Condolences
Mar. 30th, 2026 11:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hat_writes_stuffTitle: Condolences
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Transformers Mystic Tales AU
Characters: Prowl, Jazz
Word Count: 1,380
Rating: G
Pairing(s): Jazz/Prowl (sorta?)
Warnings: Underlying personhood issues, past character death, awkwardness
Author's Notes: So, the Mimics AU is normally a fair bit less heavy than Spellbound, but this update (more than the fic) does deal with death and choice and the dignity of choice, not so much suicide as somebody making the decision that yeah, what he's going to try to do is worth dying for.
But it's not really in this fic. This is just Prowl looking at Jazz and going, "My high-priority person is hurting. This is unacceptable. HOW FIX, I already have proof I suck at this."
Summary: Jazz is grieving, and Prowl doesn't know what to do.
Introspection based on the latest update of Keferon's Mimics AU.
Jazz is grieving.
Jazz is grieving, and Prowl doesn't know what to do.
It was better than with Orion-- or possibly worse. Jazz wasn't asking questions. Orion had asked questions while grieving, and Prowl's attempts to answer them...
(Was he supposed to just not answer questions? They hadn't seemed rhetorical, they'd seemed philosophical, and the entire issue of which mechanisms deserve what rights and freedoms was also philosophical. Orion had created Prowl specifically to help with all that-- but grief had entered the equation, along with doubt, and Prowl had come up with... unhelpful conjecture.)
... Well, the answers he'd offered had led this far, technically, but only because they'd also led Orion to send him away, reject him if only temporarily, conditionally, until he'd calmed himself down.
Orion had had to calm himself down, because Prowl lacked the skill to help with it. His attempts to answer Orion's questions, to let him feel better about the demonization of his friend, had only worsened the pain of his maker's grief.
(In hindsight, Maybe your friend was planning to betray you to save himself and/or his students had not been... plausible. Prowl was not disappointed in himself for offering the idea, however, because lacking the information that Shockwave had not been damned by the unerring will of omniscient Primus but by the actions of whatever person or persons currently held the Matrix, he had offered a best guess. If it wasn't 'monsters should be treated like people' that had offended Primus, then 'he was about to betray Orion' presented an option in which Primus had acted to save Orion. Prowl had, at the time, genuinely believed that would be a comforting notion. Prowl had not, at the time, had what might be considered a friend of his own, or he would have come up with something more plausible.)
Prowl did not want to do that to Jazz.
(He had not known he could do that to Orion; he wouldn't have wanted to do it to Orion, either, if he had known. But he did not want to make Jazz's grief more painful.)
But Orion's questions had at least given Prowl a clue that he needed something from Prowl, wanted something, expected something. Jazz only leaned against him a little, shoulder tucked against Prowl's chestplate, as his hand spelled out his history, his great Primal loss.
(Vector Prime, already a little temporally unmoored, had succumbed as Prima Prime had, desperately trying to help everyone he could, heroic, until the impulse killed him. That was, if Prowl considered it logically, probably the most likely non-assassination fate of anyone who was worthy of holding the Matrix, of holding half of Rung's power-- giving too much trying to help too many, however it manifested. Someone who had the self-awareness to say I can help this much and no more likely had no business being a Prime.)
(Prowl was not sure what this said about his opinion of Rung, who had initially held all that power, heard all those prayers, all that desperation, and done nothing at all to help, or harm, or interfere at all. Prowl had been created to help, to aid his maker in achieving the dream of a more egalitarian society. Rung had not caused Shockwave's demonization-- had not caused anyone's demonization, in fact, but neither was he bothered that it had happened, or had happened in what mechs assumed was his name.)
(Rung being Rung might technically mean that Primus, as a religious figure, as a deity, as mechs understood him, did not exist. Prowl was not entirely certain what to do with that concept, and so did not dwell on it. If God was a creator only interested in seeing life happen and not an authority figure dictating how mechanisms ought to conduct themselves-- no. He would not dwell on it.)
Prowl couldn't put his arm around Jazz-- whether or not a gesture of physical comfort might be natural, to him or to the situation, or helpful to Jazz, it would silence Jazz, and Prowl wouldn't do that.
There was nothing he could meaningfully do to revive a dead Prime, and so he couldn't give Jazz his friend back.
He had no power over time, so he couldn't put Jazz back in his original place in history.
But Prowl had to do something, because Jazz was grieving and that pained him. He had to try to relieve one or the other, but all he had were words, and Prowl did not know how to make words do anything useful when someone was grieving.
Truth wouldn't help. Jazz would not want to hear that his Prime made a noble choice, or that Prima had made the same one. It would not lessen his pain to hear that Jazz, alive, was what Vector Prime had demonstrably wanted.
He would not lie to Jazz, in this situation.
Conjecture was terribly risky, and Prowl wasn't sure what to conjecture. Jazz was in the middle of an opportunity to do a tremendous good-- demonization was not the will of Primus, was not a holy punishment, might in fact be a blasphemous misuse of a holy artifact, and they had the chance to stop it all, expose it to the light. But was that more good than Jazz might have done in the past? Vector Prime taking his cohort, his circle, out of time for so long might have prevented Jazz, or one of his fellows, from preventing such misuse of the Matrix in the first place, which would inarguably be better than having to fix it now.
Though without the need to fix it now, Prowl would never have encountered Jazz-- Prowl might not exist-- and that was a trade he was uncertain how to balance. More importantly, Jazz was fond enough of Prowl that Prowl was uncertain how Jazz would balance that trade.
It was also entirely possible that Jazz had spent enough time without his Prime to accept the loss, and therefore his grief did not need solutions or conjecture, and simply existed as a pain Jazz acknowledged but still experienced. This seemed likely based on the relatively subdued expression of that pain, as Jazz was not ordinarily subdued about his expressions.
"Jazz, I..." How did mechs do this? Did sparks, emotions, simply let them feel out what to do, like groping for an object in the dark? Prowl defaulted to an apology. "Sorry I don't... really know how to..."
"Just say you're sorry," Jazz's fingers murmured against Prowl's hand.
But he wasn't sorry, except in his lack of skill in this situation.
... He wasn't exactly sorry. He felt no remorse or guilt, because none of that had been his doing. It had all happened ages before Prowl existed, ages before his creator existed, ages before the societal conditions that would lead Orion to need Prowl existed. It was, simply, not Prowl's fault. Apologizing for it seemed incredibly stupid.
Was he sorry as an expression of sorrow?
Prowl didn't, if he were entirely honest with himself, care what had happened to Vector Prime. It was historically fascinating, of course, and he was deeply invested in what had happened to the Matrix, but he had no connection to any of the Primes. Their deaths might be significant, but they didn't matter to Prowl. He was not any sorrier today that Vector Prime was dead than he had been yesterday.
But it had hurt Jazz.
Perhaps it hadn't harmed Jazz, but it had hurt him.
He had been Vector Prime's voice, his words, and Vector Prime was gone; he had been saved by being stolen away from his world, his time, the things he understood. Jazz was in pain, and Vector Prime's choice of protection was the source of that pain.
"I'm sorry that happened," Prowl concluded, as sincerely as he knew how.
Jazz's head tipped against Prowl's shoulder, finials drooping back. His hand was still curled in Prowl's own, but it seemed like a long moment before Prowl felt Jazz's, "... Thanks," traced into his palm.
Since Prowl did want Jazz to keep talking-- now or later, if he needed time to calm himself-- he set aside the question of whether his words had been helpful, inadequate, or incorrect.
Time would tell, if Jazz wouldn't.
End Notes: So if you go all the way back to literally the second installment of the Mimics AU, right here, you get to see this exchange, immediately after Shockwave is demonized:
And also this:
And that's when Prowl decides to investigate demonization, what it is, how Primus decides to do it, why it might happen if not for the reasons the Council declares.
So after a whole lot of research and espionage and shenanigans with Jazz and meetingGod Primus Rung, the creator of his world, the last page here sort of demonstrates-- to me, anyway-- how far Prowl has come, and how far he hasn't. He still doesn't know what to do when someone important to him is in emotional distress, but he does know that he can at least tell Jazz that he doesn't know what to do, how to fix it. And he's awfully deliberate in exactly how he uses the word 'sorry.'
Anyway, Mimics doesn't usually grab me the way Spellbound does-- Jazz/Prowl is one of those fine ships I admire from the docks, but only usually board if I'm interested in where it's going (to stop belaboring the metaphor, Jazz/Prowl alone isn't enough for me, but I'm interested in the plot and themes of Mimics)-- but I kept circling the idea of this ficlet and suddenly when I should've been taking the week's garbage down to the street, The Muse Was Upon Me and here we are. I'm not Sightseertresspasser, I'm not really there with the probability thing in hard numbers, but I tried to use my own natural ADHD tendency towards parentheticals (every thought comes with bonus content!) to sort of... show decision trees? Isolate all the different things Prowl is thinking about in the moment? Draw circles around information Prowl finds important but not immediately relevant? Somewhere up in that zone, because holy fuck do I love me a not-quite-baseline viewpoint, and Golem Prowl sure is that.
(I did get the trash down before the garbage trucks came. All good.)
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Transformers Mystic Tales AU
Characters: Prowl, Jazz
Word Count: 1,380
Rating: G
Pairing(s): Jazz/Prowl (sorta?)
Warnings: Underlying personhood issues, past character death, awkwardness
Author's Notes: So, the Mimics AU is normally a fair bit less heavy than Spellbound, but this update (more than the fic) does deal with death and choice and the dignity of choice, not so much suicide as somebody making the decision that yeah, what he's going to try to do is worth dying for.
But it's not really in this fic. This is just Prowl looking at Jazz and going, "My high-priority person is hurting. This is unacceptable. HOW FIX, I already have proof I suck at this."
Summary: Jazz is grieving, and Prowl doesn't know what to do.
Introspection based on the latest update of Keferon's Mimics AU.
Jazz is grieving.
Jazz is grieving, and Prowl doesn't know what to do.
It was better than with Orion-- or possibly worse. Jazz wasn't asking questions. Orion had asked questions while grieving, and Prowl's attempts to answer them...
(Was he supposed to just not answer questions? They hadn't seemed rhetorical, they'd seemed philosophical, and the entire issue of which mechanisms deserve what rights and freedoms was also philosophical. Orion had created Prowl specifically to help with all that-- but grief had entered the equation, along with doubt, and Prowl had come up with... unhelpful conjecture.)
... Well, the answers he'd offered had led this far, technically, but only because they'd also led Orion to send him away, reject him if only temporarily, conditionally, until he'd calmed himself down.
Orion had had to calm himself down, because Prowl lacked the skill to help with it. His attempts to answer Orion's questions, to let him feel better about the demonization of his friend, had only worsened the pain of his maker's grief.
(In hindsight, Maybe your friend was planning to betray you to save himself and/or his students had not been... plausible. Prowl was not disappointed in himself for offering the idea, however, because lacking the information that Shockwave had not been damned by the unerring will of omniscient Primus but by the actions of whatever person or persons currently held the Matrix, he had offered a best guess. If it wasn't 'monsters should be treated like people' that had offended Primus, then 'he was about to betray Orion' presented an option in which Primus had acted to save Orion. Prowl had, at the time, genuinely believed that would be a comforting notion. Prowl had not, at the time, had what might be considered a friend of his own, or he would have come up with something more plausible.)
Prowl did not want to do that to Jazz.
(He had not known he could do that to Orion; he wouldn't have wanted to do it to Orion, either, if he had known. But he did not want to make Jazz's grief more painful.)
But Orion's questions had at least given Prowl a clue that he needed something from Prowl, wanted something, expected something. Jazz only leaned against him a little, shoulder tucked against Prowl's chestplate, as his hand spelled out his history, his great Primal loss.
(Vector Prime, already a little temporally unmoored, had succumbed as Prima Prime had, desperately trying to help everyone he could, heroic, until the impulse killed him. That was, if Prowl considered it logically, probably the most likely non-assassination fate of anyone who was worthy of holding the Matrix, of holding half of Rung's power-- giving too much trying to help too many, however it manifested. Someone who had the self-awareness to say I can help this much and no more likely had no business being a Prime.)
(Prowl was not sure what this said about his opinion of Rung, who had initially held all that power, heard all those prayers, all that desperation, and done nothing at all to help, or harm, or interfere at all. Prowl had been created to help, to aid his maker in achieving the dream of a more egalitarian society. Rung had not caused Shockwave's demonization-- had not caused anyone's demonization, in fact, but neither was he bothered that it had happened, or had happened in what mechs assumed was his name.)
(Rung being Rung might technically mean that Primus, as a religious figure, as a deity, as mechs understood him, did not exist. Prowl was not entirely certain what to do with that concept, and so did not dwell on it. If God was a creator only interested in seeing life happen and not an authority figure dictating how mechanisms ought to conduct themselves-- no. He would not dwell on it.)
Prowl couldn't put his arm around Jazz-- whether or not a gesture of physical comfort might be natural, to him or to the situation, or helpful to Jazz, it would silence Jazz, and Prowl wouldn't do that.
There was nothing he could meaningfully do to revive a dead Prime, and so he couldn't give Jazz his friend back.
He had no power over time, so he couldn't put Jazz back in his original place in history.
But Prowl had to do something, because Jazz was grieving and that pained him. He had to try to relieve one or the other, but all he had were words, and Prowl did not know how to make words do anything useful when someone was grieving.
Truth wouldn't help. Jazz would not want to hear that his Prime made a noble choice, or that Prima had made the same one. It would not lessen his pain to hear that Jazz, alive, was what Vector Prime had demonstrably wanted.
He would not lie to Jazz, in this situation.
Conjecture was terribly risky, and Prowl wasn't sure what to conjecture. Jazz was in the middle of an opportunity to do a tremendous good-- demonization was not the will of Primus, was not a holy punishment, might in fact be a blasphemous misuse of a holy artifact, and they had the chance to stop it all, expose it to the light. But was that more good than Jazz might have done in the past? Vector Prime taking his cohort, his circle, out of time for so long might have prevented Jazz, or one of his fellows, from preventing such misuse of the Matrix in the first place, which would inarguably be better than having to fix it now.
Though without the need to fix it now, Prowl would never have encountered Jazz-- Prowl might not exist-- and that was a trade he was uncertain how to balance. More importantly, Jazz was fond enough of Prowl that Prowl was uncertain how Jazz would balance that trade.
It was also entirely possible that Jazz had spent enough time without his Prime to accept the loss, and therefore his grief did not need solutions or conjecture, and simply existed as a pain Jazz acknowledged but still experienced. This seemed likely based on the relatively subdued expression of that pain, as Jazz was not ordinarily subdued about his expressions.
"Jazz, I..." How did mechs do this? Did sparks, emotions, simply let them feel out what to do, like groping for an object in the dark? Prowl defaulted to an apology. "Sorry I don't... really know how to..."
"Just say you're sorry," Jazz's fingers murmured against Prowl's hand.
But he wasn't sorry, except in his lack of skill in this situation.
... He wasn't exactly sorry. He felt no remorse or guilt, because none of that had been his doing. It had all happened ages before Prowl existed, ages before his creator existed, ages before the societal conditions that would lead Orion to need Prowl existed. It was, simply, not Prowl's fault. Apologizing for it seemed incredibly stupid.
Was he sorry as an expression of sorrow?
Prowl didn't, if he were entirely honest with himself, care what had happened to Vector Prime. It was historically fascinating, of course, and he was deeply invested in what had happened to the Matrix, but he had no connection to any of the Primes. Their deaths might be significant, but they didn't matter to Prowl. He was not any sorrier today that Vector Prime was dead than he had been yesterday.
But it had hurt Jazz.
Perhaps it hadn't harmed Jazz, but it had hurt him.
He had been Vector Prime's voice, his words, and Vector Prime was gone; he had been saved by being stolen away from his world, his time, the things he understood. Jazz was in pain, and Vector Prime's choice of protection was the source of that pain.
"I'm sorry that happened," Prowl concluded, as sincerely as he knew how.
Jazz's head tipped against Prowl's shoulder, finials drooping back. His hand was still curled in Prowl's own, but it seemed like a long moment before Prowl felt Jazz's, "... Thanks," traced into his palm.
Since Prowl did want Jazz to keep talking-- now or later, if he needed time to calm himself-- he set aside the question of whether his words had been helpful, inadequate, or incorrect.
Time would tell, if Jazz wouldn't.
End Notes: So if you go all the way back to literally the second installment of the Mimics AU, right here, you get to see this exchange, immediately after Shockwave is demonized:
“I understand that you’re hurt by his…fate.” Says Prowl “But have you considered the possibility that Shockwave was being punished for betraying you rather than the Council?”
Orion doesn’t even answer at first. Just looks at him dazed and bitter.
“Prowl…no. He couldn’t have.”
“I’m just speculating” shrugs Prowl “Shockwave was punished but as far as I know God didn’t bother to name the exact charge. We don’t know one hundred percent what exactly caused his…sentence. He may have betrayed the Council’s ideas, or he may have betrayed yours.”
And also this:
Prowl can’t work with that. He’s used to solving logical problems and making lists and strategies.
He doesn’t know how to get someone to stop being scared.
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“I don’t know.” mutters Orion “I don’t know, I have no idea. It’s too much…All these new knights, this whole council situation and now you’re also saying that the mech I treasured the most could actually be a liar and…just leave me alone.”
“But…”
“Just go away!” shakes his head Orion “Go find something else to do, find a hobby, I don’t know! Get out of my head and out of my personal life!”
And that's when Prowl decides to investigate demonization, what it is, how Primus decides to do it, why it might happen if not for the reasons the Council declares.
So after a whole lot of research and espionage and shenanigans with Jazz and meeting
Anyway, Mimics doesn't usually grab me the way Spellbound does-- Jazz/Prowl is one of those fine ships I admire from the docks, but only usually board if I'm interested in where it's going (to stop belaboring the metaphor, Jazz/Prowl alone isn't enough for me, but I'm interested in the plot and themes of Mimics)-- but I kept circling the idea of this ficlet and suddenly when I should've been taking the week's garbage down to the street, The Muse Was Upon Me and here we are. I'm not Sightseertresspasser, I'm not really there with the probability thing in hard numbers, but I tried to use my own natural ADHD tendency towards parentheticals (every thought comes with bonus content!) to sort of... show decision trees? Isolate all the different things Prowl is thinking about in the moment? Draw circles around information Prowl finds important but not immediately relevant? Somewhere up in that zone, because holy fuck do I love me a not-quite-baseline viewpoint, and Golem Prowl sure is that.
(I did get the trash down before the garbage trucks came. All good.)
