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They say that he almost didn’t make it.
Whispered rumors, of course, exchanged on subvocalizations and back channels where it’s a little easier to pretend he’s not listening. Because he always is.
But they say he almost didn’t make it. Near the beginning of the war, when the Matrix had just embedded itself into the Prime’s spark chamber, there was a battle. It could’ve been the first, it could’ve been the fiftieth, it hardly mattered. The point stayed the same.
Soundwave had almost offlined.
At the hands of the Prime, that’s the only thing that’s constant. Some say it was with his bare servos, some say it was a blaster shot, but all agree that whatever it may have been, it nearly killed their Communications Officer.
This is usually where the story ends, with expressions of disbelief and wondering that is not without a twinge of fear. Where would they be, they ask, where would we be if not for him?
Of course, there are those that can tell a more complete tale.
There is a group of Vehicons that remembers their deployments with a strike team before the Nemesis . Those who made it out with their sparks intact remember the sharpness of a mnemosurgeon’s smile and voice as she told the story like it was salacious gossip.
There are others who served under a triple-changer they swear had three different faceplates.
There are still others who remember Seekers, a full trine strong, their plating bright and colorful, untarnished by the permanent grays of mourning.
Their stories are much more detailed.
They recount the seventh battle of the Great War, and something was different in the atmosphere that day. The mnemosurgeon guesses it was heightened paranoia on both sides, others guess it was the fact that war had finally set in. Whatever the case, the fighting had turned from what you might have expected to find in a barroom brawl. They were fighting to kill.
Soundwave the gladiator, Soundwave the silent, Soundwave who had come closer than hundreds to defeating Megatronus in the now-deserted gladiator arena, stood but a step to Megatron’s right in the blooming rebellion. His symbionts, who would be lost far too soon in the coming centuries, were a formidable team that spent much time away from him on reconnaissance missions. At this battle, he was without their armored modes, but, as anyone could tell you, it meant little.
The battle raged on. Warrior after warrior charged the Prime, most motivated by foolhardy dreams of being the humble mechanism credited with destroying the beacon of Decepticon opposition then and there. He batted all aside with an effortless, infuriating grace.
Soundwave, ever observant, had watched, fending off Autobots with parries and quick, lethal strikes. He saw his moment.
Or he thought he did.
The mnemosurgeon tells it best.
The Prime was wielding a sword. Nothing so grand as the Star Saber, but a simple, lightweight thing befitting of the heroic leader he had seemed to become. He did honorable battle, efficiently and quickly cutting down the swathes of Decepticons that approached him with glinting claws and murder in their optics.
She wasn’t even sure how he had seen Soundwave. She didn’t even see Soundwave, poised to deliver the blow that would cut the Autobot forces off at the helm, but she saw the aftermath.
The Prime’s blade cut a long, agonizing line across Soundwave’s frame, tracing a path that ran from his left hip to his right finial. Though the churning whirlwind of the battle, it had been clear as day. The soft snikt of tubing being split, the shriek of metal as it was rent apart, the deceptively soft shatter of broken glass.
It seemed as if it was over before it had begun. Soundwave’s dark frame collapsed, and the Prime was looking at the energon that dribbled down his blade as if he was unsure of its origin. As if he didn’t quite believe what he had just done.
Then a blast from a fusion cannon, made concussive but not deadly by the sorry state of its wielder's damaged systems, connected with his chassis and sent him flying backwards into the Autobot ranks.
Lord Megatron had crossed the battlefield, lifted the fallen frame of his then-second in command, and ordered a retreat.
The Seekers finish their story in hushed whispers. The mnemosurgeon’s smile is tense and flinty. The triple-changer laughs, but it sounds almost nervous. The Vehicons marvel.
Because where would they be? Where would they be without him?
~
There is not a mech alive who knows the fullness of the aftermath.
There is no one else who knows of the claws of fear, real, icy fear that closed around a warlord’s spark that day.
Of the frenzied, desperate panic of no, no as long, spindly limbs twitched and convulsed in pain, as metal groaned and tore from the stress of motion, as violet light spilled from the walls of a spark chamber nearly rent in half.
Of the long solar cycles spent dispensing orders to a growing revolution, and longer night cycles spent at the side of a medical berth. Waiting. Hoping. Dreading.
But just as Megatron doubts there is a mech alive who knows the depths of fear, of the crushing horror of watching Soundwave fall, he doubts there is a mech alive that knows the quiet, soaring heights of relief that stirred within him when Soundwave finally woke.
~
It is soft, betrayed only by the sharp intake of a single vent and the sudden squeeze of digits on his.
“Loc—Location:” Soundwave mumbles weakly, shifts and tenses as though he intends to rise, “Lazerbeak. Location: Ravage, Rumble, Frenzy—”
“All safe,” Megatron sooths, “Bothering Mixmaster as we speak.”
Soundwave’s relief, like all his other emotions, is a subtle thing, that seems almost fragile in its smallness. Megatron only knows to read it by the slight lowering of shoulder guards and the soft hiss of an ex-vent.
They stay, in comfortable silence, as the machinery that monitors his second’s vitals softly works on. Megatron cannot stop himself from rubbing a thumb over Soundwave’s thin digits.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
Soundwave regards him flatly, even with his featureless visor.
“ I’ve been better.” He says with a clip of Megatron’s own voice, and he remembers the scenario instantly: when half his chassis had been crumpled in by a combiner’s mace, his right stabilizing servo struts shattered in twelve places, saved only by an indecisive left arm of the combiner team.
And Megatron laughs, really laughs. Not the cruel, victorious cackle of the warlord he would become or the leader he was shaping up to be, just the laugh of a friend. Of a partner.
And he knows that Soundwave, with his wit drier than the Silica Desert, is smiling too.
He leaves his side only once that night, and is gone only briefly, to retrieve a cubes of energon for them both. He’s been advised that Soundwave’s fuel tank was spared, barely, by Optimus Prime’s blade, and thinks his friend would do well to drink something that isn’t a filtered medical concoction.
Soundwave does rise at that, half-sitting up on the berth, propping himself up on the plane of one broad, blade-think arm. He takes the proffered cube, and Megatron steadies him when he trembles.
Click.
With one smooth motion, Soundwave sets his visor aside, and winces anew, shielding his faceplates with the flat of his other arm.
Megatron looks, because how could he not? How could he refuse, or even dare to pretend to be uninterested in the sight of Soundwave?
(He’s of the opinion that his fellow former gladiator is rather beautiful. All long, lithe lines, dark plating and sharp crests, and an unmistakable air of surety about him. It was little wonder he’d designed the symbol of their cause after Soundwave’s silhouette.)
After a moment’s hesitation, and Soundwave never hesitates, he removes his arm and sips at the cube.
Megatron stares, again, because how could he not?
Soundwave’s optics glow the color of a cold nebula. They are ultraviolet quasars that never give anything half of their focus, measured and calculated with an intelligence behind them that soars far beyond anything any stuffy Iaconian scholars could claim. Scars crisscross his faceplates, old wounds from older battles won, a map of victories and defeats and near misses.
And now, another joins them. It is larger, newer, unsealed by any weld, still tinged a faint blue from the energon underneath. It rends the right corner of Soundwave’s thin, clever mouth apart, carving its way upwards, splitting the shutters of his left optic in tiny divots. Megatron imagines it, Optimus’ blade scraping within a nanoangstrom of shattering that optic, and feels hot, bitter hatred flash around his spark.
If only for a moment.
Soundwave takes a single, measured pull from his cube. His expression grows microscopically stormier, and the right corner of his mouth twitches downward around the newly exposed dentae.
It’s really no wonder he favors his visor, Megatron thinks. For one can read his faceplates as easily as one might a datapad.
And so he reaches out, closes what scant distance remained between them. The low light of the medbay casts broad slats of highlight across the spread of Soundwave’s arms, then turns slick and fluid where it meets the sharp curves and arches of his chassis. In that same light, Megatron’s scuffed gray digits give razor-thin glimpses of silver.
He reaches out and cups Soundwave’s face in his servo, and is rewarded with the focus of Soundwave’s optics, the slow, deliberate brush of Soundwave’s field on his, and the sight for which he would raze cities, level planets, defy Unicron himself: the smallest of Soundwave’s smiles.
~
Eons later, their planet will be dead. Eons later, the Nemesis will circle the atmosphere of a little terrestrial planet, and the war will rage on. Close. Personal. Sour. Cruel.
And eons later, the same scar will claw its way across Soundwave’s faceplate.
The same scuffed silver fingers will trace it.
The same thin, clever mouth will smile.