Notes:
Fuck, I just realised I actually forgot to post this chapter here last week!
(If you check on Ao3, I actually just posted chapter 5, then I came here to do the same and realised ch.4 never came out. For this, I apologise, I really HATE this site and how it works).
Anyway, enjoy! (and I apologise again)
Metronome
Maybe it was time…
"Have you considered the idea that you might be lonely?"
Soundwave didn't startle, or jump, or react in any way. He had felt the other approach him from behind, cloaked in shadows not even the moons' light could penetrate.
"…Query."
Megatron came over, dark grey armor barely glinting in the dark, pedes moving gracefully over the rough metal of the roof, tiny scratching sounds seeming so loud in the silence and quiet of Cybertron around them.
The planet seemed dead.
Soundwave repressed a shudder.
"How long has it been since we last spoke?"
Soundwave lifted his gaze from the darkness ahead and looked sideways, Megatron's glowing red eyes giving him a visual target for his screaming sensors. The gladiator wasn't looking at him, face angled upwards, watching the slow rotation of the twin moons.
"Megatron: requested Soundwave presence in today's meeting."
His vocalizer felt scratchy as always, a little dusty from the particles littering the air around them, and he made a note to take out and clean the filter as soon as he got back to his quarters.
"You know what I mean."
Soundwave turned his entire body towards his Commander, the movement making cold hair swirl against the edges of his exposed face, tickling the edges of his jaw and the cabling of his bare throat. Red eyes met golden, both of them seemingly bringing up old memory files to review, of clashes and wounds and energon splattering on the dirty ground of the Arena, but also quiet nights spent on the same berth, quietly reading or making plans, basking in the other's fields and talking. Just talking.
The war took his toll on us.
"And made strangers of ourselves."
Megatron's claws lifted, slowly and carefully in the encompassing darkness around them – not one of them had bothered to turn on IRT* or IT**, trusting their external sensors to comb their surroundings for intruders, and all their optics could pick up was a vague outline of each other's armor -, and settled on his shoulder, curling and gripping without even scratching the paint, the weight oddly comforting despite Soundwave's dislike of social and physical interactions.
Soundwave shuttered his optics, not quite knowing what to say or do. In 200 vorns of war they had drifted apart, Megatron's mania and his own rising hopelessness had twisted and pulled at the bond they once shared.
He felt like they didn't know each other anymore.
Distantly, Soundwave wondered if he ought to be resentful. He had forsaken his whole life, the few mechs he loved, to follow a revolution that had burned itself to the ground, bringing down with it a whole planet.
He wondered if he should hate Megatron. But looking at the other, he knew he couldn't.
It had been his choice. He had thought that for once he could accomplish something on his own, something he had chosen, something he believed in.
He had been mistaken.
Megatron was still watching him, red eyes roaming along his rarely-exposed face, and Soundwave still didn't understand why he had been approached.
They didn't partake in each other's company, these vorns.
Tentatively, he relaxed the iron-tight control he kept on his field – how long had it been since he last relaxed it, how long since it extended away from his panels, since he had felt another's touch so acutely in his circuits without interfacing – and probed the air around him, carefully hiding a wince – the generators were sparking inside him, vorns of extremely close contact had almost made them incapable of stretching and reaching outside the closeness of his own armor.
Megatron's field was looser than his own, reaching almost an inch outside his plating, and at first contact seemed troubled, rolling and storming with emotions and something else th-
The hand on his shoulder tightened painfully, claws digging in his armor with a faint screech, startling him and making him pull his field back abruptly.
"Not tonight" the other dictated, withdrawing his own field and moving back a step, putting more distance between the two of them. He didn't seem angry at the apparent intrusion, more like… distant, and sad.
I apologize.
"It's fine, we'll talk about me some other orn. I'm actually worried about you."
Soundwave startled, taken by surprise.
"You are always alone. I understand our faction is not exactly what we thought it would end up being, and we'll talk about this later, but you've been withdrawing and isolating yourself for a long time, and I'm worried."
Megatron's voice had lowered the more he talked, and he seemed hesitant, almost uncomfortable. Soundwave knew he was not the most social of mechs – he had not survived that long just throwing around trust and secrets after all – and could understand the awkwardness of the situation, but that obvious unease between them stung him sharply.
It was testament of the detachment and distance that had come between them.
I'm fine.
"You're not. I can see it. You're stressed and exhausted and just plain sad. I can tell, and so can the troops. As your Commander, I can't let my TIC behave like this. As your friend, if you still can call me that, I'm worried." Megatron's fans let out a puff of air, and the heavy mech turned back towards the door leading to the inside of the building.
"I'll leave you to it."
Soundwave was left on the roof, staring up at the stars.
[*InfraRed Thermography (heat vision)]
[**Image Intensification (night vision)]
...to come out and play.
Soundwave was ready.
The moment the Autobot dropped down the opening in the air vent circling one side of the ceiling he moved to replace the hole he had made, the metal panel clicking sharply in place to close the temporary access to the room.
The other had hit the floor with a loud clang, small body half-turned to the side and visor dark, apparently in statis. Soundwave didn't dare to move for almost a breem, fans held almost still to match the silence of the room and trying to catch any sound of someone approaching to investigate the noise.
No one had heard, apparently.
He slowly relaxed, plating loosening slightly from its protoform-tight previous position, and turned towards his last-klik guest.
The Autobot was still on the floor, unmoving, matte black armor completely covered in coolant and cooling vents stuttering with a grating sound, heat emanating from a hard-running engine.
Soundwave frowned, a touch of worry making him approach without care, and he extended a servo, black clawed digits coming to rest over the flexible plates covering the flank of the mech in front of him.
The other was hot. Too hot.
Soundwave swiftly opened a little panel on his own wrist, uncoiling a small cable, and moved towards the black nape in front of him, one single slim digit applying pressure on an almost imperceptible slit to uncover the other's medical port. Within an astrosecond he had established a connection, the port's heat uncomfortably scalding around the tip of his cord.
Firewalls awaited him, blocking immediately his access while trying at the same time to highjack his connection to plant a malware in his own processor, a move he had been expecting and managed to block at once. Instead of trying to crack the extremely reinforced firewalls – SpecOps' issued, strands of code constructed like barbed wire, with the objective of stopping any kind of hacking attempt at any cost, even the owner's own processor – he found the medical protocol, scrolling quickly through the lines until he found the identification slot, designed to allow minimal and controlled access to certified medical officers in case of injuries.
He provided his old medical code, briefly wondering if it would be accepted – it was severely outdated after all, and not exactly legal, but Kup had insisted on him having a certain level of medical preparation and the underground's clinic they went to had provided the certificates and codes necessary for identification – but he had to wait only half a klik.
Information scrolled down his visor, describing the physical status of the patient, and red sections jumped to his attention, blinking glyphs screaming emergency shut-down and critical overheating. Soundwave frowned behind his mask and searched through the report, trying to pin-point the cause besides the clearly clogged-with-dust vents sputtering – they were highly efficient pieces of mechanics after all, and only a huge amount of dust and particles would have managed to block ventilation to the point of overheating so badly.
Nothing inside the mech's systems seemed to be responsible, but the Autobot was becoming critically hot to the touch – a sharp stab of pain originating from his medical cord made him flinch – and trying to bring down his temperature wouldn't work without removing the cause of such overheating.
A ping came from his comm system, trying to get his attention, but he showed it aside, letting it go unanswered, golden optics narrowed urgently on the inside of his visor, knowing that with every klik that passed the situation would deteriorate even further.
Frustration made him shift on his pedes, back struts popping from his crouched position over the other's mech, and he dismissed the medical window to a corner of his visor, gaze flying over the Autobot's plating.
If it was not an internal system's problem, it must be coming form an outside source.
Everything seemed normal, besides the coolant liberally dripping to the floor – he absently remembered the low coolant levels glyph he had noticed earlier and made a note to provide the other with a few refills to compensate – and the gritting and sputtering sounds. Optics traced a finely shaped helm, off-lined visor, sharp face and slender neck, going down to a pitch-black chest-plate and servos, finely interlocked slender plates forming the sides and abdomen an-
What was that?
He leaned forward, carefully turning the Autobot more on the front, exposing the posterior struts and aft. In the small of the mech's back, nestled between two major panel struts, was a little oblong bump, seemingly part of the armor surrounding it.
A closer look revealed magnetic clamps around the edges, keeping it still and stuck to the plating.
Soundwave traced the edge with tip of a sharp claw, and a bit of discharge hit him, a little spark appearing in a flash.
Whatever it was, it seemed to be fried and not working properly.
He braced his left servo against the upper back plates and with the other hooked the tips of his claws along the edges of the device, gripping it tightly, before yanking it away sharply. The contraption came off with a soft pop, leaving behind just an oval of cleaner armor that had avoided the dust of the air vent.
A few astroseconds later the other's black armor loosened and shifted with a clattering sound, and the previously half-opened vents opened all the way, filling the room with the racket of fans spinning to their highest setting, trying desperately to dump heat outside and away from fragile protoform and working engine.
Soundwave brought up the medical window again. The Autobot was still dangerously hot, but the temperature instead of rising had stabilised, and seemed to be dropping slowly thanks to fans finally working properly again. He still checked around, but apart for a few singed wires – auto-repair would take care of it – and low levels of coolant and energon everything seemed to be in order.
He considered the mech in front of him. He was dusty, still too hot to touch, and clearly exhausted. Before closing definitely the connection between their processors, Soundwave induced a light medical statis, that would wear off in more or less a joor.
A ping sounded again from his comm system. Disengaging the cord's jack from the medical port and rolling slowly and carefully the warm cable, Soundwave checked the ID attached to the comm line trying to reach him.
Barricade.
::Soundwave here.:: he acknowledged, tucking the cable back to its housing and closing the panel, doing the same to the other's opening.
::Soundwave sir, there's been a level 1 breach.:: answered the scout immediately, voice low and straight to the point.
Level 1 breach meant that no one had definite proof of a breach, but something seemed suspicious enough to be reported to a superior officer.
::Explain.::
::Blackout noticed a loosened air vent cover in one of the corridors of the south wing of the compound. He also says that when he looked inside the vent, he heard noises, so he sent inside a drone, whose recording however came out inconclusive.::
::Your thoughts?::
Soundwave heard a snort down the line.
::Apart from Blackout trying to sneak out to avoid his duties? I think he had too much high-grade too soon in the orn, but I thought to bring the matter up to you before taking any decision.::
Soundwave hummed, looking down at the Autobot in front of him. Dismissing the matter would only bring suspicion on him and his department, despite the unreliable witness – who, this time, was completely and perfectly right on there being an intruder, but no one needed to know that.
::Follow protocol, initiate level 1 lockdown and search the building with the drones.::
::Yes sir.:: Barricade seemed to hesitate over the line. ::What of Blackout?::
::Take his statement, then report him for whatever he's high on this time. Also, when you have time bring to my room a cube of energon mixed with mercury and zinc.:: he ordered, considering the damages of the mech in front of him and deciding on some minerals that might help his auto-repair work faster.
::..sir?:: came the hesitant inquiry.
::Are you questioning me?:: he asked casually, sliding his servo around the joints of the legs and the back of the Autobot and carefully lifting him off the ground.
Soundwave dismissed the flustered apologies coming down the line, frowning down at the mech in his servos, resting still in statis against the glass panel of his docking area. For his height and type, the Autobot seemed way below the estimated weight he should be. Still frowning, Soundwave moved towards the washracks, sending a last message to his underling before closing the comm line.
::… make it two.::