Welcome! This is a sequel, but you don't need to have read the previous stories to know what's going on. I'll make sure to introduce everyone well.

Prologue

Prowl loves mornings. It's how he is and has been since he was a sparkling. When he was tiny, he was up before dawn, making his creators smile at his chipper antics. After they were killed and Ironhide adopted him, Prowl was still up before dawn, scribbling pictures and now and then eating candy while the big black mech slept in unaware that the small being in his care was heading down the fast lane for a tummy ache. As a youngling, he still got up early, much to the dismay of Jazz, also adopted by Ironhide; Jazz liked staying up late and getting up late.

Through University, Prowl got up to train before dawn, driving on the precision obstacle course and practicing his martial arts before waking Jazz in time for the silver mech to get some breakfast before class. Once they befriended the twins Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, in an initially rocky manner, Prowl had Sides to train with in the mornings while Sunny and Jazz stayed up late at night.

Once the war set in, Prowl continued his early morning ways. As a young Autobot officer, he often had to wait for his superiors, so his mornings were spent with his sparkmate, his childhood sweetheart named Zephyr, who had also enlisted in the Autobot cause. Once she was killed, Prowl -left vulnerable with grief- was persuaded to join the Decepticon side, where he had to wait for no one in the mornings. By now a sharp tactician, he savored the small lull in the inter-fighting of the Cons in the early morning, making the most of the quiet to craft battle plans against the Autobots who'd failed him and -he believed- who'd caused by neglect Zephyr's death.

In time, Megatron sensed a threat in Prowl and decided that the early riser should rise no more. He betrayed Prowl, using his battle plan intended to take Iacon instead against Prowl's beloved home, the beautiful city of Praxus, while Prowl was on leave. Prowl was supposed to get killed, but he saw his own work set in action and fled, ending up a prisoner of the Autobots.

Reeling from what had happened, Prowl recommitted himself to the Autobots, and slowly -painfully slowly- he redeemed himself. His early rising benefitted him in this situation as well, enabling him to get a head start on his assigned work each day. The thing was, however, he began to work late as well. The war and especially his time under Megatron had broken his spark, and he didn't want any spare time to think about anything other than ending the war. He didn't want to care for anyone or anything personally, and he shut down his emotions with logic.

When he rose in the Autobot ranks, he accepted it as logical, given how hard he had worked. When bots congratulated him in his promotions, he thanked them as a manner of civility rather than shared joy. Bots came to know him as a mech they could trust completely, not only the do the right thing but also to show little mercy to any offender of law, rule, or protocol. They all trusted him, but no one really liked him. He wasn't mean, but he wasn't overly kind. He was simply just. And he never truly smiled. Almost never. Jazz, now and then, could elicit a hint of a smile. Jazz was the only one Prowl didn't shut out completely.

But after a time, Optimus took a small team of bots to a remote planet called earth, Jazz along them, and Jazz got killed.

No one told Prowl. They got the news, but they hid it from Prowl. No one dared to tell him.

When Prowl came to earth a few years later, Optimus told him softly with great sorrow.

"Understood," Prowl said quietly. Then he took out his data and inquired about what duties he would be assigned.

He didn't show anger or rage or sadness or any emotion, but his justice was cold, logical, unyielding, as if he could bring Jazz back by making everyone adhere strictly to every rule. Just the sight of him made certain bots flinch. Even Optimus flinched sometimes. And the human allies definitely flinched. No one dared cross him.

Over the years, other bots came to earth, all of them fighters in the war, many of them already familiar with Prowl and his logic, but they found this even harder, more steely iteration of Prowl difficult to bear.

Then a bot entirely unfamiliar with Prowl came to earth, a young femme of Praxian heritage. Aurion Blaze, she was called. Auri, for short. The war had taken her home and her security, but she'd never been in battle, never trained to fight, never lived on a military base. Having come to earth, though, she wanted to be a part of the cause, do something useful. She wasn't even in her fully adult frame, but she wanted to help.

Perhaps it was her shared nationality with Prowl that made her want to work with him. It couldn't be his cold personality and his demanding standards, his way of boring a hole through other bots with his optics, his ready reprimands.

No one would have taken money to be Prowl's assistant.

Prowl didn't even want an assistant.

But Auri was earnest and persistent, and even if she didn't know a whole lot, she had a good sense of timing: she asked for a job when Prowl was most overrun with work.

He couldn't exactly say no.

He agreed tentatively.

The thing was, Ironhide had become Auri's guardian, and Ironhide wasn't about to let Prowl be hard on her the way he was with everybody else. Of course he couldn't force Prowl to baby the young femme, but he set up some rules of his own and warned Prowl sternly, especially against making her cry. Prowl knew Ironhide wasn't to be trifled with, so he made an effort to be somewhat kinder. It was a challenge for him at first, but he found that it wasn't so hard to be kind to a young bot who was very kind herself.

And, quickly, Prowl found that having a sweet little assistant wasn't at all bad. Humans really liked her, and she liked them back, and with all that liking going on, the humans were so much more inclined to be cooperative. Auri could get them the turn in their reports two days early, as opposed three days late. She actually liked phonecalls, a thing which Prowl hated. Bots liked her, too. Prowl swiftly learned to send her to retrieve a report rather than track someone down to retrieve it himself. She also proofread things before turning them in to him. He appreciated that. He liked making schedules, but he hated reworking them three days (or hours) later because someone found it inconvenient. Auri, somehow, thought it was like a fun puzzle.

She was an ideal workmate.

And mornings became better with her, with her smile, with her eagerness to work, with her respectful yet friendly, "Good morning, sir." One morning he actually smiled just a hint of a smile, and she beamed with delight.

She cared for and liked almost everyone, even Prowl, and this made him pause.

It felt odd to be liked. No one had liked him for a long time. No one had looked past his harsh exterior and put their finger gently on his good traits to draw them out. No one tried to see the best in him. No one kept trying to tease a smile from the hard line of his lips.

He developed a care for her, a brotherly guardian protectiveness. He didn't want anyone to hurt this little femme the way he been hurt. He remembered having compassion like hers, curiosity like hers, empathy... They were foreign to his spark now, beaten out by the Cons, by the war, even by the Bots to some degree.

He distrusted her friendship with the twins, but he was quietly glad that she spent a lot of time with Bumblebee. Bee was a good mech, not a troublemaker like the twins. Bee wouldn't hurt her. Bee could, potentially, even become her sparkmate, Prowl thought. Bee would make a good sparkmate for such a sweet and bright little femme.

Prowl was aware that she had a bit of a crush on him, Prowl, rather than Bee, but he didn't expect that to last as she got older.

He didn't expect her crush to develop gently into something more deeper, but it did. He never would have anticipated that she would melt a small crack in the hard exterior of his spark, but she did. He hadn't expected to ever feel anything for a femme after Zephyr, but as Auri matured, he felt a bit of panic because he started to feel something more than brotherly care.

He was scared to love, but Auri wasn't. She was a little shy, bashful, having never loved before, but she wasn't scared.

He was so terrified, but he accepted the risk slowly, hesitantly, a little bit at a time. He started loving her. Sometimes his logic stamped down on him and made him back away, but Auri understood. She understood, and she trusted. She knew he was hurt, she knew he was broken, and she knew he would never intentionally hurt her. She knew he would come right back to her once his panic subsided.

And he always did. In time, his panic grew less, and his love grew more.

In time, his fear slipped away.

Prowl loves mornings, and his favorite thing about them is Auri's smile and everything she has to tell him.

Auri loves mornings. She loves them, but she's also highly adaptable about using whatever times works best for her. It's how she is and has been since she was a sparkling. When Auri was tiny, her guardian –a quiet Decepticon- worked long and odd hours, and Auri slept a lot while he was away, catching up on the sleep she refused to get while he was home and up. She wanted to spend every second with him; as soon as he was up, she was up, climbing to sit on his massive blue shoulder, peeping at his red visor, and babbling about whatever tiny sparklings babble about. Once he found a femme to babysit her for him, she changed her sleep schedule around so she would be awake whenever the femme was trying to sleep, and sleeping when the femme was up. Once her guardian found a different femme to be her nanny, one she liked, she molded her schedule according to the new femme's schedule.

One day during Auri's youngling years, her nanny didn't return from a shopping trip, and she waited up until she fell asleep on the floor by the heavily locked door. For over a week, she stayed awake as long as she could, waiting for that femme. But the femme never came, and her guardian never came, and the Energon ran low, so she decided that she would have to try going out herself. She was terrified. She had never gone outside the wall that surrounded the deserted half-bombed-out building she lived in. But she had to go or starve, so she chose to go.

She chose to go early in the morning because that seemed like the safest time. The bombs usually fell in the evening, and the shooting was usually the worst during the afternoon. She was scared to go out, but it was the only option if she wanted to live. She went out early in the morning and tried to find something to eat in the partially rubble buildings. She went out early each morning, looking in different places, trying to find something before her rations ran out. She finally found the remnants of a pub, and while it looked mostly destroyed, she was small enough to climb in under the wreckage of the roof and creep through its dusty, ashy spaces. She found a corpse, and she was horrified because she hadn't realized that the bombs were actually killing Transformers, not just knocking down old buildings. She still had to find food, though, so she crept on, tears in her optics. She found the bar and the dead bartender and potable Energon. She was almost too distressed to eat, but her system was crying for sustenance, so she ate. She choked a little, but she ate.

She was an early morning bot for a while after that, making trips to the pub just before dawn to collect Energon to take it back to her building. Once she'd scavenged the pub clean, she became an afternoon bot, lying on the roof of her building so her doorwings could absorb sunlight. She'd discovered that her doorwings were sort of like mini solar panels, drinking in the sun's energy and feeding it to her system. It helped cut back minutely on how much Energon she needed to drink. It was the wise thing to do because that Energon wouldn't last forever.

Once her Energon store ran halfway out, she made herself a morning bot again to go forage. She had less luck this time around, and she found barely anything, and in time she was traveling far enough away that she had to hide herself in strange places for the afternoon and sleepless scary night before hurrying back home at first hint of morning's light. Eventually, her store of Energon got so small that she could fit all of it into her personal subspace storage, so she did that, and then she scavenged her own quarters for anything meaningful or useful or potentially useful to her and stored in subspace as well. Then she left her home for good, just before dawn.

Each day, she traveled from first light until the sun got high and unfriendly above the wreckage, and then she found a place to hide, sometimes an empty barrel, sometimes a slab of roof lying against its former wall, sometimes a dumpster turned over on its side, sometimes a space in a bombed out building… whatever would work to hide her from other Transformers.

When she finally found an inhabited city and a femme kind enough to let her sleep in her tiny quarters, she remained a morning bot. The other femme entertained mechs at late hours and didn't want a youngling around for that, so Auri went to bed early every evening, stowed away on a fluffy blanket in the lower cabinet in the femme's kitchen. In the mornings, she rubbed dirt on her armor and went out into the street with a mostly empty Energon cube in her hands to beg for whatever a passing Transformer might give her, be it a little Energon or a coin.

Once Auri upgraded to her second youngling frame, she barely fit in the cabinet, and she needed more Energon than she could get from begging on the streets. She needed some kind of job.

"I don't know what to tell you," the other femme said in a discouraged voice. She had a bruise on her face and was recounting her coins, trying to figure out how she was going to both pay the late rent and eat. Some mech had punched her and another hadn't paid for his entertainment. She looked like she was going to cry, and Auri gave her the meager bit of Energon she'd begged off the street.

Auri tried looking around for some kind of job that afternoon, but no one would hire a youngling, not even a second-frame youngling. She got hungry and tired and sat on a bench with tears blurring her optics until the sun started to sink and a big femme passing by told her she'd better scoot on home. By that time, it was too late to get safely back to the other femme's tiny quarters, so she hide herself under some building materials in an alley and waited for morning. When she got back in the morning, there was an eviction notice on the door and no one home.

It took a week of early mornings and discouraging afternoons, but she finally found work helping a tall femme who ran a small armor care shop in the front room of her quarters. The tall femme took dings and dents out of armor, did repainting, deep cleaning, and all kinds of polishing. It was a second shift job, with them starting work in the afternoon and working close to midnight, with a small rush of Transformers dropping off and picking up their armor in the evening. Auri surreptitiously unlocked a window before leaving work, and once the tall femme had left for the day, Auri climbed back in through the window and slept under the tall femme's worktable, making sure to set an internal alarm to wake her well before the tall femme returned. The tall femme was fair, but the work was hard, and Auri overslept one day early on. But she explained herself, and the tall femme, mercifully, was understanding. She didn't let Auri sleep in her workshop, though; she made her at home in her own quarters above the workshop.

Auri spent years there on that afternoon-evening shift, and she thrived there. Not a mean femme, once the tall femme saw that Auri was a bright youngling with a great deal of potential and solid work ethic, she lessened Auri's workload and gave her data-pads of schoolwork, taking on more of a guardian role. And the tall femme taught her the secretarial duties of the job, which were easier than the hands-on work, and Auri took to them eagerly and easily. She upgraded to a third-frame youngling, and the tall femme threw a small party for her. They were happy, despite the war looming somewhere beyond the horizon, and Auri supposed it would go on forever like this, her working in the afternoon and studying in the evening.

It didn't. Auri found the tall femme is tears one day and asked what was wrong.

"Murdering Decepticons," the tall femme said, sobbing. The Decepticons had killed her brother and her betrothed while they were on a security patrol. The war had gotten closer. Then it touched Auri again a few days later. The Autobots requested the tall femme's services for the war, and she had agreed to join them, naturally.

"What about the shop?" Auri asked. Her little doorwings trembled. "What about me?"

"The shop doesn't matter anymore. I'm sending you to live with my aunt."

But when Auri arrived at the address she was sent to, she found a burnt out building on a block of burnt out buildings. She stared at it until her legs hurt from standing there, and then she sat on the front step and hid her face until the sun started to sink. Then a pretty hooker came by and offered to let her crash at her place, giggling when Auri looked at her with doubt.

"I'm not tryna pick you up, sparkling," she said. "I'm just tryna look about for a baby femme."

The hooker's place was an old but clean house that six other femmes also laid claim to. They were amicable and said she was welcome to spend the night up in the attic (a roomier option that her old cabinet, she mused), but when they held a meeting, the general consensus was that she couldn't really stay very long because she was too young to work and they couldn't be running a charity house.

"But I can work," Auri said. "I do secretary stuff and I can polish and repair armor. Not to mention sweep and scrub floors."

She stayed and became a morning bot again, going to bed early in the comfy attic, and then waking up early in the morning to polish armor and clean every unoccupied room. The femmes were friendly and kind to her, so she didn't feel like a little drudge, and most of them were well educated, and they tutored her in schoolwork, for she'd brought her school data-pads with her.

She was content with this, for she truly liked mornings the best, and she enjoyed being useful and getting praised for it. But, like her other positions, this one did not last. Decepticons came to town one day and not just for a quick bit of fun. She hid herself in a box of discarded armor pieces in the attic and shut her optics and prayed hard to Primus that they wouldn't come upstairs or set the house on fire. They did come upstairs, but they didn't see anything that interested them, so they went back down.

She didn't move. Even when the house became deathly silent, she didn't move. The sun sank after a few hours, and she still didn't move. Night settled in, but she didn't sleep. When morning came, the house had been so quiet for so long that Auri thought she might scream. She crept downstairs, afraid, so afraid. She didn't find anyone. They were all gone. She shuddered in horror, but she stayed there several weeks, sleeping in that box of armor during the night, creeping through the house in the morning to get Energon, lying on the floor by a window in the afternoon to catch the sunlight.

She was so scared and didn't know what to do for a while, but she left one morning to find another city and another job. She found both and stayed for a while before moving on. Then moved on again and moved on again. She couldn't stay.

Then one evening she picked up a broadcast from far away, a call from Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots. It was a general transmission, but he seemed to be speaking to her in a way. He was on a different planet, one called earth, and he wanted other Autobots to join him there. She had to think about what she was. Her guardian had been a Decepticon, and so had her nanny, but everyone else in her life since then had been blue-opticked and Autobot. She had blue optics herself. And Decepticons had hurt so many of the bots she'd known.

She had no work, but she debated a week before making a decision. It was one thing to travel to another city; it was different traveling to another planet. She was still a youngling, but she would be upgrading to her adult frame in just a few years; she might be of some use to the Autobot cause then, and maybe someone would look after her and care for her like the youngling she was until then. She wanted to be looked after.

She made the decision, and she made the trip. And it was worth it. She was given guardians right away, Ironhide and Chromia, and she loved them. She made new friends. There was endless Energon available for her to drink. No more scavenging. There was an actual doctor. There were new roads, and nothing had been bombed. There were humans, very interesting little sentient beings.

And there was Prowl.

He was the first door-winger she met on earth, and he was an Enforcer, a police-bot, someone who was committed to making the community a safe place. She had long admired that profession, and she admired him with sparkling awe. He made her feel safe, something she loved, having spent so much of her time afraid. It was good to feel safe. He was a little intimidating because he was so logical and stern, but since he was a protector, she knew she was safe with him as long as she behaved. It was the other bots who needed to feel intimidated by him.

She got him to accept her offer to work as his assistant, and it was morning job. The perfect time of day, she thought, and he seemed to agree. And she showed up promptly, and that got her on his good side, which pleased her.

The more time she spent around him, the more she liked him. Her sparkling-ish hero-worship of him slipped smoothly into a femling's crush. He seemed to know it, and it seemed to amuse him and confuse him by turns. She didn't mind that he didn't think of her in any special way; he was kindly protective of her, and that was enough for her.

As the morning work continued, and as she matured, her feelings for him shifted from that silly little crush to something more sensible and substantial. She saw his faults and his struggles, and she saw the goodness and kindness in him. He seemed to have a hard time being truly kind to others, simply being logically kind; she saw his potential, though. She saw that his spark had been broken and needed to be protected. He was a protector, but no one seemed to protect him; it made him prickly and defensive, she realized.

So, she watched over him. She cared for him as no one had, and he came to trust her. He started to make time in the evenings for her, walking her to the beach so they could watch the sun sink down behind the ocean amid vibrantly colored clouds. He started to reciprocate her feelings.

When she finally upgraded to her adult frame, he was her escort to her party.

She was eager to love him, but he was afraid. He was terrified, scared that something bad would happen as it had with Zephyr, and he was afraid that he would let her down somehow.

She reassured him tenderly. She understood that his logic core made him difficult sometimes, and that he was vulnerable in so many ways; she still loved him, and she let him know that she accepted him as he was, glitches and all, and she would continue to accept him because she trusted him. He slowly came out of his shell, and as his fear grew less and his love grew more, he began to find little ways to delight her. A gift of candy, a little kiss, and sweet bit of banter to make her giggle. She reveled in his loving attention, and his smile, much less rare now, warmed her spark with joy.

Auri loves mornings, and her favorite thing about them is Prowl's gentle hint of a smile and his every response to her.