspicion. Prowl glared back. "You're working for the Council, aren't you!" He jabbed a digit at Prowl's chest. "You're here to expose us and wipe us out!" He turned and started towards Orion. "He's gonna leak where we are and get us all killed!" He quickly rounded on Ratchet, who looked thoroughly unamused. "I want a frame deep scan! AND I want you to manually search every circuit in him to check for more trackers! I-"

"RED ALERT!" The red mech paused, looking towards Orion. The Autobot leader placed a servo gently on his shoulder pauldron. "Calm down, please. Wheeljack gave us the frequency for the tracker, and we have already scanned for more. Prowl is clear, we are safe here."

Red Alert looked the farthest thing from calm. "NO WE AREN'T! HE'S A-"

"He's not a spy!" Ratchet growled. "Believe me. He's the real thing."

Red Alert looked like he wanted to argue, but Orion patted him on the shoulder. "Why don't you go check the other shuttles and make sure everyone is accounted for."

Red Alert bristled, but he didn't argue. "Fine! But only because I need to take the entire security team into custody for treason!" He stormed off, the firetruck following tiredly behind him.

"You mean questioning, right?" Ironhide called after him. He didn't get an answer. Prowl watched the whole exchange with interest. Judging by the bot's reaction, Red Alert must not be in on the plan to 'befriend' him. Or was this a ploy to get Prowl to like the others more? He'd need more data for that answer.

Orion looked significantly more exasperated than before, sighing as he waved a servo at Megatron, who was once again trying to say something. "Let's get him into the Medbay first."

"Alright, get ready Jazz," Ratchet said as he shifted underneath his arm. A thought popped into his processor and Prowl felt the beginnings of a smile tug at his intake as Ratchet slipped out from under him.

"Wait Ratch, let me-" Jazz grunted as Prowl went limp and let his full weight press onto him, bringing them crashing to the ground. Ironhide roared with laughter as Jazz struggled underneath him. "Get- ack! Get OFF!"

"Not so pleasant, is it?" He asked conversationally, letting his smug satisfaction ooze into his field as he crossed his arms, ignoring the soreness.

Jazz groused as he tried to wiggle out from underneath him. "No fair! I'm way lighter than you!" That was true. Prowl was well aware of how heavy he was. That didn't mean he was sorry though. Served Jazz right.

Pax was holding a servo over his intake as he tried to hide his amusement. Starscream was sneering and Ultra Magnus looked on disapprovingly. Ironhide was laughing his aft off and Ratchet looked entertained.

Megatron, however, looked livid. "We don't have time for this!" He stomped towards them and Prowl tensed up. He watched as Megatron got closer, ignoring Ratchet and Pax's warnings. He watched as he extended his servo towards Prowl. He tried to get away as Megatron grabbed him by the arm and- and-

Sentinel wrenched him closer to him, snarling in his face as he twisted harshly. Prowl grimaced in pain as his shoulder popped and his arm fell limply to his side. Sentinel laughed as he shoved Prowl to the ground. He slipped as he tried to catch himself with his bad arm and braced himself as Sentinel kicked him in the side. He curled up around himself as it continued, each blow adding a new throbbing pain to the cacophony. He cried out as Sentinel grabbed his doorwing and lifted him up, vision blacking out around the edges as searing agony raced through his frame. He flinched as Sentinel yanked him close, whispering in his audial something Prowl couldn't hear, something he couldn't remember. It didn't matter. It was all the same. 'You're pathetic, useless, a drone no one will ever like, a tool, a-'

"Prowl!" He snapped his optics open, shaking where he lay on the floor, coolant beading his plating. He panted, trying to vent to help his rapidly overheating frame. Someone was touching him and he tried to push them away. The servos left and he curled up shivering, trying to make the memory go away.

Prowl flinched as a shadow moved above him. "I didn't-"

"I don't care. Get away from him!" Prowl looked up and saw Jazz crouching over him, holding a vibroblade and facing Megatron, engine snarling and plating fluffed out. Prowl recoiled from another touch, not really hearing what Ratchet was saying to him. He didn't want to be touched. It never ended well. Touch was bad, touch meant hurt, touch-

He felt a warm feeling in his chassis again. He tried to shunt it away, he tried to ignore it, but it persisted. It receded when Ratchet let go of him, but reappeared when he touched Prowl's forearm. He looked at Ratchet, and the feeling got stronger. He looked at Jazz and it grew even more. He let himself drift in the feeling, desperate to calm down, to feel better. He could feel his spark slowing down. His panting was reduced to shallow vents. He shuttered his optics as he collapsed on the ground, releasing the tension in his frame and relaxing his taut cables.

He heard Ratchet say something about the Medbay, and the feeling in his chassis swelled. Yeah, that sounded nice. He didn't want to be here anymore.

———

Jazz bared the door from an angry Megatron. The Decepticon was a very intimidating mech, but Jazz had faced much, much worse than a slagged off gladiator, and he refused to back down. "You are NOT coming in! You nearly scared him all the way to the Well!"

"It was not my intention!" Megatron gritted out, getting into Jazz's face. "I was merely trying to stop you two from wasting time!"

"I wasn't wasting time!" Jazz had to manually stop his plates from rising in defense.

Megatron threw his arms in the air. "Then what were you doing?!"

"Getting Prowl to trust me! Do you think he would've done that little stunt with anyone else? No! But he did it with me! And now I'm telling you to stay. The frag. OUT."

Megatron revved his own engine angrily before Pax came up behind Jazz. "Megatron, Jazz and Ratchet are right. Having you in here is the last thing Prowl needs. I know you did not try to do that to him, but whatever happened I think it is best if you stay away from him for now." Megatron was not happy about that, but he did turn away while yelling that they'd discuss this later over his shoulder.

Jazz huffed angrily at the retreating form and went further into the Medbay. He passed a few berths full of confused and mildly terrified patients and slowly opened to door to the private med suite beyond. The lights were dimmed. It was bigger than the room on the other base, but it did have another berth on the other side. Ratchet had briefly mentioned thinking about putting Sideswipe in here when the shuttle arrived, and Jazz vaguely wondered if that was a good idea. Prowl hadn't said anything about it. He hadn't spoken a word since they left the hangar. He was staring down at his servos, staying completely still as Ratchet hooked up his coolant drip. The medic had been surprised and very pleased to see that he didn't need spark support anymore, though Prowl didn't seem to care one way or another.

Jazz crept closer to the berth, watching as Prowl's optics slowly drifted up towards him. "I think I know the answer, but… do you want to talk about it?" he asked softly. Prowl's gaze lowered as he shook his helm. Jazz hummed. "Do you want me to stay?" The Prime didn't say anything.

Ratchet put his servo on Jazz's shoulder. "I think it's best if it's just me in here for a while." Jazz nodded, turning to leave hesitantly. He didn't want to leave when Prowl was clearly not alright, but he didn't know how much he could help in that situation. Or how much Prowl wanted his help. He left the Medbay, passing a worried looking Orion and confused looking Deadlock at the doorway on his way out as he headed deeper into the base.

He was pretty sure he knew what had happened, but it had all happened pretty fast. One klik he was trying to shimmy his way out from under Prowl, keeping his field clear of how pleased he was that he had gotten Prowl to crack like that in front of the others (his methods were working, thank you very much!), then the next he felt Prowl stiffen when Megatron got closer and his field had flooded with fear. He heard Orion and Ratchet yelling and felt Prowl lift off of him, shaking and scrambling to get away. He had reacted before he really thought about it, shoving Prowl the rest of the way off and swiping at Megatron with the vibroblade from his subspace. He had stayed when Ratchet raced over, he had stayed as close as he could to the ambulance after they had loaded Prowl aboard. He had seen the look on Prowl's face. It reminded him of his agents when they had a bad recharge flux, or when they got back from a particularly bad mission. It reminded him of his own when he was alone in his hab, staring at the mirror and trying to make all the memories go away.

He took the long way to where he was going, taking the time to calm down as he smiled and waved to the bots he passed. Some smiled back, others ignored him, and some tried to strike up a conversation, but he didn't pause. He was tired of waiting around, Primus slag it! He came to a stop on front of a door and wasn't surprised when it slid open without him so much as needing to knock. He walked in and leaned against one of the many monitors in the room. "Hey Sounders! Ya miss me?"

Soundwave didn't look up from where he was busy typing. "Jazz: is late."

"Yeah, something happened. I'm sure Megs'll tell you all about it." His audial horn picked up a noise from above and he looked up to see Ravage peering down at him from her perch on a higher monitor. "Hey, Rav."

"Jazz." She climbed her way down until she was level with him, tail swishing languidly as she settled down. "I was just about to head over there when I heard the news. Losing a base and gaining a Prime all in the same decaorn. Impressive."

Jazz shrugged. "What can I say? Gotta keep things interesting around here." He cocked his head. "So, you have something for me?"

Ravage flicked an ear as she produced a dataslug from her subspace. Jazz grabbed it and pushed off the monitor. "Thanks! See you around, Rav! See ya, Sounders!" Ravage flicked her tail at him as she jumped onto Soundwave's shoulders, curling up around him. Soundwave didn't acknowledge him as he left, and soon he was heading to his temporary habsuite. He was sharing with Mirage until they dispersed more of the previous base's crew elsewhere, but Mirage was still keeping an eye on things back in Protihex. He walked in and grabbed his high security datapad out of his subspace, plugging the dataslug in. It took a while to load and decrypt, but finally, finally, Jazz had a lead.

He commed Orion as he read the file, already making a mental list of preparations for the mission. He looked at the profile for the contact he would meet. He grinned wolfishly as he looked at the name.

"Hello, Shockwave."

Chapter Text

Prowl stayed still as Ratchet busied himself with settling him more fully into his berth. He avoided looking at the medic, hopeful to avoid talking about what had happened. Thankfully, Ratchet seemed content with carefully placing soft meshes around him and making sure his pillows propped him up fully. The medic pulled back, looking at one of the monitors he had already hooked up to Prowl. There weren't as many as before, and Prowl thought dully that he should be relieved. He couldn't bring himself to feel much at the moment.

The medic hummed. "Well, you seem stable enough. It's been a long orn and you need rest. I'll leave you to it. Unless… you want someone here with you?" Prowl shook his helm, not meeting the medic's optics. He really did want to be alone. Ratchet nodded and left, locking the door behind him.

Prowl laid there for a while, staring at the grey wall with dim optics. His servos shook a little and he clenched them tightly. He had calmed down enough that his frustration was fully palpable now. Frustration at Sentinel, at Megatron, but mostly at himself. He had let his guard down for a few breems and that was all it took to turn into a shaking mess in front of his captors. He was better than this! He had been grabbed like that by plenty of larger and angrier mechs. Slag, he's had much worse done to him, he shouldn't be so susceptible to those Primus fragged flashbacks!

He shuttered his optics and his engine growled as he thought of the repercussions of what had happened. He had cracked in front of both faction's High Commands. They had seen how weak he could be. He didn't remember much about what had happened after, remembering faint snippets and blurs until he was safely in his medsuite. Well, as safe as he could be right now. But he could imagine what they were likely discussing at that very moment. They had a surefire way to break him now. They didn't need to get his cooperation. They had a faster, easier way to get what they wanted now.

His spark burned in humiliation and fear as his TacNet began imagining all of the ways he'd be tortured or used now, making his tanks churn. He had to stop it somehow. He snapped his optics opened and looked over at the monitor measuring his spark rate. He glared at it. While he didn't have a spark support system keeping him berth bound any longer, the moment he even tried to exert himself he was sure the fragging thing would alert Ratchet.

He grimaced and sat up anyway, painfully slowly. His struts were sore from sitting on the floor and being dragged around. He glanced at the monitor, and though its beeping had increased a bit, it didn't bring an angry medic through the door. He slowly swung his leg to the edge of the berth, hissing quietly in pain before following it up with the other.

His midsection twinged as he turned and he paused to let the pain pass, briefly wondering if it was worth it to try and find another pain patch, though he quickly dismissed the thought. He didn't want to get caught while he was… doing what exactly? Escaping? Prowl shook his muddled helm. Even if he could walk, his chances of getting away were even lower than before with the base change. The Decepticons were much less likely to keep him alive if he was caught, and he had absolutely no information about this base beyond what he had seen of the Medbay and one of the hangars. Besides, where would he even go? What would he do? No one could mistake him for anything but the Prime he was, and the Council would be alerted quickly. If the Autobots and Decepticons couldn't find him (they would, 99%), than the Council would.

The Council that had tried to kill him. That had made it clear that they no longer saw him as an asset they could use. His usefulness and his time had run out. All he was now was a liability. He grit his dentae in anger. After all he had done, all he had endured, all of the things he could never forgive them or himself for, all of the vorns of service, and this was what he had to show for it? A death sentence? He buried his face in his servos, wincing at the pinpricks of pain from the claw marks in his faceplate.

He let his wings droop as apathy slowly took over. This was how it was always going to end, he told himself. He had calculated it long ago with his TacNet. He had had a chance once (a laughably slim one, but a chance nevertheless) that he might've been able to leave, to live a life outside of the Council one orn. That shaky dream had been completely shattered when he had become Prime.

He sighed as he thought of the plans his treacherous processor had dreamed up for him. He most likely would've found some sort of job in analytics for some company, one who wouldn't care what he was. He would've had his own apartment. It would have been small, but it would have been his, perhaps with a small window garden full of crystals. He had admired the one's in the Primal Basilica's garden. He would often take longer routes to where he was going to pass by it during his time as a lieutenant, looking for as long as he could before hurrying off to where he was ordered to go. He had never had time to actually visit it and take a closer look, but the way the light had shone through the quartz and apophyllite had frequently been the highlight of his orn. He had longed to grow some of his own, though without a window in his quarters or any shanix to buy them it had never been an option.

He lifted his head and looked at the small side table by his berth. The shard of dumortierite Jazz had given him laid where someone (Ratchet, 82%) had put it. Prowl reached over and touched it lightly with his digits, tracing along the smooth surface. He gazed at the flecks of black scattered through the soft blue of the crystal. The crystal Jazz had given him. No one had given him anything like this before. It dawned on him then that this was technically the first thing he had ever actually owned. Everything he had before had been the Primes' or the Council's property. He picked it up and felt its weight in his palm, staring at it. He finally had a crystal, like he always wanted. It was his. While he couldn't plant this one (it was much past its time for that), he at least had one now.

He felt that feeling in his chassis about the same time he realized he was smiling. It was a small, small smile, but it surprised him all the same.

———

Ratchet leaned back in his chair at the meeting table watching as Megatron continued to berate him. He was fairly sure he'd be insulted by now if he hadn't turned of his audials the moment the gladiator started talking. He could get the general gist of what was said based on the dramatic arm movements, pacing, and overbright optics, he didn't need to actually listen to the scrap. He watched as this went on for a few more breems, watching Orion's and Magnus' optics progressively widen as the tirade went on. Ratchet got briefly curious about what curse words the Decepticon was slinging at him, but decided it wasn't worth his time and continued to wait it out.

When Megatron finally stopped, vents heaving, he turned his audials back on and grinned. "Sorry, didn't quite catch that." Megatron looked ready to blow a fuse and Ratchet caught Soundwave's exasperated(?) look (it was hard to tell with the mask and visor, but the annoyance seemed clear).

Megatron grit his dentae. "You undermined my authority in front of my mechs!"

"And?" Ratchet sniffed. "You set of my patient! I don't care if you're Primus himself! My patient's health comes before your ego."

Megatron slammed his fist on the table, jolting several of the datapads and cubes on it. Ratchet didn't move a nanometer. "You seem to forget that this is my base! My Medbay!"

Ratchet shook his helm. "That doesn't matter. I'm CMO of the Autobots, so I outrank everyone when it comes to my patients. Including you." Ratchet glared at the tank.

"And Flatline is MY CMO, so he outranks you! And he's a fragging prisoner! NOT a patient."

Ratchet stood up slowly as he spoke. "First, Flatline has already conceded to my authority while I'm here, so no. He doesn't. And second," Ratchet flared his plating and glared at the mech before him. "While Prowl is in my Medbay, he's my patient. I don't give a scrap what you think of him outside of that." He jabbed a digit at the warlord as he leaned over the table, speaking low. "You are not to step pede in that Medbay until he's out of there. I don't care if it was an accident, what I care about right now is getting him better, and you are NOT. FRAGGING. HELPING! If I even see a nanometer of your plating in there I'm welding the doors shut and good luck to the rest of you!"

Megatron looked like he was ready to start throwing punches and Ratchet was more than willing to let him. He was NOT backing down on this. Thankfully, Orion spoke up. "Megatron, I fear he is right in this. I understand that it was an accident. However, we do not want to give Prowl the wrong ideas about our intentions. If you were the trigger for his… episode, then we do not want to risk a repeat."

"And why not just get it over with! He said it himself! Use him or get rid of him. I say we get what we need and lock him up somewhere! Then we at least get something good out of this and we can still keep the Matrix away from the Senate."

Orion stood up so fast he sent his chair clattering to the floor, both arms braced on the table. "I will not allow that to happen! Megatron, he is hurt, he is scared, and he needs us to help him, not throw him away!"

Megatron glared at the Autobot leader. "Oh? And how is that plan working out so far? I don't care what delusions you and your idiotic spy have! He's not going to join our side! All we'll have to show for our 'help' is a Prime who's more able to resist and the Council who won't stop hunting for him!"

"He just needs time-"

"Time we don't HAVE!"

Orion slammed his servo down on the table, setting everything to shaking again. "He is an Autobot prisoner! According to the agreement you signed vorns ago, I have overall authority of what happens to him." His optics burned over his battlemask, glowering at Megatron with intensity. "If having him on this base is such an issue, then we will gladly relocate him to one of ours at the best opportunity." He straightened, suddenly seeming centivorns older than he was as he sighed. "I know you don't, or rather can't see it, but I do. Prowl is making improvements. You need to trust him. You need to trust me."

Megatron looked ready to argue again, but Soundwave interrupted them. "Soundwave: has something Megatron needs to see." Everyone fixed their attention to the biggest vidscreen on the wall as it flickered to life, a news broadcast showing footage of the front of the Senate building.

Senator Proteus stood at a podium, surrounded by a sea of mechs blocked by security mecha and draped in a flowing cloak. "My fellow Cybertronians, I address you with great sadness and anger this orn. As you know, the Council has promised to maintain the peace and prosperity of our world. We have been working tirelessly every joor to keep the rebellious and misguided mecha that have plagued our planet for vorns at bay and to keep you safe, to keep that promise to you. However, as those depraved bots get more desperate, it seems they have turned to the unthinkable and have committed the most heinous of crimes against our people." He paused, as if the next words were hard to say. "It seems they have stooped down to the same level as that of Unicron and have stolen away our glorious and esteemed Prime from his sickberth."

Gasps and cries of outrage spread through the crowd. Proteus held up a hand and waited until the uproar died down. He had a forlorn look on his faceplate as he said his next piece. "I understand your anger and your sadness, and I share it with you. It has only been two vorns since their attempt to end our gracious Prime's life, leaving him on the edge of deactivation. Now they mock his life further and take him, stealing our conduit to Primus to try and weaken us." He lifted his helm high, raising his voice. "But they shall not succeed! The Prime will be recovered and returned to Iacon where he can continue to heal and rule us! The criminals responsible will receive the harshest of our and Primus' judgments upon their helms! We will not let them succeed in breaking our peace!" The crowd erupted into cheers and yells, calling for the rebels' deaths as Senator Proteus waved once and stepped away.

Shocked silence filled the room as they all stared at the now frozen screen. "How long ago was that?" Orion asked quietly.

"The broadcast: went live seven breems prior." Everyone stared at each other in quiet horror, Red Alert's sparks flying as he overheated. The Council had always framed them in a horrible and criminalistic light. Now? They were practically screwed. No one would take their side against them after being framed for kidnapping the Prime.

Megatron turned to Orion with a dangerous gleam in his optic. "Time's up."

———

Orion quietly knocked on the door to the medsuite, gently sliding it open after a moment. "Prowl," he greeted the black and white Praxian, who was sitting on the edge of his berth, much to Ratchet's apparent disapproval.

"Orion Pax," Prowl nodded formally, straightening his posture as best he could, shaking minutely as he did so.

"Ah ah ah! None of that! Lie back down before you hurt yourself!" The Prime narrowed his optics, but he did slowly start to move his legs back up onto the berth, though he stayed sitting up. Ratchet huffed, but he backed off, letting Orion have the metaphorical floor.

"I hope you are feeling better after what happened earlier. I wish I could wait to do this, but I-"

"The Council made their move, did they?"

Orion blinked at the question. "What?"

Prowl quirked a optical ridge at him. "Let me guess, after their failed attempt on my life, they have made a public address and framed you as criminals in my kidnapping."

Orion was taken aback. "Well- yes. They did."

Prowl nodded. "I see. Though you have no doubt already come to a decision on what is to be done with me, I do have a suggestion I would like to offer."

Orion folded his arms and motioned for him to continue. Prowl straightened more and moved his doorwings up higher on his back. "I have been informed that you are attempting to befriend me in order to gain my support in your cause. It will not work, seeing as I do not care for any of you." Orion quirked an optical ridge at that and Ratchet huffed again. Prowl ignored them. "However, I believe that we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement. You need the public to see me supporting you in order to save yourself from the vast majority of the population's wrath. Or you need to kill me, and I need you not to do that." Orion started to protest at that, but Prowl cut him off. "Seeing as the Council has shown what they are willing to do to keep me out of your servos, I feel no qualms about working against them."

Orion stared at Prowl. Ratchet stared at Prowl. The medic threw up his arms. "So you still don't think we're actually trying to help you!"

Prowl nodded. "Correct. You merely need me and this was the strategy you chose."

Ratchet let out a frustrated groan and Orion matched it internally. "While I want to emphasize that we are, in fact, trying to help you and that we wouldn't kill you either way, I am quite shocked to hear you being so open to working with us."

Prowl flicked a doorwing. "It is the most strategic choice."

Orion hummed. "Y'know, I completely forgot that you were a tactician."

Prowl glared at him. "And I forgot that you used to be good at leading."

Orion was a little affronted by that. "I think I am doing just fine."

"From what I have seen, you have yet to impress me," the Praxian deadpanned.

Orion was going to argue, but he had to admit this whole thing had been a scrap heap from start to finish. He shook his helm. "Regardless, I look forward to working with you."

"After he's recovered."

"Yes, Ratchet. After you've recovered." They turned to leave but stopped at Prowl's next words.

"I would like to inform you that I do have several conditions my compliance hinges upon."

"Conditions?"

Prowl looked at him with a gleam in his optic. "Yes. It has occurred to me that you have a lot more to lose than I if I do not cooperate."

…Fragging tacticians.

———

Ratchet chuckled as he and Orion walked down towards the base's command wing. "You know he's not gonna be happy with half of those."

Orion sighed as he got off the comm with Ultra Magnus, giving him the go ahead to broadcast the official (if very vague) announcement of their situation to both forces at large. The secret was out in more ways than one and any continued and unnecessary secrecy was a recipe for disaster.

He rubbed his optics as he scanned Prowl's list. He was all too aware of the fight he was going to have to put up against Megatron to get him to consider getting any of it approved just on principal. It was long, but most of it was compiled of extra (and in his opinion) unnecessary assurances that they wouldn't kill or imprison Prowl without probable cause, which he had listed out quite thoroughly. The rest of it was honestly kind of disheartening. Orion had expected demands for luxuries or unreasonable requests for freedoms he couldn't possibly give. But no, the Prime had taken the datapad and basically mapped out his own prison regimen. How much fuel he was to be allowed a day, how many joors he was allowed for recharge, how often he was to be escorted to a washrack, etc.

Orion parsed through the list quickly, stopping in his tracks in bafflement by the end. Ratchet stopped a few steps ahead and turned to look at him. "Pax?"

"He hasn't made any personal requests at all. No fuel preferences, no amenities, no shanix. He hasn't even asked for his own habsuite! It's all just what we would give him anyway." A sad feeling weighed over him. "He must not think we would honor any of it. He still doesn't trust us at all."

Ratchet came closer and put his servo on his pauldron. "It's like you said. He needs time. Whatever the Council did to him is gonna take a lot of patience and setbacks to get past, but if anyone could do it, it's gonna be an optimist like you."

Orion smiled behind his mask. "Or an annoying scraplet like Jazz."

Ratchet rolled his optics. "Don't even start on that. What he's doing shouldn't be working as well as it is." He frowned. "Where is Jazz anyway? He wasn't here for the meeting."

"Oh, he left a few joors ago for a mission. He said he'd be back by the end of the decaorn at the latest."

Ratchet snorted. "He better come back in one piece. What's he doing anyway?"

Orion shrugged. "He wouldn't tell me, but you know Jazz. Whatever it is, I trust him."

Chapter Text

Jazz carefully crept through a back alley in downtown Iacon, carefully sidestepping the potholes filled with the remnants of the orn's acid rain. He slipped past dilapidated buildings and flitted through the deeper shadows, carefully avoiding the optics of the few shady and less fortunate mechs still wandering the streets at the late joor. He had his silencing mods on, and he was careful to not look too conspicuous.

He rounded a corner and paused, consulting the directions Soundwave had given him. He caught a glimpse of his dark blue paint job, chipped and streaked with self inflicted wear to blend into the crowd that dwelt here. He pressed on, quickly and silently making his way to a building that looked like all the others, if slightly more intact. Only part of the front wall had crumbled and rusted from the vorns, though all the windows were busted and the door was boarded shut. He checked around, straining his audials to make sure he wasn't seen before skulking around the side of the building and slipping in a window, hitting the ground on the other side without a sound.

It was almost completely dark inside, the only light filtering through the holes in the wall and the window. It looked to be an abandoned office of some kind, with torn and rusted desks shoved to one side of the room and the cracked remains of old and useless styluses and cubes littering the dirt caked floor. He slipped into another room on the far end, this one containing a pile of old shelves stacked haphazardly against one another. He checked the room, scanning it twice before entering fully, keeping low and close to the wall. He checked the directions again and crouched down, staring at a hole in the floor deep under the pile. A hole that looked like it was just big enough to fit a cassette, not a full grown mech. Gee, thanks Soundwave.

He silently huffed as he carefully slid and shimmied his way under the pile and to the entrance of the hole. Jazz grinned when he saw the whole was actually ripped out of the grate covering a vent shaft. Gee, thanks Soundwave! He carefully started to remove the cover as his internal radio played one of his more upbeat playlists. Primus, he loved a good vent. Small enough to make you feel secure, small enough that most mechs couldn't get into it, and the possibility of taking you all sorts of places you weren't supposed to be. What wasn't there to like?

He got the cover off and slid in, crouching down as he did his best to careful to replace the jagged grate back as he had found it. He looked ahead of himself, smiling at the long stretch before him. He crawled his way through the tunnel system, overlaying Soundwave's instructions as he got closer to his destination. He hadn't been given a whole lot on the mech he was supposed to meet, only that he was a contact with Council intel and that while he was working with the Decepticons, he wasn't one himself. Most of the file had been how to get to Shockwave along with an explicit order not to kill or engage hostilely with him, leaving everything else up to the imagination. Jazz didn't like going in with such little information, but this whole 'not knowing' thing was really starting to get to him. He was a spy! Information was his currency, his map, and his job, he ran on it. He had gone in a lot worse missions with even less, he'd be fine.

He began to become aware of a lot of noise as he neared his destination, his sensitive audials picking out each one individually. The whirring of machinery, the beeping of systems and monitors, the hissing of steam and the steady dripping of liquid. He slowed down as he turned a corner and saw the light of the grate at the end of the tunnel. He moved at a painstakingly slow pace until he could see through the slats of the vent cover. The room on the other side was large, littered with shelves and tables covered in tools, beakers, and electrical components all arranged neatly and precisely. It looked kind of like Percy's lab, Jazz thought. Minus the flickering lights and the overall creepy ambiance that made Jazz's plates want to stand on end. He had a bad feeling in his chassis, but if Soundwave thought it was fine to send any of his cassettes here, then Jazz was probably fine.

He froze as the door to the left of the vent opened, not daring to vent as a large purple mech stepped into the room, looking down at a datapad with a single yellow optic. Jazz watched as Shockwave walked further into the room, stopping at a table with his back turned towards the grate and pausing to read whatever he was looking at. Jazz waited until he was sure the mech's attention was fully occupied before sliding the grate out of its place and noiselessly dropping gracefully from the ceiling. He waited a few kliks before getting up and slowly making his way towards the mech, going slowly.

One of Shockwave's finials twitched and Jazz froze, servo near his subspace as Shockwave slowly turned his helm towards him, fixing him with an unblinking and unnerving gaze over his pauldron. "You must be Maestro."

Jazz paused for a klik before straightening and dusting himself off, grinning as he did so. "Soundwave let you know I was coming?"

"Yes, though it is unusual for him to send anyone other than his cassettes." Shockwave turned to face Jazz fully, his large and bulky frame illuminated from behind from the work table's lamp, giving him an almost sinister silhouette. "You are here to receive information." His deep voice was monotone, speaking with certainty rather than asking a question.

Jazz answered it all the same, giving him a big smile as he did to hopefully show he was legitimately not a threat. At least, not right now. "Yessir! I was hoping you could shed a little light on a subject I'm a little muddy on." Shockwave merely stared at him, never taking his full and intense attention off of Jazz. He didn't like it one bit. He didn't like being that… perceived, but he didn't let it show. He merely grinned all the wider and walked over to a nearby bench to lean against it, Shockwave watching his every move. "What do you know about the Prime?"

Shockwave tilted his helm to the side. "The majority of what I know about the Prime is concerning his medical history during his time with the Council. Is that what you are after?"

Jazz felt his optics go wide behind his visor, though he kept on smiling. Now that was going to be useful. "I'll take anything you're willing to give, my mech. Question is, what do you want for it?"

Shockwave straightened his helm, gaze boring into him. "Soundwave and I have already agreed on a deal." Jazz narrowed his optics at that. What was the price they were gonna pay on that, Sounders? This was why he didn't like working with the damn telepath. The mech didn't trust Jazz (or anyone besides Megs) enough to tell him more than absolutely necessary so he never truly knew what he was getting into with these missions. It was real annoying.

Shockwave set down the datapad in his servo, moving past Jazz towards a large terminal on one wall. The wall was covered in screens displaying different equations, ratios, and other science jargon Jazz wasn't even going to try to make sense of. Shockwave loaded a dataslug into a port and started typing rapidly (pretty impressive for someone with one servo).

Jazz pushed off the bench to stand behind the mech, watching as files started to load onto the slug, flicking by too fast for him to see anything. "Why do you have access to the Prime's medical files? If you don't mind me asking."

Shockwave straightened, waiting for the data to load (15%). "I do not have access to his full medical history. The Council only gave me what I needed to complete their requests."

Jazz felt a jolt of dread start in his tank at those words. "Their requests?"

Shockwave stared unblinkingly at the screen. "Yes. The Council had several different experimental procedures they wanted to conduct on the Prime. I simply asked for any previous information that would lead to or affect the desired results."

Jazz felt himself tense, his anger and dread growing. "You experimented on the Prime?"

Shockwave turned towards him, the flashing files and images quickly passing on the screen casting a flickering light across his plating, casting a large shadow over Jazz. "I attempted to. Most of what I was tasked to do failed at the first attempt. The Council was unwilling to give me other opportunities. What I failed to do they discarded or had others attempt in my stead." Jazz had to manually keep his plating down as his anger and unease flared. He said everything so matter-of-factly, so devoid of emotion or remorse, it sent a shiver down his back strut.

Jazz looked around the room from behind his visor. He only saw the one door. Okay, maybe… "Why'd you agree? Are they keeping you here or something? Threatening you? I could bust you out no problem. Get you away from them."

Shockwave just stared. "No. I am here of my own volition."

Jazz barely kept the sneer off his faceplate, though he could feel his smile growing colder by the klik. "So you're working for the Council willingly. Then why are you helping us?"

Shockwave half turned to check the download's progress (67%). "The Council is giving me the resources I need to complete a project of mine, though what they give is not enough. The Decepticons have offered me the rest in exchange for any information I collect regarding the Council's affairs I become aware of." He looked back at Jazz, his gaze calculating and his field dead. "It was the logical choice for both of us."

"And you're fine with what they're having you do? Experimenting on somebody just cause they ask you to?" Jazz asked, voice steady despite his emotions. He crossed his arms across his chassis, clenching his fist hard.

"Yes. I normally would have declined given the restrictions they placed on the assignment. However, the chance to have a personal look at the Matrix was… tantalizing." Shockwave turned towards the terminal when it beeped, announcing the download's completion. He grabbed the dataslug, moving it in his servo. "It was merely a chance to study an object we know so little about beyond the fantasies and the stories made by mechs who needed a way to explain what they previously couldn't. There have been few scientifically motivated studies regarding the Matrix, and most of that data has been restricted or lost. I wanted to change that." He turned toward Jazz, yellow optic glowing slightly brighter than before. "Any harm the Prime received as a result was merely acceptable collateral damage."

Jazz felt his cables tense as he subtly angled himself to face the mech head on. He would make it quick. A dash and a strike to the neck cables. Or a blaster bolt to the face and that emotionless, unnerving yellow optic. Orders be damned, he wasn't going to let this monster keep venting another klik. He was about to move when his audials picked up a noise past the door. Multiple sets of pedesteps. And they were coming fast. Jazz bit down a frustrated snarl as he lunged forward, ripping the dataslug from the purple mech's servo and dashed towards the vent, leaping up and catching the lip of the opening to hoist himself inside. He slid inside and replaced the grate just in time as Shockwave turned away from his position towards the mech stepping into his lab.

The mech was red with orange accents, a rich blue cloak draped over his elaborate kibble. He strode in, bee lining it for Shockwave and waving at the guard by the door to stay there. "Shockwave, I thought we had an agreement!"

Shockwave loomed over the mech. "We do. I have upheld my end." The fancy mech looked furious, turning towards the wall Jazz was currently inside of and run his servo over his faceplate in frustration. Jazz took the opportunity to run a recognition scan and came up with a match: Senator Rutilus, in office about three millennia and a rich and entitled jerk like the rest of them. Lovely.

He turned towards Shockwave. "You said we'd be able to track it, and now it's disappeared off the map! They could have taken it anywhere by now!" He jabbed an accusing digit at the mech, gritting his dentae as he spit out his next words. "Find it. Now!"

Shockwave didn't move. "I cannot. The tracker has been disabled. There is no way for me to know where they have taken him without further information."

Rutilus bristled. "Are you telling me we gave you all that shanix and all that extra slag just for it to be that easy to lose?!"

"You gave me enough to make one tracker. It is undetectable by anything other than direct observation. I made it difficult, but I told you it was never going to be impossible to find."

"Well is that stupid thing at least doing its other job?!" Rutilus was practically shouting now, waving his arms in an uncaring face, his field absolutely drenching the vicinity in anger.

Shockwave stayed motionless, waiting for the Senator to back off before answering. "The tracker's only source of power was from the Prime's spark. If it it is no longer emitting a signal then that would mean it has been removed enough to render it useless in all its functions."

The Senator spun around, pacing back and forth while cursing up a storm. He finally stopped, taking a deep vent before sighing dramatically. "So the drone is out there somewhere with a now active Matrix. Perfect!" He snarled. He whirled on Shockwave. "We will pay you double if you come up with a way to find it, got it?" He didn't wait for Shockwave to answer, spinning on his heel and storming out of the room, the guard following close behind.

Jazz stayed stock still for a klik, venting silently as Shockwave turned to stare at the grate, trying to catch a glimpse of him. "You can tell Soundwave he does not need to worry. What you are giving me is enough for me to discard their offer." With that he turned and walked over to pick up his datapad, making his way to another table across the room.

Jazz sat there for a moment, indecisive. He really didn't want to leave this mech alive. He had admitted to hurting Prowl, to being fine with it as long as he got a look at what he wanted. It made his tank churn and the dataslug in his subspace burn. He would make it fast. He could make it look like an accident. He could make it look like it had never happened. But a nagging little voice in his processor stopped him from moving. As much as he hated this mech, as much as he wanted him gone from this world, Jazz had to admit that having someone so blatantly willing to double cross the Council while working for them was a huge asset. Plus, Megatron and Soundwave would probably make a stink about it.

He sighed internally as he turned to head back the way he had come. It didn't sit right with him, letting Shockwave live after Jazz had to witness the aftermath of what he had done. Prowl's terror, his hesitance, his distrust. It- it was the smart thing to do, keeping him alive just in case, he told himself as he followed the vent's twists and turns, Rutilus' words bouncing around in his head… 'The drone'… 'It'. He let his plating fluff up at the memory. Calling someone a drone was never a good thing, but the way he had said it, and calling Prowl an 'it.' This picture was getting uglier by the klik.

Jazz grunted as he pulled himself out of the hole and shimmied his way out from the pile of debris. He slipped out of the building and took a different route than he had the first time, slipping into a dark and camera-less nook to let his paint nanites shift their hue to a nice maroon and his plating settle into a different silhouette, kibble retracting and expanding outwards in places and visor shifting to a solid black. He put on a smile and hummed an upbeat tune as he passed out of Lower Iacon and made his way towards the market district. He smiled at bots he passed and looked curiously into store windows as he made his way towards the transport station.

He stopped in front of one window as the display caught his optic, field easing into something more cheery as he looked closer at what he saw.

Oh, he was going to love this.

Chapter Text

Prowl walked through the Primal Basilica, the echoing of his pedesteps announcing his hurried pace through the vast hallways. The empty hallways. That within itself was making Prowl uneasy. The Basilica was never empty. There were always aides and assistants running to and fro with errands or officers and officials mumbling to their parties about one thing or another. It wasn't inherently loud per se, but it always had that hum of activity giving it a constant background noise.

Well, usually. Right now his pedesteps were the only noise to be heard. Prowl fanned his wings, trying to sense any movement around him, but there wasn't any. He was completely alone. What was going on?

He continued on his way, making several turns down side corridors to try and make it to his hab, but the further he walked the more he realized he wasn't going anywhere. He stopped, severely confused and starting to feel anxious. Despite walking for several breems and making several turns he was still in the same hallway. He squinted, then took a deliberate step forward only to find himself parallel to the same pillar he'd been standing next to beforehand. He stepped backwards, to the side, at an angle, tried turning around, but no matter what he always ended up facing the same direction by that same pillar.

He huffed in frustration, his wings twitching slightly. Wait. His wings? He looked back at them, their black and white paint shining brightly. Weren't they damaged before? He looked at the rest of his frame. He was… whole. In fact, he looked better than he had in a long time. His finish was shiny and perfect, his paint bright and new… What fresh Pit was this place?!

He looked up and saw that the hallway was now closed off, the wall now in front of him holding a set of intricately gilded giant golden double doors. The symbols and glyphs carved into them didn't look like anything he'd ever read before, but Prowl felt like some of them were almost familiar. In a very confusing and mildly off putting sort of way. He stepped towards it and found himself right back where he was again. This was getting old very quickly. Prowl narrowed his optics and got ready to run, wondering if that would work when-

———

Prowl woke with a start to the lights in the med suite turning on, shining their brightness directly into his optics. He grunted and turned his face away, rubbing at his temporarily blinded optics with his bandaged servo.

"Whoops! Sorry Prowl!" Bluestreak said from across the room. "Ratchet said it would be okay if I turned them on, but I don't know how to work the dimmer and-"

"I assure you, Bluestreak. It is fine." Prowl mumbled, blinking to try and hasten his vision in returning. Across from him Sideswipe scoffed.

"If me or Sunny had done that you'd have yelled at us," he complained, ignoring Sunstreaker's sharp protest at the nickname.

Prowl glared at him, clearly seeing him hanging upside down off the edge of his berth, halfway on the floor. "It is 'Sunstreaker or I,' first of all. Second of all, yes. I would have."

Sideswipe groaned. "You sound like Ultra Magnus. Nobody cares if I say stuff 'wrong.' You know what I meant: Blue's your favorite."

"Proper grammar does matter if you want anyone to take you seriously. And yes, at the current moment, he is."

Bluestreak laughed, plopping onto the floor at Sunstreaker's side and reaching across him to flick Sideswipe's helm. "You hear that? I'm the Prime's favorite!"

He laughed at Sideswipes awkward attempt to shove his servo away (a difficult feat with his cast), Sunstreaker glaring at him. Prowl watched the exchange with slight curiosity. He had rarely seen bots showing such… familiarity around each other. Most of the interactions he had seen and had had been strictly professional or… less than pleasant, to put it in nice terms. The most comradery like this he had seen had been among the kitchen or cleaning staff, though it was never this on display, and they usually stopped when he specifically was around. Seeing these three 'goof off' as Ratchet put it was new for him. Though, they were young. Perhaps this went away with age? He wouldn't know. He had never had time to try and 'goof off,' and even then he wasn't sure he would have enjoyed it to the extent they seemed to.

He turned his head at the click of the lock, turning down his audials in preparation. He was thankful he did, because Ratchet's yelling at seeing Sideswipe on the floor was exactly what he had expected it to be. "GET OFF THE FRAGGING GROUND YOU IDIOT! I swear I'm gonna weld your aft to the berth, and just see if I don't! Primus give me strength- if your tank starts leaking again I'm gonna let Hot Rod try and fix it instead of wasting MY precious time-"

Prowl watched as the three scrambled in panic to try and get Sideswipe back on the berth before Ratchet could get to him. It was nice not being the main source of Ratchet's ire for the three orns they had been here. Their transport had arrived a few joors after he'd been settled in. He had protested greatly to sharing a room with Sideswipe but had grudgingly accepted it to the alternative of Hot Rod, who was put in the room next to theirs after a lot of glaring at him past the door. According to Ratchet, Prowl wasn't allowed to be alone in the Medbay anymore after he tried to 'rip out his own spark and ruin all of his hard work.' A gross exaggeration of what happened, in Prowl's opinion. He hadn't been trying to remove his spark, just the inhibitor. Besides, he was still alive, after all. He had been worried that after all that had happened that the medic would be more overbearing with him, but it turned out that Sideswipe and the other two were more than enough to occupy most of his attention.

"Oh for frag's sake- Aid! Get me a spot welder! The idiot's leaking. Again!" Ratchet thwacked Sideswipe on the helm, ignoring his yelp and turning to glare at the unfortunate patient's brother. "I thought I told you to stop him from doing stupid slag!"

Sunstreaker grunted. "I'm not in charge if him. If he wants to stay in here forever, so what? Just mean's our hab is quieter." Not that he would know, Prowl thought. He hadn't left this room for anything other than refueling or to go to his shift. He even recharged in the visitor chair.

Ratchet carried on with his admonishments while he patched up the red twin under Sunstreaker's careful scrutiny, leaving Bluestreak to wander over to Prowl's berth. He huffed dramatically and flopped his front half down on a clear part of the berth, sagging until he was hanging off the edge. He was always careful to avoid touching him which Prowl greatly appreciated, though he wondered if it was more out of fear of hurting him than out of courtesy. He seemed like a naturally tactile mech. He crossed his arms and plunked his helm down, this time sighing even more dramatically. Prowl rolled his optics. "What is it, Bluestreak?"

Bluestreak looked at him sidelong. "It's so boring in here. When are you gonna be able to come out? I want to show you stuff and introduce you to everyone and-"

"He's not moving a slagging nanometer until I say he can," Ratchet groused, coming over and nudging the younger Praxian over and ignoring him slumping to the floor in a dramatic show of protest. "Go over there, you little fragger. There's plenty of others for you to annoy." Bluestreak huffed before getting up and moving over to slump his weight on Sunstreaker, who didn't seem to mind.

Prowl waited until the room's (supposedly soundproof) privacy divider extended all the way before he slumped back into his pillows with a sigh. Ratchet cocked a brow at him. "You good?"

"Yes. I am just not used to being around bots with so much energy. It is… taxing," he said slowly, trying to gauge the medic's reaction to the admittance. He merely shrugged.

"Yeah, that's how it's gonna be with most of the Autobots around here. Call this your practice round." He motioned for Prowl to sit up, which he accomplished with relatively little strain. Ratchet hummed his approval as he checked his bandages. He had been in a very good mood with Prowl lately, saying that he was healing at a much more rapid pace than he had originally hoped. Prowl theorized that it was because his spark inhibitor was removed, allowing his frame to concentrate on other parts of his frame (79%). It could have been other things, but he wasn't sure and he sure wasn't going to ask. The benefit of becoming able bodied overcame any concerns he had over his unusual progress.

Ratchet carefully unwrapped every old bandage from his frame, carefully scrutinizing every small wound before straightening and gathering all the scraps up. He smirked at Prowl. "Well, you won't need these anymore." Prowl frowned, looking down at is frame. All of the holes from the wires that Ratchet had patched were gone. The patches and welds were fully integrated into his plating and protoform, many grey spots dotting his frame. He moved his arm, twisting it to feel the lack of sharp pains and tugs on the spots. He moved his legs too, still feeling the soreness in his struts from being stationary for so long, but at least the former pinpricks of discomfort were gone.

He glanced at Ratchet, who was looking at him expectantly. "I do not feel them anymore."

The medic nodded. "Good. Your shoulder and servo are going to take longer with them being so recent, but the fractures and all your open wounds should be fine now." He placed his servos on his hips. "I think we can try walking again today, if you're up for it." Prowl nodded, feeling a little anxious to get up and finally move on his own. "Great. All you have to do is tell me what's wrong with you're chassis first."

Whelp, that was the end of that. Prowl started to lay back down. "There is nothing wrong with my chassis."

"Don't do this to me, kid. You're not being subtle. You keep looking down at it all freaked out."

"And?" Prowl settled back into the berth, swinging his wings to either side of him and crossing his arms. "That does not necessarily indicate a medical emergency. Besides," he glared at the medic. "I believe one of my conditions was that 'I have full control over the medical care I receive as long as I am conscious and of able mind to make those decisions.' I do not believe this is an issue for you to worry about."

Ratchet rolled his eyes. "I've read your fragging list, Prowl. I'm not going over your helm with this. I just want to make sure your spark, and the bot attached to it, is doing okay."

"I have not had any concerns about my spark." Other than the fact that he knew Ratchet had done something to it, though no matter how many times his processor tried to panic about that, that stupid feeling would return. It made him feel safe, which was wrong, and it being wrong irked Prowl to no end. But then the feeling would get more insistent because no, it wasn't wrong but he knew it was-

"Then what is it? If it isn't your spark than it shouldn't be a problem to tell me, right?" Ratchet narrowed his optics. He wasn't backing down on this this time it would seem. Only took him three orns. "Is it a fuel line? A transformation seam? The Matrix?"

"Why would it be the Matrix?"

Ratchet seemed genuinely confused by that. "Well, isn't it… I don't know. Matrixing? I just thought maybe it was acting up."

"No. It is just as it has previously been," he said carefully.

Ratchet furrowed his brow. "Interesting. I thought taking the inhibitor off would keep it more active or something. Then again, I'm no expert," he said with a shrug.

Prowl stared at him. "What does the inhibitor have to do with it?"

There was a very long silence. "… What the slag you mean?! You took it off! I thought you did that to strengthen it, or activate it or something! Are you telling me you ripped that off just because?!"

Prowl sat up a little, raising his wings in offense. "No. I took it off because it was inhibiting my spark and making me weak."

Ratchet had a look of realization on his face. "Oh, we never told you, did we?"

"Told me what?"

Ratchet gestured to his chest. "The inhibitor was to block the Matrix some way or another, it was just using your spark as a battery. So, I guess it technically was messing up both, but your spark's scanning much stronger than before so I think the Matrix was the big thing."

Prowl glared at him. "And you've known this for how long?"

"Since we left the other base. Things got so busy I guess I forgot to tell you."

"…You forgot. You did not tell me important medical information because you 'forgot?'"

"Yeah. Cause I was busy. Fixing your face. And your arms, and your legs, and your everything while trying to escape a base on time. And you were busy being an unhelpful little fragger through the entire process."

"That- oh, fine." Prowl turned his head away, letting his frustration clearly show in his field. There wasn't any use fighting with the medic on this and it would only serve to make him more worked up. Though the situation didn't make any sense. Why would they give him an inhibitor for something that never worked? No, they must be wrong.

Ratchet tapped the side of his berth. "Alright, I won't bug you anymore with it. But I will be keeping an eye on you." Prowl looked at him through the corner of his vision, watching him produce a cube from his subspace. "Here. Choke this down and we can get you up and walking."

Prowl begrudgingly took the cube, slowly sipping at the medical sludge with a grimace. It wasn't that it tasted bad (it did), Prowl just didn't enjoy the texture of it. All the same, he didn't complain or resist like Sideswipe did. After all, it wasn't much different than what he had consumed the vast majority of his functioning. Since the TacNet burned through so much energy he needed a fuel that would keep up with its demands as well as keeping him optimally functioning during high output orns. Which were most of them. Between him running back and forth throughout the orn paired with using his TacNet almost nonstop to keep up with his workload under the Primes, it was simply more efficient to drink a grade heavier in supplements and energy boosters. He was used to this so there was no point in complaining.

He did take note of the presence of manganese in his cube. It was an underlying taste compared to the rest of the contents, but it was strong enough it was easily noticed. He wondered if Jazz must have told Ratchet about his preference, as all his cubes so far had contained it. He didn't want to bring it up though, in case they'd stop. He did enjoy it.

Speaking of the TIC, Prowl had not seen him since he had left three orns ago. He had expected him to come by like he had previously, but the room remained perpetually devoid of Jazz the entire time. He wasn't necessarily surprised. Being a member of High Command probably kept him busy with the loss of their base. Besides, he probably had bigger worries to deal with just in general. He didn't have time to come to bother Prowl. Not that Prowl wanted that. Prowl didn't even like the mech. He barely tolerated his presence. He just liked consistency and Jazz was disrupting that. He didn't listen to the chance (it was only a chance) that Jazz didn't want to be around him anymore. That he had gotten sick of Prowl (like everyone else) and had decided he had better things to do than to pester a weak, useless mech who cowered at a gladiator's raised servo. No, Jazz had just discovered what everyone else always did: Prowl was a worthless, unlikable, stupid piece of-

He suppressed a shiver as a different feeling came, still originating in his chassis and permeating through his whole frame. This one felt comforting, but different than the other one. It felt… sad? Comforting and sad. It was contradicting and that was aggravating. Maybe Ratchet was right. Something must be wrong with his spark. Too bad he'd never know what, seeing as he'd be long deactivated before he purposely let Ratchet root around inside of him again.

He finished his cube, handing it to Ratchet and shuffling until he was sitting on the edge of the berth. Ratchet waited for him to nod his okay before removing the partition. Bluestreak was immediately at Prowl's side, practically vibrating with excitement as his wings flapped behind him. "Oh oh oh oh oh! Are you gonna walk again? Can you finally leave? Your bandages are off so you have to be at least mostly better which is good enough to walk around past the Medbay right cause I need to show you everything-"

"Your paint job is horrible," Sunstreaker sneered, wrinkling his olfactory in disgust.

"Sunny! You can't just say that to a guy!" Bluestreak looked aghast, gesturing at Prowl. "Look at him! He's been through a lot and he doesn't need you pointing out his bad paint. He can't help it if it's all peeling and scratched!"

Sunstreaker rolled his eyes. Prowl noted the lack of reaction to the nickname he seemed to hate so much. Huh. "I didn't mean it to be rude. I just meant it."

Sideswipe snickered. Prowl ignored them all, focusing on placing his pedes firmly on the ground as he slid slowly off the berth. He waited a click before letting go of the edge, standing still for a moment to keep his balance and trying not to focus too hard on Bluestreak's buzzing field next to him.

"Okay, you got it. Now try and step forward a bit at a time. Don't rush," Ratchet said, staying close and ready to catch Prowl if he stumbled. He took a tentative step forward, lurching a bit but regaining his balance quickly. They continued like this until Prowl had made a full circuit around the room without falling flat on his face like the first orn they had tried this, though he was still very wobbly. He gave his doorwings a satisfied flick in their bandages as he stood back by his berth, leaning against it as Bluestreak begged Ratchet to let him out.

"Pleeeeeeeeeease please please please! I promise we won't get into trouble and you could even come with us and I promise Sunny will stop anyone from beating him up-" What? "- and I won't let him out of my sight and would you please-"

Ratchet clamped his servos on the Praxian's shoulders. "Blue. Slow down for a klik and listen. He's not ready for that yet. We're going to take this slow so he doesn't hurt himself. Besides, I still need to fix his doorwings before he can balance properly and that'll add some recovery time. He may be healing fast, but he's still healing. Speaking of that, Prowl." He turned towards him. "I'm thinking about doing it sometime withing the next decaorn, but I'll wait to set the date until we talk more about it."

"Set the date? For what?" Prowl asked, more than a little suspicious.

"For your surgery."

Prowl narrowed his optics. "'My surgery'. Can you not fix them like my other injuries?"

Ratchet shook his helm. "I won't get into depth with it with them listening, but trust me when I say you're gonna wanna be under for this one."

Prowl lifted his helm a little. "Thank you for the offer, but I will decline."

———

Ratchet stomped into the Medbay, somehow managing to slam the automatic door on his way out. That little- of course! Of course he couldn't make this easy! WHY NOT! Doesn't matter that he can't walk properly or that he's practically half blind without them, nope! And the worst part is he can't yell at I'm until he agrees like he normally would or that would ruin all his progress, but slag if he wasn't tempted to throw a wrench at that little fragger sometimes-

"So I imagine it's all going fine?" He turned his helm to glare at the slag-eating grin Deadlock was throwing at him. The assassin chuckled. "Is that a no?"

"He's being an aft about it! All I want to do is help him! That's all I've done and he still won't accept it! It's like trying to wrangle Spec Ops in for their welfare checks, except I can't give this one any physical incentive to cooperate." Ratchet ran a servo over his face. "I swear he's more difficult than Jazz and Mirage combined."

Deadlock shrugged, leaning against an unoccupied berth. "He's the Prime, Ratch. They're all pains in the aft," he said, engine growling.

"Oh don't you start that. He's grumpy, and uncooperative, and insanely stubborn, but he has every right to be. He's not like the others."

"Really? You mean all the scrap you've said about Sentinel and Zeta don't apply to the mech you're complaining just as much about?" Deadlock asked with annoyed disbelief.

Ratchet shook his head. "This one is just refusing medical treatment. He's not demanding I give him insanely stupid vanity mods free of charge like Sentinel, or complaining how I waste my time helping bots on the street like Zeta. He's frustrating in a million different ways, but from what I've seen he's not a terrible mech, he's just… He needs time to adjust. I'm just struggling to give him that time. I need to be more understanding." Ratchet forcibly smoothed out his plating. He should be more patient with Prowl. He had his reasons to be hesitant, and Ratchet was sure they were good reasons, it was just so aggravating being ready and willing to help and be denied the opportunity. "If he wants to wait until the end of Cybertron to function properly he can. I'm still gonna help him with it."

Deadlock glared at the door to Prowl's medsuite. "He doesn't deserve to have you help him if he's not going to appreciate it. Why not let Flatline or Hoist have him so you don't have to deal with this slag?"

"Cause I've spent this long building up to the point where he trusts me not to immediately screw him over, and that's progress I'm not willing to lose. Besides, I like Flatline and Hoist. I'm not gonna do that to them just yet."

"Fine. But if he keeps it up I'm going to have a little talk with him," Deadlock growled, his red optics flashing.

Ratchet Rolled his optics. "I'm a grown mech, Deadlock. I don't need you to fight my battles for me."

"So? Doesn't mean I won't," he said. The Decepticon pushed off the berth and walked over to him, reaching into his subspace and producing a cube of energon with copper flakes and swirls of lithium floating through it, handing it to Ratchet. "Here. I know you didn't fuel this morning."

Ratchet cocked an optical ridge as he took the cube. "Oh? And how would you know that?"

Deadlock grinned wolfishly, letting his fangs peek out. "I have my ways." He bumped Ratchet's shoulder with his own. "Come on, I know you were supposed to be off shift half a joor ago. Let's get you out of this Medbay and you can tell me all about how much you hate the Prime."

"I don't hate him. I'm just very inclined to the idea of strangling him right now." Deadlock snorted as he tugged on Ratchet's arm, urging him towards the door. Ratchet smiled, letting himself be led. He liked hanging out with the crazy fragger. He was a good friend.

———

Bluestreak sat at a far table in the rec room, sullenly staring through the cube in front of him. He hadn't caught a lot of what Ratchet had yelled before the partition had gone back up, but he had caught enough to know that Ratchet was not happy. Neither was Prowl. He hadn't yelled, but his glare had been lethal. The Prime could get really scary looking when he wanted to, and Bluestreak hoped he was never on the other end of that particular glare.

He didn't understand why Prowl didn't want his doorwings fixed. It must be awful not being able to sense what was around you at all times. It was so cool being able to practically see what was around you when other bots couldn't. How Prowl could stand the loss of input was beyond him. Bluestreak had nearly gone crazy when he had strained one of his during sparring a few cycles ago and Ratchet had blocked the sensory output from it while it healed, and that was just one of them! Bluestreak had heard Ratchet yelling about fried circuits and damaged sensors, and that sounded serious. Why wouldn't Prowl want them fixed? Just thinking about it made him flatten his own wings as close to his back as he could in sympathy.

Bluestreak looked sideways at Sunstreaker sitting next to him, currently glaring at everyone who got too close to their table and scaring them away. It had been overwhelming at first. When it was announced that the Prime was on base and going to be working with them, it didn't take long for word to spread that he was in the Medbay. And after they found out Bluestreak was allowed in and out of that room they had immediately swarmed him with questions and angry demands to know what was going on. He had tried to keep as quiet about everything as possible to respect Prowl's privacy, but it took a lot of ignored refusals, a very mad Sunstreaker, and a few scuffles for them to finally back off. Now the yellow gladiator flat out refused to let him go anywhere without him escorting him to ward off the mob. Bluestreak smiled at the thought. It was really sweet that Sunny cared enough to make the time to help him out, especially with Sideswipe currently on enforced berth rest. He knew they hated being apart when one of them was hurt, so he tried to make whatever he had to do quick so they could go back to the Medbay.

Bluestreak sighed and downed his cube, getting up and turning to put his cube away-

"Hey Blue!"

Bluestreak jumped backwards, tripping on his chair leg and falling backwards to land on a startled Sunstreaker. Bluestreak stared wide eyed at a grinning Jazz, gripping Sunstreaker's arm tightly as he felt his spark trying to burst out of his chassis. "Primus, Jazz! You nearly gave me a spark attack!"

Jazz laughed. "Yeah, that was the point, Blue. You looked down and I wanted to get you out of your funk." He tilted his head to the side, a mischievous grin on his face. "Looks like it worked just fine."

Bluestreak huffed to show his annoyance, though his wings were raised happily to belay his lie. "Well, I'm glad you're back. Even though you could've just said hi like a normal bot."

"And where's the fun in that? What had you all sulky in the first place?"

Bluestreak glared at him. "I wasn't sulky. It's just, well… um…" He looked around the room, not wanting to draw attention to his worries about Prowl in such a crowded area.

Jazz seemed to guess what he was thinking though. "Is it about our little bedridden ray of sunshine?"

Bluestreak snickered. "Yeah. He and Ratchet got into this big argument and now Ratchet's mad and he's mad and I feel bad because I kinda know what he's going through but I don't know why he's choosing to not fix it and it's making me feel bad cause I don't want him to feel bad-"

"So he's being a pain again? Gotcha." Jazz shifted his servos behind his back, drawing Bluestreak's attention to what he was holding behind it.

"Oh what's that? Is that from your mission? Is it dangerous? Is it secret? Is it-"

"It's a gift for him, actually," Jazz interrupted, bringing a plain box out in front of him.

Bluestreak shifted to see better. "Oh, can I see? I mean, if you don't want to show me that's fine. I don't want to see it if it's a surprise, except I kinda do cause I'm wondering what it is and do you think he'll like it since he's so grumpy about everything all the time and-"

"I guess we'll see," Jazz laughed, walking around the table. "You'll see it soon enough, but I want it to be a surprise." He turned and waved. "See ya, Blue! And by the way, you might want to get off Sunny's lap. It looks like he's about to blow a fuse." With that he left, chuckling as he heard some very hurried shuffling and a long string of frantic apologies behind him.

———

Prowl sat on his berth, silently seething. Things had gotten a little heated with Ratchet earlier, but he wasn't going to budge. He didn't want to be unconscious when Ratchet worked on him, though he didn't say as much. He had point blankly refused to give him permission to go ahead with the procedure. Ratchet had yelled and had made some very good points as to why he should let him, but it didn't matter. Mechs walked around every day without doorwing sensors, he could manage. He could learn to balance and walk without them. It would take time and a considerable adjustment period, but according to TacNet's calculations, he could live just fine without them being active.

Not that he wanted to. He longed to have the familiar input flowing across his circuits again, and walking was majorly difficult with the lack of it. But he wasn't ready. He wasn't ready to give Ratchet that level of freedom to his frame. Yes, he knew he had already been operated on when he arrived, but he had already been unconscious at the time. It hadn't mattered because he didn't have a choice. Now he did and while he loathed to admit it, he was afraid. He'd rather never feel his wings again than to trust someone like that. Especially a medic. Whether it was Ratchet or not made no difference.

He groaned when he felt that new feeling in his chassis again. He had run several diagnostics and all had come back normal, so he still had no idea where the input was coming from. He turned to look at the partition still in place, making sure it was sealed properly before taking several deep vents and opening his chest plates. He was surprised by the amount of light that glowed from his chest. It was a much brighter and vibrant blue than normal, though he wondered if sparks were normally that bright. He'd only ever had his own as a reference point, and he'd only ever opened it up for medical checks. Though, he was sure it was never this bright before. Maybe the inhibitor effected it.

He looked down and stared for a few moments, simply looking at the thing causing the absolutely radiant glow around him. The Matrix was shining bright in his chest.

The Matrix was shining.

In his chest.

"Huh." Prowl had seen what the Matrix looked like in ancient depictions, and Sentinel and Zeta had showed it off proudly any chance they got. It had shined just like this with them, but never for Prowl. Well, until now. He continued to stare at it while his TacNet ran the numbers his processor couldn't even begin to try and comprehend at the moment. What Ratchet had said… (96% he was telling the truth). 96%. HE stayed stuck on the umber for a few breems. So that meant…

Prowl wasn't the problem? But that didn't make any sense! It hadn't worked before because he hadn't been meant to receive the Matrix. He wasn't supposed to be Prime. He couldn't activate it, he couldn't… But he could so that was wrong (?) He didn't- he couldn't- AUGH!

Prowl closed his chest plates and slumped down on the bed, rubbing at his chevron to alleviate the ache steadily growing in his helm. TacNet was furiously recalculating everything he had known about the Matrix, what the Council had said, what he had believed, and it hurt. It was too much all at once. He needed a distraction, he needed something for his TacNet to latch onto to stop its spiraling, but he couldn't think of what-

The partition slid away a little as a familiar black helm popped into view. "Heya, Prowl!"

"Oh thank frag," Prowl sighed, shuttering his optics as TacNet immediately switched gear to calmer thoughts on what exactly Jazz was going to annoy him with now. This was exactly the distraction he needed.

He heard a surprised chuckle. "Aw, did you really miss me that much?"

Prowl's optics flew open as he rapidly sat up. "NO! That is not what I- I meant that simply because I needed a distraction and you happened to walk in at the right time. I did not 'miss' you," he vehemently denied.

Jazz tilted his head. "Uh huh… Sure." He stepped fully into the room and shifting a box in his arms to latch the divider, cutting off Sideswipe's laughter from the other side. "It's okay, Prowler. I know it's pretty hard when I'm gone, but you don't have to be that happy I'm back."

Prowl scowled at him. "I am not-" He paused. "That is not my name."

Jazz smiled. "Yeah, I know. It's your new nickname!"

Prowl glared. "I do not need a nickname."

"Yeah you do. Everyone has at least one. Sides is Sides, Blue is Blue, Ratch is Ratch, Sunny is Sunny-"

"I was under the impression Sunstreaker very avidly prefers his actual designation."

Jazz shrugged. "Yeah, but you can get away with it if he's… distracted." He smirked at that, and Prowl decided he didn't want to know what that was about. "As I was saying, everyone needs a nickname. It's part of being a well adjusted member of society, which is what we're trying to achieve here. So, congrats! You're Prowler now."

"I would prefer my actual designation."

"Yeeeeaaaaah, no. You're Prowler now and you get to deal with it. If you don't like it, you can take a page out of Sunny's book and beat me up and I'll stop. Until then, suck it up. Now move over." Jazz gently shoved Prowl's legs aside as he clambered onto his berth. Prowl was going to try and attempt to kick him off but he was suddenly very close very fast, catching Prowl off guard. "Here!" he said, dropping his box in Prowl's lap. "Happy Creation Day!"

He sat staring at Prowl expectantly. Prowl stared at him, then the box, and back to him again. "It is not my Creation Day."

"Will you tell me when it is?"

"No."

Jazz grinned. "Then for lack of a better alternative, I hereby declare today as the day we will celebrate it until I can find out when it actually is. And trust me, I will find out. But until then, here you go, now open it!"

Prowl furrowed his brow. "If you are going to find out anyway, as you say-" (it would take a fragging miracle for him too, seeing as Prowl didn't even know when it was) "- then why celebrate it today."

Jazz did his version of an eye roll. "Well if you want to be picky about it, you can call it a 'welcome to the rebellion' present instead. Either way I want you to open it." He settled onto the berth, crossing his legs and staring at Prowl again.

Prowl rolled his own optics and grabbed the lid of the box, preparing himself for something to jump out at him, or to spray him with something, or… he stared. Oh.

"Well? Do you like it?" Jazz asked, excitement flitting in his field and his voice.

Prowl just stared. It was a chess set. A chess set carefully carved from shining black and white crystal. he carefully lifted it out of the box, setting it down in front of him. It was made of black and white onyx, silver inlays decorating the edges. When he lifted the top it revealed all thirty two pieces sitting in a soft bed of red velvet. He placed the top down gently and picked up the black king, rubbing his thumb over the perfectly smooth surface of the piece, feeling every detail carved into it. It was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen, let alone touch. "Where… where did you get this?" he asked looking up, nearly breathless with disbelief.

Jazz looked downright elated. "Oh, just some shop I passed by on my way back. Saw it and I thought you'd like it since you seemed to like the other crystal I gave you." Prowl glanced at the dumortierite on the side table, looking back at the piece in his servo. "And since this is your new favorite game, it just seemed like a good idea. Especially since that's kinda the only two things I know you like besides energon. And hey! Now we won't have to pass a datapad back and forth next time I win."

"Jazz, this must have been expensive. I cannot-" Prowl put the piece back and set the lid back in place. "You have to take it back-" He froze, staring at Jazz's hand gently stopping his arm.

"It's okay, Prowler. Believe me, if that was a problem I would've gotten some crappy looking set from a garage sale and called it good. It's just-" Jazz shifted, removing his hand to rub the back of his neck cables. "I know you've had it rough with all the slag you've had to deal with, and I just, I don't know. I wanted to do something nice for you. You deserve to have something nice and cool, and it's not like you brought anything from before with you, so… here you go!"

Prowl was frozen. He didn't entirely understand. If this was an attempt at getting in his good graces… but he'd already agreed to help? So, was this a bid for him to like Jazz specifically? He'd been clear about his feelings towards the mech. But Jazz had shown he didn't care one way or another if Prowl wanted him around or not. What was his motivation?

Jazz laughed. "I can practically hear your gears turning Prowl. Trust me, I'm just doing this to be nice. No strings attached. You act like I'm gonna shank you if you accept it." His smile dropped a little. "Hey, not to bring down the mood or anything but out of curiosity, this isn't the first present you've ever had, right?"

Prowl shook his head. "No, this is not."

Jazz sagged a little. "Good. I mean, I would hate to know that I gave you your first present of your life right now, I man that would be…" His smile dropped completely. "Prowler. You aren't lying to me, right?"

Prowl frowned. "No, this is not the first gift I've received."

"What number is it then?"

"The second."

Jazz stayed very still for a moment. "Okay… then what was the first?" Prowl glanced quickly at the table before he could stop himself. Jazz followed his look, staring at the little blue crystal on the table. "Oh." They both sat in silence for a few moments, Jazz staring at the crystal and Prowl thumbing at the corner of the board in his lap. Eventually Jazz laughed, startling Prowl. "Well, Pit. I'm glad I did spring for the nicer one then! What do you say we break this thing in with a game before I have to split?"

Prowl relaxed a little. "If you want to lose again, then I am happy to oblige."

Jazz shook his head, scooting back a little and sliding the board between them, carefully setting it up. "Oh no, I was going easy on you those times. This time you won't be so lucky." Prowl snorted, watching as Jazz's smile grew again. "By the way. If it makes you feel better, I technically didn't spend a credit on this."

Prowl gave him a sharp look. "I swear if you stole it-"

Jazz dramatically gasped. "You wound me, Prowler. I would never steal from such an establishment! The nerve! I merely found the credits in some rich guy's subspace."

"Jazz!" Prowl hissed.

"What? It's not like he'll miss it," Jazz said. "Besides, when you're a wanted mech, technically everything you do is illegal so it practically cancels out."

"That's not how that works."

"How would you know? Anyway, you can go first, it being your Creation Day and all." Prowl rolled his optics but moved a pawn forward anyway. He was more than happy to pour his processor into the game and push aside all other thoughts.

He didn't notice his wings flicking behind him, or the optics watching them behind the visor.

Chapter Text

Jazz slipped out of the room and into the Medbay, huffing a little. Five times. He lost five times! Prowl had just learned the game three orns ago and despite looking up a slag load of different strategies on the way back to Kaon he still lost! This was just unfair, Jazz was good at games like that! Prowl had to be Primus' favorite, that was it. Cosmic favoritism. Either that or he was way smarter than Jazz had originally thought, but still, Primus must've… Oh, right. He was Prime… So Jazz WAS right and Prowl is Primus' favorite and that meant him losing wasn't actually his fault, so ha!

Jazz smiled as he headed over to where Flatline was busy rewiring something in Skywarp's hip. "Hey, Flatline. Do you know when Ratchet's coming back?"

Flatline grunted, servo deep in the Seeker's hip joint. "No. He went off with Deadlock a few joors ago. Who knows when they'll be back."

Skywarp snickered. "Do you think they're finally… you know?" Jazz and Flatline both gave him a disbelieving look and Skywarp cackled.

Flatline smacked him with the back of his free servo. "Hold still!" The Seeker sneered but stilled, flicking his wings impatiently. The Decepticon medic glanced over at Jazz. "I could comm him if you'd like?"

Jazz shook his head as he started towards the doors. "Nah, I'll just go find him. Got something to ask him about."

"Is it about your new friend in the back?" Jazz stopped dead in his tracks and turned to look at the Skywarp. The jet was smiling wolfishly at him. "It's really interesting, y'know. Starscream says not to worry about it, but the Prime coming here after you lost a base and what the news is saying, and no one but that little Praxian and the Terror Twins getting to see him? Makes a mech wonder what's really going on."

Jazz smiled at him, his visor covering the fact that it didn't reach his optics. "What can I say? The mech likes his privacy."

"Enough he can't say 'hi' to all the bots he's been screwing over till now?" Skywarp's engine started up, his wings raising. "Now that he's suddenly had a change of spark or some slag like that?" He ignored Flatline's protests, jumping off the medical berth and stalking towards Jazz until he was looming over him. "I can't believe that Megatron would just let the Prime in here no problem. So my question is: What the frag is really going on?"

Jazz tilted his helm to the side, shifting his weight to one leg. "Didn't you hear Magnus' thing? The Prime is working with us to take down the Council and-"

"'And set up a new and fair government.' Yeah, we all heard that load of scrap. But we all know something else is going on."

Flatline grabbed the Seeker's arm. "Skywarp, you're going to frag up your-"

"I don't care!" He ripped his arm out of the medic's grasp and shoved Jazz in his chest. "I want him to tell me-"

"SKYWARP!" All three turned to stare at a seething Ratchet barging through the doors, an even angrier looking Deadlock right behind him. "Get your aft in the hallway! NOW!"

Skywarp straightened, looking stunned. "I was just-"

"I don't care what you thought you were doing! All I see is you causing a disturbance in my Medbay. Again. Now get out to the hall and let Flatline finish before I decide to take a look at it!" The Decepticon floundered for a klik before angrily shoving past Jazz and stalking out the door, an irritated Flatline scolding him on the way. Ratchet shook his helm and turned to Jazz, raising his brow. "And what would that have been about?"

Jazz shrugged, waiting for his defense protocols to calm down before he moved. "He was just saying what everyone has probably been thinking lately." He jerked his head to Ratchet and Flatline's temporarily shared office. "You got time to talk about it?"

"Yeah, I got time." He turned to Deadlock, the gunner still puffed up from the confrontation. "I'll see you later. Don't shoot the idiot on your way out." He lead the way to the office, sending a sharp look over his shoulder at Deadlock's soft 'no promises.'

Jazz followed him with a chuckle, waving to the assassin as he followed Ratchet. He waited for the door to shut before shaking his plating out, letting the tension in his frame escape. Ratchet waited until he took a few vents before sitting down. "Better?"

Jazz gave a wry smile. "Yeah." He sat down with a sigh, slumping in the chair as much as he could. "Warp was just getting a little worked up about the Prime thing, wanting to know what's going on. Just got a little aggressive about it." Ratchet snorted. "He's suspicious about the whole situation, and I'm guessing he's just voicing what everyone else is thinking. Nobody but us really knows what's going on, and they won't be happy waiting around forever to find out. We need to get ahead before someone does something stupid. When are you thinking he'll be good enough to make an appearance?"

Ratchet scoffed. "Could be within the next decaorn or two if he'd stop being an aft."

Jazz tilted his helm. "Is he not wanting to leave or…"

Ratchet shook his helm. "You share a medsuite with Sides and tell me you want to stay put." Jazz snorted. "No, he's been doing great actually. He could start walking around properly if he let me get to his doorwings, but no. He'd rather be slagged than let me help." The medic sunk back into his chair, his field radiating his irritation and helplessness. "I know he can't help a lot of it but this is the biggest thing he needs done. If we could just get past this then the rest would be easier." He rubbed at his optics. "Makes you wonder what happened to him to make it him like this."

Ratchet looked down as the dataslug Jazz tossed settled on the desk with a clatter. "I got some idea."

Ratchet took the slug in his servo, looking down at it. "What's this?"

"Prowl's medical history."

Ratchet's helm shot up. "What?! How did you get this?!"

"Not important," Jazz shrugged. "It ain't the full thing, from what I know. But it's probably more than enough to get the gist of what makes him…" he gestured vaguely. "Like that."

Ratchet wasted no time in plugging it into the desk's terminal, setting up the decryption before pausing. He gave Jazz a hard look. "Did you look at it?"

Jazz shook his helm. "Nah. Figured this fell under 'patient confidentiality.'"

Ratchet stared at him for a long moment before looking back at the screen. He sat in thought for a moment before pulling the slug and getting up, grabbing Jazz's chair and puling it with him out the door to unceremoniously dumping him out of it. Jazz tucked and rolled, springing back up and giving Ratchet his best hurt look. Ratchet looked unimpressed before making a shooing motion. "Out, before I change my mind and decide it's time for your after mission check." Jazz did not need to be told twice as he beat a hasty retreat, pausing at the door as he watched Ratchet grab a wheelchair and head to the back room. He waited until he saw him reemerge pushing a bewildered looking Sideswipe in front of him. He opened the next door to Hot Rod's room and dropped him off, warning them to 'behave or else' before giving Jazz the 'I'm watching you' gesture and slipping back into Prowl's room.

He would be offended if Ratchet hadn't already had a problem with Spec Ops snooping around to the point where he had allowed Red Alert to put cameras and motion sensors in all the vent and ducts near the Medbay. He would also be tempted to bypass all those security measures if it weren't for the burning guilt he was already feeling. He left and headed down the hall past a sulking and glaring Skywarp towards his temporary hab, Shockwave's original dataslug weighing heavy in his subspace.

———

Ratchet turned towards the wary Praxian's berth. "Prowl, I need to talk to you." He pulled Sunstreaker's chair over to the side of the berth, sitting down and looking straight into Prowl's optics. "This is really important."

Prowl narrowed his optics. "And the privacy screen wouldn't have sufficed?"

Ratchet shook his head. "It would have, but I think you'd be more comfortable if Sideswipe wasn't in the room for this."

Prowl tensed up, his plating flaring. "If this is about my doorwings, then I told you that I am fine with them as they are and I do not wish to discuss them further."

Ratchet took a deep vent. "Prowl, what am I to you?"

Prowl paused. "What?"

"What am I to you?" Ratchet repeated, raising a brow.

"… You are the medic of the Autobots."

"Am I your medic?"

Prowl's doorwing twitched. "For lack of alternatives, yes."

Ratchet decided to let that one pass. "So I am your primary healthcare provider and you acknowledge this?"

He glared. "This is a useless conversation."

"No, it isn't," Ratchet said, crossing his arms. "It's a simple yes or no."

"… For the moment, yes."

Ratchet nodded. "So, as you have now acknowledged that I am your primary medic, until you decide to go to someone else, that means that it is my job to help you get better and get to and or stay in a healthy state."

Prowl vented irritably. "Yes, that is what that means. Are you finished?"

"No. I want to know why you don't believe that."

Prowl looked a little taken aback. "Excuse me? I know that you are licensed-"

"No. Why don't you believe that I am trying to help you?" Prowl stared at him. He stared back. He let it go on for a few kliks before prompting him again. "I know you have a thing with medics, but why don't you believe that I specifically, Ratchet, want to genuinely help you?"

Prowl looked away, opting for silence. Ratchet sighed, pulling out the dataslug and holding it up so Prowl could see it, watching the bright blue optics latch onto it. "What is that?"

"It's a dataslug. It has your medical history on it." He watched Prowl freeze, watched his wings shoot up in alarm and quickly moved his servo out of reach when the Prime tried to grab it. He scooted the chair back just enough so that Prowl had to hang off the edge of the berth to try and grab it, calmly watching him getting more angry and more fearful by the klik. He didn't like it but it was unavoidable.

Prowl growled his engine at him. "Give that to me! You have no right to keep that!"

"Actually," Ratchet said, keeping his tone professional, "I currently have every right to have this, seeing as you've just named me as your primary medic. That gives me every right to see my patients medical history if it helps me care for them. And I believe it will." It nearly broke his spark to see Prowl's fear shine plainly in his optics, feeling his field flash pure terror before he pulled it back. He hated this, but Prowl wasn't going to let this be easy. It would hurt both of them, but he needed to at least try it.

Prowl was gripping the berth so tightly Ratchet swore he was going to dent it. "Ratchet, I- I cannot let you- I- You can't…" His voice broke and he started to shake. "I-"

"Prowl, I haven't looked at it yet. And I don't plan to without your permission." Prowl froze again. Ratchet sighed as he moved closer, holding the dataslug out to him. He didn't move. "The plan is to look at this in here, where you can see me and you can tell me what you want me to see." He sighed. "I would like to know as much as I can so I can help you, but I don't want to hurt you in the process. Look at me." Prowl warily looked at him. "I will never purposefully hurt you. I will never do what they did to you. You will always have a choice and I am giving you one now." He offered the dataslug again. "This is important for me to see this so I can know what I'm dealing with. It will be faster and less painful for you. But it's your choice and I will respect what you decide."

Prowl stared at it for a klik before tentatively reaching out and taking it. He stared at it, turning it over in his servo. Ratchet didn't dare to vent. This was it. He was taking a risk doing this. He needed to know more about what Prowl had gone through and this dataslug would make healing him one hundred times faster. But Ratchet needed his trust more. He needed to show Prowl he wasn't a threat to him, that he wasn't like the other medics he'd had in the past. That he was here for Prowl, completely and truly. He didn't have a way to recover the data if Prowl refused, but he could figure all the physical stuff out eventually. Trust wasn't that easily found.

They waited like that for two whole breems before Prowl spoke, his voice painfully soft. "You will stop if I say to?" He asked, not looking up to meet his optics.

"Yes," Ratchet said with all the earnestness he could muster, letting his field slowly poke at the other's with honest comfort.

Prowl started to shake again and Ratchet worried he'd made a mistake until the Praxian slowly held it back to him. Ratchet took it, shoving all the reassurance he could into his field as he vented a silent sigh of relief. He dragged a monitor close and put the slug in, waiting for the decryption as he sat back down. "We'll go slow and I'll angle it so you can see. You can tell me where you want me to stop and I'll skip past it, okay?"

Prowl didn't say anything, merely looking at the monitor from where he lay. Ratchet sighed internally. "Keep in mind, this isn't the full thing, and I don't know what's on here so I won't see everything. Unless you want to tell me what I miss…" He looked at the still mech beside him and immediately knew that wasn't happening.

The decryption finished and Ratchet opened the first file. He turned towards Prowl. "Is this okay?" Prowl watched the screen, optics moving rapidly over it. Eventually he nodded, still not looking at him. Ratchet turned back, seeing a file outlining all of Prowl's base vitals and standard frame information. Nothing bad so far. He brought out his datapad, angling it so Prowl could see what he was doing, and cross referenced everything with his own notes. He still needed to put on more mass to get back to his previous weight, and his vitals were still shaky in comparison, but a lot closer to their normal than Ratchet had thought. Great! This was going fantastic so far. He made sure to say what he was thinking out loud so Prowl could hear, though he got no response.

He finished and moved to the next file, checking with Prowl again before continuing. He waited longer this time until Prowl nodded again, turning back expecting to see something completely normal and sane and not the inside of Prowl's chest with an insane amount of wires attached to the Matrix and his spark. Ratchet tried very hard not to curse when he saw the shredded remains of Prowl's chest plate in the multitude of photos of his still frame, the jagged edges completely curled outwards from where someone had appeared to rip them open instead of just letting them transform away. He read the detailed notes as fast as he could, hoping (uselessly) for something that could explain it in a way that would turn this from a horror show to a medical necessity. According to whoever did this slag they needed access to the Matrix for a redacted reason, but Prowl couldn't open his chest even with medical assistance, so they just…

Ratchet looked very pointedly at Prowl's chest. "Any idea why they needed to do that?" Nothing. "So they replaced it?" Prowl nodded. "Any problems?" He asked, struggling to keep his voice even. Prowl gave his helm a small shake. Ratchet hummed and went to the next file. He waited for the go ahead and looked at a schematic of the Matrix inhibitor. Well, not really any information on the thing itself (damn) but more so how it fit into Prowl's frame and how much power it took (no wonder he was halfway to the Well when they found him). He grimaced as he noticed it was very much meant to be a permanent thing. Well, so much for that.

He moved on and Prowl immediately shook his helm no, clenching his jaw. Ratchet nodded and moved past it, watching the Praxian's wings relax a small bit after. Good, now we're truly getting somewhere. Except Prowl shook his helm at the next, and the next, and the next. He did this for the next twenty three files before nodding another affirmative. Ratchet turned, morbidly curious about what Prowl had deemed safe for him to see and felt the energon drain from his faceplate. He sat for a breem trying to remain as calm as possible.

"Prowl, when I ask you this I want you to know that you are not in trouble, I am not mad at you, and I won't do anything to you with the information you give me, okay?" Prowl looked at him suspiciously. Ratchet took a deep vent, shuttering his optics. "Is that a fragging TacNet in your helm?"

Ratchet could hear Prowl's neck cables creak with how fast he whipped his helm towards the screen. Ratchet opened his optics to stare at the inside of Prowl's helm. The procedure was actually meant to upgrade his memory banks to hold more data (a relatively common procedure for mechs in analytics or tactical units, though the amount of storage they were shoving in there was way above the normal threshold), but it showed a piece of secondary equipment attached to his processor. A piece of equipment Ratchet had personally had a servo in banning from production because of the dangers it possessed. A piece of illegal equipment that shouldn't have actually been installed on anyone, let alone the fragging Prime.

Ratchet looked at Prowl, who was staring in mortified shock at the picture. Then his optic twitched. "How the frag do you know what a TacNet is?!" he shouted, slamming his (thankfully) undamaged servo onto the berth. "This is so- You are so- AAAAAUUUGGGGHHHH!!!!" He turned and slammed his face into his mound of pillows, clutching them to his face as he continued to yell for an impressive amount of time. Ratchet sat in stunned silence watching the outburst until Prowl sagged against the berth, not bothering to remove his face.

"…So you done? Or…"

Prowl shifted so he could glare at Ratchet with one optic peeking out. "I hate you," he said in a muffled but tired voice.

"'Kay. Do you want to tell me what that was for?"

The Prime in all his dignity and grace shoved his face back into the pillows, letting his wings thunk down across his back. "I did not think you would be able to recognize it when I allowed you to look." He huffed. "I do not want to get rid of it and I do not consent for you to touch, look, or tamper with it in any way."

Ratchet narrowed his own optics. "I wasn't going to look at it, much less touch it. I just need you to realize that thing is incredibly dangerous and that no one has survived more than five vorns with it in. Well, survived and still had their sanity intact. There's a reason those things never made it out of the testing stage."

Prowl growled. "I am highly aware of the risks. I have had it in for a at least two millennia and I am perfectly fine."

Ratchet turned back to the monitor, checking the date and… it was from at least one and a half millennia ago. And it was an already established part of him. Ratchet clenched his fists. "At least? When was it installed?"

Prowl didn't answer, bringing his doorwings as close as he could to his body. "I do not want to continue with this. Leave."

"Prowl, this is serious! No one has been able to handle having a TacNet installed and the fact that you've had it for so long is incredibly concerning. Let me take a look-"

"You just said you would not look at it."

Ratchet vented, trying to calm himself. He couldn't push Prowl too far or he'd get nowhere. "That's before I knew you had it in for an insane amount of time. I just want to take a look so I can make sure it isn't killing you or frying your processor."

"I am done," Prowl snapped.

"Well I'm not-"

"I said I am done!" Prowl snarled, lifting himself off the pillows and glaring. "I do not wish to speak further on it. I do not have problems with it, I am perfectly sound and sane, and therefore it is not your concern." He held out his servo. "Do you intend to keep your promise?" he asked with no small amount of heat. Ratchet gave him a long and hard look before taking the dataslug out and handing it to the Prime. He snatched it quickly and glared at Ratchet. "You can leave now."

"Fine," Ratchet said, getting up. "But before I go I just want to ask one thing. Of all of the stuff on that slug, did you have a choice in any of it?"

Prowl didn't answer, and Ratchet didn't need him to. The medic just nodded, walking out and closing the door behind him.

He ignored First Aid's worried questions and everyone else's strange looks as he calmly walked to the far wall and punched it so hard the metal dented. It was deadly silent when he stalked over to his office and it remained so as everyone stared at the closed door, flinching at every loud bang and crash they heard behind it.

———

Jazz stared his datapad, a slow and grim smile slowly taking over his face. He unplugged the dataslug before sub spacing it and wiping the datapad clean. He gave a low, low laugh before he hurled the datapad across the room, watching it shatter on the far wall.

They were going to pay for it. All of it. Oh, he was going to make them pay.