Notes/ I've had a few days off, and no life to speak of. Also, this chapter basically wrote itself. So I'm updating so quickly because of all that. It's very short but it feels finished to me and I'm about to start the next one anyway. This is another pretty much entirely Soundwave/Firestorm centred chapter... but I feel a light warning is in order here. This one gets heavy by the end
"Do you remember that day my creator left us alone all day locked in our apartment... you brought out that paint you'd been hiding from him..." Soundwave asked laughing hard as he remembered a day so long ago.
And Shortwave, sitting on a large slab of cobalt at the furthest corner of the city park, looked up at him. Her optics, which had cleared of coolant from her third hard round of laughter, filed instantly with more and she nearly fell forward right off the metal slab she was sitting on.
"I had nothing to really paint on and no need to repaint anything, but I decided I would paint on your body armour..." she laughed.
"I was so impressed when you finally let me look at myself in the wash station... that incredible space battle scene you'd made. You were an amazing artist..."
"Remember the rooftop?"
Soundwave smiled at this instantly, nodding.
"You used to take me up there to get me away from creator, when he'd get too drunk and threaten to beat me because I wouldn't even try to speak," he said. And although that was certainly terrible and sad, he went on smiling anyway. "I'd always talk to you though because you never laughed or smacked me in the face-plate when I got ten words all wrong. And you'd spin me around, holding my hands until my feet left the floor..."
"You'd laugh so hard, and insist that you could fly..."
Soundwave nodded again, laughing for perhaps the fourth time in that hour of visiting. But when he stopped again this time, he found himself looking intently at his creator's face-plate – far more so than he had yet in the days since they'd reunited. He remembered what she'd looked like on that rooftop... just what she'd been that day she'd found paint. He remembered the way she'd assumed she could do anything... someday. And yet she'd seemed to know so little in the then and now.
"You were so young then," Soundwave said. And the realization struck him hard because in his memories she'd always been much older. "Very young..."
"I was," Shortwave answered. She laughed a little, but it was a kind of nervous laugh now. "Still a forth frame youngling when your were born. You'd lived a decade before I reached a century..."
"Even back then there were laws against such situations," Soundwave muttered. He knew the law well, both modern and historic thanks to his work in law enforcement. And suddenly he hated his creator more then he ever had before, for daring to illegally own an interface slave who was still very much a child herself when she was sold and purchased.
"Do you really think he was ever one to give a frag about laws?" Shortwave said back. And her tone was serious and sad even as she shook her head as though it didn't matter to her anymore.
"Soundwave, do you remember the song I used to like to sing to you?" she asked, changing the subject again right back to the more joyful of their memories.
"There were a few..." Soundwave answered, laughing because no matter which one she might have actually meant, it was equally funny. "You used to change the words to them all. And you were so quick too. You even..." Soundwave absolutely burst out laughing then so hard he could barely speak and he nearly fell of the slightly lower metal slab he'd found his own seat on. It was the hardest he could ever recall laughing in his life and it surprised him to openly do so even in the moment. "You... even had a one lovely one about Creator falling out a window!"
"I can't remember all the words I made up anymore. But... I did still find myself singing the first verse sometimes while I flew my ship through empty space..."
"I used to wish I could sing as well as you..."
"I don't think I ever once heard you try to in your youngling years."
"I didn't," Soundwave answered, still smiling as his laughter finally died away. He never had tried it even once, because he could only even image it would have been a hard thing to do. It was difficult enough for him - even now when it outwardly seemed like he was so much batter – to keep his words straight while simply speaking. He'd never once imagined it could possibly work out any better while trying to sing lyrics.
"Try it!" Shortwave urged, a confidant smile filling her face-plate now. And when Soundwave just looked at her half sideways, as though she'd suddenly lost her mind entirely, she grinned bigger through her laughter and looked completely serious somehow. "You can't say you wish you could if you've never tried to even once."
"Maybe someday I will, Carrier," Soundwave answered, before he started laughing again.
"Can I ask you a question?" Shortwave asked a second later. And her optics stared at his, this time completely seriously
"Of course you can, carrier..."
"The day I first came to meet you with your brother and your sister... you said there was hope in this city for a bot like Lightwave..."
"Yes."
"What exactly did you mean by that?"
Soundwave sat a moment just watching her and smiling, before he smiled down at his tiny sister who lay on the ground - the soft stuffed toy she must have loved, laying across her navy blue chest panel - on a soft blue cover their carrier had brought along for her and produced earlier from somewhere at the bottom of the chair she was pushed in. Two bots had of course come to mind at once, both of which could began to make his point well.
"I've known two bots to suffer from processor damage," he said, quickly deciding to keep it simple as neither was really his story to tell. He smiled brighter at Lightwave, somehow moved when her half closed optics lit a little in what he guessed could just have been recognition. "You know them both too, carrier. One of them is the youngling ward's medic. And the other is Firestorm."
If Shortwave looked shocked and surprised at the mention of the first bot - and she did - then the mention of the second made her optics open wide with her disbelief.
"Knockout's condition was once much worse than Firestorm's," Soundwave explained. "Though... his language systems were completely unaffected, while hers were. And neither was close to as badly damaged as Light' seems to be. Still Ratchet found a way to fix both of them eventually, and I can't imagine he'd give up on Lightwave either."
"I had no idea..." Shortwave muttered, her shocked surprise more obvious than ever.
"Talk to Firestorm," Soundwave told her confidently. "She really won't mind. She's hardly that type." he considered for a moment. "I will be working tomorrow afternoon, but she should be home. I'll tell her to expect you. You can have a nice little visit because she absolutely loves you too. You could easily talk to Knockout too, I would imagine. I cannot imagine he'd mind..."
Firestorm had just left the wash station after purging her tanks in a sudden unexpected and terrible bout of queasiness, and she leaned for a moment against the coolness of the outside wall of the recharge station, letting the metal of it cool her overheated body armour. She moved again talking a few steps across the room, and toward the door into the hallway, when she turned around again. A sudden need to continue purging her tank made her run back to the wash station at full speed ahead.
She sat on the cold floor for a good while after that. And she wondered even after she was convinced she was finally done with being sick, if perhaps she ought to comm Soundwave. He was busy, she knew well, thinking of a case he'd mentioned working last night in which a bot had been robbed in his home at blast point. And she decided at once not to bother him over such a thing as a queasy and unsettled fuel tank. And she felt better, she realized, now that her tank was mostly empty of whatever had clearly upset it. She moved to stand up again, just slightly shaky. And slowly she crossed the tiny room to wash her face-plate under a cool stream of water.
Firestorm resolved to check on the iron flavor packet from which she had poured some powder into her fuel that morning, sure it may well have been stale, as she stood up straight again. And she wondered if perhaps she ought to lay down to rest a while. She was strangely tired in the middle of the day for the third time in days. But a buzzing at the door of the apartment put all thoughts of a short nap out of her head at once. She hurried instead for the door, still shaken a little from her sudden bout of purging.
"Shortwave! Blast' and Light'!" she exclaimed happy despite her sudden tiredness, when she saw Soundwave's family gathered in a tight little group in her doorway. She of course extended a hand to wave them all inside, stepping out of their way to let them do so, before she followed them in after she'd allowed the door to slide shut behind them all.
"Soundwave encouraged me to visit with you today," Shortwave explained, smiling a little with a look of slight uncertainty as she sat down in the tiny living room.
"He mentioned that you might," Firestorm answered back, remembering that then, and feeling just slightly silly for being so suddenly scatter-brained as to have forgotten all about it.
She hurried to the fuel dispenser, wedged tightly into the only place it had even seemed to fit, between the main door and a small storage closet filled with stacked crates of odds and ends. And after dumping the possibly no good flavor packets out, she brought a small dish of the rest of them to the living room, offering the bowl to let Shortwave and Blast' choose.
Shortwave shook her head with a small smile, insisting cheerfully that she had only ever liked her energon completely unflavored. Blast' was hesitant too, clearly never having tried added flavors in his fuel at all yet But he slowly inspected the packets in the bowl with his small hands before he finally pulled out a cobalt flavoured one – which made Firestorm instantly smile because she knew that was Soundwave's favourite one too.
"Firestorm, would you mind terribly filling this for Lightwave?" Shortwave asked, hesitantly. She held out a small specialized fuelling container, with a long spout and a handle on it, which she had found after digging a little through a bag hung from the handlebars on lightwave's chair. Firestorm nodded, smiling, and asked if tiny Light' might like added flavour too, and Shortwave appeared to think for a second.
"Maybe..." she answered, in a tone that said it could not possibly hurt anything. "I've never given her anything flavoured at all... sadly I can't even began to guess what she might like to try..."
Firestorm frowned then, sadly, at the thought of both younglings having lived their entirely lives so far, however short they may have been on a ship where they'd never even had the chance to have flavoured fuel or any treats. She remembered the tray of energon cakes and sweets she'd brought out the day she;d first met them all, and laughed again at how Blast' had so obviously stuffed a few of various kinds into his storage compartment, probably for later. But Light' – she had never yet gotten to try anything at all, and it did seem only fair that she get something sweet too.
Aluminum, Firestorm decided quickly, smiling to herself and knowing that particular metal had a lovely sweet flavor that most younglings seemed to like. She took a package from her bowl, and poured some into the fuelling bottle, before quickly filing it at the dispenser. The suddenly far too sweet smell of the power she'd poured into the bottom of the container hit her scent receptors had. And for a second she felt, to her dismay, like the might just purge again. But thankfully she didn't. And as an afterthought, on her way back to the living room, she grabbed a couple of small energon goodies left over from the other day for Blastwave.
"Soundwave suggested I talk with you," Shortwave said, when Firestorm sat down next to Blastwave on the sofa.
She looked doubtful and more hesitant than ever. But still she was clearly determined all the same. And looking at her, watching as she smiled down at her young helpless and damaged daughter who now sat supported on her lap as she was fuelled slowly from the container that had been filled for her, Firestorm understood at once. She may not have had a youngling of her own. But that hardly meant she couldn't recognize the desperation of any carrier worth of the title, to save her own. And she knew exactly what Shortwave had come to talk to her about, because of Soundwave's heads up that she might stop by.
And so without even being asked, she quickly and carefully shared her story – explaining her fall in her youngling years and the damages it had caused her. She remembered her struggles and explained them out loud as she did, all while trying hard not to leave out anything that might have been even slightly helpful, and wondering all the while if any of it really was at all. She finally questioned that too.
"More then helpful," Shortwave smiled brightly. Her smile looked so strangely like Soundwave's. It made Firestorm grin at once.
"I... haven't upset you at all, I hope, Firestorm..." Shortwave muttered apologetically after a good moment. And Firestorm just shook her head easily.
"Of course not," she answered, still smiling. And she looked again at Lightwave who clearly struggled hard just to suck on the end of her fuelling spout hard enough to get anything out of it. and to drink it. But the youngling's optics were bright all the same. And it was easy to guess she was enjoying the sweet taste of the added aluminum.
"You want to save your child," Firestorm said, smiling with both her understanding and her admiration for that. "And you won't give up while there might be a way. How can I not tell you as much as I can if it helps you help her...?"
"Thank you, Firestorm." Shortwave just smiled again, a near exact copy of Soundwave's nervous and hesitant little hint of a smile.
"May I hold Lightwave?" Firestorm begged a moment later, when she saw that the youngling had stopped drinking from her container entirely. And Shortwave just smiled brighter at her question.
"Of course you can," she said, standing to put the youngling into her arms. "You... know that she can't support her own weight at all?"
"Yes." Firestorm nodded slowly and just a little sad as she took the damaged child from her carrier. But Lightwave was still a small youngling just like any other, and she loved every one of them. Light' certainly was a bit heavy – about as much as Cybershock or Hotwire and his twin siblings must have weighed by then. But it was still far more like holding a newborn first-frame in her arms than anything. And she smiled at the child, even managing to rocked just a little in her chair with Light' in her lap, just because she seemed so young. She listened, pleased, when Lightwave whirred a little, her optics partly opening for a second.
"What happened to her?" she asked, because having never seen a youngling anything like Light' before, she'd always naturally been curious about her since they'd met.
"Nothing happened to her," Shortwave answered. And she shook her head then a little as thought she thought her answered might not have really made any sense. "I mean... Light' was born this way. This is what she's always been."
"I hope I didn't offend you..." Firestorm said, but Shortwave simply smiled again.
"Of course not," she answered, clearly meaning it. And she looked for a moment at her smallest youngling, still in Firestorm's arms. "She was so different from others from the start. She can't cry. So the day she was born and placed into her frame she just kind of laying still looking close to offline. I... thought at first she'd catch up but she just never got much better..."
Firestorm, quite understandably, was sad at that. This youngling, she thought should, in a perfect world be out goofing off and laughing with Cybershock and Switchgear, and their friend Hotwire - all of who were probably somewhere around her age And she slowly opened her mouth again, about to express her sadness. But Shortwave just smiled at her again before she could. And she nodded toward her youngling.
"It's not all terrible," she said. "I don't know what she's thinking exactly, or how much she can think... but it seems it's so basic a process to her that she really just kind of... is. She's innocent... she'll be a youngling forever, and the tiniest of things make her so happy..."
"I suppose I hadn't thought of it like that," Firestorm mused back, smiling again herself now.
"Firestorm, you look so pretty with a youngling in your arms," Shortwave said. And when Firestorm looked up again, the older bot was grinning like a youngling herself. "I can easily picture how you will look any day now with yours and Soundwave's first child sleeping in your lap in this living room..." she paused a moment only to grin even brighter before she chuckled a bit and said quite pointedly, "And surely you can imagine how pleased I'll be to spoil the paint off my first grand-creation!"
"Soundwave and I won't be having younglings of our own," Firestorm answered, suddenly awkward and sad and strangely guilty all at once. And she lowered her gaze, pretending to fuss with making Lightwave more comfortable across her knees, so as to avoid looking at Shortwave for a second.
Soundwave would do anything for her. He'd give her anything she asked, just to make her happy. He'd done it for years already. Even when she insisted up and down so often that he didn't need to. They had a wonderful life together, and their home, though so small, was beautiful. But the matter of a child was the one thing he never had budged on even one slight bit. And a good few years had passed already since she'd last asked him for one, deciding that an otherwise perfect life with the only bot she could imagine ever loving was certainly not worth upsetting with any constant pestering about it.
"Oh?" Shortwave's tone and expression were both clearly surprised and disappointed. And Firestorm just frowned a little while trying hard to keep her face-plate serious instead of sad.
"Soundwave has his career with the police force now," she said. "And... I have my business, which takes up my time. This apartment really is small, and..." she left it at that because suddenly her tank was rolling again, and she'd began to quickly panic over some possibly need to run fast for the wash station while the damaged youngling lay in her lap.
"Firestorm," said Shortwave, while she and Blast – who was busy nibbling on a leftover goodie – exchanged looks of concern. "Are... you alright?"
"I'm good," Firestorm said easily, smiling again and happy as the discomfort somewhere in her tank settled itself on its own.
The very last place Firestorm thought she'd been spending that morning was in the medbay. Yet, that's exactly where she suddenly was. Soundwave stood beside her, his optics never leaving her as she lay on the recharge station she'd woken up on – the one closest to the far back wall – a short while before. He smiled a little, his look of confidence doing little to hide his anxiety from her. And she smiled back up at him, assuring him right back, because she felt like nothing at all was really wrong.
"I must just pushed myself too hard is all," she told him.
"You need to be fuelling well before you fly that fast" Soundwave reminded her pointedly. And when she tried to sit herself up, he gently shoved her back down with his hand resting against her chest panel, so that she would stay laying flat. "You should have had a full container this morning and at least half more before you decided to try stunt flying..."
"I... I did fuel," Firestorm replied. She really had. Her queasiness – which had only grown worse in the past couple of days, had finally lifted the day before. And since it had, she had been drinking energon with an apatite for it like nothing she had ever experienced before. And she knew she'd had enough that morning because she'd finished two whole containers in the hours after waking, having added calcium to both because she was strangely unable to get enough of the flavor now, although it had always been far from her favourite.
"You haven't been yourself lately..."
"I've been fine..."
"We should not have been out flying," Soundwave said. He took her hands in his, and she smiled up at him, even as he continued to gently admonish her. "Firestorm, you should have told me you didn't feel well today. I asked you to fly with me because I know you love it. But you know you can always say no..."
"I was fine when we took off," Firestorm explained honestly. And she tried to smile again, though he was admitted growing concerned herself now about her own health and safety.
She'd lost conscious out of nowhere while in the air. She didn't recall doing so exactly. But she knew full well she must have. Because one moment she'd been flying just as hard as she could through the open sky, Soundwave beside her and both of them laughing as he dared her easily to try a double sideways roll... and the next she'd woken up in that medbay, a curtain closed around her and the lights dimmed for rest. What if Soundwave hadn't been with her? She asked herself this on the verge of panic at that thought. He must had successfully grabbed her. But what if he hadn't managed it? She could easily had crash landed and that could have killed her.
Soundwave sensed her sudden unease, and she knew it. Because he held her hands tighter, and smiled again with greater assurance then before. And he was still doing so, when the curtain moved and a medi-bot that was only the slightest bit familiar crept in past it. Ambulon. Firestorm recalled his name slowly. And her unease increased again when she remembered that Ratchet, one of a couple of medics she trusted most, was away from Cybertron on some matter of urgent importance. And Knockout – the other one she might have trusted just as much - usually though not always, worked with only youngling patients.
"Good afternoon," the medic greeted pleasantly, professional and smiling, while he read quickly from a datapad in his hands. "...Firestorm?"
Firestorm just nodded mutely, confirming her name while she wondered if perhaps she would be allowed to sit herself up yet.
"I've reviewed some scans I took when you were brought in." The medic smiled again, before he pulled over a couple of chairs from against the wall. He sat in one, close to the side of the recharge station, and motioned with a polite wave of his hand for Soundwave to take the other. "Soundwave here explained to me that you went into power down while flying at five thousand feet. Do you remember anything?"
"Sorry. No..." Firestorm just shook her head. More worried now at understanding she'd been out long enough to recharge through scans on top of everything else.
The medic grabbed a small light and held it in front of her optics, asking her to follow it - which she easily could – before he grabbed each of her hands instructing her to push against them in a test of her strength, and the other usual assessments of function. And finally, when he was all done with that, he nodded, chuckling just a little.
"I wasn't expecting you'd have any problems with function, which you certainly don't," he said, his tone assuring.
"What did you find from the scans you mentioned?" Firestorm asked in reply. She looked around, more anxious than ever. "Anything?"
"I did indeed," Ambulon answered. But instead of the usual expression one might expect to see on the face-plate of a medic as he read out scan results, he smiled brighter, as he looked from Firestorm to Soundwave and back again.
"You'll need to start upping your fuel intake even more than normal for a flyer," he said calmly. "At some point soon there will be additives too... Firestorm, congratulations. You are carrying."
The medic said more, going on just a little about the importance of rest, and how Firestorm could still fly at least for a while yet as long as she felt well enough and took it slow and easy. He said he knew she'd likely want her case handed over to Ratchet when he returned, and how he'd been more than happy to hand over her case because he knew she trusted him the most... but Firestorm barely heard any of it well enough to process the meanings of the words.
Her audials rang and the room appeared to spin a little and then faster as her spark beat faster behind her chest panel and a million thoughts ran through her processor at once. She was terrified. More so than she had ever been in her life, because this was all new and a complete unexpected unknown. But she was happy too. Overjoyed. If not for her shock, she might well have broke out into smiles before promptly jumping up and down. Her very own baby! She was going to be carrier, just like she'd always wanted. Just like she'd still wanted more then she ever dared to admit when she'd decided to give up the dream.
Her thoughts raced faster. And although she knew even then that on some level it was silly, she wondered who her child, still a newspark so young she'd only just learned it was there at all, was destined to be. She guessed quickly that it was a girl and then promptly changed to guess, deciding instead that it 'felt' like a boy to her. And then she wondered if she'd guessed wrong after all, and decided it didn't matter in the least. She wouldn't find out, she decided at once. Speedbreaker never once learned the gender energies of any of hers and it seemed like such fun to be surprised. She imagined how she'd hug her child every day. How he would grab her fingers and giggle and how she'd read to him and sign him songs as soon as he was just a little bigger. And Soundwave would love the baby too. Surely he'd have too, although he'd always said no to creating one. Now that it was happening anyway, he smile and brag... and he'd have pictures on a data pad in his office at work...
Firestorm looked up them at Soundwave. Sure he'd been shocked beyond words before he got to be happy. She wanted to hug him, to let him hug her a while before they went home to decide where to put a first-frame recharging basket – she decided quickly that she wanted a simple on in a 'classic' style and that it should fit next to a window... But Soundwave was looking away from her when she looked up, his optics staring at the floor. His hands had let go of hers at some point in the midst of her musing, and now hung at his sides clenched into determined fists. He didn't even seem to notice as she sat up on the recharge station, and swung her legs over her side, with a smile clean across her face-plate.
"This can be... resolved I would assume?" he questioned the medic, coolly and serious, as he finally looked him in the optics.
"Re... resolved?" Ambulon repeated, just as though he didn't quite understand.
"Younglings are not in the plan for us," Soundwave clarified, still calm and with his fists still at his sides. "This one was an unexpected accident... surely it isn't to late to get rid the newspark?"
"Well..." the medi-bot was clearly uncomfortable with the conversation. But professionalism compelled him to answer honestly regardless. "Firestorm is quite far along already to have not known until now. There is still time to do such a thing safely, but not a great deal of it. You will both need to decide in a few short days..."
"No!" Firestorm blurted, interrupting firmly as she jumped down to the floor. She could barely believe what was being discussed and so calmly, just as though it was real an option. Her spark pounded, near breaking at once, and her tank flipped and flipped until she was sure she would lose that morning's fuel and all she'd had the night before all over the medbay floor.
She grabbed Soundwave's arm hard and spun him around with surprising force to face her, rage burning though her frame where she had never once been truly angry with him. Her own hand – the free one still not holding his arm – clenched into a tight fist of her own,and she wondered fro a fleeting second is she really meant to hit him.
"How. Could. You." She demanded, optics burning with furry. Each word she spoke was slow, deliberate. And her free hand unclenched at once to rest instead protectively over her spark chamber, as if to guard the tiny spark she'd only just learned existed, but loved all the same. Her voice quickened rising in pitch and filled with tears as she damaged again, "Soundwave! How the slagging scrap could you...?"
"Fire...storm..." Soundwave answered, clearly shaking now and terrified as he spoke. "Please... give me a short while... I'll see you at home..."
"Are you going to be alright?" the medi-bot asked, somewhat hesitantly and so clearly unsure what to do, when Soundwave walked out of the curtained off cubicle and then clear out of the medbay without another word.
"I... I don't know..." Firestorm answered. She held her spark chamber with both hands because it almost physically hurt to think of Soundwave's behaviour. And she could not stop thinking about it. It played through her processor again and a again, like a data-disc stuck on repeat. She looked down at her hands then and saw how bad both were trembling.
"I... didn't mean for that to happen," the medic said. His face-plate was a clear mix of apologetic and horrified. "Creators are usually so happy... even if the newspark wasn't quite planned..."
"It wasn't your fault," Firestorm told him. And she would have said more, but before she could form another single word, she instead burst into spark-broken, sobbing tears.
"Would... you like to see the newspark?" the medic asked, his tone clearly uncertainly because he still clearly had no idea what he should do. "I could... give you a scan if you'd like one right now. You're already so far along it should be easy to see it spinning..."
Firestorm smiled at once, through her tears, nodding eagerly before she followed his instruction to lay back down again.
"You aren't going to force me to let you... get rid it... are you?" she asked him, quietly and shaking harder, disgusted by the words she'd just spoken out loud.
And the medi-bot, a scanner already in his hand and powered up, shook his head firmly in under a second, with a smile of assurance on his face-plate.
"No one can make you make that decision," he said seriously. "Not Soundwave and most certainly not me or any other medic. This is your youngling, Firestorm. And if you want to be a carrier, there is always a way, even if things do prove a little... complicated."
It was well into early evening, when Firestorm finally went home. But she did feel better by then, or least mostly so.
"Soundwave?" she called out quietly, into their apartment, which was strangely well lit that evening – nearly ever light in each room, including the wash station oddly enough, blaring bright on near their top settings.
"I'm down here," Soundwave's voice called back, from the recharge room. And he sounded calmer now, almost cheerful.
Firestorm hurried down the narrow hallway. She wanted to hug him, because she'd missed him just as much as ever. And for a moment she thought everything might just have been okay again. Perhaps he'd been thinking just as hard as she had, and perhaps he'd changed his mind. She even let herself imagine he'd be happy now, and they'd play their music discs that night while the snacked on rust sticks in their recharge station playfully compared their favourite prospects for their child's name, She nearly tripped, just outside the door, over a still open packing crate, and her spark sunk at once.
"You were gone a while" Soundwave observed. He was sitting on the edge of the recharge station, another crate in front of him. And this one, he was just sitting upright from closing tightly.
"I had to think a while," Firestorm answered. She saw quickly, when she looked around the room, that Laserbeak's perches were gone from the walls, among other things. Her tank flipped harder. "I... I talked for a while with the medic of course. Then I just had to be alone. So I went to sit in the park... finally I went to the marketplace. I... I was looking for a good while at newborn things... The medic gave me first first scan today... the newspark is strong and perfect. He said he could have identified the gender already but I said I didn't want to know yet..." Firestorm rested a hand again over her spark chamber, begging him with her optics to understand, though at the same time she knew his own thinking was well past that. "Soundwave. I can't destroy it. It's my child... our child... "
"You're right," Soundwave said. He smiled then, the same calm assuring smile she'd seen from him so many times. But it was so different now, so sad and... devastated. He sat up straighter and held out his arms, which she ran across the room to fall into at once. "You can't terminate your youngling. You've wanted one more than anything for so long... and I understand how wrong and disgusting it was of me to think that was the answer."
"Wh... what's with these crates?" Firestorm asked him. She feared she already knew, but she wanted him to say it anyway, to confirm that he hadn't lost her mind in her panic.
"I'm leaving tonight," Soundwave said, still just as calm and just as sadly. "I've comm'd Bulkhead, who said I can recharge on his sofa for a while until I get a new housing assignment soon. You love this place and you always have. It's only right that you should keep it for you and the youngling, and I should be the one to go..."
"Soundwave..." Firestorm found herself close to begging as she fought back tears and he simply held her tight against him just he always had during the best of times. "We... don't need to do this. We don't need to be... over. We can figure this out!"
"If I outright asked you to choose between my and that youngling of ours, I know fully fragging well what your choice would be." Soundwave smiled at her in clear nonjudgmental understanding when she moved back from him and looked him in the optics. "So I won't ask you to choose. And in any case your choice isn't wrong."
"Soundwave..."
"For all it's worth, my Firestorm, you'll be a wonderful carrier. Amazing. You'll tell the baby the most wonderful stories, and rock her by the window... and you'll teach her to fly. Bots can do this alone and you'll do it as well as any." Soundwave moved then, reaching out to rest a hand over her spark chamber, before he spoke again. "I can't be part of her life because I'm the very last thing she needs in it. And don't think that doesn't break my spark... someday when she's big enough I hope you will tell her that I loved her too..."
"You don't need to leave tonight," Firestorm said, tears of coolant filling her optics and rolling down her face-plate before she could stop them. "Stay here tonight... stay a few days and we'll wait for Ratchet to get home. He will have some good advice for us..."
"Staying longer will only us both far sadder when I must finally leave later," Soundwave answered simply. And with that he held out an arm for a clearly upset, confused and frustrated Laserbeak, who had been perched on the highest of the corner shelves, and caught her gently before he ordered her to her dock. Then he simply picked up the crate at his feet, added the one in the hallway to his load and walked out without a look back.
Firestorm dropped to sit on the recharge station, numb with shock while her tears dried on her face-plate. And it felt to her like she must have sat there for hours, not moving and barely able to even think of doing so, too defeated and terrified, overwhelmed and uncertain of anything to even think. When she finally did move again it was so late into the evening. And the sun had set completely, leaving the window behind her dark. She dragged herself to her feet and made her way to the window meaning to close the heavy curtains she'd chosen at Soundwave's insistence soon after they'd first moved in. But instead she just stared out for a while at the darkened city and the lights shining far below. Her hand went back to rest over her spark chamber again, as she finally yanked the curtained shut with the other. And she stumbled back then onto the recharge station, where she dragged the covers over herself and just lay that way, hand over her tiny newspark and more tears falling again.
"We'll figure this out," she said out loud to the newspark she carried, who she'd watched spinning and spinning on the scans and could not see as anything less than a living spark already because clearly he was. "We'll make it somehow... just you and me now."