randomplaces | nottabeater 'verse. Private room on the repair level. Lost and Found.

Soundwave watched in silence as Ratchet gently brought the femme on the table to awareness, his optic sensors seeking out traces in her new shell of the one that he'd known so many vorns ago. His neural net crackled and crawled softly as he found them, an angle of jaw; a curve of the chestplate; the sweet, sweeping curve of her nose and brow plates. Yet there were differences too. No longer was she a little semi-transparent fairy thing with lights beneath her skin, that technology had died with her creator. This shell was the dull silver of all protoforms yet, and though it bore her spark's mark it also bore Ratchet's stamp in the more sturdy lines of its construction.

But it wasn't the physical changes that Soundwave most feared. He himself only faintly resembled the mech who had once produced music in the best entertainment places of Cybertron. His legend had died long ago, the same day that he had thought she had. No, what made his nerves crawl and his hands clench was the thought of all he had done since the day they'd been parted; the thought of the mechs and femmes who'd died by his hand or his actions.

The thought of Blaster, who had once been his bond-brother and whom he'd killed in cold remorseless fury for what he had believed the red mech had done.

A lie. Megatron was her murderer. His optic visor darkened. All those sparks... destroyed for nothing. What will she say when she knows? Will she turn from me? How will I survive that?

"Shhh," said Ratchet softly, after murmuring to the femme for several minutes in their own language of subsonics, clicks, and squeaks. "He's right here."

Ack! Soundwave's fists creaked as he clenched them more tightly, his body shaking as he flinched from that searching soft gaze.

"Soundwave?" she tried out the word carefully in her human voice, then lifted a hand and reached for him.

He nearly bolted. Only Ratchet's imposing bulk and daunting look of warning stopped him. Even so he couldn't turn back and stood with shoulders slumped and head hanging.

"Negative," he said, hating the mechanical emotionlessness of his voice. "The mech you knew was lost many millions of Earth years ago. All that remains is one who bears the energon of others on his hands."

"Ratchet told me," she said softly, her hand drooping as she looked at his back and saw the scars. "And he told me that the war is over."

"I killed our brother, and he was innocent." He shook his head.

"It's done. And Blaster would laugh at you for acting like this." That soft ripple of laughter that used to haunt his dreams and which she shared with Blaster coloured her voice. But then it faded as she added, "Please, Soundwave, it took away everything else I ever loved. Don't let it take away my mate, too."

He turned back instinctively at the sadness and fear in her voice, stepping up to the table and pulling her close as she wept softly against his scarred chestplates.

"I am here." His voice trembled. "I won't leave again."

Ratchet watched as the emotionless mech broke down and joined his mate in tears, then turned and silently slipped from the room to give them privacy.