[CtE] From the Shallows 09

[dracoqueen22]

From the Shallows
Part Nine

Surrounded by darkness, the helmet came down.

Two more cables snaked against his sides, under his armor, sinking into the ports nearest to his spark, and the Matrix gave a sharp, charged pulse that made Hot Rod jerk. Lights danced in his optics.

It was oddly quiet, and the sounds of his own frame were too loud compared to the muffled noises from beyond the enclosure. The cable in his cephalic port pulsed and Hot Rod jerked as he awareness drew sharply inward, away from his body, into the nothing-space that was the digital universe.

He stood in a very familiar place, a room which could be a complete copy of where he'd received the Matrix the first time, save that the colors of the lights were a dull orange and yellow opposed to the bright blue and white. The spherical object in front of him had far less facets but color played across the surface of it, entwining with arcs of charge which crackled and spat.

WHO ARE YOU?

The sound came from nowhere and everywhere, like a chorus of voices had spoken in perfect unison, simultaneously high-pitched and low-pitched and everything in between.

Hot Rod startled and turned in low circles, seeking the speaker, but he was surrounded by cold darkness, save for the glimmering sphere.

"Are you the guardian?" Hot Rod asked.

WHO ARE YOU?

"Well, someone's only in the business of asking questions," Hot Rod muttered, but he squared his shoulders. "I am Ho-- Rodimus Prime, according to Primus. But I used to be Hot Rod of Nyon. Or maybe I'm both. I honestly don't know."

His face flamed with embarrassment. So much for making a good first impression.

"Anyway, it doesn't matter. Primus gave me the Matrix, which means I'm acting in his stead, and you need to stand down. There's no danger here," Hot Rod added, trying to project every thing he knew about confidence, and all he'd learned about leadership.

Silence.

The world rumbled around him, a long, tedious hum. The Matrix twitched in his chassis, as though restless, but didn't offer any guidance. It was about as useful as a lump of coal.

ARE YOU WORTHY?

"What kind of fragging question is that? How should I know?" Hot Rod demanded, frustration making his engine rev. "I'm not the one who picked me."

The world rumbled again, and the spherical object flashed a kaleidoscope of reddish colors. It stopped spinning, and like before, something opened up in it, but it was a small port, like he was meant to cable up to it.

Ugh.

PROVE YOUR WORTH.

The Matrix surged in his chassis, toward the spherical thing, and Hot Rod stumbled along with it. Two cables snaked from his chassis from either side, two he didn't recognize, and suspected they were a result of his recent frame change. The plugs at the end were unfamiliar, but they fairly sparked with charge.

Hot Rod didn't have to guide them to the port. They found their own way, sinking in with faint clicking sounds. There was a pulling sensation, like it was dragging him inward, and though he didn't move, he felt as though his sense of self had spooled down into a tiny thread, feeding the inner workings of whatever this thing was.

He saw Nyon.

Not with his optics, but rising at the back of his mind like a memory, images flashing by in a flicker, moving from one to the next. Friends. Neighbor. Fellow soldiers. Batchmates. He saw himself, learning and training.

Nyon was a colony and it was a hard life, scouring the planet for energon deposits, for minerals and metal deposits, dealing with the occasional sandstorm or incursion from curious alien lifeforms, but it was the only life Hot Rod had known.

He'd loved Nyon. He'd dreamed of daring adventures and leaving the colony one day to explore the universe, but he'd always wanted Nyon to be a place he could come back to.

Until the war came to Nyon, Autobots and Decepticons jostling for control of various supply chains, and while Nyon was a hard life, they were rich in a very specific metal needed for ammunition. Something both the Autobots and the Decepticons wanted.

Hot Rod hadn't known about the thing under their colony. He didn't think anyone knew about the massive mechanism the Senate had left underground, a weapon they kept on the off-chance they might need it someday.

He hadn't known about the laboratory where all manner of gruesome experiments were being carried out. How it had held a branch of The Institute. How the rich mineral veins had made Nyon ripe for experimentation, and how a colony of miners were considered expendable for the greater good.

Hot Rod hadn't known about any of it, until the laboratory disgorged its abominations into the streets, until the massive thing rose along with it, snatching up Nyon's residents and feeding them into its grinder belly. A shuttle had landed nearby, equipped with a massive tractor beam -- probably the Senate intended to take their weapon to the frontlines once it was done feeding, set it loose upon the Decepticons.

Hot Rod had made a choice.

He was a colony mech. He wasn't invested in either side of the war. He didn't care this was meant to kill Decepticons. He only cared that it was swallowing his hometown to do it.

He didn't know how to take it down or deprogram it. He only knew where the miners stored their explosives, and he remembered too many lessons at Acme's feet as he explained how they worked.

He couldn't save his hometown. But he could make sure the Senate couldn't use them any longer.

Hot Rod jerked out of the memories with a gasp, knees buckling, and would have fallen to them if the Matrix hadn't pulsed and kept him upright, like a puppet. Shame and guilt fell over him like a dark shroud.

"Is that what you wanted?" he demanded, his voice thick with static, and he curled his fingers around his dorsal cables, tried to pull them free. His hands shook, and his cables stayed connected, sparks of charge spitting along their ends.

He gritted his denta as the charge snapped at his hands, bit at his fingers, sending bursts of pain through his sensory net. His spark flared with pain, weakness stealing over him. He felt... drained for lack of a better word, like the Guardian was feeding off of him.

PROVE YOUR WORTH.

Another sharp tug threw Hot Rod into his memories again, the war flashing by, himself aboard the Xantium after being found by the Wreckers, drawn by the odd radiation readings the massive explosion had thrown into space. They'd found maybe a dozen survivors, including Hot Rod, and most had staggered on to the main Autobot fleet. A few vanished.

Hot Rod saw them on the battlefield later, Decepticon brands stained purple on their chassis.

Dealer called him a murderer and tried to kill him. Would have succeeded if not for Springer, leaping out of nowhere to strike him. He'd shaken Hot Rod, told him the battlefield was no place to feel guilty, and the guilt grew heavier, because now he'd risked Springer's life as well.

The war dragged on.

Hot Rod fought, and he bled, and he killed, and he suffered. Small skirmishes, mainly, because that was what Wreckers were for. He learned as much as he could, until he was glad the war split itself into the guerrilla tactics it did, because he was starting to wonder which side was in the right anymore.

And then coming back to Cybertron, and facing the reality of what the Decepticons were, seeing the transmissions of what they'd done to the Autobots, and feeling ashamed for doubting the rightness of the Autobot cause. He hadn't known the Decepticons were capable of such things. He hadn't wanted to know.

Hot Rod groaned, feeling sick to his tanks, yanked out of the memories as if thrown from a current. He wobbled and grabbed onto the module to stay upright, while the Matrix pulsed angrily in his chassis as if chastising him.

"I don't know what you want from me," Hot Rod hissed, thoughts spinning, energy levels reading thirty percent.

He'd been at eighty when he sat in the chair.

PROVE YOUR WORTH.

Hot Rod felt the tug again, trying to drag his awareness back into the sphere, and back into some other dark and sordid memory.

This time, however, Hot Rod resisted.

“I’m not proving a damn thing,” Hot Rod growled, and he pulled back, mentally more than physically, resisting the pull of the sphere, its attempts to rifle through his memories and pull out his darkest moments, his worst failures, everything he hated about himself.

“I didn’t ask for this,” Hot Rod snapped as his engine whined and the tug of the thing grew stronger, like it was trying to reach into his cortex and rip all of him out of his frame.

“I didn’t want this,” Hot Rod snarled, and his hands balled into fists, beating on the side of the sphere, charge pulsing along his cables, hovering midway as though battling for dominance with the sphere

“I don’t know what you want!” Hot Rod shouted, and the words echoed in the odd silence like they were heavier than words ought to be. He banged on the side of the sphere, dull thuds tolling like a gong.

PROVE YOUR--

The words cut off sharply as Hot Rod growled and focused, throwing a large pulse of charge across the connection, rejecting the demand with every fiber and plate of his being. He refused to be part of some game. He had no intention of letting himself be judged for something he hadn’t asked for.

All he wanted was to turn this damn thing off and walk out of here alive, preferably into Jazz’s arms if he was lucky. He wanted another one of those kisses. He wanted an answer.

He wanted this fragging Guardian to stop.

The stench of ozone grew stronger. Lights flared and popped in loud shattering noises as the sphere wobbled where it hung, blue-white lightning flashing across the surface. The Matrix pulsed in Hot Rod’s chassis, a flash-fire heat that surged outward, spilling across his cables, slamming into the floating sphere.

It stalled his vents. He wobbled where he stood, the scent of scorched metal nauseating for its thickness. The ports where he was connected grew unbearably hot, but he couldn’t remove them or trigger their release.

The voice rose again, but this time, it didn’t have words. It made a sound, like an angry wail, and the entire room rattled around Hot Rod. It rumbled up through his feet and through his frame, all of the lights popping out until the only illumination came from the sphere, glowing brighter and brighter orange like it had caught fire.

PROVE YOUR WORTH!

It was a scream, a shouted demand, and Hot Rod nearly fell for it. He almost dropped down, the urge to beg for forgiveness rising up in him, until his anger burned it away.

"Frag you!" Hot Rod snarled. He slammed his fists into the sphere and sent a surge of charge along the lines, the Matrix abruptly pulsing in the same moment, throwing out a wave of blue-white electric fire.

It poured into the sphere, and the world flashed stark orange-red around Hot Rod. The air reeked of ozone and charred energon and weldfire. A piercing scream made his audials ring, and the world around him rumbled and tossed like a mighty quake.

And then it all went dark.

~

The roar was organic to the core, so loud and echoing it made everything rattle, and his audials ring. Grimlock flinched and resisted the urge to cower and cover his audials. The massive Guardian went still, its many limbs shivering as that unearthly sound split the air, several Seekers wobbling mid-flight.

Arcs of electricity hissed and spat as they crawled over the Guardian's form. Beneath it, the multitudes of its army went still as well, their head-like appendages craning upward toward their master.

The combined forces of the Cybertronian army was not made of fools. They took their advantage, striking down every enemy around them, and for once, they did not immediately reform into new foes.

A Seeker broke from the ranks, spiraling in the air before it spun and transformed, landing with an elegant thud next to Grimlock. Starscream grinned at him, optics alight, his armor scorched from catching a few stray laserbeams.

"I don't know what that primeling did, but I think it worked," Starscream said as the Guardian keened and twitched.

"We hope," Grimlock grunted.

It certainly seemed to be true.

The army had frozen in place and were rapidly being destroyed, crumbling to pieces and dust where they were pummeled or shot or blown up. The massive Guardian shuddered as if something were tearing it apart from the inside. Those crackles of charge grew larger and brighter, and it kept making that horrible, keening sound.

It jerked, which on a thing that massive seemed like an attack, the hundreds of protrusions flicking like sensory horns. The ground trembled up through Grimlock's feet. The air took on the stench of ozone, like the air before a lightning storm, and a thin, sour note of decaying Cybertronian fluids.

"Any word from the inside team?" Grimlock asked.

"Not that I'm getting," Starscream answered. He frowned, optics darkening, orbital ridge drawing down. "It's just confusion."

A loud crack pierced the keening. Grimlock looked around, but Starscream grabbed his arm and pointed, "There!"

He saw it then, the large crack ripping through the main torso of the Guardian. It spread along in a jagged line, a gaping wound that then splintered off in a web. More cracking echoed, and Grimlock couldn't find all of the places the Guardian was evidently splitting apart, its biolights pulsing one last time before going dim.

The keening stopped.

"Is that a good sign?" Starscream asked.

The Guardian shuddered. The cracks spread further and further, starting to meet and grow, intersect, deepen.

Grimlock realized what was going to happen mere seconds before one of the protrusions broke off and crashed to the ground, narrowly missing a pair of soldiers dragging away a wounded third.

"Retreat!" Grimlock shouted, into the air and across the comms. "It's collapsing! Fall back!"

Others took up the shouting and the Cybertronian army started to flee, scattering in all directions away from the bulk of the Guardian, which was indeed collapsing into large shambling pieces of greying metal.

Rodimus had come through for them.

Grimlock hoped the team had gotten out in time.

~

Jazz knew the moment Hot Rod had done something, because the insistent press of the Guardian's internal defenses abruptly stopped. The ones they had destroyed remained smoking frames. They did not get back up.

It was a relief, because Jazz was starting to run low on ammunition, and he knew the others were, too. They were tired, dented, scraped, sore.

The lights in the control room started to pulse in an eerie tandem. Hot Rod wasn't visible behind the enclosure, but it emanated a bitter cold, and then the smell started, the acrid, ozone, rotting fluids smell.

Springer gagged, and Jazz almost teased him, until he muttered the words, "Garrus 9," and turned away, Drift murmuring something to him.

Jazz knew enough about Garrus 9 to drop it.

He let the others keep an optic on the invading hordes. Jazz turned his own attention to the freezing capsule keeping Hot Rod from him. The lights dimmed to nothing, until the control room was lit only by their own biolights, and the handful of glowsticks Drift tumbled across the floor.

Jazz pressed a hand to the capsule, and it thrummed beneath his palm, ice cold, instantly numbing his haptic sensors. Small bits of charge arced out from the seam like it was tasting the air. It was quiet in the room, too quiet, the ambient noise of the Guardian in full function fading away to nothing.

"Is it over?" Drift’s voice echoed hollowly in the silence.

The whole room shuddered and lurched. Jazz had to grab the capsule to keep his balance. A loud crack echoed dully through the walls, and the rumbling intensified.

"Is that a good sign or a bad sign?" Springer demanded as a rattling noise suddenly rose from within the capsule.

It sounded like a struggle.

"Roddy?" Jazz called out, palming the exterior of the console, looking for some kind of handle or hatch or any way to get it open.

The rattling intensified, but it was almost drowned out by the shaking and rumbling of the room around them. Furniture started to topple. It got harder to stand.

Jazz's spark strobed with fear.

"Help me get him out of there!" he demanded, trying to pry his fingers into the seam. What he wouldn't give for a crow bar right about now. He whipped out a vibroblade, sliding into the seam, twisting and putting pressure on it.

"We don't know if it's time," Springer said, but his voice sounded vaguely panicked, and he hissed when he touched the ice-cold of the console.

"It's time," Cyclonus said. "We have to hurry. The Guardian is falling apart."

"Then fragging help me!" Jazz snarled as the blade of his vibroknife snapped in the seam, shattering into two useless pieces on the floor. He growled and beat at the exterior of the capsule. "Give him back!"

He scanned the room as Springer elbowed him aside, shoving his thick fingers into the seam and attempting to pull. Cyclonus joined him, on the opposite side, and their cables creaked as they strained to yank it open.

There was no other console, no other way Jazz could see to speak to this thing or command it open. Force was their only option.

"We have to blow it," Jazz said as Cyclonus and Springer pulled but the capsule wouldn't budge.

"It'll hurt him, too," Springer snapped, optics flashing. "I didn't know you were that much of an idiot."

A sharp crack split their argument, running through the wall of the room.

"He's right," Drift said, as Jazz tumbled a few localized charges out of his subspace and slammed them against the seam of the capsule.

“We don't have time to argue," Jazz snapped and ducked down, activating the remote trigger for the bombs.

Truncated curses erupted around the room as the localized explosions sounded off, adding more smoke and discharge. Jazz coughed, waving away the haze, and his spark sank into his feet.

The pod was blackened with soot, but otherwise unharmed.

"Damn it!" Jazz snarled and banged his fists on it, harder and harder. "Give him back, damn you! Let him go!"

"Move!" Drift barked, and Jazz leapt aside a mere second before the former Decepticon shoved his sword into the pod, right along the central seam, the jewel in the hilt glowing fiercely.

It parted the metal as if it were nothing more than liquid, curling back from the sword. Drift panted for ventilations, looking pale, but he twisted the blade, ripping into the metal like a mech possessed.

"Help him!" Jazz shouted as he shoved his fingers into the jagged edges, pulling back, his derma screaming at the ice-cold/burning-heat of it.

Purple claws sank into the seams above him, Cyclonus yanking with all his might, as Springer gripped on the other side, locking his knees and pulling. There was a horrendous screech of resisting metal as they peeled it back, just enough for Jazz to wriggle inside, his spark squeezing at the sight of Hot Rod slumped in the chair.

He was alive. Thank Primus.

Jazz didn't have time to debate consequences. He grabbed fistfuls of cables and detached them while the others continued to wreak havoc on the pod, making more space to get the larger Prime out.

"Hurry!" Springer snarled.

Jazz left the helmet for last, taking greater care to disengage the cephalic port cable. It released Hot Rod steadily enough, and started to wilt like a dying flower when it disengaged. In fact, all of the cables lay limp and lifeless while the internals of the pod rapidly grayed and rusted, as if the guardian was dying.

Hot Rod hadn't just stopped it; he'd deactivated it.

"Primus, you're amazing," Jazz murmured as he got an armful of his Prime and started to pull him out of the throne. "And I'm gonna tell ya that as soon as ya wake up. And you'd better wake up."

Hot Rod said nothing, but his frame hummed, and his chassis vibrated, and he was warm to the touch. He was alive. He'd better stay that way.

Hands grabbed hold, pulling them out.

Chaos took over. The guardian was collapsing around them, disintegrating, falling apart. There were no more enemies to fight, but it had one last card to play, and if they didn't hurry, it would take them down with it.

"Time to go!" Springer barked, and this time Jazz didn't argue when he scooped Hot Rod up into his arms and took off.

Drift, exhausted, leaned heavily on Cyclonus. Jazz led the way, following a map which was rapidly becoming useless.

They were going to make it.

They had to.

~

The guardian crumbled.

Its minions did not.

But at least now, when they were blasted or sliced or blown apart, they stayed that way. The tide of battle turned in their favor. An end remained in sight.

For the first time, Optimus felt he could ventilate, despite the silence from their infiltration team.

"Still nothing?" he asked Soundwave.

His lover's dock popped open, Buzzsaw emerging to alit on Soundwave's shoulder. There was a moment of brief conversation before Buzzsaw took off again, this time at a high rate of speed.

"Communication difficult," Soundwave said. "Buzzsaw to search."

"The guardian continues to disintegrate," Flare reported, as the screens flashed in front of his optics at a rate only Red Alert could have parsed.

Optimus rubbed at his chassis, the mounts aching as if in sympathy with whatever Hot Rod had endured within the guardian. His weakness had gone away since he first encountered the new Matrix weeks ago, but the ache lingered. He supposed he'd never be rid of it.

"Contact Earth," Optimus said. "Bring back the evacuees. Let Cybertron know it's safe again."

"Yes, sir," said Mainframe. If he was at all upset he'd been shoved aside to the secondary position by Flare, it didn't show. If anything, he seemed to relish it.

Flare was not Red Alert, but it was painfully hard to remember that when he sat in the chair Red Alert would have claimed, filling a position which had always belonged to Red Alert. There were some truths which ran spark-deep, Optimus realized, and Red Alert or Flare or whoever he’d shaped himself to be was sparked to protect.

More reports streamed in.

The guardian’s army crumbled and turned to dust. The guardian itself continued to wither, ashes floating away on a wind, silence falling on the battlefield. The medical center was stuffed to the brim with the injured, but so far, there were no fatalities.

They’d done well to protect their people.

Was it luck? Was it fate?

They had Hot Rod to thank.

Seekers flew over the disintegrating Guardian, broadcasting video, and Soundwave monitored Buzzsaw. They all searched for some sign their infiltration team had survived.

Optimus scanned the images.

Wait.

He surged forward, gaze locked on the screen. “Flare, bring up the Tetra quadrant again. Zoom, two hundred percent.”

Flare obeyed. The image focused on what would be the guardian’s left flank, if Optimus could assign such a description to a dangerous mass without true shape. One of the digitigrade limbs had crumbled already, and the body itself sagged toward the ground. There was a flash of metal -- green, bright green and yellow.

Then a heli burst upward from the decaying form, rotors spraying bits of ashy residue in all directions, and in its wake came a purple spacecraft, sleek and covered in battle scars with a white and red mech dangling from the underside.

“Transmission received,” Soundwave said as relief tumbled through Optimus all at once, his shoulders sagging, joy licking across his face. “Infiltration team all present and accounted for.”

“Hot Rod?” Optimus asked as Laserbeak nuzzled him and chirred in his ear, making a pleased sound.

“Unconscious but alive,” Soundwave said, and Optimus sank back into his chair, straining the cables attaching him to the console, but not pulling them loose.

His knees wobbled. He whispered a prayer to Primus while rubbing at his chassis, guilt giving way to relief.

He hadn’t gotten Hot Rod killed.

“I’ll meet them in the medbay,” Optimus said as he finally regained control of himself. He started to disengage the many cables, tucking them away, the ache in his chassis beginning to to ease. “Soundwave, keep me apprised of the situation.”

Hot Rod had survived. Cybertron was safe. The first test of the United Cybertron had been a complete and utter success.

Optimus couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so proud.

~

Hot Rod had a private room.

It made sense. He was a Prime now, and more than a few mechs wanted to gawk at their new Prime, their new hero, the mech who had put himself in the line of fire to protect them. Autobots and Neutrals and Decepticons alike just wanted a peek at the colony mech turned Prime.

There were so many gifts piled outside of his recovery room, Ratchet had hired someone to box them up and take them to Hot Rod’s suite. He was tired of wading through them.

No one, however, disturbed Hot Rod without Ratchet’s permission. No one crossed Ratchet. So for now, it was quiet and dim, with only the hushed steady drone of the spark monitor.

Just a precaution, Ratchet said. He had no reason to believe Hot Rod wasn’t going to wake up, or that he was in any physical danger. It was just like any other time Optimus had over-extended himself with some special Prime thing.

Hot Rod would be fine.

Jazz wanted to believe him.

He had the utmost faith in Ratchet. It was purely for his own peace of mind that he’d taken up vigil here, one hand clasped between his, a hand much larger than he was used to, attached to a frame far larger than he was used to, but the spark within it all still the same.

Hot Rod was still Hot Rod, behind the Matrix and the upgrades and the responsibility. He was still the mech who had so effortlessly captured Jazz’s spark, despite his best efforts to build a shield around it.

Falling in love with Hot Rod was the easiest part. Letting himself pursue that love, well, it was a different story.

Jazz bent his head, pressed Hot Rod’s knuckles to his forehead, clutched Hot Rod’s hand between his. He offlined his visor. He cursed at Primus, whom he never put much faith in regardless, for daring to put Hot Rod in his path, then giving him a Matrix.

“Guess I’m just cursed, eh, Rodders?” Jazz murmured, though he knew Hot Rod couldn’t hear him. “Or maybe I just have a type, yeah? Mechs way, way out of my league.”

He chuckled. There wasn’t any humor in it.

He brushed his lips over Hot Rod’s knuckles. A promise had been made, but Jazz knew how much a promise mattered in the thick of war, of battle. A promise was a promise, until the bullet careened across the smoke and din, and you never saw the broken promise coming for you.

Jazz cycled a shaking ventilation.

It was easy to tell himself to give something up, when he thought that something was always going to be there. Was going to be happy and content without him. Look at Optimus! All paired up with Soundwave and happy as a clam. Jazz walking away was probably the best thing that could have happened to him.

Stood to reason it would be the same for Hot Rod, right?

Right.

Jazz worked his intake.

“I’m the one who’s supposed to run away, not you,” Jazz murmured. “You gotta stay because these mechs need ya. You’re a hero, Rodders. I told ya, didn’t I? Knew ya had it in ya.”

Even as he said it, he knew that wasn’t what Hot Rod wanted to hear. He hadn’t done what he did to be called a hero. He did it because it had to be done, and apparently, he was the only one who could do it.

Hot Rod was many things, but a coward had never been one of them. Not like Jazz.

He sighed and hung his head, thumbs scrubbing gently over Hot Rod’s hand, careful not to wake him. He needed his recharge. Needed to rest and recover.

“I was wrong,” Jazz whispered. “I shouldn’t have left. Should’ve had a conversation like real mechs do. I’m just… not good at that part, Roddy. You know that. I can pretend, but I’m not good at being real.”

Jazz gnawed on the inside of his cheek. He counted the steady drone of the spark monitor. He counted Hot Rod’s steady ventilations. He listened to the quiet hum of Hot Rod’s frame, and he tasted in Hot Rod’s field, the second field of the Matrix. A bit different than when Optimus carried it, but painfully familiar.

“I want to be real,” Jazz said. “With you.”

It hurt. Like someone had punched him right in the spark. It would only hurt worse if Hot Rod had actually heard him. Like tearing open an old wound and bleeding energon all over the floor, ripping apart a weld, his insides spilling out on the floor.

Not romantic in retrospect, but accurate.

Hot Rod had insinuated himself so firmly into Jazz’s spark without having to do a damn thing, and it wasn’t fair.

The only thing worse than walking away, was losing Hot Rod completely, and Jazz couldn’t be that coward anymore. He couldn’t.

“I’ll be here when you wake up this time,” Jazz promised.

They weren’t on the battlefield. It would be a lot easier to keep this promise, he hoped.

***