Zusammen — Chapter One (for real this time)

[legendtrainer]

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54432748

Private Jazz didn’t have a clue what to do with the first bit of correspondence that he received.

The conflict had only just gotten serious enough to really be called a war, having taken three vorns — three vorns after he’d ended his relationship with Megatron, and left Tarn for Iacon — to really get going. Thoughts of his breakup were still pretty sore.

Jazz turned the note over in his hands, appreciating the quality of the black flimsi—something was taped inside of it too, though he had yet to open it. His digits fidgeted a bit, hesitating.

Given that it had been directly delivered to him by Lazerbeak, it couldn’t be anyone other than his ex. Jazz felt his spark tighten at that.

Holding the note made it feel as if the bottom had dropped out of his spark casing. Jazz’s joints felt itchy with nerves.

He’d only managed to get the note because he was the only one of his squad to run towards, instead of away from, the familiar sound of an avian cassette. Even only a few vorn into the official war, Soundwave was already a notorious, high-ranking ‘Con. His cassettes were always given a wide berth.

Lazerbeak, covered in soot, had stuffed the note and package into an instrument case, a place he knew Jazz would check for parts. He’d then jetted off with a rough caw startling all the patrolling Autobots and giving Jazz enough time to grab it.

The monochrome bot tapped his foot, a nervous habit Ravage had never been too fond of. He huffed, fiddling with the note’s purple seal and trying not to think back on his old memories — of the parts of himself he’d left behind in that run-down apartment.

Scanning the skies for other Cons, Jazz picked at the wax, holding it close. He forced himself to read it.

‘My respect for you has never wavered, even if our tempers have reared their heads. Know you are in my thoughts.’

It wasn’t a break-up. It also wasn’t an apology — he didn’t really know what to make of it.

Whatever it was, it was in Megatron’s scratchy and unmistakably bad handwriting. The ex-miner’s hands had never been made for fine control, and they shook whenever he gripped something so small as a pen or stylus. Megatron had always refused to get them replaced.

Jazz spun the note around in his hands. He checked it for hidden codes, holding it up to the rays of the sun that were filtering through the filthy, smog-laden air, flipping through settings on his visor to check for invisible residues and such, but there was truly nothing.

He felt around the package it was tied to. There was something thin cylinder-ish inside, about the length of Jazz’s hand. He scanned again to double check for explosives, but again found nothing. Blacklight showed smears of dried energon, though. Interesting.

Worrying.

Unwrapping it revealed… a finger. Grey with death, but paint flakes in the wrapping showed it had once been scarlet, and that it had been wrapped while still fresh.

Jazz quickly wrapped it back up to keep it from making a mess. It was a very, very rich somebot’s finger, but he couldn’t be sure whose. The entire thing was carved with curlicues. There was a ragged gash which the frame hadn’t had time to repair before the finger had been removed — by force, if the tearing on the energon and hydraulics lines said anything. He slipped it into his subspace, confused.

He gave one last glance to the short note before putting it away too. Even so, neither the itching-unsure sensation nor the pit in his spark had fully gone away.

The note said nothing direct, and Megatron was normally nothing but. Had he not fully bought into the end of their relationship, sending a note to Jazz to give himself more time? To make sure he’d thought twice about getting other partners before Megatron decided if he wanted to try again?

With a new worry to think about, Jazz made his way back. They had only just started to look for him, wary from Lazerbeak’s flyover. It wasn’t long before they found him, too. And after tuning out of the dressing-down he got from a superior officer for running off, they continued moving along their patrol route. Army officers’ angry words held nothing on the slag his old owners had once said to him.

The dull, squat rectangle of the base sat on the horizon like a chunk of scrap sheeting. Their perimeter guards looked a bit distant as they let them through the gate, and were too worried to pay any real attention to the group trudging past them. One of Jazz’s patrolmates telling them they’d met a Con’ on en-route seemed to make it worse. Interesting.

They all looked around, confused, as the outside training areas were abandoned, with stuff looking like it had been dropped mid-use and just left where it had fallen. There was no alert on Jazz’s HUD. It seemed dead, which was odd for Ironhide’s strict schedule, and he began theorising what juicy incident might’ve caused such a rare occasion.

Going inside, he’d immediately noticed that the base was tense, whispers and knots of bots milling around, backs turned outwards, too distracted muttering amongst themselves to notice the returning patrol. Snatches of half-heard conversations were plucked by information gathering programs Jazz was running, a picture building in his mind.

Meanwhile the mess hall, usually deserted at this time, was packed. Soldiers’ whispers collated in Jazz’s processor as they got to the energon dispenser.

He realised a few kliks before the others the cause of the commotion — Sentinel Prime was dead. Killed in siege of Nyon.

Slowly the others seemed to catch on as well, and Jazz heard the buzz of comms as others finally noticed they were back from patrol and sent them the news.

It was no wonder why their beat had been so quiet, or why the finger in Jazz’s subspace was fresh enough to leak energon into the wrapping. Lazerbeak must’ve flown as fast as his thrusters could take him.

They all hurried through the dispenser line towards the rest of the crowd packed around the wall-mounted television. Behind his visor, Jazz snuck a peek up to the separate, raised area where the Autobots’ ‘special guests’ ate. There was something telling about the juxtaposition of vibes coming off of them. The terror in their EMs was nearly unnoticeable from the sheer confusion and wariness the rank-and-file projected.

Jazz, personally, would have enjoyed deconstructing Sentinel’s processor diode by diode while the Prime was still conscious, had he a little less self control. Having him rot in a jail cell while the damage of his autocratic rule faded would’ve suited him well. Megatron, clearly, had made other plans.

Over the tops of helms, Jazz caught the newscast. The clearly-frazzled news anchor had the look of someone being ordered over comms, and was narrating over clips from the fight. While it had clearly been cut to make Sentinel Prime look as good as possible, as moments passed, a more clear image of the encounter took shape.

The rapid-fire cuts made it clear there was some shenanigans, as the original film was obvious Con work. An Autobot propaganda cut of Decepticon propaganda, for which Jazz had to hold in a snort.

A quick check on some forums confirmed what looked to be a deliberate spread by the Con intelligence. In that light, it was very much Buzzsaw’s clever camerawork on display in the difficult updrafts caused by the fires below, where the view bobbed and circled the two combatants.

The smoky rooftop fight between Megatron and Sentinel had been a bad idea from the start — for the Prime.

Sure, Sentinel was some ex-soldier type, but Megatron was a singularly skilled gladiator. No clever cuts could hide how well he wiped the floor with the pompous scrapheap. There was just no way to make the gunmetal grey beast of a bot look bad in a fight; he was a force of nature.

The news anchor had the distinct look of someone receiving an urgent comm before returning to their narration. Backlit by fire, flankers, and swirling ash, the billowing smoke was black and oily — that of a people burning. It was dramatic. It was sensational. Sentinel cut a complicated form of gold, and Megatron was a murky shadow with the red gleam of his optics and the reflections of his safety markings. The gladiator had always been one for atmosphere.

The newscaster really tried to hide just how much Sentinel begged at the end, where he was knelt with a blade to his throat before a disposable nobody. No editing could hide how there had never been a single noble diode in that slag’s entire frame.

The utter ease with which Megatron decapitated the head of state could even make one a little charged behind their panels. Would have, too, if Jazz hadn’t been very aware of the bedlam that was going to ensue and engulf bots’ lives from this. The complications, the chaos this would cause cascaded in likelihoods and guesswork.

He forcefully culled the program. There wasn’t enough information yet to warrant getting lost in his own head about it.

He slipped out to the hall unnoticed by the crowd, as the televised footage began to loop — he didn’t even need to see it on the screen, because the fight was still replaying in his head as he made his way to the empty washracks. The crown of his self-set mission parameters being totaled right in under him really set him on edge. He felt like a precarious scrapheap. Jazz needed to clear his processor.

Splashing the sputtering solvent, set strut-chillingly cold, onto his faceplate Jazz checked the datanet again. Hunting around led him to what could only be Rumble and Frenzy continuously reposting the uncut tape as the moderators of various forums and social media swarmed. ”And good luck to them,” Jazz thought uncharitably. He turned it on again, letting it run at quintuple speed as he scrubbed himself dry.

He made his way back to his teammates before they even realised he’d been missing, mind still wandering.

The whole Sentinel bit… it was good news for Jazz’s sanity in the short term. The Autobots were now technically leaderless, what with the Senate’s puppet decapitated. Oh, sure, there would be an interim leadership — he’d expect that much, and he put his bet on it being headed by Sentinel’s SiC — some crusty general from the Golden Age — but the general and bureaucrats hated each other to the struts. It was more than likely that nothing would actually be getting done. It would be bureaucratic gridlock. It also meant there would be time to look into all those other factions forming within the Autobots.

Jazz took a seat as one of his teammates passed around a cube of highgrade spiked with nitro. His thoughts ran again. He took a deeper sip the next time it came around.

The main bot Jazz had come to kill was done in before he’d even gained a single rank. He took another sip, feeling a bit washed out and bitter.

So, the whole Primacy thing. The Matrix was some unknowable nonsense, Jazz doubted anyone could predict where it would end up. That was assuming Sentinel had even carried the damn thing in the first place, and if he had, was it now in Decepticon hands?

That was an even more unknowable fate; the Primes had been one of Megatron’s favourite rant topics, and he was as likely to use it to have a propaganda-laden Con Prime as he was just to smash the slagging thing.

Jazz shook his helm hard enough to hear something rattle. Nothing was happening tonight, politics was too slow, and the official mourning period for the Prime was a full thirteen chords. He had time. He needed to recharge. He needed not to think for a bit.

He left the mess hall a cycle later, leaving his teammates’ worry behind. Whoever the new government would be, they’d be far out of Jazz’s current reach.

Another quick rinse in the washracks, chatting quietly to some basemates, and he was back in the barracks, lying flat on his back in his berth and unable to sleep despite the soft comfort of the surrounding bots’ sleeping ventilations. He could practically feel the weight of the flimsi in his subspace. The finger felt like a lump of lead. Subspace tech made that physically impossible, but his sensors didn’t know that.

Jazz really had thought they were done, through, but Megatron wasn’t done with him, it seemed. Megatron was never done.

And Jazz… he really couldn’t work up the conviction to deny himself that devotion.

Megatron was deeply possessive of those he was close to. His devotions ran deep, he collected ownership — and that meant that Jazz had unwillingly placed a target on the bot he’d been on-and-off sleeping with for the past while. A chunky little scooter with a sweet spike and braided cables.

He didn’t wish the revenge Megatron would cook up regarding that on anyone but his old masters, but Jazz wouldn’t take the chance. He sent a quick message to the bot, now off base, saying that they’d have to cut it off.

Eventually, he fell into recharge, feeling the restlessness follow every morning for orns and orns to come. No letters, no responses. Not a chirp or word from Lazerbeak or Buzzsaw, not even a small cassette’s silhouette in the distance. Even the usually frantic patrol routes were quiet, and the officers seemed tense. Megatron wasn’t usually one to let feelings linger when he could say something.

They all continued worrying in the common rooms about who would replace Sentinel, Jazz joining in if only to keep up on the base rumour mill.

A tense patrol the orn after some senatorial discussions left him with more questions.

He’d caught a glimpse of Ravage during the scouting, for the first time in three vorn — not super clearly, and not for long, but the cougaraider had stopped, letting them both make eye contact for a short moment.

The message was clear: Megatron was still watching.

Jazz had stood there as Ravage had slipped back into the rubble and his patrol partners had caught up. “Only a shadow,” he’d said.

A chord later, he used one slow day on monitor duty to pursue his curiosity, looking up the darknet forums he was behind on. Almost immediately, a particular bit of intel caught his attention. One of those groups of errant Autobots was gaining power, led by some ex-dockworker-cum-archivist petitioning the Senate. The designation sounded familiar, and he hummed with interest, switching back to the monitors as he pursued the internal database.

The bot, a cute tricolour hauler, had been on his radar it seemed. Some more research had dug up information that Jazz wouldn’t say made him hopeful, exactly. It did, however, make a little of the weight in his struts lessen. Something here could work, could do some good. He himself didn’t have much personal influence right now... but there was some good blackmail on old, high-ranking Autobots he’d been holding in reserve, and it might be worth bringing it into play for this group.

Perhaps Jazz had a plan.