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Here is my hand, he said.
But that was long ago.
Here is my hand that will not harm you.
—Louise Gluck, "Epithalamium"
Soundwave is aware of Starscream’s presence. The visual feed from the Nemesis streams across their connection, Starscream’s frame bristling in every available camera angle. After a moment Soundwave’s own proximity sensors issue an alert, triggered by the low sound in the doorway, Starscream’s systems whirring in cooldown after his long flight—and, presumably, the strain on his self-repair system. His armor is still deeply dented and scuffed.
Soundwave finds it unnecessary to move, or to disconnect from the Nemesis; Starscream often comes to stare at him after a fight with Megatron, although for what purpose, Soundwave is unsure.
“I know you can see me,” Starscream snaps, wings fluttering sharply upwards.
Soundwave moves one of the cameras to acknowledge him, but Starscream says nothing else. Eventually he huffs loudly and turns to stomp back out the way he came.
“Starscream! It is time—report to the infirmary,” Soundwave plays.
Starscream whirls back around, fists clenched. “You might be the favorite now,” he hisses, “but one day Megatron is going to teach you the meaning of fear. And I for one am looking forward to it.” He turns and walks quickly out of the control room, his retreat playing over the surveillance system and streaming directly into Soundwave’s processor for analysis.
Soundwave is unsurprised by Starscream’s open jealousy and resentment; his ambition submodule often produces such reactions after one of his schemes have been thwarted.
Soundwave carefully disconnects from the Nemesis, canceling the connection in stages and slowly pulling the heavy plug out of his dorsal port. A live, unshielded connection with the ship isn’t advisable; its systems are designed to be operated through a specialized intermediary interface, but that equipment was destroyed before they left Cybertron. Out of the remaining Decepticons, only Soundwave has the internal hardware to support a connection.
Soundwave fused his own fear circuitry well over a thousand years ago, when he still fought daily in the Kaon Arena. The experience is partitioned, but Soundwave retains a semantic memory of the process, and the near-failure of his autonomous systems afterwards. He had been built for obedience, and given only the emotional circuitry necessary to reinforce that; without it, his emotional subsystem nearly disintegrated. Megatron had to force a primary neural connection to stabilize him.
Megatron introduced Soundwave to many things—freedom the highest of all. But one thing he never needed to teach him was fear.
#
He finds Megatron in the ship’s newly-constructed bathing chamber, his frame submerged in recycled oil. They haven’t had the resources for oil baths for the past few centuries—and never did, before the war—but Earth’s rich and plentiful resources have allowed this single luxury.
Soundwave steps silently into the bubbling oil, which slips underneath his armor, into his datacable housing, seeping around Laserbeak's connections and loosening the dirt and debris there.
Megatron surfaces slowly, oil sluicing down his arms as his upper body bends up and out of the oil.
“Soundwave,” he says, illumination routines dim, and he pulls Soundwave into his lap with a pleased noise. “Come here.”
Soundwave can move no closer, his armor already interlocking carefully with Megatron’s own. His only response is to open his dorsal neural access port, next to Megatron’s hand. Megatron’s thumb instantly dips inside.
“Someone else has been here,” Megatron growls, when he finds the contacts still hot.
“The Nemesis!” Soundwave plays, in Starscream’s voice.
“Hmph.” Megatron rubs roughly around the edges of the port. “Sometimes I think the ship has greater claim to you than I do. When was the last time you fought at my side?” he demands.
“Soundwave—needed here,” Soundwave says, playing Megatron’s own words back at him.
“Insubordinate,” Megatron says, but he removes his thumb. His cable comes slotting in after, and Soundwave opens up neural access easily, Megatron’s clear and focused processing a familiar relief after so long spent navigating the ship’s input alongside his own. Megatron, unlike Soundwave, was not built for surveillance or data analysis functions, and his reality matrix is easily navigated, inseparable from his personality.
Megatron doesn’t have the appropriate hardware to take Soundwave in turn—like many Decepticons, he destroyed his ports early in their rebellion to prevent interrogation, long before the Autobots secured the plans for the cortical psychic patch. Still, Soundwave is unbothered; a one-way connection has always been sufficient to meet his needs. And the familiar rush of Megatron’s pleasure, the activation of his charge management system, is mirrored in Soundwave’s processor, unaffected by the lack of physical pleasure circuitry in his own frame.
Megatron’s hands roam across Soundwave’s armor, activating pressure sensors in their wake, and his tongue slides over one of Soundwave’s antennas. Soundwave shudders, datacables coming reflexively out of their housing, and Megatron reaches for those, too.
“There you are,” Megatron murmurs, and Soundwave feels his pleasure and satisfaction, magnifies the sensations and pushes them back over the connection, a little painful without a closed loop, but worth the effort when Megatron’s head goes falling back with a clang, his systems reallocating resources towards their interface, the oil bubbling faster and hotter around Soundwave’s port.
Megatron’s overload takes them both, suddenly, and Soundwave is blanketed in Megatron’s heavy armor, surrounding him on all sides, holding him down in the oil. External sensation fades away, and for a moment Soundwave is only Megatron, clutching himself close, his systems wildly overpowered and strangely limited at the same time—and then his systems initiate a restorative shutdown.
Soundwave returns to consciousness after six point four astroseconds, a slightly longer lapse than normal. He attributes it to his ongoing connection with the Nemesis—Soundwave no longer utilizes a standard recharge unit, choosing to run his defrag routines and recharge cycles through the ship itself. It isn’t fully compatible with Cybertronian system requirements, but Soundwave calculates that noticeable processor degradation won’t occur for another seven hundred years.
The passive monitoring routines Soundwave installed on the Nemesis’s surveillance systems ping him with a notification, which he opens: Starscream and Knock Out are still together in the infirmary, discussing something in low voices. Soundwave chooses not to intervene, only setting a command to record the conversation; perhaps plotting with Knock Out will help stabilize Starscream's ambition submodule for a while longer.
Megatron is still dozing, his processes drowsy and slow over their connection. Soundwave holds the connection open, running a quick diagnostic routine while the opportunity is there.
Megatron is functioning within adequate parameters, although the half-formed bond with Orion Pax is still festering, the deterioration spreading deep into Megatron’s emotional subsystem—impossible to remove without further disruption to his reality matrix. The dark energon provides some symptomatic relief, but Megatron's increasingly erratic behavior indicates that its effectiveness is waning.
The war must end quickly, now; while Soundwave has seven hundred years remaining, Megatron has less than half of that. But the Decepticons will not achieve victory unless Optimus Prime is slain, and whether the resulting backlash to Megatron’s systems would be survivable, Soundwave does not know. Shockwave could calculate the odds, but Soundwave is unwilling to reveal the true level of damage to any other Cybertronian.
Spooling his datacables up out of the oil, Soundwave finally cancels neural access. He leaves the familiar weight of Megatron’s inert cable resting in his port and dismisses all thoughts or war and victory from frontal processing. Whether the war can be won or not is irrelevant; Soundwave will not surrender.
Sated, he curls more comfortably against Megatron’s chest, and initiates a much-needed defrag routine. The Nemesis's systems hum lowly around them, functioning at an acceptable capacity.