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hat_writes_stuffTitle: TF Portal AU: Not Unrelated (Love as a Construct)
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Keferon's TF Portal AU
Characters: Bluestreak, Prowl
Word Count: 2,836
Rating: E for Everyone
Pairing(s): Gen
Warnings: Bluestreak has his original backstory (sole survivor of Praxus, or at least the only survivor who was there), and Prowl has... uh, most of Caroline's original backstory. This is discussed.
Author's Notes: Keferon. Keferon. Hey. Hey. Let go of my brain, Keferon, I need that.
Anyway. Keferon now has a Jazz/Prowl Portal AU. It's going backwards, somehow, it started at potato and proceeded to lopping off cores and currently there's something a little bit Rattman happening, or supposed to be happening, but I?
I got distracted by Bluestreak.
So take this post to start with, that's Prowl's situation, and then THIS post which hurt me okay, that's the one that got me in the heart and gave me a plot, and this post made me go, "Yes, that feels Right," but THIS post, this post right here? I was doing things, Keferon, and a whole ass ficlet slammed me right in the ADHD. Dropped everything, had to write.
Also I scoured Keferon's blog for where I saw a boring human name for Prowl and it turns out that's from another fic, here, And when the skies are open, we'll still be singing this by Flockofcrowsinatrenchcoat, because at 4am I was not up to coming up with a name under my own power. (Celaeno named Bluestreak for me, on the grounds that she liked Blake better than Bradley. I am awake enough to know better than to name two brothers owned by Hasbro Parker and Bradley, so Blake it is.) I was possessed by Bluestreak going "Actually I have some Views on this, you're gonna write 'em right now."
I am very proud of myself for not resorting to more ironic reuse of Portal lines. The only thing that saved this fic from being titled "They Woke Me Up So I Could Live Forever" is the fact that it is not from Prowl's POV.
Summary: Prowl was never human. That's not how the procedure works.
Bluestreak found his brother's preserved corpse in the depths of Prowl's facility.
These facts are not unrelated.
Bluestreak was fairly certain that Prowl, the AI running the facility, liked him.
He wasn't sure what to make of that, not really-- not now. Not after what he'd found in the bowels of the facility, when they were trying to save themselves and find Prowl's morality core in the (thankfully cold) incinerator and also keep Mirage (poor mind-controlled Mirage, a meat-puppet for Bombshell for the duration) safe for himself and others and the facility.
It had been, suffice it to say, a really stressful time to find his long-lost brother's creepily well-preserved corpse.
So Bluestreak did what Bluestreak usually did, when faced with a too-big emotional issue he didn't have time for in the moment: mentally packed it up and put it aside to deal with when he did have the time. He'd also learned, to his regret, that he did have to deal with whatever he was compartmentalizing, or he'd have breakdowns and issues and-- well, sooner was better than later, as soon as it was safe enough to go sorting through... all of it.
So, Bluestreak was fairly certain Prowl liked him, and he'd been around, and running the facility, since before everything went so completely to shit and slag as it had. Prowl might not be the most sensitive about it, but-- Bluestreak didn't really need someone to be sensitive and gentle with him.
He needed someone to tell him the truth.
"Prowl?" he asked the nearest security camera, rather than the ceiling (because Prowl wasn't really in the ceiling, and the cameras were a little like making eye contact). "I, um, I have an awkward question about-- about before-- about when the company that owned this facility was still running? Do you have access to information from back then?"
"I was one of the company's last major projects," Prowl agreed, sounding calm-- but sounding cautious. "I have access to all company data that was digitized; some older records are still in hard copy. What did you need to know?"
That was not, Bluestreak noted, a promise to tell him. But he found himself smiling a little anyway. "I'm looking for information on one specific employee who would have worked here about-- at least twenty, twenty-five years ago? Just. Just what happened to him I already know he worked here up until then-- maybe not just what happened to him if you have, like, information on-- on-- not what he did if that's a problem to tell someone but what he was like how he... how he fit how he... Who he was," Bluestreak concluded. "As a person."
"I... may be able to locate information like that," and Prowl sounded very cautious. "Please tell me you aren't interested in the last CEO."
"No-- I don't think so," he said. "I'm-- his name was Parker Evans," Bluestreak said.
Prowl said nothing, for just a moment too long.
He was probably just processing, but unfortunately he said nothing for slightly too long to Bluestreak, so he went on-- "I know-- I knew-- I've always logically known he was probably dead and I don't really remember him-- the last time we heard from him I wasn't even three years old yet-- but I'd always-- I'd always sort of hoped he was my long-lost brother, you know, and not-- not-- not yet another dead relative and-- I just-- I--"
"Bluestreak," Prowl said, sounding... odd. Strained? Strained. "If you would prefer, we can have this conversation in greater privacy in my primary chamber."
Bluestreak had never seen Prowl's main chamber. It was the most secure place in the facility-- you had to be as trusted or as sneaky as Jazz to get in there. ... But he'd heard something about projectors.
Maybe Prowl had pictures. Security camera footage.
Bluestreak suddenly desperately wanted to see footage of his brother alive and moving, not... preserved.
"I'll still probably babble all the way there," he warned, but also asked, "Will you show me the way? I promise not to touch anything you don't want me to touch." Because Prowl had been violated, recently. ... On the other hand, from Bluestreak, that could be construed as a jerkass-genie kind of promise. "And I'll leave my guns outside the chamber."
"... You're currently armed?"
Bluestreak answered Prowl's surprise with a shrug. "I'm always armed or I can get armed in a few seconds."
He let the babble turn to being constantly prepared to evacuate while being led to one of those glass elevator things-- where Prowl told him he could leave his weapons, so Bluestreak did-- and...
Prowl's main chamber was a softly-lit dome-shaped room, or what seemed to be a dome-shaped room, the walls made up of hundreds of those moveable white panels that sort of gently fidgeted. The room looked alive.
"Oh that's so cool," Bluestreak breathed.
"Thank you," Prowl said-- his voice seeming to come from a direction, this time, and something red and black and white near the ceiling moved. "I do regret to inform you-- or to confirm for you-- that Parker Evans is dead."
"Oh-- no, I know that," Bluestreak started.
"You... do?"
"We found his body, the twins and I, when we were in the underlayers trying to find either your morality core or the plans for your morality core."
Whatever was moving near the ceiling stopped, looking like some kind of crane arm-- and the wall panels all froze, too.
"His body," Prowl echoed. "His body is... in recognizable condition?"
"There's this case thing-- I don't know if it's frozen or something else but it's-- it's definitely preserved in there and it has his name on it and-- I don't really remember what he looked like? But if nothing else the guy in that case has my dad's nose and mom's chin."
"He kept his corpse," and the lights-- didn't flicker, it was too smooth for that, but they dimmed and brightened briefly.
"Prowl? Are you okay?"
"... In this situation, I don't think I have the right to be less okay than you are," he said, and that crane arm started moving again.
There was a-- at the end of it there was a person-- not a person. A person-shaped... interface? A robot, arguably, but it was firmly attached to the crane at the upper back, dangling like a puppet, so probably just something to make-- to make Prowl more user-friendly. It was male-shaped, broad-shouldered, armored like a science-fiction soldier built for dexterity-- which might just have been the metal or plastic or whatever its plating was made of. It was all stark high-contrast colors, black and white, with glowing red lights. Even the two red streaks in the obviously-synthetic fibers of its hair glowed red. Its eyes glowed red, out of black sclerae, set in a paper-white face like a porcelain doll.
The face had Bluestreak's late father's nose.
His late mother's chin.
Prowl's humanoid user-friendly whatever-it-was was wearing Bluestreak's brother's face.
And whether it was a reflection of Prowl's own emotional state or just puppeteering, sympathetically, the face looked sad.
Some logical part of his brain was trying to make actual sense of the situation, but it was the wild curl of hope that had Bluestreak-- Blake-- asking, "Parker?"
Prowl's expression fell, shattered, in a way that made Bluestreak absolutely certain that it was Prowl's expression and not just something he was simulating for a smoother social interaction.
"No," he said. "I'm sorry. ... I'm so sorry I'm not him."
Bluestreak moved forward, and Prowl... stood there. Or almost stood there, it actually looked like he wasn't quite touching the floor. But he didn't move away, even when Bluestreak reached out his hands. He didn't touch, just reached, and after a moment, Prowl reached back, far too cautious as Bluestreak took his hands.
They felt plasticky.
"Tell me," Bluestreak said, keeping it as simple as he possibly could (so he could get the most he could, to start with, so he could ask follow-ups), "please?"
Prowl closed his eyes, for a moment, and though he-- his human-shaped body-- didn't shiver, the wall panels did.
"Your brother," he started, "was the backbone of this facility. He put everything he had into the company, to the point of buying up any publicly-available stock to keep it afloat. He was the person everyone within the company turned to when something absolutely needed to get done. When it turned a profit, it was largely his doing. He was deeply invested, personally, and entirely indispensable.
"When the CEO and his engineers said that they'd worked out how to transfer human consciousness into a computer, that the drives were ready, your brother was... certainly interested," but he said it like he was allowing that. "It seemed salable, to certain parties. Technological immortality. Your brother didn't see the appeal in it for himself-- the drives to hold a human consciousness, a personality, were shockingly small, but to store the breadth of a human memory, to provide a framework where that tiny personality core could reach out into the world and accomplish anything? Even in terms of pure intranet access, they were massive.
"But it seemed like the sort of thing people with more money than sense, more money than morality, would pay obscene prices for, so he agreed it was a project they should pursue."
Prowl's expression had calmed, smoothed out, over the course of that explanation-- but Bluestreak was reading between the lines. "They put Parker in there?"
Prowl's gaze dropped. "No."
Bluestreak wanted to hug him.
He squeezed Prowl's hands, instead.
"Then what happened?"
Maybe he'd hug him later, if an opportunity presented itself.
"Your brother was the backbone of this facility-- but he was also, by that point, independently wealthy, and increasingly frustrated with the CEO's behavior. He wasn't considering leaving the company," Prowl said, very certain, "but he could have. If he'd left, he could have done anything he wanted, anywhere he wanted, and this company would have foundered and collapsed as surely as though its spinal cord had been severed and removed.
"The CEO refused to take that chance."
The walls shivered again, and closed down flat, as Prowl's shoulders drew up and in. "Your brother did not consent to the procedure.
"They-- they told him it was immortality, that he was needed, that he was vital, but he fought them even while they were strapping him into the machine.
"They didn't upload him into me.
"They copied him."
Which made Prowl... what, a sort of... technological clone of Parker Evans...?
"And when that copy was complete, they destroyed the original." ... Oh. "I am so, so sorry, Bluestreak. I'm not him-- I'm just--"
Bluestreak let go of Prowl's hands-- and Prowl started to lift his body or avatar or whatever it was out of reach, so Bluestreak had to jump a little to catch him, to get his arms around Prowl and hug him tight.
Something, somewhere, ground to a crashing halt, Bluestreak could hear that.
"You serve my grandmother's minestrone," he said, and Prowl just froze, for a moment.
"The-- the soup? It's a scalable recipe..."
"My mother's mother's recipe," Bluestreak said. "I thought-- when I first had it? It was like home in a fucking bowl it was the best thing I ever had it-- I wanted to swim in it, basically. I never got that recipe myself, you know? It-- our hometown, my hometown, it was leveled. As far as anyone knows, I'm the only survivor-- definitely the only survivor who was there at the time."
"I'm... aware," Prowl said, and his arms very slowly came up around Bluestreak, hands just brushing his shoulderblades. "You have my condolences for that, as well."
Blue tightened the hug for a moment, but didn't let go. "So when I had that soup-- at first I didn't know what to think and I sort of didn't care, of course it tasted like home, you know? Hot soup of the right kind after we were all so lost and nearly broken? Of course it smelled like care, like family. And after a while I thought it was just-- one of those things, you know, where it turns out the Secret Family Recipe came of the back of a box of cake mix or something, or maybe it was originally an industrial recipe for schools and things and my grandmother scaled it down for home use.
"But that's not where you got it, is it?"
"I'm so sorry," Prowl practically sobbed, and before Bluestreak could react, went on his own ramble-- "I could make it with what I have access to here, so when I wanted-- when Jazz needed to eat, once he got me my body back, it was what I defaulted to, and he liked it so much, appreciated it so much that when he came back and brought all of you it was-- it seemed sensible. I didn't-- until I heard your full name, I didn't know who you were-- I'm sorry for that, too-- I meant to-- I didn't mean to steal it," he concluded, and at that, Bluestreak was actually too shocked to respond like he should have. "I didn't intend-- he died wishing, in no small part, he'd spent more time with you. He died regretting he wouldn't see you grow up. He loved you so much and I-- I-- I--"
"You're my brother," Bluestreak cut in, before that could turn from stammering to maybe erroring. It sounded like it could go that way.
"I'm not," Prowl insisted. "I'm a copy."
"You're not Parker," he agreed. "You're Prowl. But not being Parker doesn't mean you're not my brother."
"I am reasonably certain that is not how that works," Prowl said, the lights shivering a little.
It was if Bluestreak said it was. "You're a copy of my brother's mind," he said. "His memories, his personality, right? I'd guess his emotions but emotions in humans tend to be biochemical so I don't think you could have a copy of those..."
"No, I can't-- my emotions work differently, but I-- I remember his."
Prowl didn't seem quite able to say Parker's name.
... That was okay. Prowl was allowed to grieve him, too.
"So, if someone had cloned Parker," Bluestreak started, pulling away just enough to see Prowl's face, "if someone had made a purely biological copy of my brother, with none of his memories and a blank slate for a personality? I would still consider that person to be my brother-- not Parker but there's no upper limit to the number of brothers someone can have as far as I've ever heard. You're a copy of the things that actually made Parker Parker. How could you be any less my brother than that hypothetical clone?"
Prowl's hands flexed against Bluestreak's shoulderblades, curling and uncurling against his shirt. There was a sound of groaning metal from... somewhere hopefully not too load-bearing.
"I don't deserve this," Prowl tried.
"... If I were a really good person I'd say that having family isn't about deserving it and I kind of want to say that? But mostly I want to say fuck that because I deserve this." Bluestreak swallowed, hard, and shoved himself up against Prowl in a desperate hug again. "Everyone died. Everyone. Everyone in the city is dead, Prowl-- Mom and Dad and everyone else, the house is dead the lake my school everyone. I could hope Parker wasn't but I always sort of knew he had to be because we got that inheritance, we wouldn't have gotten that without some kind of confirmation of death.
"... They sent us a box of ashes but Dad thought it-- was the wrong consistency or something. Anyway that's not important right now," Bluestreak said, waving that thought, that memory, away. "What's important is-- you're alive, Prowl, you're alive and you're really hard to kill and you're possible to fix in ways Parker-- and Mom and Dad and Nana and home-- can't ever be. Couldn't ever be. You don't have to ever call me your brother if you don't want to but you're mine and I'm not-- I'm not giving that up. Not without a really messy argument. And I mean that literally, I get snotty when I cry, it's gross."
Prowl very slowly, very carefully, shifted his arms to hold onto Bluestreak fully, finally. "He would have been very proud of you," Prowl said, cautiously. "He-- valued determination."
"Mom and Dad would have loved you," Bluestreak told him, honest and earnest-- and the lights flared, and the robot body shivered, this time, and Prowl buried his face in the crook of Bluestreak's shoulder, the even warmth of a lit computer monitor soaking into Bluestreak's neck.
The facility sobbed around them, and Bluestreak sunk one hand into the thick filaments of Prowl's hair, cradling his head, claiming his brother.
Not the one he'd lost, but a nice big sturdy one he might just be able to keep.
"There you are," he murmured, holding onto the part of Prowl that could hug. "There you are."
August 1 2025: Keferon illustrated the thing!
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Keferon's TF Portal AU
Characters: Bluestreak, Prowl
Word Count: 2,836
Rating: E for Everyone
Pairing(s): Gen
Warnings: Bluestreak has his original backstory (sole survivor of Praxus, or at least the only survivor who was there), and Prowl has... uh, most of Caroline's original backstory. This is discussed.
Author's Notes: Keferon. Keferon. Hey. Hey. Let go of my brain, Keferon, I need that.
Anyway. Keferon now has a Jazz/Prowl Portal AU. It's going backwards, somehow, it started at potato and proceeded to lopping off cores and currently there's something a little bit Rattman happening, or supposed to be happening, but I?
I got distracted by Bluestreak.
So take this post to start with, that's Prowl's situation, and then THIS post which hurt me okay, that's the one that got me in the heart and gave me a plot, and this post made me go, "Yes, that feels Right," but THIS post, this post right here? I was doing things, Keferon, and a whole ass ficlet slammed me right in the ADHD. Dropped everything, had to write.
Also I scoured Keferon's blog for where I saw a boring human name for Prowl and it turns out that's from another fic, here, And when the skies are open, we'll still be singing this by Flockofcrowsinatrenchcoat, because at 4am I was not up to coming up with a name under my own power. (Celaeno named Bluestreak for me, on the grounds that she liked Blake better than Bradley. I am awake enough to know better than to name two brothers owned by Hasbro Parker and Bradley, so Blake it is.) I was possessed by Bluestreak going "Actually I have some Views on this, you're gonna write 'em right now."
I am very proud of myself for not resorting to more ironic reuse of Portal lines. The only thing that saved this fic from being titled "They Woke Me Up So I Could Live Forever" is the fact that it is not from Prowl's POV.
Summary: Prowl was never human. That's not how the procedure works.
Bluestreak found his brother's preserved corpse in the depths of Prowl's facility.
These facts are not unrelated.
Bluestreak was fairly certain that Prowl, the AI running the facility, liked him.
He wasn't sure what to make of that, not really-- not now. Not after what he'd found in the bowels of the facility, when they were trying to save themselves and find Prowl's morality core in the (thankfully cold) incinerator and also keep Mirage (poor mind-controlled Mirage, a meat-puppet for Bombshell for the duration) safe for himself and others and the facility.
It had been, suffice it to say, a really stressful time to find his long-lost brother's creepily well-preserved corpse.
So Bluestreak did what Bluestreak usually did, when faced with a too-big emotional issue he didn't have time for in the moment: mentally packed it up and put it aside to deal with when he did have the time. He'd also learned, to his regret, that he did have to deal with whatever he was compartmentalizing, or he'd have breakdowns and issues and-- well, sooner was better than later, as soon as it was safe enough to go sorting through... all of it.
So, Bluestreak was fairly certain Prowl liked him, and he'd been around, and running the facility, since before everything went so completely to shit and slag as it had. Prowl might not be the most sensitive about it, but-- Bluestreak didn't really need someone to be sensitive and gentle with him.
He needed someone to tell him the truth.
"Prowl?" he asked the nearest security camera, rather than the ceiling (because Prowl wasn't really in the ceiling, and the cameras were a little like making eye contact). "I, um, I have an awkward question about-- about before-- about when the company that owned this facility was still running? Do you have access to information from back then?"
"I was one of the company's last major projects," Prowl agreed, sounding calm-- but sounding cautious. "I have access to all company data that was digitized; some older records are still in hard copy. What did you need to know?"
That was not, Bluestreak noted, a promise to tell him. But he found himself smiling a little anyway. "I'm looking for information on one specific employee who would have worked here about-- at least twenty, twenty-five years ago? Just. Just what happened to him I already know he worked here up until then-- maybe not just what happened to him if you have, like, information on-- on-- not what he did if that's a problem to tell someone but what he was like how he... how he fit how he... Who he was," Bluestreak concluded. "As a person."
"I... may be able to locate information like that," and Prowl sounded very cautious. "Please tell me you aren't interested in the last CEO."
"No-- I don't think so," he said. "I'm-- his name was Parker Evans," Bluestreak said.
Prowl said nothing, for just a moment too long.
He was probably just processing, but unfortunately he said nothing for slightly too long to Bluestreak, so he went on-- "I know-- I knew-- I've always logically known he was probably dead and I don't really remember him-- the last time we heard from him I wasn't even three years old yet-- but I'd always-- I'd always sort of hoped he was my long-lost brother, you know, and not-- not-- not yet another dead relative and-- I just-- I--"
"Bluestreak," Prowl said, sounding... odd. Strained? Strained. "If you would prefer, we can have this conversation in greater privacy in my primary chamber."
Bluestreak had never seen Prowl's main chamber. It was the most secure place in the facility-- you had to be as trusted or as sneaky as Jazz to get in there. ... But he'd heard something about projectors.
Maybe Prowl had pictures. Security camera footage.
Bluestreak suddenly desperately wanted to see footage of his brother alive and moving, not... preserved.
"I'll still probably babble all the way there," he warned, but also asked, "Will you show me the way? I promise not to touch anything you don't want me to touch." Because Prowl had been violated, recently. ... On the other hand, from Bluestreak, that could be construed as a jerkass-genie kind of promise. "And I'll leave my guns outside the chamber."
"... You're currently armed?"
Bluestreak answered Prowl's surprise with a shrug. "I'm always armed or I can get armed in a few seconds."
He let the babble turn to being constantly prepared to evacuate while being led to one of those glass elevator things-- where Prowl told him he could leave his weapons, so Bluestreak did-- and...
Prowl's main chamber was a softly-lit dome-shaped room, or what seemed to be a dome-shaped room, the walls made up of hundreds of those moveable white panels that sort of gently fidgeted. The room looked alive.
"Oh that's so cool," Bluestreak breathed.
"Thank you," Prowl said-- his voice seeming to come from a direction, this time, and something red and black and white near the ceiling moved. "I do regret to inform you-- or to confirm for you-- that Parker Evans is dead."
"Oh-- no, I know that," Bluestreak started.
"You... do?"
"We found his body, the twins and I, when we were in the underlayers trying to find either your morality core or the plans for your morality core."
Whatever was moving near the ceiling stopped, looking like some kind of crane arm-- and the wall panels all froze, too.
"His body," Prowl echoed. "His body is... in recognizable condition?"
"There's this case thing-- I don't know if it's frozen or something else but it's-- it's definitely preserved in there and it has his name on it and-- I don't really remember what he looked like? But if nothing else the guy in that case has my dad's nose and mom's chin."
"He kept his corpse," and the lights-- didn't flicker, it was too smooth for that, but they dimmed and brightened briefly.
"Prowl? Are you okay?"
"... In this situation, I don't think I have the right to be less okay than you are," he said, and that crane arm started moving again.
There was a-- at the end of it there was a person-- not a person. A person-shaped... interface? A robot, arguably, but it was firmly attached to the crane at the upper back, dangling like a puppet, so probably just something to make-- to make Prowl more user-friendly. It was male-shaped, broad-shouldered, armored like a science-fiction soldier built for dexterity-- which might just have been the metal or plastic or whatever its plating was made of. It was all stark high-contrast colors, black and white, with glowing red lights. Even the two red streaks in the obviously-synthetic fibers of its hair glowed red. Its eyes glowed red, out of black sclerae, set in a paper-white face like a porcelain doll.
The face had Bluestreak's late father's nose.
His late mother's chin.
Prowl's humanoid user-friendly whatever-it-was was wearing Bluestreak's brother's face.
And whether it was a reflection of Prowl's own emotional state or just puppeteering, sympathetically, the face looked sad.
Some logical part of his brain was trying to make actual sense of the situation, but it was the wild curl of hope that had Bluestreak-- Blake-- asking, "Parker?"
Prowl's expression fell, shattered, in a way that made Bluestreak absolutely certain that it was Prowl's expression and not just something he was simulating for a smoother social interaction.
"No," he said. "I'm sorry. ... I'm so sorry I'm not him."
Bluestreak moved forward, and Prowl... stood there. Or almost stood there, it actually looked like he wasn't quite touching the floor. But he didn't move away, even when Bluestreak reached out his hands. He didn't touch, just reached, and after a moment, Prowl reached back, far too cautious as Bluestreak took his hands.
They felt plasticky.
"Tell me," Bluestreak said, keeping it as simple as he possibly could (so he could get the most he could, to start with, so he could ask follow-ups), "please?"
Prowl closed his eyes, for a moment, and though he-- his human-shaped body-- didn't shiver, the wall panels did.
"Your brother," he started, "was the backbone of this facility. He put everything he had into the company, to the point of buying up any publicly-available stock to keep it afloat. He was the person everyone within the company turned to when something absolutely needed to get done. When it turned a profit, it was largely his doing. He was deeply invested, personally, and entirely indispensable.
"When the CEO and his engineers said that they'd worked out how to transfer human consciousness into a computer, that the drives were ready, your brother was... certainly interested," but he said it like he was allowing that. "It seemed salable, to certain parties. Technological immortality. Your brother didn't see the appeal in it for himself-- the drives to hold a human consciousness, a personality, were shockingly small, but to store the breadth of a human memory, to provide a framework where that tiny personality core could reach out into the world and accomplish anything? Even in terms of pure intranet access, they were massive.
"But it seemed like the sort of thing people with more money than sense, more money than morality, would pay obscene prices for, so he agreed it was a project they should pursue."
Prowl's expression had calmed, smoothed out, over the course of that explanation-- but Bluestreak was reading between the lines. "They put Parker in there?"
Prowl's gaze dropped. "No."
Bluestreak wanted to hug him.
He squeezed Prowl's hands, instead.
"Then what happened?"
Maybe he'd hug him later, if an opportunity presented itself.
"Your brother was the backbone of this facility-- but he was also, by that point, independently wealthy, and increasingly frustrated with the CEO's behavior. He wasn't considering leaving the company," Prowl said, very certain, "but he could have. If he'd left, he could have done anything he wanted, anywhere he wanted, and this company would have foundered and collapsed as surely as though its spinal cord had been severed and removed.
"The CEO refused to take that chance."
The walls shivered again, and closed down flat, as Prowl's shoulders drew up and in. "Your brother did not consent to the procedure.
"They-- they told him it was immortality, that he was needed, that he was vital, but he fought them even while they were strapping him into the machine.
"They didn't upload him into me.
"They copied him."
Which made Prowl... what, a sort of... technological clone of Parker Evans...?
"And when that copy was complete, they destroyed the original." ... Oh. "I am so, so sorry, Bluestreak. I'm not him-- I'm just--"
Bluestreak let go of Prowl's hands-- and Prowl started to lift his body or avatar or whatever it was out of reach, so Bluestreak had to jump a little to catch him, to get his arms around Prowl and hug him tight.
Something, somewhere, ground to a crashing halt, Bluestreak could hear that.
"You serve my grandmother's minestrone," he said, and Prowl just froze, for a moment.
"The-- the soup? It's a scalable recipe..."
"My mother's mother's recipe," Bluestreak said. "I thought-- when I first had it? It was like home in a fucking bowl it was the best thing I ever had it-- I wanted to swim in it, basically. I never got that recipe myself, you know? It-- our hometown, my hometown, it was leveled. As far as anyone knows, I'm the only survivor-- definitely the only survivor who was there at the time."
"I'm... aware," Prowl said, and his arms very slowly came up around Bluestreak, hands just brushing his shoulderblades. "You have my condolences for that, as well."
Blue tightened the hug for a moment, but didn't let go. "So when I had that soup-- at first I didn't know what to think and I sort of didn't care, of course it tasted like home, you know? Hot soup of the right kind after we were all so lost and nearly broken? Of course it smelled like care, like family. And after a while I thought it was just-- one of those things, you know, where it turns out the Secret Family Recipe came of the back of a box of cake mix or something, or maybe it was originally an industrial recipe for schools and things and my grandmother scaled it down for home use.
"But that's not where you got it, is it?"
"I'm so sorry," Prowl practically sobbed, and before Bluestreak could react, went on his own ramble-- "I could make it with what I have access to here, so when I wanted-- when Jazz needed to eat, once he got me my body back, it was what I defaulted to, and he liked it so much, appreciated it so much that when he came back and brought all of you it was-- it seemed sensible. I didn't-- until I heard your full name, I didn't know who you were-- I'm sorry for that, too-- I meant to-- I didn't mean to steal it," he concluded, and at that, Bluestreak was actually too shocked to respond like he should have. "I didn't intend-- he died wishing, in no small part, he'd spent more time with you. He died regretting he wouldn't see you grow up. He loved you so much and I-- I-- I--"
"You're my brother," Bluestreak cut in, before that could turn from stammering to maybe erroring. It sounded like it could go that way.
"I'm not," Prowl insisted. "I'm a copy."
"You're not Parker," he agreed. "You're Prowl. But not being Parker doesn't mean you're not my brother."
"I am reasonably certain that is not how that works," Prowl said, the lights shivering a little.
It was if Bluestreak said it was. "You're a copy of my brother's mind," he said. "His memories, his personality, right? I'd guess his emotions but emotions in humans tend to be biochemical so I don't think you could have a copy of those..."
"No, I can't-- my emotions work differently, but I-- I remember his."
Prowl didn't seem quite able to say Parker's name.
... That was okay. Prowl was allowed to grieve him, too.
"So, if someone had cloned Parker," Bluestreak started, pulling away just enough to see Prowl's face, "if someone had made a purely biological copy of my brother, with none of his memories and a blank slate for a personality? I would still consider that person to be my brother-- not Parker but there's no upper limit to the number of brothers someone can have as far as I've ever heard. You're a copy of the things that actually made Parker Parker. How could you be any less my brother than that hypothetical clone?"
Prowl's hands flexed against Bluestreak's shoulderblades, curling and uncurling against his shirt. There was a sound of groaning metal from... somewhere hopefully not too load-bearing.
"I don't deserve this," Prowl tried.
"... If I were a really good person I'd say that having family isn't about deserving it and I kind of want to say that? But mostly I want to say fuck that because I deserve this." Bluestreak swallowed, hard, and shoved himself up against Prowl in a desperate hug again. "Everyone died. Everyone. Everyone in the city is dead, Prowl-- Mom and Dad and everyone else, the house is dead the lake my school everyone. I could hope Parker wasn't but I always sort of knew he had to be because we got that inheritance, we wouldn't have gotten that without some kind of confirmation of death.
"... They sent us a box of ashes but Dad thought it-- was the wrong consistency or something. Anyway that's not important right now," Bluestreak said, waving that thought, that memory, away. "What's important is-- you're alive, Prowl, you're alive and you're really hard to kill and you're possible to fix in ways Parker-- and Mom and Dad and Nana and home-- can't ever be. Couldn't ever be. You don't have to ever call me your brother if you don't want to but you're mine and I'm not-- I'm not giving that up. Not without a really messy argument. And I mean that literally, I get snotty when I cry, it's gross."
Prowl very slowly, very carefully, shifted his arms to hold onto Bluestreak fully, finally. "He would have been very proud of you," Prowl said, cautiously. "He-- valued determination."
"Mom and Dad would have loved you," Bluestreak told him, honest and earnest-- and the lights flared, and the robot body shivered, this time, and Prowl buried his face in the crook of Bluestreak's shoulder, the even warmth of a lit computer monitor soaking into Bluestreak's neck.
The facility sobbed around them, and Bluestreak sunk one hand into the thick filaments of Prowl's hair, cradling his head, claiming his brother.
Not the one he'd lost, but a nice big sturdy one he might just be able to keep.
"There you are," he murmured, holding onto the part of Prowl that could hug. "There you are."
August 1 2025: Keferon illustrated the thing!
