Chapter Ten
It was late in the afternoon when Soundwave and Thundercracker returned to the shanty to find it empty. Thundercracker instantly started spinning in circles in the middle of the hut as though his missing youngest brother would materialize in one of the dark corners if he looked at them all enough times.
"Where'd he go? He never goes anywhere on his own!" he fretted.
"I believe you would have more success in locating him if you left the hut," Soundwave pointed out, and Thundercracker frowned at him before following his advice.
The former satellite listened to him calling for his brother while he sank down to the damp ground (it always managed to be damp in the hut, despite the fact that it hadn't rained once the whole time they'd been there) and rubbed a hand over his face tiredly. The simple fact was that he was worried, too—more worried than he'd ever been before—and it was starting to show on his stupidly expressive human face.
Rumble and Frenzy weren't young—not by human standards, anyway. They had seen death, they had seen war; there wasn't much they hadn't seen, but Soundwave still couldn't help feeling an overpowering sense of protective instinct over them. It was worse in this organic form.
He worried about them sometimes even more than Thundercracker did about Skywarp. They wandered off and he didn't know where they were, who they were with, or when they'd be back. He'd seen the human children beaten before, many of them even younger and smaller than his own creations, and he knew that if he ever suspected someone of hitting Rumble or Frenzy, he'd kill them with his own hands. He wouldn't be able to stop himself. And it would put all of them in danger.
At least while they were Cybertronian, he'd always known what the twins were doing. He had been in constant communication with them 24/7, even when they were billions of miles away from each other fighting in the war. It was frustrating now, not knowing what they were up to and not having the power to stop the stupid ideas forming in their minds before they acted on them.
He wasn't ignorant of the twins' penchant for misbehavior. He never had been. They were fragged up little glitches with a severely warped sense of humor, but they were his fragged up little glitches and he wouldn't want them any other way. The only problem was that now that he had been cursed with this abominable human state, he no longer possessed his telepathic abilities, and so the twins could be up to Primus knew what without his having the slightest clue.
Thundercracker returned then, dragging a protesting Skywarp behind him.
"But she was nice, T.C.! She was teaching me!" Skywarp was whining at his brother. There was an intriguing, savory smell wafting off of him that painfully reminded Soundwave of just how long it had been since he had eaten.
"We still shouldn't be spending time with the humans. What would Megatron say?" Thundercracker shot back.
"You're not going to tell him, are you?"
"I..."
Soundwave sensed the two Seekers looking in his direction. He glanced over and shrugged. As far as he was concerned, Megatron only needed to know what it would hurt him not to, especially these days, and he doubted that Skywarp had the capacity to cause the kind of trouble that would hurt anyone. He never had been a very good Decepticon, after all.
"No, I'm not going to tell him," Thundercracker finished. "But all the same, you don't know what might come of spending time with them. It could be—"
He was cut off by a ruckus from outside, and a moment later, the twins came bursting into the shanty.
"Hi, Soundwave!" they called as they rushed past him to the small mound of possessions that they had managed to acquire from somewhere over the last few days.
Soundwave's relief at their reappearance quickly dissipated when they began whispering to one another, their backs turned to him.
They were clearly up to something again, and there was no chance it was any good. Unfortunately, they were not quite within his earshot. He shifted towards them slightly, hoping he could get close enough to hear without them noticing.
They did notice.
Frenzy's eyes flicked in Soundwave's direction, and he quickly nudged his twin into silence. The two of them stared accusingly at their creator until he turned away again. As soon as he did, they resumed their hushed conversation.
Soundwave found it all very suspicious.
Now, there was a rustling noise to his right. The twins were getting up and looked as if they were heading out again.
"Where are you going?" he asked as monotonously as he could manage with a human voice box.
The twins turned to look at him. "Sight seeing," Rumble said cheerfully. Beside him, Frenzy nodded and smiled unconvincingly.
Bullshit, thought Soundwave—vaguely aware of how human the sentiment was—and watched them bounce away happily. They didn't honestly expect him to believe that, did they? It was insulting if they did.
Deciding that no one would care if he were to spend the evening stalking his own creations, Soundwave stood up and started to follow after the twins before they could slip out of sight, ignoring the Seekers' questioning looks as he passed by.
Rumble and Frenzy unwittingly led their creator deep into the slum, passing through parts that he had not encountered yet. Some of the shanties were in better condition than theirs—one or two even had doors, and Soundwave couldn't help but feel a little jealous—but most were worse. Far worse.
Soundwave looked away as he came to the sudden realization that around here, a roof over one's head was a rare privilege that few had the chance to experience.
Soon, the claustrophobic settings of the slum began to thin out as they left the litter-strewn streets and entered a far more open area. Soundwave took a deep breath, preparing to relish the expanse before him, and then quickly wished he hadn't.
A dump!
This was his creations' destination? A dump?!
Soundwave felt an irresponsible trickle of disappointment, having wished deep down that the twins' destination be somewhat more... interesting? Exciting? After all, how much mischief could they get up to in a place like this? It wasn't exactly a prime place to vandalize or steal from.
Ahead of him, Rumble and Frenzy were now climbing up the nearest, upper most pile of rubbish, presumably to survey the area. Soundwave moved around to position himself behind them, ensuring that they wouldn't be able to see him from their vantage point. Looking around, he was intrigued to notice that the twins were not the only beings present in the dump.
Despite their bare feet and the undoubtedly unhygienic and dangerous conditions of the dump, numerous residents of the slum—some as young as two, some as old as eighty—were strolling about in the waste, occasionally kicking around in it as if spending the evening here was some sort of popular leisure activity. One figure broke from the rest and climbed the rubbish pile to join his twins, a girl slightly smaller than the two of them. He couldn't hear their conversation from his vantage point, but it seemed animated and friendly.
Soundwave was now completely flummoxed.
That was, until he noticed a vehicle approaching in the distance.
All of a sudden, Rumble, Frenzy, and the girl threw themselves down their mound, sprinting off at full speed in the direction of the oncoming vehicle—which, now that it was close enough, Soundwave could tell was a truck—as did everyone else.
The former satellite watched from his safe distance as the rubbish truck came to a halt, dumped its load, and began to drive off again. He continued to watch as well over twenty people, including his creations, rushed over to the freshly dumped waste and began to rummage through it with an almost rabid ferocity.
And then he understood.
They were scrounging for things to sell—waste-picking, it was called. Soundwave almost smiled; at least Rumble and Frenzy were trying to make an honest living—unlike Starscream and, he strongly suspected, Slipstream. Never mind that scavenging was still considered illegal in many parts of the country. He would have felt proud of his twins if, at that exact moment, Frenzy had not punched an elderly man in the stomach to gain ownership of a tin can. But at least they were trying.
By the time Starscream got back that evening, the others had long since returned and were all fast asleep—except Megatron, of course. The former warlord was siting up outside the door, his dark eyes catching the moonlight as they stared accusingly at the errant Seeker.
"What?" Starscream hissed, wrapping his arms around himself in the chill of the night.
"As we've had this conversation already, I'm sure you can guess," Megatron replied.
"And you know my response. Good night." He made to step past his leader into the hut, expecting to be stopped. To his immense surprise, Megatron sighed, but did not move. It was so uncanny that he found himself poking his head back out the door a moment later. "You aren't planning to sleep out here, are you?" he demanded.
"If it will prevent you from trying to eat me in the middle of the night, then yes."
Starscream snorted and retreated, shivering, back into the hut. He cast a jealous glance at his brothers wrapped around each other beneath their blankets as he made his way to his own pile. They looked warm. For a moment, he stood over them, torn between wanting to join them and wanting to kick Thundercracker in the head and wake him up out of spite. In the end, he just sniffed and went about wrapping himself in blankets. It didn't do much good. It never did.
Nothing did much good these days.
And there it was. Starscream bit his lip in frustration as the now-familiar wave of despair and self-pity washed over him, crushing him in its wake. He hated this most of all about being human, hated the way he barely had control over his own emotions. Just a minute ago, he had been almost happy, satisfied with his takings for the day, and full of the warm rice that he and Ajit had shared for their dinner. Now, all of that had been superseded by the fact that he was cold, which had reminded him that he hadn't slept well in days, which in turn reminded him of how painfully human he was.
It was always like this. Several times a day, he would find himself awash in a sea of misery that no amount of scheming or planning could ever pull him out of. The others didn't seem bothered by it so much. They were going about their lives normally, almost as if they were finding pleasure in being made of organic slag that was slowly but surely rotting away every second of every day...
Soft but heavy footfalls interrupted his spiraling thoughs, and Starscream curled himself tighter, burying his face in his blankets, as they approached him. There was no way he was going to give Megatron any sign that he had been on the verge of tears.
The former warlord paused just beside his second, and Starscream stayed stock still, trying to pretend that he was already asleep. What was the old fool doing? What did he want? He continued refusing to move, even as Megatron bent down and...
"What are you doing?" Starscream demanded in a low hiss as his commander stretched out on the ground next to him.
"I cannot sleep with you shivering so loudly," Megatron replied, tugging at the edge of the blankets.
"I was not—" Starscream began to shriek, but Megatron cut him off by clapping a hand over his mouth.
"I would prefer if you didn't wake the others," he rumbled. "Now, let me in, and perhaps we can both get a proper sleep for once."
"As if I could sleep with you so close," the Seeker hissed once his mouth was free again.
"You managed quite well last night," Megatron pointed out.
And this was a good point. However the two of them had ended up next to each other, the fact remained that Starscream had probably had a better sleep last night than any other since becoming human. Perhaps he could use his commander to his advantage for a while. He huffed in irritation and lifted the edge of his blankets.
"You do anything suspicious and I bite," he declared.
"You bite me again, and I'll break your face," Megatron growled back as he slipped under the covers, pressing himself against the Seeker's small frame. "What do you even imagine I would do to you?"
Starscream wasn't sure, now he thought of it, and decided that it didn't matter anyway. Megatron's warmth was already radiating through his whole body, filling him with a relaxed drowsiness that was at once both unfamiliar and wonderfully right. Who'd have thought that the moron could be so useful? It took all of his willpower not to nestle further into that broad chest.
"Just... don't move around too much," he murmured, closing his eyes.
Megatron grunted in reply and slung an arm over the Seeker, pulling him a little closer. Starscream didn't bother to complain—he was already half-asleep.