Didn't quite make it to 500 words this time. But considering how I had to retype this from scratch after losing the original, I'm not going to worry about it. This would have been up last week if not for that little speed bump, which is why this uses last week's prompt of "Outer Space".

They all thought he was crazy. Shockwave was aware of that, and it didn't bother him. His experiments had earned him far worse labels in the course of his life, and he was sure more would come.

But this was a new insanity.

Some called it obsession that kept him glued to a screen long into the night cycle, scanning every communications channel he knew. Others thought it more likely to be a compulsion which brought him back time and again, repeating his search even when there was no reason to expect a change. All thought it was a waste of time, and none could understand why he continued.

Shockwave couldn't have explained it to them. They were emotional beings, and he was not. They were driven to survive by the fear of pain, the love of comfort, and in many cases, the angry desire for revenge. They interacted because they enjoyed it, protected those they cared about, and mourned those they lost.

Shockwave was nothing like them. He socialized rarely, and then only because isolation was detrimental to one's mental health. He watched out for those under his command because they were of no use damaged or dead. He didn't mourn at all, although he acknowledged the deaths of those he knew personally.

No, they could never understand. There was no explaining why he couldn't simply accept that Megatron was dead and turn his full attention to the war. Why he needed to believe that his leader would one day return. Shockwave himself didn't fully understand it. On the surface it defied all logic to keep waiting, especially as vorns crept by. The longer they went without contact, the more likely it became that Megatron never would come back. Shockwave knew that, just as he knew he should stop this foolishness.

But his mission superseded all of that. Megatron had left Shockwave to guard Cybertron until his return, and to accept that day would never come would be to remove his reason to survive. And he needed a reason to survive - he wasn't suicidal, no, but without the hopes and fears that drove others to safeguard their lives, he needed to justify his continued existence. The fact that life itself wouldn't exist without a purpose was sufficient reason for him to search out those justifications, but he was under no illusions that, if the time came when he couldn't find them anymore, he would end his own life as remorselessly as he had countless others.

Space was vast, and he knew Megatron could be anywhere, even lost forever among the stars. Perhaps one day he would find a new reason to go on, and when that day came, he would relinquish his hold on this foolish belief. But until then, he watched and he waited.

He had nothing else.

Let's face it: Four million years is a LONG time to wait. Even by Cybertronian standards.