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He was the first awake on the eve of a battle, and the last to find sleep the morning after one.
The plan had been perfect, but no plan survived first contact with the enemy and this was no exception. But the Autobots needed that refinery, and there had been no putting it off, no retreating to attack another day from another angle. Further, the Decepticons had begun targeting tactical personnel. For once, Prowl’s habit of being on the battlefield, instead of safe in the tactical hub located at its edge, putting himself at risk to see what was happening with his own optics rather than just through the tactical feeds, had been praised afterwards as fortuitous, instead of insane.
Megatron’s new super weapon hadn’t been in the plan either.
Blessed and cursed , the Autobots called him. The weapon hadn’t been accounted for in the plan, but it hadn’t fired more than a single shot before Prowl stepped out of cover to look at it with his own optics. He saw his own reflection in the burnished chrome of the cockpit glass. The operator had smirked — Prowl has been close enough to see the mech’s smirk through his reflection — while he’d painted a targeting lock over this most elusive of the Autobot’s tactical personnel’s outstretched doorwings. He’d pulled the trigger just as Ironhide had pulled the damn fool glitch head! down back into cover. But the weapon never fired. Malfunctioned, and a second later, it exploded. And afterwards, the Autobots talked . This hadn’t been the first time that Prowl’s presence on the battlefield had turned things mysteriously to his favor. His plans were as perfect as any could be, he controlled the battlefield, as any tactician should, as only a superb one could . His pure competence would have had the Autobots following his instructions without question, knowing that if they died, Prowl would not let them die in vain… But when they saw him there among them, they put themselves over into his hands totally, because, they whispered, when things were direst, fate itself was rewoven to his design.
Blessed and cursed , they said, because no one could miss what it cost him. They were reminded anew each time something unexplainable happened, when mysterious explosions rocked the battlefield and the Autobots were left wondering when the Decepticons had retreated. Prowl’s spark was broken, and there was nothing anyone, over a millennia of war, could do to mend it. Some had tried, but Prowl shrugged off the offers of comfort, of companionship, and sat alone in the crowd of tattered survivors taking the chance to refuel after the battle, staring into his own reflection on the glass edge of his own ration cube. It was the price of that terrible gift. Fey, Fated, Haunted , they called him.
The Decepticons had other names for Prowl. Sparkless . The prisoners shrank away from the nightmare in black and white, his battlefield wounds still sluggishly bleeding energon. They cringed beneath sorrowful blue optics. He didn’t ask them questions. Didn’t speak at all, in fact. He simply walked up to each one, chained to a wall polished to mirror brightness and looked them over, then his optics looked beyond them, through them as they squirmed under his unseeing gaze for long breems, then walked away. The prisoners sagged in relief that they had survived their personal demon, until he told spec-ops interrogator each of their secrets. Their names, their loves, their fears. Everything an interrogator needed to break them completely, break open their minds and flay their thoughts… They trembled under that cold recitation of their individual dooms. Demonspawn, Devil , they called him as he walked away, leaving them to spill their secrets, or break, under the interrogators’ hands.
The command mechs — mostly Ratchet — called him a damn lucky fool and Prowl did not disagree, but neither did he agree. He just watched with sorrowful optics as (long after the most serious triage had been dealt with) the medic repaired the shrapnel injuries he’d taken. Even in the aftermath of battle, Ratchet’s medbay gleamed, the tools kept clean and polished and reflecting every stray image that crossed their surface. Ratchet growled when he noticed Prowl was not listening to him, but it did nothing for the tactician’s distraction. Prowl’s luck did not deflect blaster shots, he ranted, slow lethal shrapnel, or mysteriously create shelter from seeker bombing runs, and his damn lucky fool self should be more careful! The others watched him with something like pity, and something like incomprehension. None of them disagreed with Ratchet openly, but some of them — like Prime — could see Prowl’s luck for something other . Enemy mechs died on the battlefield around him, no explanations, no one saw the deaths, no after battle simulations could discern how, but it happened just the same. Stabbed, ripped apart, weapons misfired, sparks torn out and processors wiped. Prowl’s pre-battle simulations gave no sign that he expected this to happen, his after-battle ones ignored the discrepancy; the deaths happened just the same, unmentioned in any report, but whispered among the officers and other tactical staff.
Exhausted from the battle and its aftermath, doorwings drooping, Prowl entered his quarters.
Briefly he glanced over at the mirror, the one he so painstakingly hauled from base to base, and saw only his reflection. His doorwings drooped a little more. Were he at all able, it was the first thing he grabbed when they evacuated a base, and the first thing to appear in his new quarters, no matter how primitive the accommodations turned out to be. Once, after being driven from their base, his retreating division had sheltered for nearly a vorn in a rain-worn cave at the new edge of Decepticon territory, surrounded, cut off, and practically living in each others’ subspace. The mirror had been hung on the wall, right were Prowl could see it as he curled up on the span of acid-etched metal floor designated as his for recharge. The mirror was part of his mythology, the gossiping Autobots that knew how precious it was to him said that it was the source of his mysterious fate-weaving. In reality there was nothing special about the mirror itself, save that unbroken, unscratched sheets of fragile silvered glass were becoming rarer and harder to replace as the War wore on, so he took care to preserve this last one.
With only his reflection in it, he ignored the mirror as he prepared for recharge. He cleaned his plating as best he could by himself, heated the berth to a comfortable temperature, turned off the lights without acknowledging his quarters’ single personal effect, but then looked into it as he sat down on the edge of the berth. He watched his own reflection as he lay down and finally relaxed, curling up with his doorwings splayed comfortably behind him. His frame tried dragging him into recharge, but he resisted sleep. The reflection of his own optics were the only light in the darkness, and it was only when he saw the blue glow of a visor looking back at him that he surrendered himself to dreams.
Even unconscious Prowl’s EM field opened up in welcome-pleasure when ghostly fingers drifted over his doorwings. Nothing was there, but in the mirror, two mechs curled up together, touching the only way they could.