Chapter Text
Their quarters weren’t much, but they’d belonged to Soundwave and his cohort for a long time. He knew each dent of the walls, each scuff and scrape: over there was the gouge where Rumble and Frenzy had tussled over an inconsequential new toy. Up there, the paint flecks from the time Buzzsaw had painted himself gold and played the part of a lileth bird in a performance of the Trials of Aegis. Originally intended as berth-space for two full-sized mechs, the rooms were only barely large enough to accommodate all seven symbionts, small as they were, plus Soundwave’s own far-larger frame. Truthfully, their quarters were not much larger than their former home in Iacon, but they had made them their own in a way that the dingy and acid-scarred confines of their allotted residence had never been. They knew these quarters. They’d all become used to their place in the arena, this strange function he’d carved for them. They’d even thrived here.
What Soundwave did next … would change all of that forever.
It had been three orn since he’d learned the path that he must take. Three orn to grapple with the consequences of that path, the danger that it would pose to his cohort. With the things that he would need to do, regardless of how they violated his core coding, his most deeply held beliefs. Even now, he was not entirely sure that it was worth it. Whether this impossible goal was worth courting his own madness, his own death. Or worse, endangering the precious, star-bright sparks that had been entrusted to his care.
Always before, there had been an escape, a choice to remain true to his function above all else. Now … now he proposed expanding that function beyond any mech’s imagining. To take the entirety of his frameclass as his cohort, to place them under his protection, his authority--the very idea was madness. It was something he had never been built for.
And yet … in a world gone mad, what else could a Cybertronian do but adapt and survive?
Soundwave could feel the distant, heavy thrum of arena machinery through the metal decking beneath his pedes, could pick up on the distant comm-chatter; hails and inquiries, the minutiae of mecha going about their assigned duties. Military frametypes, almost all of them. There were few civilians left now. Soon, Soundwave thought, even those would be soldiers, regardless of their function or their framing.
Their quarters were spare, cramped as Soundwave’s cohort trickled in from all corners of the arena and Kaon. Buzzsaw and Laserbeak, so agile in the air, carving hairpin turns through the open hatch for the sheer joy of speed. Ratbat, squeaking from his somnolent perch on Soundwave’s shoulder, flapping his smaller wingplates at the flightframes in sleepy agitation. Flipsides, Rumble, and Frenzy tumbled in at once, all three mechkin babbling happily, Flipsides still with coolant from the medbay on his plating and the other two liberally coated with metaldust from the training grounds. Ravage joined them last, a shadow among shadows despite his size, stalking on silent cybercat pedes.
Beautiful, all of them, topcoats well-maintained, joints unhindered by rust or neglect. All of them his, to the very spark, his to guard, to keep safe. He could lose them all by choosing wrongly now.
Soundwave forced his ventilations to steady.
His symbionts arranged themselves, waiting with growing solemnity, perched upon the minimal furnishings or curled on the floor according to their individual tastes. They all understood that the world was changing. They had waited through his silence, disturbed by their carrier’s distress, but obedient to his requests for solitude. Still, when he had finally called, they had come eagerly, wishing to be of help, of use.
Each of them was unique, irreplaceable … and so small. No armor, minimal weaponry, and all of them watching him. Trusting him. No, bare survival was no longer enough. It had been bad enough in Iacon, only somewhat better in Kaon and now …. Ratbat’s ability had proven that to exist only on the sufferance of warframes was to invite disaster.
“What’s up, Boss?” Rumble finally asked, fidgeting under Soundwave’s silent regard. He had tucked himself onto the same stool as his brother, which Frenzy had allowed with only a couple of shoves and some minor grumbling; all further evidence of his symbionts’ unease. Flipsides, for his part, had settled in closer to his Master, one small hand resting possessively on Soundwave’s leg, worry and unease rippling through his field.
“Soundwave: has come to a decision.” Their distress was distracting, and he did his best to stay on point, to verbalize his decision rationally and clearly. “Current status at the Kaon Arena, untenable. War, now inevitable; future resources, likely to be minimal. Our cohort, must choose with whom to ally.” He paused, marshalling his arguments carefully, as if he were defending his thesis before his fellow Archivists. “Soundwave: has decided to join the Decepticons. Advancement to officer ranks, offers best chance for our survival.”
“How ya gonna do that, Boss? Those cannon-humpers don’t respect anyone that ain’t military-framed. As far as they’re concerned, we’ll just be pathetic civilian wannabes that signed on for the free energon,” Rumble said, scowling.
“Correct. Our function, meaningless to Decepticon cause.” It was a harsh truth, but one they all had to accept. Precious and irreplaceable the symbionts were, but not for any reason that the rank and file Decepticons would recognize. “New duties must be undertaken.”
“What kind of skills would you have us learn?” Laserbeak said quietly, his carefully chosen words echoing with the forgotten cadences of the third Golden Age.
“Espionage. Stealth, communications. Politics.” He looked at Ratbat. “Find weaknesses. Exploit openings.” The glideframe on his shoulder nodded. It was not so different from what they already did, if viewed in a certain light. Their practice at the arena would help differentiate them all from the other civilian mecha joining the Decepticon cause. Their familiarity with warframes would help, as well. They’d all lived in close quarters with unpredictable, sometimes violent gladiators, and as part of the Decepticon forces, they couldn’t be seen huddling with other disaffected civilians like frightened glitchmice. To do so would only encourage the warframes’ disdain, and that was not what Soundwave needed. Not what *they* needed.
“Master …” Flipsides said hesitantly. After more than ten vorn as part of Soundwave’s cohort, he was no longer as uncertain as he once had been. He was still far more retiring than most of the cohort’s other, more rambunctious members, however, preferring amicable compromise over territorial squabbling. Soundwave sent him a wordless glyph of encouragement, inviting Flipsides to speak his mind. “Wouldn’t … wouldn’t going to the Prime be better? Warframes--they’re dangerous. Optimus Prime’s side will have more civilian frametypes, they’ll understand why we might not be able to fight as well. We’ll--we’d be safer there, wouldn’t we?”
Soundwave inclined his head. “Affirmative. Prime’s faction, more conducive to cohort survival.”
Buzzsaw tilted his head, shifting his wings uncertainly. “Then why are we joining the Decepticons, Boss? D’you think Optimus is part of the problem, like Lord Megatron says?”
Soundwave shook his helm. “Such considerations, beyond our scope. Soundwave’s function, to ensure the safety of symbionts. Joining the Prime, offers safety for our cohort -- but fighting, still likely to be required. Other cohorts, other chroniclers, unlikely to survive in the Prime’s forces.” He lifted a taloned hand to stroke along Ratbat’s optical ridge. He paused, knowing what he was about to ask them to understand would be difficult to accept. “This war, likely to cause the extinction of our frameclass. Chroniclers: will fail in our function. Soundwave: has found only one path that might prevent this.”
Laserbeak dipped his head. “Making a place for other cohorts among the Decepticons … will be more difficult than it was here, at the arena,” he said, unconvinced, but listening. The ancient flightframe had worried before, when Soundwave called so many of his kind to Kaon. Chronicler-cohorts were not gregarious by nature, and never, in all Laserbeak’s long view of recorded history, had a carrier taken such risks as Soundwave had to keep so many of his kind safe.
In the end, the gamble had worked. Soundwave had, impossibly, managed to find places and positions for tens of thousands, had probably saved hundreds of sparks from the Well.
But if most cohorts would not survive among the Prime’s forces, then even fewer could be expected to find safety with the Decepticons. Neither carriers nor symbionts were meant for war. Even those symbionts who could fight -- bladeframes, hornframes, even flightframes to a lesser extent -- rarely did so. And they were far outnumbered by symbiont classes who were incapable of carrying any practicable weapons at all -- glideframes, scaleframes, jumpframes, and many others.
“Agreed,” said Soundwave. He drew a slow ventilation. “Soundwave: intends to shape the course of the war itself.”
A long silence. It was almost unimaginable. Reshape a war? Influence its ever-shifting eddies and ripples to craft safe harbor for a select few? The sheer scale of such an endeavor was difficult to grasp, let alone contemplate.
Ravage lifted his powerfully-built head and spoke, for the first time. “A daring proposition,” he said. “But how?”
Soundwave reached to trace talon tips over Ravage’s bladed back, marvelling as always in the gloss of the topcoat, the strength of the symbiont. “A place among the Decepticon high command... difficult for civilian frametypes to obtain,” he said slowly, hating every word. “Soundwave: will require... upgrades.”
The bladeframe’s optics narrowed.
Flipsides looked up, hesitant. “I... which ones, Master? I mean, Primus knows we’ve got a whole lot of different weapons and stuff. And medics to install them! But you’re already carrying a lot of extra plating, and I know Stent had to put in some force multipliers to lift it all. You’re... already probably running pretty close to your spark output limit.”
“Modification required: singular, and minor.”
Ravage bared his long, serrated teeth. “Unacceptable,” the bladeframe said flatly, his flexing talons carving ribbons of solid steel from the flooring.
Flipsides glanced nervously between Ravage and Soundwave, uncomprehending. “S-soundwave? I... Ravage, what does he want to do?” the mechkin whispered, wishing he didn’t have to vocalize the question at all.
Soundwave looked at them all. His beautiful cohort …. “Soundwave: will install Parametric’s field-reading module.”
The announcement was met with a moment of stunned silence, swiftly followed by a storm of protest.
“What?!”
“Slag, no! No way! Boss--”
“The risks … this is madness, Soundwave!”
“Enough,” Soundwave said, silencing the babble with a carrier’s authority. “Risks, extremely high; outcome uncertain,” he admitted. “These considerations, already taken into account. Soundwave’s ability to process data, to handle sensory input, far greater than Parametric’s. Risks of this upgrade, now known. Allowances, can be made.” He paused, taking in his cohort’s horror. Gentling his vocalizer, he added, “This path, necessary.”
“Your death is necessary?” Ravage snapped.
“Advancement through Decepticon ranks, necessary for our survival.” Soundwave met Ravage’s bristling indignation calmly. “Rapid advancement, necessary for others’ survival. Telepathic modifications, unique. Result: enhanced value to Decepticon cause. Many applications for such an ability; potential for promotion, very great.”
“But if you die, we’ll be without a carrier, and then we’ll probably die too,” Ratbat pointed out, little wingclaws clinging tightly to his perch. “Boss … I don’t know what you saw, but I don’t like this. Taking all this risk for mecha who’re probably gonna die anyway …”
“Cohort’s survival, still of paramount importance,” Soundwave said, leaning forward. “Soundwave: will take steps, make arrangements for your safety in event of death. Influence with other chronicler-carriers, sufficient to ensure this.” Laserbeak and Buzzsaw keened a wordless ultrasonic denial. “These plans, necessary,” he reminded them. “Soundwave: will not leave you unprotected.”
Rumble and Frenzy were both shaking their helms, small blunt fingers digging into the edge of their seat. “No, Boss--no! Frag the others--as long as we’re okay, that’s all that matters,” Rumble blurted. “They got their own carriers--let ‘em survive on their own, just like we hafta!”
“Symbiont deaths: unacceptable,” Soundwave said implacably. It was a command from which they knew he could not be moved. Carriers, ultimately, were expendable. Symbionts were not. Soundwave had proven how much he believed that, over and over, against even the Overlord and the Senate.
Ravage was on his feet in one lithe motion, circling to sit in front of his Master. “This is truly the only way?” he asked, a narrowed crimson stare boring into Soundwave’s visor. “You are going to risk your life, your sanity, the safety of our cohort, all in the hopes of saving strangers? To protect symbionts you’ve never met? Symbionts who belong to other carriers?”
“Affirmative,” Soundwave replied without hesitation. He didn’t dare let his resolve waver, even in the face of his First’s disapproval, his cohort’s fear and confusion. He reached outward, to stroke over those bristled sensory spines; Ravage shifted minutely away, so that Soundwave’s talons touched only air, and his spark clenched. “Soundwave … is still yours. Will always be yours,” he said, almost pleading. “Survival of other symbionts, other carriers; necessary for Cybertron’s future. This future, only possible through great risk. All other military designs: incompatible with frametype, unlikely to achieve desired result.” A carrier-mech’s systems were simply too specialized for extensive warframe modifications.
Ravage’s gaze was piercing.
Buzzsaw’s wings were hunched, his neck curved, his flightplates hanging. He looked the very picture of misery. “You -- are you sure about this, Boss?”
“Affirmative.” For the first time, Soundwave opened his hands--petitioning, rather than commanding. “Decision made. Query: risk too great for symbionts to remain?” It would hurt to the core of him to let them go, would leave scars that would pain him for as long as he functioned. But he had no choice. Carrier mecha commanded in almost all things, but never in this. And perhaps … it would be easier to let them go, hard as it was, than it would be to watch them die, fighting battles they were never framed for.
Or worse, to have them die by his own hand. If all his plans and failsafes weren’t enough, if Parametric’s madness took root in him as well … he hadn’t glimpsed the range of his cohort’s individual fates, after all. And it would be many orn, perhaps even a quarter vorn, before Soundwave was sufficiently recovered to attempt another look into that abyss, to tackle the turbulent confluence of possible futures.
Buzzsaw was the first to shake his helm, vocalization steady and certain. “We’ve been together a long time, Boss. I know you. This plan of yours -- it’s crazier than Ratbat. But I’m in it with you. I won’t leave.” He shuffled his slight weight from pede to pede, ignoring the glideframe’s indignant meep of protest from Soundwave’s other shoulder. “‘Sides which, ain’t no other carrier who can give scritches like you.”
Soundwave inclined his helm in acknowledgement, unable in that moment to find any words at all. But something in him loosened, a knot wound too tight for too long, and a portion of his relief showed in his field. He wouldn’t lose all of them; wouldn’t be entirely stripped of his true function.
“Yeah, you’re stuck with us, Boss.” Frenzy and Rumble bounced off their stool, running over to Soundwave’s pede and swarming up to the surface of the berth, climbing with their customary dexterity. “I t-told you, we’re gonna be the best symbionts ever, ain’t nobody gonna touch you. Can’t d-do that if we go someplace else,” Frenzy said seriously, looking up.
“But that doesn’t give you license to be stupid, okay? That’s OUR job,” Rumble added, poking at Soundwave’s armored breastplate with one talon for emphasis.
“... affirmative,” Soundwave managed, reaching out to briefly touch the mechkin, to gather them closer. They grumped, but allowed the embrace, a measure of their agitation. They enjoyed their carrier’s touch as much as any of the others, but still didn’t like anyone to see it.
As for his third mechkin.... “I’m worried,” Flipsides admitted, looking up. “But not about you. I’ve already seen what you’d do for us. You won’t end up like Parametric did. And...” the mechkin bit at his lip plate. “And I think I understand what you mean about those other cohorts. This war... its going to get pretty big, isn’t it? When we go to war on other planets, there isn’t usually much left. No libraries or things like that. A lot of ours could get damaged in this war, too.” The little mechkin leaned into Soundwave’s leg, feeling the solid strength there, thinking for a moment on what all of Cybertron could lose. A billion years of knowledge might vanish... unless symbionts could keep it safe. And so they needed other cohorts.
“This... this is really important, isn’t it?” the mechkin asked, and Soundwave returned a solemn nod. Flipsides clenched his fists. “I believe in you. And in this thing you’re trying to do. So … no, I don’t want to leave.”
Soundwave shuttered his optics briefly, his relief sweeping him. “Soundwave, will ensure that other tasks are found for you,” he said, stroking his talons carefully over that small helm in gratitude, recognition. He knew how deeply the mechkin had been affected by his trials in the tunnels below Iacon. “Fighting, not necessary for all of us.”
Flipsides lifted his helm, inclining his faceplates into the touch and reaching up to cup that gentle talon closer. Soundwave would risk -- had risked -- everything for them. War would demand cruel things of Flipsides, of them all, no matter where he went. Best to face those demands beside a Master as thoughtful and attentive as Soundwave.
On the carrier’s shoulder, Ratbat turned to preen a wingplate, twisting the limb around so that he looked like a knotted-up ball. “Ratbat, requires time to decide?” Soundwave inquired after a moment.
“Wha -- don’t look at me! I’m not going anywhere!” chirped the glideframe, irate, little wings flailing. He clamped down harder on Soundwave’s shoulder fairing, lest anyone try to pry him off. He’d already seen what a lot of trouble it was to change carriers, even if any were as interesting as Soundwave. Which they weren’t. "I already told you, we're gonna be great together. Just you wait and see!"
Ravage and Laserbeak watched him. His two eldest, his jewels without price, treasured down to the very core of him, their fields and forms imprinted on his spark. They both guarded the knowledge of a planet, aeons of culture and art, of history and science. Both of them had seen Transit’s memories, and Ravage had engaged Parametric in battle. Neither of them could mistake the risks they, or he, faced.
Soundwave could not imagine being without them... and couldn’t imagine allowing them to take this chance with him.
But it wasn’t his decision to make.
“Hey, guys,” said Flipsides. “Can you come help me look through the medical supplies, see what we’re going to need? We can leave everyone else to talk.” Flipsides looked to the glideframe on Soundwave’s shoulder. “We can count all the things, and organize them too,” he added, knowing that there was little the other symbiont liked better. Except maybe naps.
“B-but I wanna--” started Frenzy, cutting off as his brother cuffed him. Squabbling, both mechkin made their way off the berth, and went to join Flipsides. Heaving a put-upon sigh, Ratbat glided down to join them, landing heavily on Rumble’s shoulder plates. Buzzsaw glanced between Soundwave and the other symbionts, and then joined the mechkin without a word, launching himself to glide out the hatch.
Ravage’s tail twitched, the heavy flail there scraping against the floor plating as he suppressed the need to pace.
Laserbeak shuttered his optics for a moment. “You spoke of allowances,” he said quietly. “What did you mean?”
“Soundwave: has reviewed Echo's observations. Initial hypothesis: Parametric was overwhelmed by initial flood of inputs, unable to recover before core coding was irreversibly corrupted.” Soundwave hesitated. In truth, he would have wished for a decavorn or longer in which to gather additional information, to study the device and consult mecha more expert in its use. But with Cybertron on the brink of civil war, that was now impossible. Soundwave would have to proceed with nothing more than simple observational data and guesswork to go on.
“Soundwave: has superior data processing, far greater bandwidth than Parametric. Projective plane module, may be used to damp initial flood of data, aid in successful integration. Consultation with medics, may reveal other possible precautions.”
“May?” Ravage pounced upon that weakness, scarlet optics narrowed. “You are risking your life, our cohort’s safety, on something that *might* work. Whatever scrap of protection this thing might offer us, it isn’t worth such a risk. Master, this war … as bad as it might be, it is just another war. Mecha will die, Towers might burn, but it will pass. All we need to do is to survive, and we will have the chance to rebuild.”
Faced with the ancient knowledge in those words, Soundwave could only shake his helm. “Ravage … this war, unlike any other. This war--” he hesitated again, not wishing his fears to seem overblown, the irrational terror of a young mech facing the battlefield for the first time. Finally he said simply, “This war, far greater. Possibility exists: Cybertron, may not survive.”
“Hyperbolic excesses are not constructive here,” Ravage snapped, claws flexing in the pitted flooring. “Parametric lost more than his sanity -- he lost *himself.* The thing that took root in him....” He shook his head, audials laid back as if to flick the memory away. Soundwave knew it, had seen what Transit experienced as well... but he did not have the perspective of a symbiont, clearly didn’t understand how fundamentally *wrong* that memory was. Feeling a carrier reaching, taking by force what was not given... it was monstrous.
And yet not nearly so bad as the thought of losing Soundwave entirely. His carrier, Ravage’s, trained and shaped and beloved from the time he was little more than a mechling -- Soundwave was something not quite like any other carrier, was irreplaceable in a very real sense. For Soundwave to risk himself so needlessly, so foolishly was simply beyond the pale.
“And your death would be no swifter than Parametric’s,” Laserbeak added, clacking his beak in agitation. “Parametric’s device could use your bandwidth to taint you more thoroughly. The berthformer’s plane module can only offer you a reflection of yourself, after all. Viewing your own code will afford you little if that code has been corrupted.”
“Your assertions, correct,” Soundwave said soberly. “Other precautions, also necessary. Soundwave’s core coding, will be safeguarded elsewhere.” It was no small thing; such a copy would give another mech access to everything Soundwave was, everything he had ever been, would contain every datawall, every guardian protocol and piece of ICE his systems possessed. Even code specialists, those mecha trained in identifying and correcting damaged code, were rarely entrusted with such things due to the inherent risks involved. A missing fragment here, one bit of data misremembered or encoded wrongly there, and it would be all too easy to introduce a fatal cascade of errors into the subject-mech’s system. Or worse, a mech could use that copy to hack the subject mecha’s very core coding, pry loose every memory file, every secret, and damage them beyond any recovery.
Laserbeak flinched at that suggestion. “Master--you are not seriously considering giving *Stent*--”
“Negative.” Soundwave regarded them both levelly. “Soundwave: will only trust our cohort with such a task. In addition--” he vented harshly, steeling himself for what he was about to ask. “Soundwave: will not risk the possibility of harming you. If Ravage, Laserbeak agree: both will be given two encrypted virus-spikes. The first: designed to shut down a carrier’s laser core, triggering stasis-lock. The second…” He met the two elder symbionts’ horrified optics without flinching. “The second, will shut down spark core containment.”
“You … you want us to …” Every plate of Ravage’s frame was hackled, his field roiling with instinctive negation. He took one step backwards, then another. “This--”
“Soundwave: must safeguard you,” Soundwave said urgently, willing them to understand. “This decision, not made lightly. Field-reading module, essential for our survival. If integration fails … cohort safety, still of paramount importance. Soundwave’s death, preferable to corruption by Parametric’s madness.“
Ravage wheeled to pace, no longer able to keep himself from that restless motion.
Laserbeak shook his finely-crafted head, a quiet keen of sorrow building in the back of his vocalizer. Every time he bared his docks, Soundwave held him -- held them all -- in the cradle of his own spark. They knew him, down to the core. How could they ever bear to extinguish that sanctuary? A symbiont was not made for terrible choices like these. And even leaving the sheer horror aside, how... how could Laserbeak do such a thing to the rest of the cohort? “I cannot countenance such an act, Soundwave! If this war does reach as far as you believe, then your life is more important still. Ratbat, especially, is unlikely to survive a major conflict without you.” To say nothing of Flipsides and the other two mechkin, although they, at least, were sturdy mecha.
Soundwave dipped his helm in solemn agreement. “If Soundwave fails, many cohorts in grave peril, including our own. Results, the same... if Soundwave does not try.”
Laserbeak’s vocalization was a bell-toned whisper, stunned by this revelation. “What have you seen?” the flightframe asked.
Soundwave hesitated, reluctant to subject his symbionts to that tattered maze of darkness of pain and failure. Even when placid, the divinations glimpsed through Ratbat were never easy for a symbiont to view -- everything about them was mathematical conjecture and shifting probabilities, with nothing solid, nothing real.
Ravage wheeled from where he stalked the wall, and prowled to stand in front of Soundwave once more, the blades of his frame an upright forest of razored edges. “And if I forbid this?” the symbiont growled, every part of him tensed.
Laserbeak stilled. Ravage’s few, simple words stretched a symbiont’s prerogative far, far past the breaking point. The carrier chose the way -- the symbiont’s choice was simply to follow, or to choose to unwind himself from the carrier. Above all others, Ravage knew this.
So, too, did Soundwave. The carrier curled his talons against the edge of the berth, metal scraping metal, just lightly. A waiting silence stretched between them all, heavy with unspoken choices.
And then he levered himself off, to kneel before Ravage. He reached out to stroke the bladeframe’s heavy head, cupping with both palms. His vocalizer crackled, ragged at the edges, hardly more than a whisper. “Ravage... must not ask this. Please.”
Shivering finely, the big bladeframe pressed himself into that embrace, chest against Soundwave’s shoulder, chinplates hooked over his Master’s thick pauldron. “Master … show us what you have seen,” he said finally.
Soundwave nodded slowly. And unlimbered a pair of primary datacables.
Laserbeak and Ravage waited, unmoving as the cables socketed into place, as they were connected once again to their carrier. Soundwave’s cortex enfolded them both, the touch of his mind and spark as familiar as their own, even as his field roiled with apprehension and regret.
He did not reach for the vivid, endless wells of their memories. This time, Soundwave opened his own, inviting the two symbionts into the vastly complex relays and networks of his own processors, his hard drives. Once again, Soundwave walked the futures spreading before them all, remembering as clearly as he was able. And, all three together, they bore witness--
--to Ravage, sleek frame burdened by a warframe’s armor and a warframe’s brand, his head low, his helm heavy and misshapen, almost unrecognizeable under the bristling of his weaponry. Only the predatory grace of his frame was the same, the slow stalk of a bladeframe on the hunt--
--death and death and death, all around, the bodies of mecha piled high where cities had once been, where life had once flourished. They were only three now, three guttering sparks huddled together in the wasteland that had once been Cybertron--
--Towers falling, flames racing across the sky--
--symbionts caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, victorious warframes returned, dripping with energon as they twisted Rumble’s arm from its socket, joints tearing, laughing as the mechkin screamed--
--gestalts roaring as they battled each other, heedless of the smaller mecha that fought and screamed and died beneath great crushing pedes--
--Soundwave thrashing in desperate rage as warframes pinned him down, while cruel talons wrapped around Laserbeak’s shining wings--
--battered, but they were whole, bearing the civilian brand of the Senate, of the Prime’s service. Whole and together and they had won, they were victorious … and they had lost everything. For they were the last, alone, outcast from the burnt cinder of their world, bearing witness to their Prime’s despair and the darkness of the Final Age--
--turning, Soundwave desperately reaching for new possibilities, searching for hope, for a future, and finding only death, again and again--
The memory of his journey was not clean, was dizzying in its scope, twisting through possibility after possibility as Soundwave had experienced them, until all three of them were shaking with remembered echoes of future-grief, future-despair and death. Soundwave looked again, as he had countless times before, reliving what he had seen, searching for some other glimmer of hope …. but there was nothing. Until... there, a single splinter of possibility.
These memories were more tattered still, worn with Soundwave’s exhaustion, mere glimpses into the maze of possibility. But they all watched as Soundwave --cradled the device in his talons, watching the way the thing’s narrow, twining hooks flexed and reached in his hands--
--Confusion. A journey over white. Strength. Reaching up to wrap dark, blunted fingers around the Lord Protector’s pale talons. Mecha falling back, faceplates twisted in fear. Vast plans, schemes crossing the universe. Knowing. The winged sweep of a warship, the dart of smaller shuttles. A warframe’s brand, chiseled and enameled in purple with the kind of painstaking care born of terror--
And just there, impossibly brief, a glimpse... the impression of waiting sparks, of hope long guarded and banked. It was the tiniest glimmer in the darkness ... but it was real, nevertheless.
Soundwave let the data transmission end, his cilia drawing back inside their sheaf. He unlocked the blades of his multitools from Laserbeak’s port, and then reached to catch the flightframe as Laserbeak launched himself with an ultrasonic keen. //Master!//
Ravage, too, trembled, silent and pressed close as Soundwave gathered Laserbeak into the same embrace, bowing his helm over them both. Laserbeak shivered hard as Soundwave stroked and soothed, caressing the symbiont’s wings closed, crading the whole of the flightframe’s chassis against the armor of his chestplates, where the placid lap of his field was strongest. //So... so terrible! How can … so much lost -- the libraries, the music halls of Tarn.... I n-never thought … // the flightframe gasped, vocaliser too broken with static for speech.
Soundwave knelt with them both, silent, holding them while they both grieved in their own ways, mourning the loss of a future beyond war. He would have given anything, in that moment, to negate this fate. Anything to craft for them a better future.
But that choice had never been his to make. As his symbionts’ trembling finally eased, Sounedwave stroked his talons over the complex mechanisms of Laserbeak’s helm, his shuttered optics. “Query: would Laserbeak.... do Soundwave the honor of guarding his carrier’s core coding?”
“Surely … surely there is another way. Surely you can beg an audience, tell them what you have seen. The Prime …” Laserbeak’s voice trailed away even before Soundwave shook his helm. “They … would not believe us, would they?” He huddled closer. “They did not listen before, when you were an Archivist. Now … they would have even less reason.”
“Laserbeak: is correct,” Soundwave said quietly.
A tiny keen of despair escaped before Laserbeak could stop it. He pressed the top of his helm hard against the heavy plating over his Master’s spark. Then after a long moment, he lifted his head, seeking out first Ravage’s optics, then Soundwave’s. “If we must do this … then you will not do it alone. I will safeguard your code, Master, and your life.”
“As will I,” Ravage said, every plate of him tense and still, scarlet optics burning. “We will battle together, Master; and you must fight for yourself every bit as hard as you would for us, for we will not leave you.”
Soundwave inclined his head in acknowledgment, unable to hide the depth of his relief. “Soundwave: is honored by your trust,” he said, feeling their fear and their faith in equal measure. This was only the start of a very long road, he knew. And at the end of it, they would not be the same mecha they were now.
But they would survive, and see this through to the end.
All of them, together.