Crash of the Peaceful Resolution

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Title: Crash of the Peaceful Resolution
Rated: PG
Continuity: IDW
Characters: Prowl/Jazz
Warnings: angst, spoilers for, uh everything except the latest issues which if you haven't read GO READ for Prowly goodness
Prompt: for the prowlxjazz anniversary celebration!  not  goodbye A person who is willing to forgive abuse the first time; tolerate it the second time, 
but never a third time.  (Fic sorta shotguns these prompts)

 1. After Autocracy, Cybertron

 “You can’t be serious.” Jazz folded his arms over his chassis, tilting his head down to hide the pain on his face.

A smile, brittle and tired. Prowl couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled and it felt sincere.  Not since Megatron’s arrest, surely. Not since before that, possibly. “I am,” he said. That was all he could manage.

“It’s running away.” He couldn’t keep the petulant tone from his voice and honestly didn’t try that hard. This was ridiculous. Prowl was being ridiculous. He’d never thought he’d say that.

“It’s not.”

Jazz let the silence stretch between them, unmoving. A waiting game, the kind Prowl had often played with him. Only this time he knew it would work for him. Prowl hated not getting the last word, the right last word. 

Time seemed to stretch and they could both feel the future pulling at them, with tenebrous claws, tearing them into an uncertain future. 

“Jazz.” Prowl frowned, reconsidered. He always was careful. Too careful, almost, by Jazz’s judgment.  “I am,” he paused again, as though picking the words out of a minefield, “no longer of use here.”

“That’s scrap and you know it,” Jazz said, bridling around his temper.  “We need mechs like you more than ever now.”

A firm shake of the head.  “I can’t. Jazz. I am responsible for,” a wave of the hand, a tight, controlled gesture, “all of this.”

“How do you see that, huh? Seems to me you’ve been the one trying harder than anyone to prevent this.”

“That’s just it.” The hand was captured in the other, as though it had moved too far. “I arrested Megatron and the others. I…played right into their hands.”  Everything had been planned out. Despite his careful planning, logistics, all the efforts of secrecy for the raid, he’d missed something. He’d not seen something they had, and they’d taken advantage of it and blown an arrest up into a coup. It was beyond devastating.

“Still think it’s running away.”

“It’s removing a factor that is detrimental to our aims,” Prowl said, coolly. “They know me. They can predict me.” Too well. It…galled.

“All I’m saying is if that’s it, really it, you have other options.”

“It’s not ‘really it’.” He sighed. “Jazz. There were a number of factors in my decision. I wouldn’t be so rash—“

“…me.” Jazz jutted his chin. “Was I even one of those ‘factors’?” His way: blunt and unsubtle at times, but sometimes it was what Prowl needed: a sledgehammer through the wall of his defenses.

“…of course.” Stony-faced and unreadable.

Jazz squeezed his optics shut behind the visor, glad for its protection.  “Yeah. All right. I see.”

“You see.”  A hint of a question, like a delicate flavor in water.

“Enough,” Jazz said. An end, because that’s what Prowl wanted.  It was more than he could take, right now, to manage it with grace. “I see enough.”  He straightened up, squaring his shoulders. “Well. Guess this is it, then.” A lopsided smile, one oozing pain. Because he wanted Prowl to at least see how much it hurt. Not that he expected it to change Prowl’s mind. But just so he’d know not everyone was built of adamant.

“Yes,” Prowl said, and for the first time there was a note of something real in his voice: regret? Concern? Grief?  Jazz didn’t begin to guess.

Jazz jerked his chin toward the gangplank, where the passengers were already lining up: ragtag refugees, disorderly and cluttered. How Prowl would survive among that, he had no idea.  Not his problem. 

He tried really hard to believe that.

“So, what’s her name?” Spacevessels were always ‘she’, marking the difference in being, sentience, existence.

Prowl flicked a doorwing as he turned to take in the crowded ramp, the ungainly, unsleek lines of the ship he was going to flee the war in. “Peaceful Resolution,” he said.

Jazz tried to cook up words, but then it hit him: those were good as last words between them. A hope, a wish, the thing they could never have.

2. On Earth, four million years later

The expression hadn’t changed, Jazz thought. Hardened, perhaps, the lines a bit sharper, more deeply etched; but Jazz had seen that edge of disappointment before.   “You know I know this trick,” he said, shaking his head, hands loosely folded behind his back.

It had taken centuries to grow closer again: Prowl keeping an almost humiliated distance as he’d rejoined the Autobots, his armor scuffed and charred after the crash, hover-systems strained after the long drive back from the Manganese Mountains.  It had been hard for him to leave, Jazz knew, and even harder to come back, feeling like he was slinking in, in a cloud of failure.

Jazz had found out Prowl had taken charge after the crash, organizing the survivors, stopping brawls over resources, arranging for care. Doing, in short, what Prowl did best: manage. He’d heard this not from Prowl himself: Prowl never mentioned it, as though storing it up in his memory alongside the aftermath of Megatron’s arrest as Things He Could Not Control, but through others, a small, but steady trickle of messages of gratitude, offers for another escape ship.  Prowl ignored them all, in that astonishing, almost brutal way he defied reality at times. 

The only thing he’d ever said about it was, once, a quiet, “the past is the past,” as he had let himself be drawn in for that first, returning kiss, one it had taken months to achieve.

The past was never the past, Jazz knew. It trailed behind the present like a heavy cloak.  Prowl looked to futures, calculating and alive, a thousand different paths from every moment: Jazz studied the past for personality, character: the patterns and motivations, Prowl for statistics and probabilities. It was what made them so good together, heat and cold, black and white, past and future, feeling and logic. And it was also what tore them apart.

“It’s not a trick,” Prowl said, a sigh in his voice, the one Jazz knew was Prowl releasing as much of the public persona as he dared. Only with Jazz. It was sad that this had become Prowl’s idea of confiding in him.  “Jazz. Your actions have caused needless complications.”

“Always have, always will,” Jazz said. “Everything’s a needless complication. That’s what life is.”

“This isn’t a joke,” Prowl said, mouth flattening.

“I know.”

“Jazz.”  Another struggle for words, because Prowl had to reach inside his emotions. “What you did was—“

“Remove a threat.” He wasn’t going to let Prowl name this. He’d done it. He’d be the one to label it.

“We’re here to protect them.”

Jazz snorted. Humans. Right. They didn't seem to want it. Not when they leveled a gun at Bee.  “You don’t believe that. Come on, Prowl. Between you and me?  You know that’s a fake.”

“Really.”  A flick of a doorwing: Prowl, irritated, letting it show. “Educate me.”

“It’s you, Prowl. It’s about PR. How it looks. You’ve always been more about appearances than—“

“Than what.”

“What matters. Really matters.”  Jazz knew.  He knew about Aequitas, about the need—in Prowl’s mind—to keep the appearance of war as a clean thing. And he knew his hands were dirty, and he didn’t care. War was a dirty business. He wasn’t afraid to show he’d gotten down in the trenches with the best—and worst—of them.

“Winning the war matters.” A pause. He knew the argument, too; it had gotten old and worn, a scar on the healing between them. “The right way matters.”

A tense, dizzying moment as the words, ‘more than me?’ burned in Jazz’s vocalizer. And he asked himself, if Prowl could end it in an instant, as he had before, just like this, did it ever, had it ever really meant anything?

Did Jazz mean anything?

Jazz lived on the edge of danger, but even he knew when to step back.  He wrapped himself in an icy chill. “I see,” he said, wondering if Prowl, too, heard the echo from the past.

3. After the War, Cybertron

“So here’s where you’ve been,” Prowl said, coming to a stop before the small dais of the ersatz stage.  Any other mech might have added ‘hiding yourself’ or something lighthearted. Not Prowl: just fact.

“Yeah,” Jazz said, bending down to coil the mic cord around the back of his hand, preparing to stow it in its case.  It didn’t escape him that this was the first time Prowl had sought him out, not only since the war, but, well, ever. He’d always made Jazz come to him, seek him out, as though afraid of showing even that much ‘weakness.’ 

Because he would think of it as weakness, needing another mech, while Jazz knew it to be a strength, the greatest strength the Autobots had.

He straightened up, the coiled mic held between them.  Kind of symbolic, he thought: a microphone, an implement of speech, powered down and useless between them.  “You need something?”  Why else would Prowl show up?

“I wanted to talk.”

Jazz tipped his head to one of the now-empty tables in the shadowed, closed bar. He gave a minute shrug to Blurr: yeah, it’s okay. The curious concern of the other mech balanced him, and it was only then he realized how Prowl’s presence had unsettled him.  “Let’s talk.”

“You’re wasted here,” Prowl said, his chin moving in an arc to take in the entirety of Maccadam’s. 

“I’m happy here,” Jazz countered. 

“You can’t be.” As though the words created reality, because Prowl disbelieved them.

“I am.” 

“You’re running away, Jazz.” The tone was patient, and raw enough they could both hear how hard he was trying.

“I haven’t run anywhere,” Jazz said, quietly, the words barely audible through the echo of Prowl’s leaving, the bass hum of the Peaceful Resolution’s planetary thrusters vibrating under their feet all those ages ago. Only this time he was the one accused of running away and the world was no longer at the brink of ruin, but trying to pull its way from the crater.

“From your responsibilities.”

“My responsibility is to Cybertron,” Jazz said. “To building peace.”

“And this,” a gesture at the microphone on the table between them, the coils loose like a sleeping serpent, “is how you do that.”

“Yeah,” Jazz said. “It is.” He wasn’t Blaster, brimming with inspiring words, but he’d found some comfort he’d never known in singing the songs of the old Cybertron, before the war, the melodies turning soulful and yearning in his vocalizer.  It was good to remember the past, all of it, and mourn and rejoice and move on. That was his work now.

“Jazz. We need you.” 

Jazz looked up, scrutinizing Prowl from behind his visor, mouth parted, waiting to hear the words, wondering if Prowl would have the courage, humility, self-awareness to say the words. He waited, wanting to hear it, wanting to hear the shift in pronoun, ‘I need you.’

And waited.

And nothing, Prowl’s hands laid flat on the table, as though trying to keep it on the ground. 

Jazz pushed to his feet, gathering the uncoiled cord in his hands. “Goodbye, Prowl,” he said, his voice full of mourning for another past, another death, the loss of something great and beautiful between them.

Comments

[crazedwolf.livejournal.com]

;______________________________;

Stomp on my heart why don't you. No, but, seriously this was really fantastic and very true to the characters the way they are in the series. <3

[gunmaxual.livejournal.com]

Oh...that kind of ending really makes the pain stark, because it's a true ending.

[wicked3659.livejournal.com]

I loved this when I read it the first time and I still love it now. You really know how to grab the heart strings and tug. The emotion is palpable throughout all of this between these two. It's tragic that in the end Prowl still doesn't see, doesn't get it. Very sad. Excellent fill! :3

[fianna9.livejournal.com]

This Prowl will probably never admit what could have been. Very sad, but completely believable. Well done.

[pl2363.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was very wonderful characterization from the comics that honestly blows my mind. I'm always so impressed at how well you managed to grasp the characters and then write them.

Amazing and so sad at the same time.

[calicocoa.livejournal.com]

How haunting.

This was lovely to read. I adore the IDW series, as dark as it is. You really captured the two characters from this verse very well. Thank you for sharing!

[toyzintheattik.livejournal.com]

Oh, I loved this. So painfully real. Damn you Prowl, just say the word.

[sideslip-tf.livejournal.com]

So sad. We only get so many chances...

[silberstreif.livejournal.com]

Oh Prowl, he simply isn't able to admit feelings, right? And Jazz still hopt until the last moment. *sigh*
Wonderful fill.

[renegadewriter8.livejournal.com]

Gah!! Prowl you idiot! Awesome job!

[bluebirdsoaring.livejournal.com]

That, Prowl, is how you don't do it =(

Great story and amazing charaterization!!

[vejiraziel.livejournal.com]

Excuse me while I go sit on that corner and weep because my goodness, all my feels! And such an awesome take on this fic even through the angst. TTATT

[pjlover666.livejournal.com]

Oh that hurt. Because at the end, when they finally had the chance, it got wasted away... just amazing work. Wonderful fill. My heart is aching for them both...

[mmouse15.livejournal.com]

All the missed chances...*sobs*

You craft such exquisite stories, full of emotional resonance for me. Great response to the prompts, too.

[gilded-orchid.livejournal.com]

Prowl...how are you so freaking brilliant but so amazingly STUPID!?!

Ye gods.. *shakes head and sniffles*

[cmdrtekk.livejournal.com]

Powerful read, tragic throughout. I do like how you are not afraid to let the full punch fly at the end. The final really sealed the deal on the entire storyline.