Dare to dream 4

[silberstreif]

Dare to dream

Beta: Starfire 201
Continuation: AU, G1
Genre: Drama, adventure
Characters: Prowl and Jazz
Wordcount: 14 850

Summary: Life in Kaon is hard, tragic and more often than not short. Kaonite Enforcer Jazz knows all that and navigates the streets with experience. But when a Praxian officer on the hunt for a dangerous killer comes to visit some things can't be ignored any longer.

The archive was located in the basement. Alarge computer stood here, maintained and updated by a lone AI whose name no one recalled. Jazz had been told that the AI at full power was able to deduce things in an instant that a normal mech took orns to do, but he had never seen it powered beyond the bare minimum. Prowl gave the polite spectre that greeted them a cold look, then dismissed the AI with a few words after he got the pathlines for the maps.

The maps were, of course, so outdated that it bordered on the ridiculous. Jazz gave Prowl a long glance when the Praxian asked about structures and pathways, but answered every question to his best of knowledge. Glint wasn't mentioned once and Jazz would've been hard-pressed anyway to say what the government buildings had to do with a serial killer. Still, Prowl wanted to know and Jazz provided.

It took a long while to build a map that at least didn't give any wrong data anymore. Big, white dots marked that map now, with grey areas simply titulated as 'slums' and several other colours which marked the gang territories. Special interest had been taken to make sure that every giant apartment block with more than five thousands residents corresponded to a real one. Now, looking at the map, Jazz quietly decided that Kaon made a sad picture. Wherever one looked, there was corruption, danger and violence reigning supreme.

"Jazz, would you please colour every area over which the Decepticons have total control purple? When they have at least partial control, I think a lighter purple would be a good choice," instructed Prowl.

"Sure." He started to work. It went quickly and only breems later they had a purple map with a few colourful islands inbetween. Jazz pointed out a few of them. "They'll probably join da movement in a decaorn or so. Or maybe they already have and Ah just didn't get the word."

With serious, undecipherable optics, the Praxian Enforcer looked over the map, clearly burning it into his memory cortexes. "Soon, they'll rule everything."

"Yeah," agreed Jazz and remembered again the teasing glyphs 'dare to dream'. Would his dreams come to him wearing purple?

Soon after, they left the station and Jazz went to his little run-down apartment to wait for the next shift.

Overthe next orns, Prowl never left the station again and always stayed within the archives, collecting any significant data he could find. Jazz was always by his side and when Prowl regularly gave him a energon cube on the side, the AI didn't care.

With time, the Praxian Enforcer became a bit warmer and the Kaonite Enforcer a bit more trusting. They traded stories about arrests, and as Enforcer gossips, compared their cities and sometimes even their own lives.

But all things have to come to an end and this end approached only six orns later.

Prowl straightened, stretched his cramped doorwings, and with deliberate servos turned off the console he was working on. The darkening of the lights was what made Jazz look up from his own work. "Prowl, everything alright over there?"

"Yes. I'm merely finished." The Praxian didn't look at Jazz, but at the maps he was working on and then at the shadows of the computer room surrounding them. "I've been called back to Praxus as my superiors have determined that Glint is probably already deactivated and that the chances of finding him are too low now in any case."

That wasn't good news to Jazz. He had started to enjoy working with the Praxian, to have a reliable Enforcer at his back and to live something resembling a normal Enforcer life. "Can't really disagree with them, Prowl. The chances were never high."

"No, they weren't," agreed Prowl easily. "But then, Glint was never the reason I came, right?"

Jazz's visor flashed. He had suspected it, but never dared to voice the accusations in his processor. "So ya're really a spy?" he asked flatly, his tanks suddenly squirming as he couldn't ignore the implications any longer.

"Kind of," admitted Prowl quietly, maybe even a bit ashamed. "I was tasked by the Prime to find out as much as possible about the situation in Kaon and its possible military targets." He seems to fight with himself and then forced his head to look at Jazz. "My work was very successful and would've never been possible without your help so I wanted to thank you."

Right. Being thanked by a spy of Optimus Prime in a city that was being taken over by a group outlawed by said mech. Did that make him a traitor? Better yet, would the Decepticons and other Kaonites care that he had just done his job? Probably not. Sparks were cheap and Kaon had always loved public displays of spilled energon. Jazz didn't know how how he should express the roiling emotions inside him, somewhere between hysterical laughter and quiet desperation.

So he just smirked: "Mech, ya're really new to this spying thing, right? Ya do not thank the mech ya used, even if the mech suspects. Rule number one. Didn't they get ya the spy book?"

Prowl looked startled. "No, they didn't." He paused as he realised that Jazz was trying to deflect from the matter at hand. "I'm happy that you suspected and decided to help me... you're probably more aware than I what the Decepticons will do to you, if they ever found out."

Jazz's visor darkened until it was nearly black. "Ah am."

The chances were low that no one would connect the source of Prime's information with the highly visible visit of a Prax of all mechs. And then the accusations and guilt would be all Jazz's to bear. Death would come as a sweet release.

Truthfully, Jazz couldn't say why he had helped Prowl besides his thoughts what the other mech really was. Maybe it had been loneliness, maybe the extra cube of energon which he could used to so quickly.Maybe, it simply had been the small fact that he actually genuinely liked Prowl with his awkward mannerism, dry humour and clear moral lines. Maybe.

Prowl shifted on his pedes. "I don't want you to die. So, maybe you could come back with me to Iacon?"

Jazz froze. Then laughed, torn between offended and some more painful emotion he shied away from in favour of anger. "To Iacon? Ah? Ya expect me to abandon my city and to just go for what? And what would Ah even do in Iacon – clean doorsteps? No, thanks." He rose from his seat. "If that was all, Prowl, you just run back to Praxus or Iacon or whatever and let ma stay where Ah belong."

"Jazz..." The single word was drenched in emotions. "Please, be reasonable."

"Ah'm realistic!"

"You are definitely not!" Prowl crossed his arms. "You said yourself that you worked once in Iacon as one of the best Enforcers of our planet. And you could also provide the Prime with invaluable insight into Kaon. You would be respected, have a regular income and a good home." He softened bit. "And far more energon than you'll ever get here."

Jazz flinched. It always came back to the energon. "And ya think all that is enough ta turn me against my own home? Against every mech Ah've ever known and ma own brother?"

For several long sparkbeats, the humming of the computers was the only thing heard. Then Prowl sighed. "I hope so, yes."

"Ya are a fool," spat Jazz and started to walk to the exit.

Prowl took the insult in stride. "A fool that wants you to survive more than just the next few decaorns. I'm your friend, Jazz. Even if you do not believe me now."

"Ya're a spy." With a last glance back he added: "And spies lie."

He walked out. As the door closed behind him, it left a heavy shadow on his spark. Deep in thought, he used his extra energon to race home, a nearly criminal squander but he needed it now. He needed the feeling of speed and control and choice. While all the time being acutely aware that he was burning Prowl's energon.

Before he reached the steps of his apartment block, his comm system pinged and a small message popped up. He read it automatically before realising who the sender was.

Shuttle: Astrotrain. Parking place: 346. Departure in eleven joors. Jazz, please come.

That was the whole message and few things had hurt comparatively. Impulsively, Jazz wanted to delete it, but then he hesitated and stumbled into his apartment block. The steward of his home welcomed him with a fake smile, but no threat or worse. Jazz had been a good tenant for vorns, had always paid his rent and even two credits more to keep the Stewards on his side. It had paid off over the vorns as they had chosen to forget the times when Jazz hadn't been able to pay, because he had used his small salary to buy a few more dredges of energon for a youngling that tried to hide the desperate hunger shining in his optics...

He walked past with small nod, trying to hide the memories and the cruel punishments of the Stewards. It was with them that he had learned to switch his emotions off and to forget. Pure necessity at the time, but even now he woke up during a bad recharge cycle and felt bodies against him or saw energon dripping from his servos in pink neon.

He walked on past the begging younglings in the hallways, around the drugged mechs sprawled across the dirty floor in front of the lift. Left and right the walls were smeared with messages, some holding true information like what floor belonged to which gang, others simply name tags and a third category was the cheapest kind of advertisement available in Kaon. Again and again he saw the glyphs 'dream' and 'dare' and Decepticon interwoven with a single name: Megatron.

The lift came and he entered. It had been chance that his apartment was at the very top floor of the building, but he had never regretted the fact. It made it quieter and the roof was the one joy in his life that came without any strings attached.

In front of his apartment door, he suddenly stopped. Behind it was his room with a single berth and not much else. He had never had the credits to buy more as he had always given them to Ricochet and later to mechs like Softkey. There had been a reason the other Enforcers had joked that he was too soft for a life in Kaon.

He decided to let his apartment be. With a troubled spark he entered the roof and stood on the small, clattering metal bridge. The view was still there and hadn't changed. With heavy thoughts his optics jumped from building to building, searching for something that he couldn't name.

Looking back,Jazz knew it had been no chance that he of all Enforcers had gotten Prowl. The chief had probably suspected the Praxian's real mission, and being the sneaky mech he was, he had chosen one of the few Enforcers who was not corrupted beyond any help for the collaboration.

Jazz sighed and sat down on the bridge, elbows on his thighs.

He remembered the view from Iacon's towers over the city. It had been so much brighter, but in many ways the same. The real difference hadn't not been in the architecture and not even in the easily available energon. No, the real difference had been the mechs. The Iaconians had always talked about the future, about their wants and hopes for the vorns to come. His life in Iacon now seemed so far away, like a faint dream, but he remembered one thing with sudden clarity: He had joined those talks. He too had once wanted more from life than a single energon cube more.

"Dare to dream," he muttered thoughtfully. Megatron was right. Kaon needed to dare to dream or it would never find the energy to change matters.

And shouldn't Jazz stay around and join such a movement? Shouldn't he try to change Kaon for the better too?

He should. But he had seen the mechs joining the Decepticons, knew who was leading them and a part of him feared. They would change Kaon, yes. But for the better? He didn't know.

Maybe he should stay for the mechs. But the hard truth was that his colleagues were not mechs he trusted and friends were nothing one had in Kaon. And Ricochet... little, innocent Ricochet wasn't anymore. He was now his own mech making his own choices.

'Dare to dream' Megatron had said and Jazz remembered a time when he dreamed of justice. Of being able to see right and wrong. Of leaving Kaon.

Again his optics roamed the city state in front of him, searching for anything that would give him a warm spark or was worth fighting for. His optics only found the same things as always, while deep in his spark the same strange, distracting feeling beat stronger that he had carried around since Prowl's offer. It was hope.

Jazz shuttered his optics and dared it.

He dreamed.

~

The shuttle would leave any moment and yet the passenger was still standing in front of it. Only the doorwings on his back showed that he was anxious about something.

::Sir,:: said the shuttle. ::We have to leave.::

The doorwings lowered a bit. ::I'm aware of it, Astrotrain.:: Prowl couldn't wait any longer.

With a heavy spark and the distinct feeling he was leaving a bright, intelligent mech to his violent death, he climbed up the ramp. Astrotrain was spacious and comfortable on the inside, even though he originally was a military class model.

"Well, there you are," said an amused voice suddenly. "I feared we would've had to fly without you."

Prowl's head snapped up. With wide optics, he recognised the black and white Enforcer sitting in one of the chairs for passengers. "Jazz!"

"The one and only," came the answer with a smile. "I decided to get on the shuttle a bit earlier."

Relief crashed through Prowl as he sat down across from the other Enforcer. "But... how?"

"Special training on sabotage, remember?" Jazz winked.

"Yes." He leaned back and felt the slight vibrations as Astrotrain started his powerful engines. "I'm happy that you decided to come." The words felt indequate to express his feelings, but they were all he had.

The smile on Jazz's face slipped a bit. "You were right, Prowl... you and the Decepticon both." He looked outside of the window to where Kaon got smaller and smaller. "I just had to remember to dream again."

END


~

Thank you to all who have read the story. I wanted to make it longer, but as it ws written for the Anniversary Challenge at ProwlxJazz I had a time limit. Much thanks goes to Starfire201 who betaed this story unbelievably fast.

I hope you all enjoyed it and I would love to hear your opinion about Kaon, Decepticon and maybe even my story. ;)

~silber

Comments

[kkcliffy.livejournal.com]

This was and amazing and beautifully written story! I'm so glad Jazz made the right choice at the end. He can make more of a difference by making sure Prime knows just how bad Kaon is and why so many there are following Megatron. And giving up his only true friendship would have been pure idiocy. It's wonderful that his chief paired him up with Prowl and that Prowl gave him the chance to have a life again.

[silberstreif.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I hope Jazz makes a difference and reminds all mechs, especially Prime, in Iacon and everywhere else that Kaon doesn't deserve to be forgotten. And that they are just reaping what they sowed in some way.