OK, so like a long while ago I wrote a story called "Remembrance," which you can read a href=".net/s/315618/1/Remembrance"here/a, if you'd like to but haven't yet done so. When I had first conceived of that story, it was supposed to be about an OC named Sunfall. She's an Autobot, part of whose personality isbased on a human OC I created: Claire Chase, sister of the G1 'toon's amazing Chip Chase. I killed her in a car accident involving Prowl. In true "Autobot Spike" style, I stuck what remained of her mind into Sunfall the Autobot. (Don't ask how because I don't know. And it doesn't really matter because, in the end, it's just an excuse for fangirlishness, y'know?) But "Remembrance" ended up being more about Prowl, giving Sunfall short shrift.

For some reason, though, she's been on my mind lately. Maybe somewhere I feel guilty about not developing her. Or maybe I'm just in an überfangirl mood; this character and her story is a "guilty pleasure" of mine, the kind of story that, not all that long ago at all, I wouldn't have shared in a billion years because I would have been embarrassed by it. But I guess once you hit 40, you don't care what people think. You just let it all hang out. And you apparently write 12 pages of…stuff…in an evening and a half. (It's got exposition for those of you who haven't read the original story, just to give a bit of context. For those of you who have read the original: My apologies for the exposition. ;) )

This storyline is not part of any "universe" that I write, and it's not really standard G1, either, though I suppose it could be wedged in there with a crowbar if one really wanted to/tried. But in the main…Well, it's its own special brand of… specialness. *rolls eyes*

This might be Chapter 1 of a larger story…or this might be all there ever is to it. Right now, I'm thinking I might do sequential vignettes with these two. Or not. I don't know. Whatever the case, this thing ends kind of abruptly, but I don't know if I want to continue it. I mean, I really, truly don't know.

And I really, truly don't know what I'm looking for here, either. Encouragement to continue? Fervent pleas NOT to continue, for the love of Mike? :) Dunno. In all likelihood, though, I suspect that these two will continue to plague me on occasion, simply because the idea of them, to me at least, is fun. And as a Certified Rabid Prowl Fangrrrrrrrrl, I apparently cannot help myself, either. *sigh* And if they continue to plague me, then I'm afraid they will likely continue to plague you, too. Apologies in advance. :)

Oh, and for those of you who care about the issue, this is decidedly NOT slash. Would that it were! Then I wouldn't feel like so much of a fangirly dork. :)

Sunfall cursed viciously, running through her entire vocabulary of curses both human and Cybertronian as her shot went wide. Again. Squinting, she glared ferociously at the mostly-unsinged target sitting placidly a few hundred yards away, as if it was somehow the target's fault that she seemed incapable of hitting it more than once. The one time that she had managed to hit the target had been her very first attempt.

Beginner's luck, Sunfall sourly reflected, sucks that way.

After taking a deep, calming, steadying breath, Sunfall again raised the extremely heavy laser rifle, braced its butt against the front of her shoulder, stared down the sights, lined up her shot, breathed a little prayer, and fired. And then she cursed even more vehemently as the shot went wide yet again. Wider than the previous shot had gone, even. With one final curse, she threw the rifle against the wall of the shooting stall and then angrily slammed a fist against the other wall. And then she yelped not just because the impact hurt her hand, but because the pain radiated all the way up to her shoulder.

Useless, she thought savagely to herself as she slammed her back in frustration against the concrete wall she'd just punched. Totally useless…

It was a familiar refrain, one that had been plaguing her almost since the moment of her "birth," particularly so because the beginning of her existence could not remotely be described as normal. Most Transformers were "born" as a clean slate, a basic personality that would learn and grow over the eons of his or her lifetime, much like a human infant. But Sunfall had had something of a head start: a large percentage of her personality had belonged to a human named Claire Chase, who'd had twenty-two years of a life of her own, a life that had partly been spent amongst the Autobots on occasion. She had been killed in a traffic accident, but thanks to the efforts and dubious ingenuity of her brother Chip and Wheeljack, what had been left of Claire's memories and personality had been transferred to the Autobot who became Sunfall.

The result for Sunfall was much confusion. Sunfall knew and remembered many things about Claire, but she certainly couldn't recall everything about her and her life. So Sunfall's life so far had mostly been spent filling in gaps and trying to remember and in some cases recreate some of the relationships that Claire had formed before her death, in order to give the part of her that was Claire some sort of anchor in reality. Had she not made such an effort, Sunfall was fully aware that she would have gone stark raving mad months ago, since Claire had at first been not much more than a mass of disturbing emotions that sat in her head, mumbling random things at her and often sparking dreams and nightmares, neither of which, Sunfall had subsequently learned, Transformers usually had at all. She was just "blessed" that way. She'd read about the human mental illness known as "multiple personality disorder," and she could deeply relate to it at times.

Settling Claire in her mind, reconciling the parts of her that were Claire with the parts that were entirely Sunfall, a different and brand-new being, had been the priority for pretty much all of Sunfall's life to date. It had not been an easy task at all. It had taken months of strenuous effort on both entities' parts to accomplish the goal. The reward for their efforts was that the two entities lived in peaceful co-dominant harmony now.

Usually, at least.

Once that issue was resolved, naturally another one immediately took its place: now that her mind was finally good to go, for the most part, Sunfall found that she was just going through the motions of life, plodding through an endless series of purposeless days. Over the last few weeks the lack of purpose had started to weigh heavily on her. Sometimes, it seemed as if her future was nothing but a huge, looming expanse of empty lifespan. It was an unimaginable length of time that she knew she needed to fill with something or otherwise go completely bonkers. The question, of course, was what that "something" could possibly be.

Claire had been a musician prior to her death, which was not a very useful function amongst the Autobots. Claire had had no other skills useful to her new life, either, and Sunfall had been an entirely new, pure, and blank creation. Sunfall knew that, had her beginnings been at all normal, she would have been given guidance to help find her path. She would have had some nurturing and some input from those responsible for bringing her into existence.

But Sunfall was not normal at all, and it was blatantly obvious to her that most of the Autobots saw her as simply Claire in a different body. They probably further figured that, as such, she would somehow, magically, just know what she was supposed to do with the rest of her suddenly-impossibly-long life. Or perhaps they thought that she would simply carry on with her life as it had been before she had died, not even thinking about the significant little fact that Claire's previous life was closed to her now. To the rest of the world, even to her family other than Chip, Claire Chase was dead, buried, and gone. So Sunfall couldn't just "be Claire." She had to be Sunfall, which would have been all well and good but for the fact that Sunfall was a clueless blank slate, just as any other newly-created Autobot would be. However, she was "blessed" with a generous helping of Claire's independence and stubborn pride, so she didn't want to admit to the fact that she was floundering. This combination of cluelessness and baseless pride didn't help matters at all.

So, Sunfall had resolved to try to learn some useful skills by herself. If nothing else, she felt that she owed it to the individuals who had, in a way, saved Claire's life. Hence, her decision to learn how to shoot. She didn't think it could possibly be that difficult, especially since it was something that it seemed every Autobot could do at least passingly well, out of simple necessity.

But she'd been wrong, and that was intensely frustrating. Knowledge and skills had always come to Claire quickly and naturally. She wasn't the certified freaky genius wunderkind that her brother Chip was, but she was no intellectual slouch, either. She'd had talent and brains, and she had often been recognized and praised for both. But now, as a part of Sunfall, she was merely an average Autobot or perhaps even a below average one; if nothing else every other Autobot seemed to have a purpose, a specific job that was his or her own that he or she did very well. Sunfall, on the other hand, felt like the proverbial fifth wheel, with nothing to offer and, apparently, with little ability to acquire any useful skills, either. It fleetingly crossed her mind that perhaps she could learn how to fix Cybertronians instead of how to shoot them…but then, she'd never been any good with machines.

There's some irony, she thought sardonically, considering her new machine body. Six months into her new life, it still startled Claire to glance down and see the Autobot body that she wore, all in rich sunset shades of gold, orange, and red. It was a very pretty paint job, but seeing herself still gave her the willies. She wondered if she'd ever get used to it…

Might take a couple million years, she thought dismally. Maybe by then we'll figure out what the hell to do with this life of ours, eh Sunfall?

And with that thought, Sunfall returned to the task she'd set herself. Bluestreak had given her an odd look when she'd asked to borrow a gun from his impressive personal arsenal, but he'd agreed readily enough when she'd explained that she wanted to be able to defend herself, at least. He'd given her the rifle she was just now picking up from the floor, given her a brief demonstration of how to use it – It wasn't hard, certainly – and off she'd gone to the practice range that was just a short walk from Autobot Headquarters. She'd enjoyed the walk; it was nice to be outside on this crisp, cloudless early autumn day. It had only been once she'd arrived at the range that her day had gone downhill with amazing speed. After that first triumphant shot when she had, completely by chance, hit the target pretty close to dead center, it had all gone down the toilet. But maybe now that she'd had a break…

Sighing, she lifted the rifle again, braced it, aimed, fired. Wide again. She tried again and again and again. Same result every time. Her shot would go wide to the right, and she'd try to adjust her aim accordingly, only to have the next shot go even wider to the left. She couldn't compensate properly for the weapon's enormous recoil, she soon figured out. It threw off every shot she attempted when she didn't try to compensate for the recoil, and when she did consciously attempt to adjust, she over-compensated every time. She dismally realized that she couldn't do even this most basic of things that every other Autobot could competently do.

The realization, though not an earth-shattering one in and of itself, was the proverbial straw that broke Sunfall's back and her carefully-constructed composure. Six months of uncertainty, repressed anger, and frustrating purposelessness exploded from her in a flood of invective aimed solely at herself. In a blind rage, she smashed her borrowed rifle over and over again against the thick concrete wall of the stall, screaming vile curses and expressions of self-hatred at the top of her voice in time to the beating that she gave the rifle. She slammed the thing into the wall for what seemed to her like a very long time, until she had no more words and no more rage and there was just hollowness and emptiness left in their wake.

She let the mangled rifle drop to the ground then and backed slowly away from it, almost horrified at what she'd done to it. She continued to back away until the back of her legs connected with the concrete bench situated across the middle of the stall. She almost fell backward over it, but she managed to steady herself just in time, ending up half-falling and half-sitting down on the bench, feeling utterly spent.

She sat there on the bench in the small shooting range stall, unmoving for a moment or two, Claire wishing like hell that she could still let loose and sob her little heart out. But she no longer had the ability to cry, so she sat there, staring out of the open stall, and simply…shook. It was all that she could do. She shook and shook…until a hand alighted all unexpectedly on her shoulder. Startled, she gasped, her body jerking as she reflexively looked up at her unexpected visitor's face.

It was Prowl. Of course it was. He was always showing up precisely when she didn't want him to show up. It was a very annoying knack that he had.

Things in general were odd between Prowl and Sunfall. She didn't know what to do or say around him. He and Claire had been, by Prowl's own admission, very close. Kindred spirits, he'd termed it, and for him to be that poetic and mushy spoke volumes. Claire, meanwhile, utterly and unabashedly adored Prowl, had adored him since she was about twelve years old. He had been her first and, really, her only crush, and so he had become the yardstick against whom she'd measured any human male who had shown any degree of interest in her. Try as she might to spark some interest in those males, she had nevertheless always found them greatly lacking in comparison. Even though she had known that Prowl was way beyond her grasp on many different levels, she had still been intensely drawn to him, availing herself of any flimsy pretense to spend time with him that presented itself. Prowl had never seemed to mind; he had seemed to enjoy those times as much as Claire had. So now Sunfall had crystal-clear memories of some of the conversations and experiences that they'd had during those times.

This, for Sunfall sans Claire, made things very awkward. Claire knew Prowl well, almost intimately well, and he knew her equally as well, but to Sunfall by herself, without Claire's input, Prowl was a complete stranger. Still, knowing that a large percentage of Sunfall was Claire, he seemed drawn to her as well. The attraction was born partly of guilt, Sunfall knew; Prowl had admitted that to her, as well. He blamed himself for what had happened to Claire, and some degree of that self-blame would probably always be a part of him. Sunfall imagined that he would always be seeking to make amends for Claire's death, even though they both knew that it hadn't really been his fault. But Sunfall harbored the uneasy suspicion that that wasn't all that there was to Prowl's concern for and interest in her. If nothing else, the biggest barrier between him and Claire – Claire's humanity – had suddenly been removed. This knowledge was, for Sunfall on her own, deeply troubling.

So now, looking up at Prowl, Claire wanted nothing more than to reach up, grab him, cling to him, and sob. Sunfall, on the other hand, just wanted to run away and hide. The two completely opposing impulses seemed to cancel each other out, and Sunfall found herself just sitting there, frozen with indecision, staring nervously up at Prowl.

"Hey," he said to her at length, somewhat uneasily, tentatively giving her shoulder a squeeze that he hoped telegraphed his concern for her.

Sunfall imagined that he'd witnessed enough of her embarrassingly emotional and completely out-of-control display to make him uncomfortable and uncertain as to how to approach her. Completely unhinged people generally made him just a wee bit nervous, after all.

"Hi," Sunfall responded in a small, humiliated voice, dragging her gaze away from his and fixing it on the concrete floor beneath her feet.

All uninvited, Prowl unceremoniously plunked himself down on the bench next to her. He studied Sunfall's profile for a long moment while she sat there next to him, staring at the featureless floor as if it fascinated her, her expression both embarrassed and deeply troubled.

Prowl had indeed witnessed the entirety of Sunfall's emotional display, but watching her break down hadn't surprised him at all. Not all that long ago he had innocently remarked to Ratchet that Sunfall seemed to be adjusting remarkably well to her situation. Ratchet, in turn, had snorted disdainfully in response and had asserted that she wasn't adjusting at all, that the majority of her was in complete denial of what had happened to her and was also desperately trying to maintain a status quo that had already been irrevocably altered.

Ratchet had, in fact, predicted at least one huge emotional outburst on the horizon for poor Sunfall. Ratchet, as usual, had turned out to be right.

And when Prowl thought about it, it was actually a good thing that Sunfall was acting this way. It meant that the part of her that was Claire was starting to deal with what had happened to her instead of existing in a dazed, numb, confused fugue of denial. That was the first step toward moving on and truly settling into her new existence. This outburst was just one of the hurdles, one of the bumps that she had to face and overcome on her way to that acceptance of her situation. And although Prowl certainly wasn't the universe's foremost expert on emotions, certainly not on dealing with the damned things, he was determined that he'd be there for Sunfall, even if it was uncomfortable for him, to help her with the transition that she faced. He felt that it was the least he could do. So now, he sighed and broke the somewhat tense silence that had settled between them.

"Are you all right, Sunfall?" Prowl asked. The answer – that she wasn't all right at all – was apparent to Prowl, but he'd learned through years of exposure to the baffling species known as humanity that it was polite to ask such a question even when he already knew the answer to it. Sunfall still thought like a human, for the most part, so Prowl was always careful to address her as if she still was one, and that meant that he was obliged to ask stupid questions, the answers to which were usually eminently obvious.

And, of course, since Sunfall still generally thought like a human, she correspondingly acted and reacted like a human. Meaning, she often acted in completely unpredictable ways. This was made patently obvious to Prowl when Sunfall, instead of answering his question with a polite white lie, jerked to her feet…and then stood there laughing like a deranged hyena. She laughed so hard and for such a long time that she ended up leaning against the wall of the stall for support, her arms folded across her midsection, as she struggled to control herself. Prowl sat there on the bench, meanwhile, just observing her.

Human humor was something that frequently escaped Prowl, but he knew about it well enough to know that what he had said generally wouldn't be considered funny at all. He therefore hypothesized that Sunfall's reaction to his words was more indicative of hysteria than amusement. His hypothesis was proven accurate once Sunfall regained her composure well enough to answer his innocent question.

"Sure, Prowl," Sunfall eventually and sarcastically spluttered. "I'm just dandy." She paused, considering, then added in a rush, "I have no purpose and no life, and I can't do anything right, and it's been made clear to me that I can't learn how to do anything useful, not even just shooting that damned thing." She paused to point disgustedly at the rifle she'd been using, then finished up with, "And I'm looking at nothing but millions of years of total, utter uselessness ahead of me, and I can't even begin to deal with the thought of it. But other than that, I'm just peachy. Thanks for asking."

Prowl blinked at her, momentarily lost for words. He'd reached the right conclusion regarding her state of mind, but he wasn't at all certain how to respond to what she'd said. Claire had always put enormous amounts of pressure on herself, had always had the highest expectations of herself. Whenever she failed to meet those self-set expectations, she'd always had a tendency to berate herself far too severely for it, sometimes going to truly irrational extremes. Prowl was fairly certain that it was more the Claire portion of Sunfall that was talking at the moment so, just as he had done with her in the past, Prowl felt compelled to remind her of reality.

"Sunfall," he said in calming tones, the kind one would use to speak to a rabid wild animal in the hope that said animal wouldn't haul off and bite. "You've been online for only six months. You have plenty of time. No one's expecting you to--"

"I'm expecting me to!" Sunfall testily interrupted him. "Doesn't matter what you all think and expect," she said, waving in the general direction of Autobot Headquarters to indicate that she was talking about all of the Autobots. "I expect me to contribute and to be useful. Because really? I can't sit on my shiny metal ass for ten million years and be bored out of my skull. I'll go nuts. So," she finished, her tone of voice suddenly and incongruously bright and airy, "I thought I'd figure out how to kill Decepticons."

Prowl wasn't sure how to answer that. Claire wouldn't have hurt a fly. Now she might very well be contemplating mad, murderous rampages, and that thought was just slightly unsettling.

"You…want to learn how to kill Decepticons?" he asked cautiously, after a long moment spent blinking at her. "I mean," he clarified, "this is…is some sort of goal you have set for yourself?"

Sunfall sighed.

"Well," she said, "if I happen to run across a Decepticon one fine day, and they decide that they want to try to kill me, then yeah, I'd like to have some recourse. Unless you're intending to come with me as my personal bodyguard every time I step foot outside of this base."

"I wasn't planning to, no," Prowl answered, nonplussed.

"Well, then," Sunfall said with a decisive nod. "There we are. Except that I apparently suck at shooting. I don't want to count how many times I fired that thing," she said, pointing with disgust at the now-mangled rifle lying on the other side of the shooting stall, "and I only hit the target once."

Frowning thoughtfully at that, Prowl rose from the bench, crossed the small stall, and picked up what was left of the rifle that Sunfall had been trying to use. Frowning more deeply, he turned around to face Sunfall, eyeing her questioningly. Sunfall fidgeted under his somewhat intense gaze.

"Who gave this to you?" Prowl eventually asked of her after shifting the remains of her borrowed laser rifle from hand to hand a few times, testing its weight.

"Bluestreak," Sunfall answered, in reply to which Prowl snorted explosively, which made Sunfall jump.

"That figures," Prowl said exasperatedly. "Trust him not to consider certain variables." When Sunfall just stared at him quizzically in response, he explained, "This is much too heavy for you." He shook the remains of the offending rifle with one hand for good measure. As a result of the shaking, bits of it clattered to the concrete floor; Prowl hardly noticed. "Not to mention much too powerful," he continued. "It's not surprising that you can't control it. Bluestreak just doesn't think sometimes."

"Thinking doesn't appear to be his strong suit," Sunfall distractedly agreed, blinking stupidly at the rifle, as if she'd never seen it before. Then she sighed and added, "But he seemed awfully proud of that thing when he gave it to me. I hope he won't be pissed that I kind of broke it."

Prowl looked down at the mangled chunk of metal in his hand. More bits chose to fall to the floor at just that moment. He looked back at Sunfall, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"'Kind of?'" he quoted archly.

At that, Sunfall snickered and then giggled, and it was genuinely amused giggling rather than the deranged laughter she'd been indulging in a few moments before. Prowl felt an odd sense of accomplishment that he'd managed to make her laugh.

"OK, so I completely destroyed the damned thing!" Sunfall amended through her giggling. "It's evil. It deserved it."

"It is…was…an inanimate object, Sunfall," Prowl patiently, logically objected. "It can't be evil."

"Oh yes, it can," Sunfall countered with utter certainty. "Trust me. I know these things."

Prowl sighed.

"Whatever," he allowed resignedly. Using the word that way was, in fact, a habit he'd picked up from Claire.

Claire…who was now a part of the Autobot standing across a small target range stall from him. Sunfall was an enigma to him, a conflicting and occasionally frustrating one. Sometimes, she was so obviously and clearly Claire that Prowl completely forgot that she wasn't Claire. At those times, they would fall easily into their previous pattern of relating to each other: Easy conversations centered around a surprisingly wide array of subjects and punctuated here and there with relaxed laughter. During those times, it was as if Claire's death had never happened; they just picked up right where they had left off. But at other times, Sunfall was a complete stranger to him, a new being that he didn't know at all. Never knowing quite what to expect from her threw Prowl off-stride; he appreciated stability and predictability, and those were qualities that Sunfall, at least for the moment, entirely lacked.

Sunfall's lack of predictability was understandable, given her unique origins and the challenges that he knew she faced in blending two separate and perhaps wildly different personalities into one cohesive, functioning whole. Understanding her predicament didn't necessarily make her easier for Prowl to deal with, however. On the other hand, he'd made the decision that he was going to be there for her, to help her as much as he could, and at the moment she apparently wanted nothing more than to belong and to have a purpose in life as an Autobot. So, he would do his best to give her that, starting with teaching her how to shoot, if that's what she had decided that she wanted.

As was her wont, Sunfall eventually started fidgeting as her momentary mirth faded and as Prowl stood there watching her; she was never comfortable when anyone stared at her. Claire had once told him that she had always cracked at auditions because she knew everyone was staring at her and it, to use her words, "freaked her out." And for just a moment, as Prowl looked at her, it suddenly wasn't Sunfall there in front of him at all, but just Claire, specifically the Claire who would fidget and blush profusely and protest mightily whenever he stared at her for whatever reason. Then he blinked and Claire was gone. It was just Sunfall there again, and she was not entirely meeting his gaze because she was busy attempting to ignore the fact that he was staring at her. When her attempt failed, she leveled a glare at him, eyes narrowed in irritation.

"What?" she finally demanded. "You know I hate it when you do that, right?"

Prowl half-smiled and nodded.

"Yes," he said. "Which is the main reason why I do it."

"Brat," Sunfall groused. She was still glaring at him, but her expression also reflected hints of amusement.

"Sometimes," Prowl affably agreed, flashing Sunfall a small and rare smile that, to Sunfall's dismay but definitely not to Claire's, did very strange things to her innards. And then, abruptly changing the subject, Prowl said, "Come here, Sunfall."

That warm, squishy feeling evaporated as quickly as it had arrived – thankfully, as far as Sunfall was concerned – and she eyed Prowl suspiciously.

"Why?" she wanted to know, all suddenly wary.

"Well, do you want to learn how to shoot or not?"

"I don't need lessons," Sunfall sniffed pridefully. "It's not that hard."

"Neither is quantum mechanics, really," Prowl answered, "but most people who aren't your brother need some help with that, too. So get over here."

Sighing, frowning, Sunfall pushed away from the wall and approached Prowl. She stopped a few steps away from him, when a thought occurred to her.

"I don't have a gun anymore," she pointed out.

Without a word, Prowl produced his own weapon, flipped a switch on it, and then offered it to Sunfall, butt-first.

"Now you do," he said simply.

Sunfall hesitated a moment and then reached out and gingerly took the weapon from Prowl's hand, careful not to make any physical contact with him as she did so. His was a hand-based weapon, so it was much lighter and more delicate-looking than the heavy assault rifle that Bluestreak had given her. Prowl, she knew, preferred finesse over brute power and clean, utilitarian simplicity of form over ostentatious and unnecessary decoration, and his chosen weapon reflected those preferences. For all that it was relatively small and light, though, she knew that the weapon was very effective. Efficiently effective. Prowl would tolerate nothing less.

Gesturing at the distant target, Prowl was saying meanwhile, "Go ahead. Show me."

"All right," Sunfall responded gamely. Squaring her shoulders determinedly, she turned toward the target, raised the gun with one hand, and then, without further preparation, fired.

Sunfall's shot nicked the target on its lower right edge, and Sunfall whooped triumphantly, flushed with success, and did a goofy, jerky victory dance around the stall. Watching her exult in her small bit of success, Prowl couldn't help but smile fondly at her. And as Sunfall turned to him just then, a bright smile on her face and a dazzling light in her eyes, Prowl marveled that it truly was the little things in life that tended to make people happy, and then he wondered what other little things he might be able to offer her…