sakon76

Siamese in Black and White
by K. Stonham
first released 13th December 2011

They know what they are.

They also know that most others won't understand, won't believe what they are. The humans have terms for a shattered mind: schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, half a dozen more. Cybertronian medicine is, in this way, very similar to Earth's.

There is no room, everyone knows, in a single cranium for more than a single processor.

To be fair, almost all the time this belief is correct.

With Prowl-and-Jazz, it is not.

Ratchet knows, and his impressive tirade at their creators'... experimentation had been one of the ones Jazz committed to long-term data storage for future reference.

Optimus knows, and, gentle soul that he is at his core, he is uncomfortable with the notion. Most of the time, he manages to ignore it, and address them individually.

When Wheeljack (who does NOT know about their advanced dual processors, and the thought of him knowing makes them both shudder at the paths the mad inventor's CPU might subsequently go down) invents a mod he calls a "sorcelling unit," which allows one to change appearance, they grab at the chance.

Ratchet grumbles while installing it, but even he can see the queasiness in Optimus' optics when he looks at the two-in-one, and knows this is the best way to nip the discomfort in the bud. They are not a combiner, where multiple individual minds and bodies are combined into one. Neither are they an inverse combiner, where one body can split into smaller units, each controlled by the whole.

Jazz-and-Prowl are two minds, complementary, in one body.

They all know, at this point, that the war will be neither quick nor easy, and anything that gives the Prime an advantage (or lack of disadvantage, Prowl points out) is something to be grabbed at.

Prowl's identity is long-established; Jazz is the one who gets to design a new appearance and suddenly burst onto the Autobot scene with a display of stylish martial skills. He is swiftly accepted onto the team and assigned as the head of the new Special Operations division.

Ironhide, they think, suspects. Red Alert, of course, has cameras everywhere and had to be told in advance that Jazz is a cover for Prowl. Which isn't quite right, but it's an excuse the Security Director will accept.

No one else believes that the flamboyant third-in-command and stoic second-in-command have much in common, let alone a body.

Privately, they find this amusing.

Optimus can believe the polite fiction they've given him, and if anyone else thinks it odd that Prowl and Jazz are never seen together, well, their personality clash is a convenient excuse for why the rest of the command team obviously strove to keep them apart.

And if, on the rare occasion they are captured by the Decepticons, they happen to be interrogated... well, Jazz can shove sensitive information into Prowl's CPU, which will shut down until needed. And Prowl can do the same to Jazz.

Soundwave cannot dredge you for what you do not know. It makes Jazz laugh and laugh.

Ratchet worries about them, they know. Thinks that it's not healthy for two perfectly sound processors (he only grants them this soundness when he's feeling particularly charitable) to each live only a half-life.

If he ever comes after them to separate them, however, he knows they'll kill him rather than suffer living alone, in silence, a single mind in each body.

They've talked about it. They have, long and serious discussions.

And in the end they are Prowl-and-Jazz, and Jazz-and-Prowl, and no matter what exigencies war has forced them to resort to....

This is who, and what, they are.

Pity the person who sees, and separates, them.

*~*~*

Author's Note: I've had a vague idea in the back of my head for a while that Prowl and Jazz are such opposites, in personality, in coloration, in everything, that together they add up to one person. And when I mentioned it to people at Botcon this year, they wanted me to write it. Thing is, though, sometimes an idea isn't enough to support a longer story. So here the idea is in a short, introspective piece. Sorcelling is, of course, taken from

taralynden's "Story of a Lifetime." As for the rest, if anyone wants to springboard from this and use the premise of this story, let me know! Because I'd love to see what someone else could do with it.