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Prowl hoped to never again feel the... narcotic radiation of the combined Enigma and Talisman. But while he felt it, it was the most euphoric, liberating, soothing sensation he'd ever known. It felt like the making good of a nearly-forgotten false promise the Functionists of Petrex had made to him nearly five million years ago: that everyone had a place where they fit in, a place they belonged, even Prowl; and that he was in it.
And then, just before it ended, somewhere in that mix of infinite minds, Prowl felt Soundwave break.
The plummet from the Enigma/Talisman high was like falling from orbit and burning up in the atmosphere.
###
Prowl hadn't thought Soundwave mattered to him—until he was gone, and suddenly his absence loomed larger than any other.
Even Optimus, the mech of the hour, the only hero whose name was being repeated over and over on a day full of dead heroes, was merely not here currently, merely not here and not to be here again. Like a piece had played its part and been taken off the board, a queen removed with three pawns waiting to replace it.
But Soundwave felt like losing the king. Soundwave felt like he was missing. Soundwave was an outline in the crowd, in the corner of Prowl's HUD; and every time Prowl turned, expecting the outline to be filled, it wasn't.
He thought it might have been because Soundwave died while channeling the rest of the species together. You notice when the hub of a network breaks, after all. But when he asked Pyra Magna, returned from space, what she'd felt when Soundwave died, she replied, "Did he?"
###
What did Prowl think about Soundwave?
It wasn't a question he'd had to ask before. He usually just thought about people. He didn't think about what he thought about people. There was especially little point of it with a Decepticon, who—regardless of what Prowl thought of him—was a target to be stopped. A target must be understood, analyzed, comprehended, but it didn't pay to have an opinion about a target. Opinions, whether positive or negative, were distractions.
What did he think now?
He thought Soundwave was one of the only high-ranked Decepticons who truly believed, with his entire spark, that what he was doing was good. Prowl could concede that it was admirable that Soundwave cared, unlike Megatron or Starscream or Shockwave. Megatron could argue, in rhetorically impressive ways, that he was good, but didn't really believe it anymore if indeed he ever had; whether or not he was good mattered far less to him than whether the public judged him good. And Shockwave understood that being good was less important than being right, and he thought he was right. (He wasn't. Nothing is right if it isn't ultimately, eventually, in service of good.)
Soundwave believed he was on the side of good, fought with all his spark for what he thought was good; but he was incorrect—monstrously, genocidally incorrect—and that made Soundwave... sad.
Sad, pitiable—and loathsome.
Prowl was so burnt out on loathing that the thought of adding more made him almost nauseous. Soundwave was dead. Prowl could afford to put in minimal effort for him.
Pity, then.
###
Some days later, Prowl saw Rumble, Frenzy, and Buzzsaw huddled together by the sturdiest tree in eyeshot. The twins sat in its shade and the half-twin bent one of its branches under his weight. Automatically, Prowl found himself drifting toward the trio; and stopped, far outside their circle but watching them, not sure what to do now that he was here.
It didn't take them long to notice him, and turn to glower. "Whadda you want?" demanded—Prowl honestly couldn't keep them straight—the blue one.
"I don't know," Prowl said, completely honestly.
The trio looked at each other, then glared at Prowl again. The black one snapped, "Then why don't ya go figure it out somewhere else, cop? This tree's taken."
"Hold on," Buzzsaw said. "He would've—wanted us to be nice."
The twins gave him a dirty look.
"I don't like him," Buzzsaw said defensively. Prowl wasn't offended; he'd heard the words spoken with far more venom by people he'd considered friends. "But that was his policy. We should— We could at least try it."
They all looked sullenly at Prowl again. Then the blue one shrugged and grunted. "Just this once," the black one said. "Next time, you've gotta earn it."
Prowl couldn't get more than one foot underneath the shade without encroaching on their space; but he sat anyway, and tried to figure out why he'd wanted to.
###
Here was something else Prowl thought about Soundwave:
He was the only one who had ever acknowledged how Prowl hurt.
Bumblebee and Ultra Magnus called the Constructicons—five balls and chains shackled to his arms and legs—his friends. What the Decepticons had done to him was never acknowledged, never admitted. When he was still reeling from the pain of what he'd been forced through, mentally, physically, when he was screaming at anyone who came near him from the hurt of it all, no one would talk about it. Not even the Autobots.
Soundwave alone had said that Prowl resented him for his part in Prowl's mental mutilation. He hadn't said it disparagingly. He hadn't said it like it was a problem Prowl had to get over. He hadn't said it like he thought it was foolish, over-emotional, trite. He'd simply acknowledged it. Prowl resented Soundwave because of what Soundwave had done to him.
Five years later, what Prowl needed to hear, desperately needed to hear, was I'm sorry. From someone. Anyone. I'm sorry for what we did to you. I'm sorry for not noticing what was happening. I'm sorry you went through that. Anything. Anything. Someone, anyone—just admit out loud that he'd been made to suffer and he was hurting still.
He knew he was never going to get that. He knew nobody would ever care about him enough to offer it.
But Soundwave had acknowledged that Prowl resented him for what he had done to Prowl.
That was the most Prowl would ever receive. He was going to have to hold onto that for the rest of his life.
###
When Prowl received the full list of fatalities from the Lost Light's incompetent, pathetic excuse for a captain, he had to leave the room. He didn't say a word. He simply stood, and turned, and left. Rodimus was yelling at him to wait, asking him where he was going, and his reeling mind struggled so hard to calculate a sentence that could explain that he couldn't speak without requiring him to speak that he stumbled over his own feet.
Shockwave had the good grace not to offer a comment when Prowl returned to his prison ship, collapsed to his knees, and curled into a ball.
Dominus. Skids. Getaway.
He'd lost everyone, now. Dominus, Skids, Getaway. The grief was enough to rip off the lid he'd had to hastily spot-weld over the loss of Shock and Ore, back when he'd still been buckling under the monumental task of processing his own suffering alone.
He couldn't remember how to cry properly anymore. Primus, he wished he could.
###
Days later, when he'd recovered from his grief enough that anyone who looked at him would think he'd never felt it, he remembered that Ravage had also been listed among the dead.
###
When Prowl approached Rumble, Frenzy, and Buzzsaw again, Frenzy (Prowl thought he was Frenzy) gave him an expectant look. "Well?"
He'd been told if he wanted to get near them again, he had to earn it.
He stood outside the shade of their tree and said, evenly, "I've recently learned that all my spies are dead."
They all looked away from him. After a moment, Rumble said, "Funny coincidence. Our spymaster's dead."
Prowl sat down.
###
Here was something else Prowl thought about Soundwave:
In some ways, he was almost an Autobot.
It wasn't a compliment. It wasn't a mitigating factor. Soundwave was almost an Autobot because he was motivated by the same things the average Autobot was—or by the same things the average Autobot said one ought to be motivated by. Faith. Loyalty. Friendship.
Motives don't matter, though; only actions. Soundwave was motivated like an Autobot, but those motivations fueled a Decepticon's actions: he was behind just as many massacres of prisoners, exterminations of planets, and slaughters of civilians as any other Decepticon officer. Motives mean nothing; actions mean everything.
Throughout the war, Prowl had heard plenty of Autobots muttering behind his back that he was practically a Decepticon. No other insult he'd ever received had cut him so deeply. Of course he knew why they really said it, even if they didn't: because what motivated him was reason, logic, facts and figures. They thought such motivations were unworthy of a true Autobot. They thought basing battle plans on what would win instead of what would save his friends' lives meant he didn't care.
They didn't understand that that was how he cared.
They didn't understand the difference between an officer who ruthlessly destroyed everything in his path and an officer who ruthlessly saved as many lives as he could.
Prowl hadn't learned until after the war that Decepticon High Command had never fully trusted Soundwave. Even Megatron had harbored suspicions of him throughout the war. At first the thought baffled him, when from the other side of the war it had always seemed painfully obvious that Soundwave was the most trustworthy officer that High Command had.
But now, he realized, the things that had made Soundwave seem so obviously trustworthy were also the things that made him the most Autobot. They might have been the very things the Decepticons distrusted him for. Faith. Loyalty. Friendship.
Prowl wondered if Soundwave had ever heard Decepticons muttering that he was practically an Autobot. Prowl wondered if Soundwave, too, had silently let the words lash deep in his spark, while acting like they'd never touched him.
###
Here were some more things Prowl thought about Soundwave:
He understood why Optimus had ensnared Soundwave with blackmail. Prowl didn't fault Optimus for it, as for Optimus's goals it was an absolutely strategically sound move; but he didn't agree with Optimus's goals. He was furious that the one Decepticon who'd ever turned his back on High Command for any reason other than to find a new method to stroke his own ego had been unwillingly dragged into conquering a planet by the one mech in all the universe who should have been most opposed to another conquest.
He thought that Soundwave's ridiculous little commune was the closest any Decepticon had gotten to realizing the ideals they imagined they'd been pursuing since the start of the war; but he didn't think it made up for a single one of the crimes Soundwave had committed in the war.
He didn't believe for a second that Soundwave was truly so naïve that he hadn't understood the full consequences of his actions until after the war was over. More likely, he'd probably denied the full consequences. Prowl didn't think Soundwave had the power to steel his spark to the knowledge of the things he'd done the way Prowl himself did.
He believed—for Carpessa, for Junkion, for the New Institute—that he himself was little better than Soundwave. To be sure, Soundwave beat Prowl for sheer quantity of sins, many times over; but in terms of quality, they were the same. They'd both done the worst things they could imagine in pursuit of a beautiful peace, a greater good, that would make it all worthwhile. Now Prowl had come to believe that perhaps there was a better way, that perhaps the end couldn't justify the means because only good could ultimately lead to good. Soundwave had simply come to believe the same thing a couple years sooner.
He thought that Shockwave might have been wrong when he said that he and Prowl were each other's parallels, the logical Decepticon and the logical Autobot. They were only parallel in motivation. Not in actions, and not in intentions. Perhaps, all these years—equally quiet, equally unpopular, equally shunned, equally fervent, equally committed to a true greater good, and equally mis-serving that ideal—his parallel had been Soundwave.
And he was envious that half of Soundwave's spies had outlived him.
###
"You lot?" Shockwave said, audibly disgusted, as Rumble, Frenzy, and Buzzsaw burst into the prison ship. "What are you doing here? Prowl never permits visitors—and if he did, he wouldn't permit you."
"He hired us," Rumble shot back. "Thought he wasn't doin' a good enough job gettin' on your nerves by himself."
"We're Prowl's new guards," Frenzy said. "Slash messengers, slash, uhh, errand bots... slash I dunno, assassins?"
"No assassinations," Prowl said firmly, following them onto the ship, and taking his usual seat at the controls. "Or sabotage, espionage, or petty vandalism. I'm retired. If you want to cause mayhem, it's going to be the lawful kind."
In some awe, Rumble whispered, "That's the most boring-soundin' mayhem I've ever heard of."
"We're still working out our new job duties," Buzzsaw told Shockwave, landing on the back of Prowl's chair. "It's all pretty touch and go—which I think means, if he gets touchy, we go."
Prowl snorted dismissively, but declined to comment as he powered up the ship and lifted off.
"He's the first Autobot we've willingly worked for and we're the first Decepticon underlings he's willingly taken on," Buzzsaw went on. "There's going to be an adjustment period while we're getting used to each other. If we have any big blow-out arguments, though, I promise we'll have them in here while you're trying to sleep."
"Wonderful."
"I dunno," Frenzy said. "Ain't got a social strut in his structure, somehow knows what everyone's up to but don't know a thing about how people work, thinks he can stop us from making mayhem just by askin'—he don't sound that different from what we're used to, honestly."
Prowl reminded himself, as they laughed at him, that they probably meant it as a compliment.
Probably.
###
Here was one last thing Prowl thought about Soundwave:
Ultimately, beyond all else, the both of them had been driven to protect. Hadn't they? Ultimately, the both of them had fought the war, and committed the worst evils, out of a sincere belief that they were protecting Cybertron from a far worse enemy.
Of course, concerning which side was the real threat to Cybertron, Soundwave was wrong and Prowl was right. But Soundwave had certainly believed the opposite, so it was a moot point.
If there were no threat—if there were no war—if the both of them hadn't turned themselves into monsters to fight it—Prowl thought he and Soundwave might have gotten along. He thought they would have seen each other as kindred spirits. He thought they might have liked each other, in some alternate reality where they'd never been dragged into a pointless war.
Maybe that was why his death had called to Prowl. Maybe, for just a moment, when everyone's sparks were touching, Prowl had had some subconscious glimpse of the connection they could have, should have had.
But it was too late to find out now.