ante_luce | May '10 PxJ challenge - On the outside, looking in

Title: Reunion
'Verse: 2007/09 Transformers
Characters: Guess the human. Prowl. Jazz
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Cussing.
Notes: For the May '10 challenge at the PxJ comm

He’d been given his old job back.

Or something like his old job, anyway. The higher ups said it was because it’d been proven, after events in Egypt, that his sort of experience was invaluable when dealing with the Cybertronians, and they’d apologised privately for terminating him in the first place.

He thought they were just scared of how easily he’d gotten his way with the rail gun and wanted him on their side.

Either way, it was better than working with Mother. Even if the food at the new base wasn’t as good. He’d have to bring in a proper sandwich and show those chumps at the cafeteria how things should be done.

= = =

The first string of new arrivals that he was present and officially in the loop for happened about a year after his reinstatement. Four bright lights in the sky, setting off every sensor he had an ear on, and half the ones he wasn’t supposed to have an ear on. He was in his element, keeping on top of things, barking orders and getting everything covered up and ready in time.

Their latest arrivals landed exactly when and where they’d said they would, something that he appreciated. The other Cybertronians seemed to take amusement at that fact, and he put it down to humour at his expense. Of course, make fun of the neurotic little organic, the only person who seemed to value a detailed schedule and the keeping of it. The rest of his own species did the same anyway.

He didn’t ride out to meet them. That Lennox fellow and that Epps chap went instead, and he knew he’d heard the Topkick mutter something about not wanting to make a bad impression on the newbies. Bah. He had work to do and couldn’t be arsed to traipse about in a hot and dusty wasteland playing meet and greet. Leave that to the grunts. He had a nice air conditioned office and too much paperwork that he couldn’t dump on an unfortunate underling due to security reasons.

= = =

Everyone on base was curious about the new arrivals. He had a hard time keeping everyone on task and making sure they weren’t slacking off, trying to get the first look at the team returning. A couple of well placed glares had them moving though, and he settled down at the main entrance of the gate, arms folded across his front to wait.

The dust cloud was the first thing he saw. Then the Topkick and the Emergency Response Vehicle. Behind them were a red Camaro, a champagne Corvette and two Dodge Chargers, one dark silver, one lighter, almost white. The Peterbilt brought up the rear. So no one had been hurt enough to need a lift. He could have told them that. This group had said so themselves in their last transmission, and any group that could make a landing with such precision could be trusted to be the same with their reports. He pushed off the wall, dusting himself off and headed inside, stopping first at Hawkins’s station. Good man, Hawkins. Always paid up on his bets. The news would be all over the base in a moment, and he needed to get back to barking at them to get them to work.

= = =

It was late at night when he overheard the following conversation.

“Sir, I heard.”

“Yes.” A sigh, pained and remorseful. “I am so very sorry.”

“Such is our lot. And his remains…?” He knew a stoic front when he heard it, and so did the Prime, because there was no mistaking the sadness in the Peterbilt’s words.

“We laid him to rest at sea.”

“I understand. I will return to my duties then.”

Footsteps headed his way and he flattened himself against the wall, blending the best he could with the shadows. The mech didn’t notice him, but he noticed the Charger’s expression, and he noticed the Cybertronian leader’s optics on him, glowing softly in the dark.

He left, unnerved by the knowing look on the large robot's face.

= = =

This new mech was efficient. He liked efficient. When he was sure the mech’s regular duties of tactical analyses were done, he stepped in, citing a need for a Cybertronian liaison he could trust not to screw up the paperwork, and using the same force of personality that had gotten him his rail gun, got himself a Prowl.

Observing the mech as he briefed Prowl on the ins and outs of Earth bureaucracy, he realised one thing. Huh. Until now, he hadn’t quite believed that these robots, things of metal, manufacture and programming, range of emotion exhibited regardless, could also feel heartbreak.

Casual inquiry (okay, eavesdropping) revealed more. Prowl had been in a relationship with the mech who’d died at Mission City. Most of the Cybertronians hadn’t believed it when they found out, and a few of them still didn’t, citing Prowl’s personality (or lack of thereof) and the low odds of the mech ever landing a partner because of it, and pointed out the way the mech went back to work like nothing had happened.

He knew better, because when he looked at Prowl, he saw himself.

= = =

Her name had been Elsie Strathmoore. She’d been in Sector Seven along with him, both of them young adults freshly inducted into the organisation. She laughed at his attitude, smiled at his scowls, and when his own father had given him the dressing down of his life in front of all the other people in the room, she’d found him later in NBE 1’s chamber, taking notes on the frozen robot’s readings, and had taken his hand comfortingly.

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“He shouldn’t have humiliated you like that. I mean… He’s your father.”

He answered, cool and distant and not looking up from his clipboard. “It is because he is my father that he had to do so. I understand his position, Strathmoore. I am his son, and even though I gained my position here through my own merit, there will always be talk about nepotism. Do not concern yourself with what hasn’t affected me.”

“… I see. Of course, I shouldn’t have presumed… I…” She’d stuttered, and he’d sighed, turning to look at her properly.

“… Elsie.”

She looked stunned when he used her first name. He’d never done that before, for anyone. He nodded.

“Thank you. For coming to check on me. No one else would have.”

The admission was hard to make, but worth it when she hugged him and pecked him on the lips. It was still worth it when his father gave them both an even bigger dressing down for making out in the NBE chamber.

He could see the amusement in his old man’s eyes anyway.

= = =

He called her Else. She called him Reggie. And they’d been happy. No one had dared believe it when they announced their engagement, but engaged they were and nothing anyone said (or whispered behind his back) could change that.

= = =

Elsie died when they carried out the first tests using the Cube’s energy. The resulting monstrosity of whirling parts, gnashing teeth and guns put a bullet through her head.

His father died in the same attack too.

It was this disaster that convinced him that NBE 1 was too dangerous to ever lose containment of. NBE 1 was of the same manufacture as the Cube, it had the same energy readings. It had to have come from the same source, and each subsequent experiment using the Cube had resulted in mindless killing machines. Anything created by the Cube had to be a mindless killer.

With his father gone, he stepped into the old man’s place, ordering stricter lockdowns on NBE 1’s chamber, tighter patrols and checks, and more stringent testing of the Cube. If there were more of these things out there, Cube or NBE, then one day they might find Earth. And Earth would be prepared.

And duty would have to fill the hole left in his heart.

= = =

He offloaded his paperwork on Prowl.

The others complained that it wasn’t the mech’s job. He didn’t care. Neither did Prowl. Both knew what he was doing. Nothing like burying oneself in work to dull the pain.

The mech had looked at him and he had looked back with the same light of loss in his eyes, and then Prowl had simply nodded, sorting through the stacks with an ease he envied.

Workload thus taken care of, he left to accomplish some… other business.

= = =

Something had niggled him ever since he overheard the big red and blue mech talking to Prowl. He found it odd that his old colleagues would have let such a specimen go. Buried at sea his left foot, the mad scientists Sector Seven hired would never have done that.

Knocking on the door of the nice little house he stood in front of, he put on his best shark’s grin and was gratified to see the man who opened it pale to a fetching shade of light green. Yep. Still got it.

“Evening, Rothschild. I was just in the neighbourhood and thought I’d drop in for a chat. Catch up on old times, you know. See how the old gang are doing.”

He walked past the trembling man and shut the door behind him.

= = =

“He’s intact then.”

“The other robots repaired it fully before the burial.”

“Clever plan, fool the Cybertronians into thinking the mech was truly dead, then switch one trailer for another containing a similar car. Only not. What have you done to him?”

“Him? It is not a him. You have been working with those things for too long. You are beginning to attribute anthromorphic qualities to them.”

“Rothschild, shut up or I will tase you again. Bring him online, give me all the data you have, and then get out.”

“What are you… You can’t! My research… The organisation will kill me!”

“They won’t. Because if you turn up dead I will know who did it, and they do not want me on their sixes.”

“I will still be dead!”

“Let me tell you what will happen if I don’t leave here with this ‘robot’. I will call the other ‘robots’. I will tell them that their comrade, who they thought was buried and honoured and all that shit, is actually lying under a tarp in the basement of another shady organisation being studied like a lab specimen. And then… then, I will give them your address.”

“Take it-” He glared, and Rothschild stammered. “I mean him! Take him and go! Please!”

“My pleasure. Now bring him online.”

= = =

He drove back slowly. The car was occasionally unresponsive, but he managed, having once made his college beer money by driving a cab in downtown New York. Coaxing, threatening and outright swearing by turns, he got his ride to the base and through the gates in one piece. The last few yards he got out and pushed, rolling the vehicle into the empty hangar before bringing down the shutters.

Then he called Prowl.

The mech stepped into the dark space to find him perched on a silver Solstice’s hood.

“They put some kind of program in him, he’s out of it, but he knows who and where he is. I’m going to get that medic of yours, but I thought you’d like to have your reunion first.”

Prowl strode over, falling to his knees beside him, reaching out and laying a hand on the Solstice’s roof in disbelief. He looked up at the mech in concern, then a grinding noise issued from somewhere below him and he shot off the silver hood like it burned, turning to watch as the car unfolded and fell, trembling, into Prowl’s arms.

Soft chirrs and warbles filled the air at the pair clung to each other, and he nodded and left.

“I’ll give you five minutes. Then I set the chartreuse terror on you.”

“Simmons.”

He looked back. Prowl was watching him, gripping the other mech so hard he could almost see the dents forming. Not that the mech in his arms seemed to care.

“Thank you.”

He waved it off, then exited the hangar, pulling out a wallet and with it a picture.

“May they have better luck then us. Watch over them, Else.”

Stuffing picture and wallet back into his pocket, he looked up at the night sky and thought he heard a familiar laugh. He shrugged. Maybe he’d give them ten instead.