Wavy lines and muted colors. That was what filled Cybershock's vision for many moments after her optics had come slowly back online. And in those minutes she just lay where she was, wondering, in her dazed, confused, and disoriented state, exactly where she was to begin with.
She moved slowly then – daring to try, only as her visuals began to focus just the slightest bit. And slowly, while still lying flat on her back, she turned her head to look first to the left, and then to the right.
She was in a large and cluttered room she didn't recognize. She understood that all too slowly, as her vision further cleared up. And for another long moment, she just lay where she was, looking around her at shelves overstuffed with datapads... at a couple of worktables overflowing with all manner of gadgets and scientific equipment.. and then toward a closed sliding door across the room, beside a large projector screen and an energon dispenser.
The youngling took another long, silent moment just to wonder how she'd ended up in... wherever it was that she'd found herself. And all too quickly, she remembered the scraplets!
Cybershock sat up then, using her arms to assist her in the motion – relieved to find them both fully intact and undamaged. And she checked her own legs then – her relief growing instantly to find them too attached and okay.
She was scratched up and scuffed – her usually colorful paint dull and badly damaged. But she was otherwise unharmed. And slowly, she stood up – daring to do so only after another long moment and a quick assessment of her limbs.
"Hello...?"
She called the word out slowly, hesitant, and looking around her. But there was no answer.
"Is... anyone here?"
Again she was hesitant as she called out again. And she hurried to the door, pressing her audial receptor against it, not daring to even try to open it, as she listened carefully, still hearing nothing.
And so, she turned around again away from the door and toward the closet of the cluttered worktables – one beside the simple, lightly padded repair table she'd awakened on.
Cybershock knew she shouldn't be snooping. Her creator had gently told her off more than once after he'd caught her snooping around at things she shouldn't have been, inside the Autobot medbay. But she was nothing if not incessantly curious. And the closest shelf of datapads was too much for a young mind to resist. She grabbed a pad at random, powering it up with a touch of a finger on the bottom of the little screen. And in a second more she was reading intently, with her spark quickly pounding and her interest growing fast, as she set the pad down to reach for another one.
The youngling – now too busy with her reading – didn't even hear the door slide open, until it was too late. And she turned quickly at the sound of heavy footsteps, dropping the pad to the floor with a small, resounding thunk against the metal, as she stared up at the single optic of a large purple-painted bot who towered over her.
"Shockwave..."
Cybershock muttered the name slowly. Because though she'd never met the bot before, she certainly know of him. She bent down, carefully, hesitant as ever, to retrieve the dropped datapad. And she handed it to him at once, relieved as he took it from her carefully, to recall that this large, imposing bot had once known her Creator well.
"I'm sorry..." she said, meaning it entirely. She looked back to the worktable, cluttered with the infamous bot's many datapads – his own personal notes. "But... your work is..."
The large science-bot stopped her mid-sentence with a firm motion of his hand. And for a long moment, he looked her over carefully, while she stood looking up at him.
"You are clearly no worse for wear," Shockwave said, and behind his near-emotionless tone, there was the slightest hint of his obvious relief in that.
"A cryo-grenade made quick work of several hundred scraplets," he explained, answering the question she hadn't yet asked him. "Unfortunately it also knocked you fully into power down amid a heap of junk. I brought you back with me because this place is closer than the hospital. But you showed little sign of damage. I will say, you are a very lucky young bot. If I hadn't just happened by when I did..." His words died around him, unfinished.
"Thank you for saving me!" Cybershock blurted out her gratitude, now that everything made instant sense. And Shockwave, to her immediate surprise, chuckled just the tiniest bit, under his intakes.
"I know full well your creator would kill me with his own two hands for doing anything less," he said, serious again. He gave her another fast look-over, and added in a tone of slight amusement, "I'm not sure he still won't, given the state of your paint job."
"You remade the Predacons!" Cybershock said because her processor would allow her to say little else at that second. And she waved toward the worktable again – the many pads of notes and records, and toward the shelves she could easily guess contained still more of the same. "An entire amazing and once powerful species, saved from extinction, by the wonders of science, and dedication to lifelong ambition."
She questioned herself then for just a moment – recalling the little she'd learned about the illusive bot, who'd chosen isolation. And she asked herself silently if she'd gotten it right. She watched him for a moment more, as he turned his head again to look away from her and back toward his notes – watched his posture shift a little as he appeared to consider intently. And finally, he looked back at her, with his single optic staring her way.
"You... know of the Predacon species?" he asked her. His tone was curious again. And Cybershock just nodded.
"Yes!" she said, excitedly. And she paused then, hesitant and careful, as she slowly continued. "I'm learning, anyway. Or... trying to. I... I know one. One of them... a youngling, is my friend. And..."
The youngling bot stopped speaking, her sentence unfinished, when she felt an energon container shoved urgently into her hands – filled from the dispenser by Shockwave, while she'd just barely bothered to notice him filling one up.
"Please refuel quickly," the science-bot told her, in a tone that just barely hinted at some urgency. "You are most certainly in need of the fuel-boost after your unintended power-down."
"Thank you," Cybershock muttered. She truly was grateful for the fuel. And just as soon as she'd taken her first small drink from the container, she understood, just how much her body did indeed need some.
"The Predacon youngling..." she said urgently, just as soon as she'd drank a little more. "He's... injured."
She drank a few sips more and watched as Shockwave showed the first real hints of obvious emotion she'd so far seen from the mysterious bot – raising his head to look at her at once, with his singular optic silently questioning, his body once with undeniable dismay.
"Injured?" he asked. And if his body hadn't hinted at his capacity for genuine concern, his tone certainly would have.
"His face-plate," Cybershock explained the situation simply – gratefully- as she finished the container of energon. "It looks pretty bad. I... told him to find help. But..."
"Your creator is on his way here any moment now to collect you," Shockwave answered back – just as though there had ever really been reason to doubt that of course he would be. And he sighed, resolute, assured and decided at once. "Just as soon as you are both on your way, I will go and find that injured youngling., in order to assist him myself."
"Thank you." Cybershock's gratitude was surely obvious at once, as she looked up at the large science-bot, sighing her relief as she handed him back the now empty container.
"Why did resurrect the Predacons?" the youngling asked – because suddenly her need to know that much, was overwhelming.
She watched as Shockwave turned away from her, to face a near worktable, piled high with data pads. She heard him sigh then, slowly. And for a long moment, she guessed that maybe he wouldn't answer her at all. She feared then that maybe she'd actually offended him without intending to. But slowly, without turning back around, he began to speak again.
"We were at war. Predaking – the first of them to be reborn – was meant at first to be little more than the ultimate weapon. Then... I suppose I got curious. Too much so I fear for mine of anyone's good. One lone Predacon I'd fast discovered could never truly function as the only one of his kind. So, under the guise of increasing our defensive power, I created more of them. And finally, I left them on their own when the war came to an end. Because leaving them to form their own society... to create and raise their own younglings, and establish a true culture of their own... The chance to simply observe it all unfolding... that is surely the dream of any decent scientist worth the title."
He finally turned around again to look at her. And for a long moment, Cybershock saw the conflict and regrets behind his single and unmoving optic. She listened as he sighed again. And she listened harder, trying to hear just to make out his barely whispered, muttered words.
"Surely we all regret something when it comes to that terrible war. My own biggest regret was the recreation of a species whose time had long since come and gone..."
he was interrupted by the sudden chiming of a small proximity alarm box, which Cybershock quickly found mounted just above the closed door when she thought to look for it and notice it.
Shockwave left her at once, and without a word about it – sliding the door open with a push of a button, before he disappeared down some darkened corridor beyond it. Cybershock stood where she was, silent and too quickly growing restless again. But she wasn't alone for long. Because Shockwave soon returned with her Creator behind him. And both bots were now engaged in a serious sort of conversation.
"I can't thank you enough for rescuing my daughter." Cybershock heard every one of the many emotions in her Creator's voice as he spoke – saw him visibly trembling a little from his own overwhelmed state, as he looked around him with the familiar look of a bot barely registering a single thing he saw. And she watched Shockwave as he simply nodded back – a bot, she understood so fully now, who was doing his own part in just being decent and good, after so long a time on the wrong side of a centuries-long war.
"It..." Shockwave looked so clearly uneasy now. And he looked down toward the floor of the place in which he stood, sighing, before he looked up again. "It was the very least I could have done... the past so well considered."
The city was nearly silent when Cybershock and her creator got back into it. And the streets were all but empty at that hour, save for a bot here and there, passing quickly in their own vehicles modes, or flying high above them.
Her creator was quiet that night – he had been since they'd left Shockwave's home inside the mountain. And it surely wasn't just the focus still required just for him to drive across the pavement without slipping to the left or right as his steering fought against his processor, that caused him to be so.
He was surely disappointed in his daughter for the first time in his life. And Cybershock watched, from inside her little Smart car form, as he slowed a little, then sped up again in front of her – his own upset so obviously making the already tricky task of simply driving just as well as any other bot, far harder than it was on any usual day.
"Hey... Daddy..."
Cybershock pulled around him quickly but hesitant, to stop in the middle of the roadway. And she transformed then, into bot-mode so that she could look at him with intent, regretful optics in the darkness of a Cybertronian night.
"I'm... I'm sorry. I did exactly what you specifically said to never do. I..."
The youngling stopped speaking then – relieved when her creator at least stopped to listen. But unsure what to say now that she'd begun to speak, regardless. She watched him, tears threatening quickly, as he sat still, on the roadway still in his vehicle-mode, and still saying nothing. The young bot's tears fell then because she couldn't stop them. And she hurried backward, dropping to sit on a nearby bench, where she just sat staring out at the darkness through tear-filled optics.
"Cybershock..." her creator was beside her in a second, on the bench. And to her greatest relief, he pulled her tight against his body with both of his arms.
"It may well have been my fault, I fear," he muttered. And when his youngling daughter looked up at him, confused and uncertain, he explained it at once.
"I've... always taught you to do what you truly believe is right... to trust in your spark to know what the right thing truly is. You tried to talk to me about the Predacons, and if I'm honest, I guess I just wasn't fully listening. Maybe, if I'd have listened to you just a little better, I'd have realized then just how much this mattered..."
"Of course it matters," Cybershock was just as much exasperated now as she was relieved. "We call them unpredictable and dangerous, and... and maybe they are. But Shockwave brought the first ones back into existence to be weapons of war. And now they live on... in a world that doesn't want them... in a time they didn't ask to live in. They can barely feed their children... their homes are reinforced with scrap metal, salvaged from our fallen cities..."
Her creator just looked at her, with an expression on his face-plate that showed his interest and regret in equal parts, as understanding fully dawned. He looked for a moment like he was about to speak again. But he didn't. Instead, he just sat, waiting for his youngling to continue as she sat looking up at him.
"Predaking may have helped to save my life once," Cybershock spoke up again – her confidant tone broken only by the tears of emotion that threatened all over again. "I... know bots like to say that probably wasn't his intention... that a good chance at one final fight with Megatron was what likely made him land that night. But... I'm not so sure. I was never convinced. Because why that night of any night would he finally just attack him? And..." Cybershock's tears fell then because she couldn't hold them back any longer. "And... Ironforge saved Stormwave. That little baby might be offline now if he hadn't helped him. And the world just kind of forgot all about that..."
The youngling bot felt her Creator's arms tight around her as he pulled her close to him again. And for a long moment that went on easily into another, both just sat, silent on the bench in the darkness, in the quiet of the recharging city.
"My daughter... uniting the races of Cybertron."
Cybershock looked up when her Creator finally spoke again. And she saw him smile – the kind of uncertain, hopeful, and determined-to-trust kind of smile the older bots used when they needed to convince themselves that fast-maturing younglings weren't about to make an unfixable mess in their own tries at independence.
"I don't think I've laughed that hard in the last century!"
Shortwave paused in the middle of the marketplace, leaning lightly against the back of a bench – one of many that surrounded the central plaza and snack stands – as she stifled the last hints of her laughter. "I'd never realized before you were such a funny bot."
"Well, I most certainly didn't either," Ratchet remarked in response. He stood, amusement and bewilderment both equally clear on his face-plate. He was his typical, fully serious self again in the very next moment – the ridiculous joke he hadn't intended to make, already far from his processor as he finished the container of well-flavored fuel he held in his hand.
"I need to stop by the paint shop today," he said, silently amused as Shortwave continued to giggle just the slightest bit under her intakes, as she she looked up at him, listening. "I just need to have a quick word with Firestorm about..." He paused then, fully set on not alarming his companion without any real need to.
He meant to speak up again, casually hinting at a simple visit as he walked out through the main doors of the marketplace, with her still giggling beside him. But there was clearly so little need to bother. Because Shortwave smiled brightly at once – so clearly excited at the simple thought of her creation's lovely mate, and her little grand-creation, and thinking little of a reason for a visit in the first place.
"I'll race you!" she said, laughing again as she finished her own fuel. And for a moment her face-plate flashed with mischief behind a joking expression.
"We both know I'd hardly stand a chance against an airplane," Ratchet answered, flustered. He shook his head, and further muttered, "even if you flew at low speed and backward!"
"You're right, of course," Shortwave said, laughing again. She slowed her steps in the next moment, her laughter dying out around her as she looked around, with her hands nervously fidgeting with nothing – a bot so clearly unsure of exactly what to do with fully empty hands, and a processor free from constant demands on her attention.
"You are... not used to days spent without any younglings to care for." Ratchet's words were pure observation. And he spoke with confidence, and understanding.
Shortwave just nodded, slowly, thoughtfully.
"I'm more than used to Blastwave's days in school now," she said. "But Lightwave... most certainly not. I never thought for a moment I'd ever see the day... Lightwave, in a classroom."
"Well," Ratchet looked at her, Serious and smiling. "You have this still fast-improving world to thank for that opportunity for her! Educational exposure for every youngling bot of Cybertron."
"True..." the flyer just smiled brightly for a moment as she walked. But slowly, the smiled faded from her faceplate, and she looked at the medi-bot again, serious and sad. "Still... I can't imagine there's really much point."
She stopped walking then entirely, to stand where she was, with her expression turning at once to horrified regret.
"You must think I'm terrible for saying such a thing," she said, sadly and sighing.
"No," the medi-bot shook his head at once as the pair began to walk again. "Because you're absolutely right. Still, time spent in the classroom, among her fellow younging bots certainly won't do her a bit of harm. And it certainly won't hurt the other young ones either. Besides, it's certainly a nice daily break for you, to have your own life for a while."
"My own life?" Shortwave chuckled as she echoed the words back. And she shook her head then, before sighing slowly. "I can't say I've thought much in years about what that life would actually look like." She slowed her pace, until she had nearly stopped again entirely. And for a long moment she simply considered.
"My younglings are my life now," she said. But there was more to say, and she said it, slowly, uncertain and hesitant. "Getting them to safety, to Cyberton... that was my life's mission for so long. And... now we're here. We're safe, and happy. And I have no idea what to do with myself aside from endless care for younglings who need me less and less every day."
"You could... come to a party with me for starters."
Ratchet's words made Shortwave laugh for a good long moment. And finally, she looked up at him again, to see that he was, oddly, quite serious in his comment.
"I mean it," he said, confirming. "Tomorrow evening. Some event for the hospital planned a while back. I might just look like less of a fool if I only had a decent dance partner."
"Hmm..." Shortwave chuckled as she continued walking. "Now... if only I knew of a bot who could dance, so I could introduce you two!"
Ratchet chuckled back for a moment, shaking his head and amused all over again by the dark blue painted flier. He smiled, cheerful and confidant, until that confidence faded abruptly, to be replaced by hesitation.
"I wouldn't be going at all," he said thoughtfully. "Parties are hardly my thing... even if most invited guests are bots from within my own field. But I'm told I need to be there... something about accepting an award."
"Oh?"
Shortwave was curious now. And her tone was one of pride, as she questioned with her optics, looking up at the medi-bot as they walked.
"For my work on the subject of acquired processor damage," Ratchet explained, hardly the least bit impressed with his own achievement. And he shook his head again, huffing just a little under his intakes, as he waved a hand around just a little, in a gesture of dismissal. "I can't say I understand the council's insistence on this. Obviously I had no choice when circumstances threw me into the work, and the resulting research."
"Your life... your work..." Shortwave spoke with admiration now. And she looked from the medi-bot, to the walkway and back again – thinking of her own job of near daily cleaning duties inside the event-center - as she did so. "It will always be so... meaningful."
Ratchet smiled for a moment... then he looked uncertain, and then thoughtful. But he remained silent all the same, just looking her over and waiting for her to continue.
"I..." Shortwave struggled for a brief moment with her own words, just trying to make her own thoughts make sense. And finally, she spoke up again, hesitantly. "I... guess even now, the functionalist thinking I grew up with, lives on somewhere in my processor and spark..."
They reached the paintshop then, after crossing the road in the midst of conversation. And smiling again, with renewed excitement for the day, Shortwave hurried to stand in front of the shop's sliding door, letting it slide open on its track before she stepped inside at once.
"Firestorm?"
She called out the name cheerfully, looking around for said bot, and exchanging her first confused glance with the medi-bot beside her when no answer greeted her from within the clearly still-open and unlocked little shop.
"Anybot home?"
She called out the words, still cheerfully – walking forward slowly with Ratchet close behind her. But when both bots caught the sound of a first-frame youngling's cries of undeniable distress as both approached the closed work-room door, Shortwave ran forwards at once, gasping in her own distress as she reached the door quickly.
"Shortwave... wait..." Ratchet muttered urgently. Because he didn't need to enter the room, in order for both his own medical programming and simple sense and instinct to tell him that something was very wrong. He hurried to the door, pulling it open as the tiny bot – one he knew full well so seldom fussed and cried at all – began to scream louder from behind it.
"Firestorm!" the medi-bot said, his fast-growing dread becoming true alarm when he found said bot sprawled awkwardly onto the floor – halfway to sitting up, with her drawing stool tipped onto its side nearby. Meanwhile, her newborn youngling son's unheeded cries grew louder from inside his little basket nearby.
"Scrap..." the young flier muttered the word quietly. And her sheer embarrassment was more then clear as she looked up at the medic and her mate's carrier. Then her faceplate turned serious, and urgent as she looked toward her youngling, still crying in alarm inside the basket nearby.
It seemed at first like Firestorm had simply fallen – in an explainable act of occasional clumsiness – from the top of the stool, instead of sitting firmly on it. But the rest of her workstation told a very different story. And Shortwave took it all in slowly, with a sinking spark – the multiple blushes and a mini-sprayer all knocked down from a shelf against the closest wall... the drawing screen filled with more blurred lines than legible artwork. The young bot had tried to fill a fueling bottle too. And she'd clearly managed to do so, because one lay, nearly still full, on the small table next to the baby's little basket. But under the little, portable dispenser, that sat inside the workroom, there was nevertheless, an undeniable mess of spilled energon, and powered first-frame additive mix.
"Firestorm..."
Shortwave muttered the name, in dismay, watching as the medi-bot helped the young bot to her feet. She watched her as she stumbled in the first second she was standing again, and knew in an instant, the clearly sick bot would have fallen to the floor all over again, had the medic not been suoorting nearly her entire body weight by then.
He moved her to sit on a bench by the wall. And she was nearly seated safely, when she stumbled forward, dead weight against the medi-bot's body, and her optics offline.
"What... what's wrong with her?"
Shortwave's question, and the tone of alarm so clear in her voice, made the medic shake his head at once, entirely uncertain. And he muttered said uncertainty, while looking up just long enough to see her lift the still screaming, panicked baby from the basket.
"Firestorm..." Ratchet's voice was firm but slow and steady as he held the still unmoving bot against his own body, supporting her weight as he moved her to the workroom floor. "Come on... talk to me, please."
The young flying bot still showed no sign of any awareness at all. And she certainly didn't answer him. In fact she then began to shake, hard and violently instead.
"Notify Soundwave," Ratchet said, turning back to look at Shortwave for the briefest instant as he did so. "Tell him we're headed straight to the hospital and to meet us there as soon as he possibly can."
But there was little need to have said anything at all, and he saw that at once. Because Shortwave was already busy on her commlink, doing just that while she held her now just slightly calmer grand-creation tight against her chest panel.
"Soundwave." The mentioned bot turned quickly, at the sound of his own name. And in his present state – distracted, his mind racing a mile in a moment, and near the point of shaking as he held his newborn in his arms – he barely recognized the bot who'd spoken.
'Downshift'
Understanding came slowly. And he turned around the rest of the way from his place at the window he'd been staring out idly, to look the young medical student in the optics at once. He watched her for barely a second as she stood, smiling with her obvious uncertainty and a vaguely professional look, as she fumbled a bit with a small stack of datapads balanced in her hands.
"How is Firestorm?" he questioned, skipping past any casual pleasantries immediately. He glanced around the busy, crowded waiting room for just a moment – barely seeing at least twenty bots in their colorful paint, who sat around, quiet and bored and barely appearing to notice him either – before his optics went back to the student.
He watched her, uneasy, as she just shook her head, motioning him to follow behind her, and nearly dropping her pads again as she did so.
"I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I... I don't know. But I'll take you right to her... and to Ratchet, who will surely explain..."
"He is... doing very well it seems," the student said, making idle conversation, with her optics on the baby as they walked into an empty corridor. She looked uneasy. Soundwave could see that in an instant. And he knew at once without needing to ask, that she did indeed know something, despite her insistence to the contrary.
"He certainly is," Soundwave muttered in reply to her comment, his unease fast increasing, and his hold on Stormwave just a little tighter. As a pair of doors slid shut behind them, shutting them into a nearly silent hospital ward.
They walked past several closed doors, quickly. And when they reached one close to the end of the hallway, Downshift stopped, pausing in front of it, to tap on it lightly with her fingertips, while still holding onto her datapad stack. She turned then, looked just a little flustered for the briefest of moments, and set the pads down onto a rolling supply cart left sitting next to the door, and loaded up with empty energon containers.
"Wait here," she said politely, before stepping into the room. "You'll be seen in a minute."
Soundwave began to pace around, nervous and uncertain when the student had left him alone in the silence of the corridor. But he didn't have long enough to make even two full lengths along the insignificant distance of the door's track, before said door slid open yet again.
Ratchet hurried out of the room, letting it shut behind him before he stepped – with his faceplate distracted – toward Soundwave. He nodded to the bot, in one quick motion, before he lead him to the closest bench, across the hall.
"How is Firestorm?" Soundwave asked the quickly quickly, not bothering with pleasantries. And his spark sank fast when he heard the medic sigh slowly while looking at the floor.
"You were right when you told me something might really have been wrong," he said. And he wasn't even trying to hide his own emotions now, dropping to sit down on the bench himself. And Soundwave watched for a long moment, as he sat tapping the fingers of one hand against the arm of said bench in clear unease, and his own helplessness.
"It is..." Ratchet continued on, while muttering now - hesitating over it, as he looked up again. "It is not good. I have run several tests. And the results will be back anytime now, ideally. But based on the assessments I was able to make, given her current state, it's most certainly not good."
"I... won't know for sure until I get those test results back," he said slowly. "I'm still waiting for the final result of the last test I ran. But I know full well I'm right, regardless – and all that despite my hopes and denial. Soundwave... there's a very good chance with little room for doubt, that your bond-mate is suffering from a still unnamed disease most closely related to processor circuitry rapid degradation syndrome."
'Impossible!' The word echoed through Soundwave's processor, the second the old medi-bot's words had fully registered.
'He's wrong. He's gotten it wrong!'
He sat for a moment, silent on the bench. And that moment dragged slowly into another, and then more. The weight of his son, still a small and helpless newborn youngling, felt heavy in his arms. And suddenly the weight was gone entirely.
Soundwave looked up again – his optics focusing before he realized he'd ever lost focus on the room at all – to see the medic now holding the baby. And he realized, with a terrible start, that in his own disbelieving shock, he'd nearly lost his hold on him, and sent the youngling falling to the floor.
"The... disease that offlined Starscream..." Soundwave stammered out the words horribly, as he tired to stop his hands from shaking violently from his fast growing horror. "That... that so quickly destroyed every bit of his usable function, until... he was barely a remnant of himself in the end...?"
'That can't be right.' The thought screamed in Soundwave's processor, quickly followed by rage... and then by immediate denial. 'There was a mistake made somewhere. Surely such mistakes can happen, even to the best of them.'
"Not quite," Ratchet said, continuing right on with the topic at hand. And his tone was doubtful – one of a bot who so clearly knew that the technical distinctions hardly made a difference. And it was serious, all the same. "It's not quite the same condition, remember. The progression won't look quite the same... but..."
He stopped speaking then, abruptly. And Soundwave knew him well enough to know he'd stopped, because it, indeed, hardly made much difference in the moment.
"If I'm right about this, then it's still early on..." Ratchet muttered. And Soundwave snapped out of his shock just well enough to register the feeling of the medic's free hand, resting gently on his shoulder panel. "There is... a fair amount of hope for successful treatment. I can't lie... it's hardly guaranteed. And the road forward will be far from easy. This disease is a rare one... rarer even than PCRDS. And it's never even been officially named in the medical texts, because of said rarity. But, based on success with treatment of its sister disease, in its early stages, I'd say she might still have a fair chance...
For too many long moments, Soundwave just stared at the wall, watching as the silvery surface appeared to ripple and swirl around, in the haze of his vision. He was trembling badly, and of that much he was all too aware – though at the same time he was fully powerless to stop it. And he balled his hands up at once, into fists of frustration, instead, in his futile struggle for control.
"Please... let me see her."
His voice sounded far away as he spoke the words out loud. And they echoed through his audials, as he fought against a sudden need to purge his tank violently. He might have stumbled then, his body refusing to cooperate entirely in his effort to stand up if Ratchet hadn't grabbed him fairly by an upper arm.
Stormwave was recharging now, even if restlessly. And Soundwave steadied his hold on the child – grateful for the effort it took to do so, in his state. Because that alone kept him far more firmly in the present, as the doors slid open before him.
"Firestorm is not alone," Ratchet said – an answer to the question Soundwave had not yet found the spark to ask. The old medic smiled a little, assuring, as they continued forward through the quiet ward. "Your carrier is with her. You know of course that she was with me when we found Firestorm unconscious in the paint shop. She hasn't left her yet. And I know I couldn't make her if I tried."
Soundwave hesitated just a moment as the door in front of him slid open. And then he peeked around the corner, not unlike a nervous youngling, before he took one step and then another into the doorway of the room. He wondered what he'd find inside – pictured in this processor just had bad the scene easily have looked. And it was determination that made him step forward regardless.
He sighed out loud in his utter relief just a moment later, when he saw, easily and quickly, that the worst of his fears, and the cause of his dread had been all but unfounded.
Firestorm was awake now, and sitting up, with some decent sense of balance on the recharge station. She and Shortwave had so obviously been engaged in conversation too – and not one of the negative kind either. Because Firestorm was smiling, the lingering hints of her good-natured laughter still showing in her optics as she looked toward the door. She smiled brightly for another moment. And Soundwave wondered then if she knew anything herself yet of her own condition.
It was clear in the next moment, that she did – and that despite her still bright smile and last hints of her laughter. Because her faceplate turned serious then – contemplative and thoughtful... understanding – before she simply smiled again with a strange sort of confidence that Soundwave himself knew that he could never possess.
"We'll... be okay," she said. Her voice was just a little slow – that of a bot in clear need of rest. And her hands trembled just a little while her head tilted just the slightest bit toward the left even while supported on her pillows. But she just smiled again, and brighter now as she reached out toward the baby.