Disclaimer: Don't own Transformers

Betrayed

Chapter 10: Confessions

"Doc, are you ready yet?" Wheeljack questioned, peering over the medic's shoulder to see what Ratchet was doing.

Ratchet ignored the fact that he could hear Wheeljack's systems running from their close proximity and instead replied, "No. I have a little bit more that I need to go through. Why don't you let Optimus know what's going on?"

Wheeljack rested his helm on Ratchet, continuing to watch as the medic moved, almost daring the medic to do something about the blatant invasion of personal space.

After a little while, Ratchet reached for his wrench, tucking it back in his subspace while putting a neatly folded tarp back in his medical kit. "Don't you have something better to do?"

"Not really. I'm all ready to go." Wheeljack wrapped his arms around Ratchet's torso, wondering all the while just how much he could get away with.

If he tried to do this when he first landed on Earth, Ratchet would have kicked his aft and used Soundwave's help to wield him to the ceiling of the medbay.

Wait…

Soundwave wasn't an Autobot back then. It was fascinating seeing how they had grown accustomed to the presence of each other.

Soundwave would have been a loner and did whatever it was that Soundwave did in his free time which wasn't all that much different from what he did while he was working. It vaguely reminded him of a certain medic.

Ratchet still worked from early morning to late at night, but now he didn't mind the company of others as much as he use to. Raf was one of the few who could get away with being around and talking to Ratchet for hours at a time and not annoy the medic in the process which was a feat that most bots couldn't accomplish, let alone humans.

And well… there was Wheeljack. He supposed he changed as well. If it weren't for Ratchet, and now Soundwave as well, he would have been off on his own, challenging Decepticons whenever and wherever he wanted and on his own terms. He never really knew which night would be his last, but he never really gave it much thought.

Wheeljack hadn't been thinking much about what life would be like after the war and what he wanted to do with himself once the fighting stopped. The uncertainty made him slightly uncomfortable.

Deciding to leave Ratchet alone for now, he left the medbay, bumping into Optimus in the process.

"Good evening, Wheeljack." Optimus smiled, one of those genuine, soft smiles that he had been so renown for back on Cybertron.

"Evening, Prime." Wheeljack was about to continue on his way when he remembered Ratchet's suggestion. "So I was wondering… Do you think it'd be alright if Soundwave, Ratchet and I left on a field trip in about…" He quickly checked his chronometer, "45 minutes?"

Optimus looked slightly surprised by Wheeljack asking permission for once to do something. "Don't harm the humans and it will be fine. Do you want me to control the ground bridge for you?"

Wheeljack brightened, "That sounds great!"

"Very well." Optimus paused, knowing he missed an important detail. "Where are the three of you going?"

"On the Nemesis." Wheeljack cheerfully answered before hunting down Soundwave.

Dreadwing sat before a computer, a bored expression on his faceplate as he stared at the screen. The number was up to 9179 and from his calculations they got messages often or in clusters.

There was no way that he could check them, he had unsuccessfully tried hacking into the system and even using all the passwords he thought Soundwave might use. The only hope he had to finally get a glimpse of what was going on was to answer a call when it happened. He had no idea who the calls were coming from and so it seemed like the best course of action, right?

Meanwhile the Nemesis was on its way to the closest mine. Dreadwing made sure of it this time.

He was about to drift of into recharge from sheer boredom when a call snapped him out of it. Dreadwing quickly hit button to answer, hoping that he didn't miss it.

A comm line opened up from the screen, displaying the frequency of each and every voice picked up from the other side of the call along with the location that it was being made from. All of the displays he figured would be useful for someone such as Soundwave, but for Dreadwing, most of the display was meaningless.

"This is Omega 1, pick up Nemesis." The voice sounded as if the owner was frustrated by something.

"This is the Nemesis." Dreadwing replied, hoping that he was heard clear enough by the Decepticons at Omega 1.

"What? The Nemesis picked up?!" The screen displayed the chattering that followed, adding frequencies to the display before a femme quieted them down, narrowing the frequencies down to two individuals.

The femme cleared her voice. "I hope I'm not out of line in asking who are you."

"Dreadwing."

The femme sounded slightly suspicious, "Where's Soundwave. He's usually the one who deals with communications. Was he offlined?"

"No. He's not here at the moment." Dreadwing responded, wondering how much he should say. "Soundwave has been busy with… other matters as of late."

"Did we lose the war?" The first voice questioned, not entirely wanting to know the answer.

"The war is as it's been for the last millennia."

"Well that's good to hear, I think…" A random voice trailed off.

"It's come to my attention that the Nemesis has a lot of missed messages. Do you know anything about this?" Dreadwing asked, crossing his fingers and hoping the femme in charge would know the answer.

"Soundwave checks in with each and every mine on this planet daily. From my understanding, he also keeps in contact with every base and outpost across the universe where communications have been properly established once every few decacycles."

Dreadwing gaped at the screen; amazed that Soundwave would do such a thing without Megatron's knowledge. He knew that the Decepticons could function very smoothly at times, but he thought Megatron was in charge of that. In the recent events it became clear to him that it wasn't Megatron who was responsible.

Was it actually all of Soundwave's hard work and dedication?

Megatron may be the leader and the one who called the shots, but it made sense that it would be Soundwave who made sure the orders were properly received and carried out.

Where did Starscream and Shockwave fall into the mix?

Soundwave put one last cube of energon in his subspace when Wheeljack found him.

"Hey, Sound. Are you done getting ready?"

Soundwave nodded.

"Great. You think we can talk for a bit before we go?"

Another nod.

Wheeljack let Soundwave over to a spot that could easily view the entrance to the medbay and the ground bridge that way when it was time to go, they wouldn't have far to travel. The two then sat down on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, gazes fixed on the entrance to the medbay.

"Regardless of what happens tonight, I want to let you know I'm glad you joined us." Wheeljack began, "I'm happy to have gotten to know you. Sound, you're one cool bot. I really appreciate what you've done for the Autobots and your willingness to help Ratchet with 'Bee's vocalizer."

"Thank you, Wheeljack." Soundwave paused, somewhat unsure of himself. "I appreciate your openness. You can be very… loud at times, but I've grown accustomed and fond of your ways."

"You've gotten close to Ratchet, a lot faster than it took me." Wheeljack sighed, "You make him happy. He won't admit it, but you do. I can't believe I'm doing this, but… if you want to be with him, I won't stop you."

Soundwave reached over and grabbed Wheeljack's servo. He gave it a comforting squeeze. Finding it easier to rely on old habits, he replayed a section of what Wheeljack had just said. "You make him happy. He won't admit it, but you do."

Wheeljack chuckled, a wide grin adorning his faceplate. "You make me happy too."

"Agreed." Soundwave replied.

"So what now?" Wheeljack hesitantly looked over at Soundwave, unsure of what he was going to see. "Do we confess and the three of us start dating? We'd become a… a…"

"Threesome?" Soundwave supplied.

Wheeljack laughed, "I was going to say a trio."

Ratchet came out of the medbay, talking to Optimus about something that they couldn't quite hear.

"Doc! Over here!" Wheeljack waved with his free servo, gaining the attention of the two.

Ratchet said something else to Optimus before they parted ways, Ratchet coming over to where the two were while Optimus went to the ground bridge controls. Ratchet looked over the two before saying, "Did I miss something?"

Soundwave moved his servo and instead motioned for Ratchet to sit down with them. Hesitantly, Ratchet complied sitting so that he was facing the two.

"Sound and I had a very interesting conversation just now that I'd bet my last cube of high grade that you'd want to know about." Wheeljack nudged Soundwave, prompting the mech to reply the entire conversation to the curious medic.

Ratchet waited for the recording to finish before laughing. "A trio, huh? I was going to say a trine."

"You're going to be apart of the trio, right?" Wheeljack prompted, hoping that he and Soundwave were correct in their assumption of Ratchet's feelings.

"Of course I am." With the air of a professional medic, Ratchet added, "If for some Primus-forsaken reason I wasn't, it would be considered a duo."

Steve was the only one who wasn't at his usual location of at this time of night and that was because he was asked to deliver Megatron's energon and then to test it to make sure it wasn't poisoned. Steve's lack of hesitance was enough of an indicator to Megatron that it hadn't been tampered with.

To tell the truth, the Vehicon was very tired, having been up since a few hours before the sun came up to do his shift and so when he saw a hallway on his walk to his sleeping quarters brighten up for the briefest of moments, he excused it as his optics playing tricks with him and left it at that.

It was late and he had a shift to attend to early in the morning. There was no sense in wasting time. Even if he had seen a light, it might have been the Nemesis going through a flux in energy. Stuff like that happened from time to time, right?

Once he turned the corner, Wheeljack poked his helm from around a different corner, checking both directions before whispering to the others. "It's all clear."