This story has previously appeared on my LiveJournal account - the first two sections were originally written for the 2011 prowlxjazz anniversary challenge, and each section title (except the epilogue) is a prompt from Week 4 of that challenge.

Title: Killing Me Softly

Author: ZeaT
Rating: T
Verse: G1, pre-Earth
Warnings: unbetaed, Jazz/Prowl, angst, intimacy (sparks, non-explicit) in section 5
Summary: Escaping their old base, leaving their home behind had been hard. Abandoning their hopes that the missing Ops mech would find his way back to them was harder still.

Disclaimer: The Transformers franchise belongs to Hasbro, and has been developed by them in a number of versions. This story is based in the original 1983 cartoon universe. Characters and settings are used without permission but without profit accruing to the author.

Comments and suggestions are very welcome!

Killing Me Softly.

No one programmed the Rec Room computer to play that song at that particular moment.

They weren't even sure who'd selected the random playlist, or who programmed the music in the first place. Until that moment they'd been glad of it. There'd been nothing before, to distract them from the pain, the guilt and the anger. Without the music filling the emptiness, the room – Pit, the whole complex! – was too eerily quiet.

When the Autobots came to this new base, they'd come with sombre faces and dimmed optics. They'd left jokes and laughter and the familiar banter behind them… with Jazz.

They'd waited as long as they could. Even then, there'd been arguments. So many arguments. No one had been surprised when it fell to their base commander to counter each and every one of them. Prowl's vocalisor had remained steady, the tactician's expression never wavering as he repeated the basic facts time after time.

Their base was all but surrounded, the noose around it tightening.

Their position was untenable, retreat and regrouping their only rational option.

Their new base must be a secret one, the surviving Autobots too few and too spent to fight a perpetual, ongoing defence.

And, even ignoring the reported explosion, Jazz was more than a half a cycle overdue. He'd most likely deactivated decaorns before, or else was captive and compromised.

The rest of the unit had known it as well as Prowl himself. That didn't make the reality of their situation any easier, or the cold-sparked mech who forced them to face it any more popular. They'd followed his commands as they fought their way out of the old base, but not without anger and insubordination. Prowl had taken it stoically, not protesting his virtual shunning and not even reacting to the 'accidental' shoves and collisions he encountered during his rare sorties into the corridors of their new headquarters.

And that was as it should be, ran the general feeling. After all, Prowl should know this hadn't been easy. They'd been forced to abandon more than they brought with them. Leaving behind the slim hope that Jazz might yet find his way home had been hardest of all.

So no one would consciously have picked this song, out of all the Autobot's music archives, to play across a subdued Rec Room. And when it came up nonetheless, they listened, lost in memories of a broad grin and a glowing visor, of a familiar voice serenading the assembled mechs on that last night, of Jazz crooning these words with a joyful passion that gave no hint of his upcoming mission.

"Prowl?"

It was Ratchet who noticed the door-winged mech leaning against the entrance to the room, finally driven out of his office and into their presence by near-critical energon levels. The medic's voice was quiet, not intended to carry, but every Autobot present turned at the call. Every mech saw the expression on Prowl's faceplates, and the optic fluid that streaked his cheeks in that unguarded moment.

"Prowl?"

Sideswipe had been one of the tactician's greatest tormentors. He'd turned a cold shoulder on the mech, and gone further, determined to show Prowl what he'd inflicted on the Autobots under his command. Until that moment, he'd have sworn that Prowl was incapable of feeling their grief. He'd never have believed a mech cold-sparked enough to abandon a friend could understand so simple an emotion as pain. Now he stepped forward with one hand extended, unease filling his posture as it had his voice.

Dim blue optics flared bright, and then normalised. Just like that, the familiar blank façade they all knew so well returned. Prowl straightened and turned, door-wings tight to his back as he left without a word.

No one dared speak. No one moved save Ratchet, who followed their comrade from the room with an energon cube and a vented sigh.

Whether it was the strain of his neglected systems that caused Prowl's legendary control to slip, or whether it was the song, resonant with echoes of Jazz's laughter on the orn they'd seen him last, the anguish they'd glimpsed on their tactician's faceplates banished any doubt that the mech understood the nature of pain.

And when the song ended, and speech returned, they spoke not only of Jazz, but also of Prowl and the cues they'd never picked up on, the secret they'd never suspected. For the first time since Jazz was deemed lost, a sense of kinship stirred among them and a deep concern.

Deep inside, where they hadn't admitted it even to themselves, every Autobot knew that Jazz was most likely gone. They grieved for their friend. They mourned too for the compassion they'd always taken for granted, and yet had allowed to die with the mech who embodied it. Now a new resolve grew between them – a determination not to lose another mech, one they cared for more than they'd realised and understood less well than they thought.

The Autobots' world had changed, there in a too-quiet room, with the sound of music floating in the air. And they'd changed too, the moment they'd seen Prowl weeping softly, listening to Jazz's song and dying a little more inside with each loving word.