Intermission 7

Give Me a Sign

"Days go by, give me a sign, come back to the end, the shepherd of the damned, I can feel you falling away, no longer the lost, no longer the same, and I can see you starting to break"

Soundwave had once been a gladiator in Kaon, one of the very best. In fact, he had only ever been bested by Megatron himself. This was surprising, considering his original frame type and purpose. The mech was slender, even with all the extra battle armor, and taller than most. For all of that, he was a good fighter and he clawed his way to the top on skill and wit alone.

Soundwave had been built for one purpose- spying. He was built slender to fit into small places or fade into the background. His processor was top of the line, all fast paced thoughts and smooth transitions. Many assumed he was a telepath and they were right, after a fashion. All systems give off specific sounds and he had long ago learned how to listen to them with his finely tuned audio receptors. Soundawave lived and thrived on sound waves and it made him wonder just how much those scientists knew when they designated him.

Here, though, orbiting in space, there was not a lot of use for his skill. He had been assigned to monitor the human satellite system, but that task took up so little of his processor power that he was very bored much of the time, left alone with his thoughts and the stars. He did not want to be alone with his thoughts. They made him sick. He made himself sick.

If he were honest with himself, something he rarely was these days, he would admit that he was ashamed of himself, his faction, his whole race. He was ashamed of his people for allowing things to go so far and twice as ashamed of himself for perpetuating things as he had and for allowing himself to drift so far from the ideals he had once held so tightly to. He had been drawn by Megatron, drawn to his power and authority. He was also drawn to that one, all-important idea of equality. The young Megatronus once said that all Cybertronians deserved equal standing in society, something that certainly did not exist then. Still didn't. Megatron's ideas of equality for all and even Prime's sermons about freedom, justice and peace were in shambles, worth less than scrap. They were in the middle of a very long, very dirty war and no one walks out of a war with their belief intact or their hands clean. Primus, there was so much energon on his servos.

The worst part was that Soundwave didn't even know if he felt remorse anymore. He knew that pain and suffering he had caused, was still causing. As he floated above this planet like a god, he was free to view everything like a god through their satellite system. So he knew that the Prime was dead, knew it to be his fault, and his spark hurt in that odd, distant way, for causing his Prime harm. So he had seen his femme, seen her all grown up with a chip on her shoulder the size of their dead planet, proudly wearing the Autobot symbol and quietly in agony over her broken bonds. Again, he felt remorse and guilt because she had never had a chance to grieve for her creators, hadn't been able to spend time with her split-sparked twin, but it was still distant and cold. That twin had been his charge and he couldn't find her no matter how far or how hard he looked. This, he thought, was most troubling. The both of them had been living with only half a spark for so long, he doubted either had even realized but he knew that with the deactivation of the firewalls in their processors, they would feel it all very acutely. He had been that second spark's caretaker for far too long to just sit back and let her be in pain while her twin had someone to lean on, but he couldn't find her. And he didn't care. He couldn't find that part of his spark that made him care.

It was this lack of feeling that his black thoughts had been focusing on lately. He was naturally reticent and had never really been free with his emotions, but this was entirely different. At first he had simply thought that the war was catching up to him and his spark was truly shriveling up into nothing. Then he noticed an odd line of code in his systems.

And he realized it had nothing to do with him.

It was that revelation and a slightly less distant incensed rage that kept him from noticing the spark signature barreling through the atmosphere on the other side of the planet. The very spark he had been looking for.

0o0

He's dead.

She can't remember much, just yelling and gunshots and the order to move. That was nothing, the story of her life. That wasn't what had her staring blankly out of the window of NEST's eerily quiet C-17, wondering just what she had done to be so heavily punished. This was cruel beyond belief.

He's dead.

The sudden warmth and sound of humming systems beside her alerted her to the mech beside her. She didn't turn her head, couldn't because if she did, she'd be faced with him, laid out in the middle of the plane's holding area, cold and gray and lifeless-

Dead, he's dead.

"He's alive you know," she murmured because she needed to focus on something that didn't revolve around red and blue and strut-shaking deep voices and she knew without looking that the mech beside her was a wreck. Sideswipe visibly stiffened, nearly vibrating at the prospect and she almost smiled. At least someone could feel something other than this awful emptiness in the pit of her spark. "Sunstreaker. He's here on earth and I know where to find him." And if her voice was nothing but a croaking, lifeless shadow of what it normally was, Sideswipe didn't comment.

A whispered "Thank you," was all she got in reply and she just nodded, laying her helm on the glass. This was not how she imagined seeing her team mates again, not exhausted and covered in energon and mourning way too many heavy losses and slaggit, but she knew what would happen next and she wished that that logical part of her processor that was already in tactician mode would just shut down so she could grieve properly.

Because she knew they would look to her now. When the Prime was nowhere to be found, the people always look to the Prime's bonded. And even though Strikezone didn't technically hold that title, she was still considered as such. She had done it before, given orders in the absence of Prime, Prowl and Jazz but that was different. This time, none of them were coming back. Jazz was long dead, Prowl was lost to the stars and Prime…

Dear Primus, she didn't want to think it, it shouldn't be possible-this can't be happening-

"We'll be landing in twenty, sir." The human's voice broke the silence again and the soldier she had been introduced to in the mayhem with eyes that held that same jadedness of the Autobots- Major Lennox- nodded and stood.

Optimus Prime is dead.