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Countless souls entered the Pits of Kaon. Just as many perished within its arena. That was the mantra Soundwave grew to internalize.
In those first cycles after waking to the darkness of Kaon’s caves, he’d fiercely held onto the idea that he might leave someday. It was only after acquiring a small, defenseless Ravage that he learned caution. The fights were called death matches for a reason. This creature relied on him to live. And thus, within those first few moments of holding her whimpering form, Soundwave forced his young mind to mature. He still believed hopelessly in one day finding peace far, far away from this place, but now he had a reason not to get there recklessly.
It was for Ravage’s sake that he trained as hard as he did. It was all for her that he killed opponent after opponent after opponent. It was to ensure she had a chance at living that he accepted his fate as a gladiator and claimed victory that season.
The reward was technically fair. Each season lasted three vorns, so that was the prize for being the season’s victor. Three short vorns.
Reeping the benefits of his violent reign should have included finding a means to leave the caverns beneath the arena. But after three long vorns of taking life after life after life all for the sake of one, his body was still trying to heal, his spark was still reeling, and his mind simply refused to work.
Countless souls entered. The only way to leave was through the Well.
Soundwave told himself it wasn’t defeat he fell into. This looming darkness in his spirit was just doubt. And Primus didn’t want him to succumb to such nonsense. It was a sin, wasn’t it? To doubt? He was sure he’d heard someone tell him once that to worry was to distrust his faith. And that had to be a sin, most certainly.
Then again, what did it matter at that point if he stepped away from faith? Hadn’t he just shattered countless sparks over the last three vorns? Who was he, then, to call upon a deity and ask for forgiveness?
Soundwave had surrendered to the shadows that plagued him when the new recruits came. They were all mostly the same, anyway. Prisoners and disobedient slaves sent to Kaon’s underground as a form of punishment. Each would have to prepare themselves for the death matches, as Soundwave had. Maybe one of them would be fortunate enough to be favored by fans. Maybe one would turn out like the older gladiators set aside for starting matches and fanfare. But only one of them would be a victor.
Soundwave wanted to avoid the lot of them. He wanted to seep into the shadows and be alone with Ravage in their little bubble of peace. But despite all that he’d done, Primus had plans for him.
The Tarnish miner’s designation was D-16. He was a towering figure (not that he seemed very aware of this) with a shade of grey marring his frame that Soundwave had only ever seen on a dead mech. The poor thing asked far too many questions. He wanted to know where Soundwave’s face was, what Ravage was, how Soundwave had won the last season, where the lights in the sky went, and so on until Soundwave finally broke.
The newspark had eyes like the gleaming red embers Ravage wore in her youth. Huge and wide and so bright, the spark within the frame seemed to be making an escape attempt through the optic lens.
It was like he was waking once again. This time, however, there was this speck of light trying its hardest to blind him. Soundwave couldn’t look away. Ravage loved to bathe in the miner’s light joy.
So, he told D-16 all that he knew of Primus, of the Well of Allsparks, and of the first Thirteen Primes. He explained why he kept his face covered, why he needed that control over his body, and why he was somberly admitting to this life they’d been thrown into.
D-16 was far from thrilled with the latter. His innocent eyes hardened as he proudly fought against this notion that they were trapped. “I’ve seen the daylight crawl back into its hideaway come nightfall. It was scary that first time because I didn’t know it would come back. But it did. And it does. And because I know the daylight will return in the morning, I’m not scared anymore of the night.” His scratched face twisted into a stubborn grin. “I can see how pretty the night sky is, now. Have you seen it? The scattered little lights that blink at you when you stare at them?”
Soundwave shook his head.
“Well, one day you will,” the newspark insisted. “One day, I’ll show you.”
Poor thing was going to die fast, Soundwave thought. His source of confidence seemed confined to his voice.
Still, Soundwave continued telling his stories. He wasn’t sure where in his mind the memories dwelled, but the truthful tales of heroic Primes and a benevolent god took him and Ravage and D-16 away from their dim reality.
One cycle, another mech joined in their discussion of divinity. He quietly listened as Soundwave spoke tersely of how their world had come to be. He smiled fondly when D-16 derailed their talks to bombard him with question after question. Most surprisingly, each answer came with a genuine smile and soft reply.
His name was Terminus. He was a nobleman’s guard for a time until he was arrested for thievery. He had to explain to the miner what exactly he had stolen since the poor newspark had never heard of datapads.
“I just wanted to read,” Terminus insisted with a kind of yearning Soundwave had only ever heard in the miner’s voice. “My master’s library contained everything from biology to astronomy to philosophy and religion. It was a wonder, and it wasn’t technically mine.”
“And they sent you here for taking that?” the miner pushed, too confused by the concept to fully grasp the crime.
Terminus’s smile melted. “No…I was sentenced to life in prison for stealing the datapads. I sent myself here.” His entire body lifted proudly. “I figured, what kind of an end is that? To waste away with no one knowing or caring that I existed? No, I asked to come here instead. The Pit Fights are brutal, but at least I would die having been something.” His servos lifted high above his head. “Here, I can go out in a blaze of glory!”
“That’s true,” the miner muttered, his entire spark visibly seized by awe.
Terminus gazed up at the young mech, lowering his arms as he asked, “Why are you here?”
D-16 pointed to the cave’s ceiling. “I tried to touch the sky lights.”
Soundwave cocked his helm to the side at that. “Clarify.”
The miner just jerked his arm higher, as if emphasizing where he was pointing would help. “The sky lights. The ones that come out at night. I tried to reach them, but they were too far away. So I started jumping. My overseers didn’t want me to. They didn’t understand, though. The little lights always blink, but one of them went away. I had to get to them before they all left.”
Terminus made a sound of understanding. “Stars. They’re huge balls of fire that live in space. You can’t touch them. I read somewhere that they live so far away that their light can take vorns to reach us. The one you saw probably died long before either of us was ever created.”
D-16 hadn’t been thrilled by that fact, but his new obsession over all that Terminus knew overrode any and all negativities.
Soundwave watched that first conversation unfold in relative silence. It was fascinating to see the way their optics burned brighter as their voices coated the air between them. Terminus couldn’t look away from the imposing miner babbling about how much he loved the sun. D-16 was completely enthralled by the limitless knowledge Terminus was willing to share with him.
It was no wonder the two became inseparable. And Kaon was brighter for it.
So, Soundwave began to tell his stories to a crowd of three. Ravage would lay across the miner and the would-be scholar as they learned of the lives of Primes. There was Solus, the creator of weapons, and Prima, the creator of light. Vector and Trionus controlled time and history while Micronus maintained their morals. Alchemist and Quintus were thinkers beyond Soundwave’s comprehension. Onyx was a beast far gentler than those the gladiators fought. Nexus combined into many forms, and Amalgamous could appear as any of his choosing. Liege was the Prime of Lies while Megatronus was the patron of warriors.
These twelve had long since passed on, returning their sparks to the Well, but the thirteenth was still living in a realm between life and the afterlife. His essence exists in a vessel and would be gifted to the Primes destined to rise in their times. To receive this Matrix, then, was to have access to the divine.
“How regal,” Terminus remarked, looking not to the sky or the storyteller but to the mech sitting beside him. “Oh, to be so worthy of a god’s favor.”
“Worth: is not innate,” Soundwave clarified. “We are all granted the potential for such an honor.”
Terminus, however, was not speaking to him. That captivation in his eyes was reserved for the miner. “Megatronus,” he said, seemingly testing the word in his voice. A hand was raised to D-16’s chin. Not to lift it, just to touch. “Megatronus,” he called with more force behind the sound. “A name worthy of a warrior.”
The miner smiled in that gentle way that betrayed his youth. “If god favored me, I would not be here.”
“Perhaps They believe you are more than meets the eye.” The hand pulled the miner’s face just out of reach of Terminus’s. “Primus knows I do.”
This was merely one among countless moments that turned the gears in Soundwave’s processor.
There were nights spent wakeful, trying uselessly to sleep through the screams of battles waging just outside their barracks. Soundwave would hold a crying Ravage against his chest as he paced to sooth her. During those nights, he would catch glimpses of one large form and mistake it for a single mech. Those nights, he’d pass by a grey miner and red scholar attempting to melt into one being. Some nights, there were coolant tears shared between them or strangled cries they tried to smother. Most of those nights, though, were waged in dry silence.
Days were just as dark. The scholar and the miner would train together for the pending death matches. More often than not, sessions would devolve into fits of laughter. Laughter faded into delighted conversation. Conversation sequestered in the dark recesses of Kaon’s underground where no one was liable to disturb them.
Eventually, Soundwave did. He had to. The season’s start was fast approaching. They needed to know where they were going.
Each season consisted of three vorns. Each vorn held its own theme. The first gave fighters the illusion of choice in their fate: battle alone or alongside a partner. This was where Soundwave intervened to share the advice an elder gladiator, Scorn, had given him. Do not fight beside an ally. Of course, the miner questioned this.
“Why not? Wouldn’t we have better odds of surviving this place if we fought together?”
Soundwave shook his helm knowingly. He’d believed the same before Scorn told him what the Pit organizers would not. “Victors of paired matches battle each other at the end of the vorn.” He laid a hand on the pair’s shoulders in the hopes his honesty was emphasized. “To battle together is to ultimately pit yourself against each other.”
Terminus’s eyes brightened. He worked his mouth around his thought before finally voicing it. “The purpose is to learn your eventual opponent’s tactics.”
Good, Soundwave thought, that one of them understood the organizers’ need for dramatics. The need for a compelling show. To have spectators watch in shock and awe as two beings who’d relied on one another for so long faced each other in a fatal match.
He walked away from the pair then, secured in the notion he’d saved them from a fate worse than death. Neither were likely to win the season, but at least they wouldn’t be the reason for the other’s demise.
Looking back, he wished he’d paid closer attention to the eyes of the miner. That infectious brightness that yearned to hold stars in his hands, it shone in those red optics as Soundwave explained reality to him. No, it should not have surprised him to learn the two had defied his advice. They were inseparable. Reality be damned.
And so, he watched a scholar and a miner march into the arena side-by-side, hand-in-hand. Against beasts, against fellow gladiators, the pair waged a victorious war.
In those nights when Soundwave paced the barracks, willing Ravage’s starvation pangs to cease, he’d pass a grey and red form tucked away from the crowd. Awake and alight, though their eyes lulled half-lidded. They didn’t speak, not out loud. Theirs was a language spoken through ground plating and merged lip plates. There was electricity in the air that lingered after every match and carried them into the next.
It wasn’t love. Not as Soundwave envisioned love to be. They were young and foolish and desperate to be seen or felt. They were worshipers kneeling before the other’s body rather than the divine’s spirit. They were rushed and violent in the way they grabbed one another, merged into one another. They were far away from Soundwave’s own notions of what loving someone looked like.
Or perhaps he was the mistaken one. Perhaps the way they gazed at each other and fought effortlessly beside one another was a form of young and desperate love Soundwave had no reference for. Regardless, there was no point in discussing the matter. They would be dead by the end of the vorn.
Victory after victory rang hollow in Soundwave’s spark chamber. Every cheer for the pair was an omen to a doom neither could avoid. When the end of the vorn finally came, it seemed only Terminus understood this.
The night before the final match of the vorn, Terminus left Megatronus recharging in favor of approaching him.
Whether it was love or blind obsession, the scholar spoke as a devotee would. “Megatronus is my life. However I lived before him, before now, is nothing compared to him. I would give my friend all that I have if doing so meant he’d rise above what life has thrown at him.” There was light in his eyes the likes of which Soundwave had never witnessed. “Promise me…promise me you will hold him when I’m gone.”
Or maybe this was insanity he saw in those blazing red eyes. But Soundwave had no room to speak when Terminus continued his pleading.
“You know the divine, Soundwave, better than I do. Trust me when I say it speaks to me through him. I know, in my spark, that he was meant for so much more than Kaon or Tarn. Primus has chosen him for something grander. Something beyond me.” Terminus closed his eyes, seemingly sinking within himself. “Why else would Primus have revealed Themself to me, now, in your teachings? Why would They give me him in the same breath?”
Who was he to deny the divine or question its role in another’s life? And who was he to deny a friend’s selfless need to protect someone they both cared for? Of course, Soundwave gave his word.
The day was filled with beams of sunlight. No clouds or smog hung above the arena as Terminus and Megatronus defeat the last of their foes.
Soundwave watched through a slit in the walls as the scene unfolded.
The audience’s cheers of excitement morphed into entitled begs for more. One battle was finished, yes, but another needed to commence. The real reason millions were seated in a packed stadium. Jeers faded when Terminus threw his weapons down. They all but ceased as Megatronus did the same.
“Where are your cheers?” Megatronus prompted, throwing his arms up to raise the crowd’s spirits. “We are victorious!”
Above the overseers’ chastisements, above the crowd’s disappointed cries, it was Terminus’s words which blared in Soundwave’s audials. “They aren’t going to listen to us.”
Megatronus was elsewhere, though, heedless of Terminus’s pleas for reason. They would be an exception to the norm. They would rise above the stations given to them. They’d grasp the stars before they blinked away.
“Fight me!” Terminus cried, weaponless and kneeling before a mech who refused to look down. “You have to!”
“Never!” Megatronus howled back with eyes half-lidded and helm inclined to the sky. He raised his arms higher as if to embrace the sunlight.
That was how their dance began. Two unmovable forces shoved and grasped at each other in vain efforts to sway one of them. Terminus seized the broadsword Megatronus had taken to. Megatronus refused to lower his arms. They landed in a sort of embrace, mouths agape in frightful battle cries and reasonless arguments.
In the end, it was Terminus who dealt the killing blow. He pulled Megatronus’s arms down, pressed the palms to the pommel of the sword, and dragged them close until the blade was sheathed in his own chassis.
Above the crowd’s disappointed jeers, Megatronus wailed. He sank into the energon soaking the ground with Terminus laying limp in his arms. Where Terminus inevitably fell was where he knelt, where he cried out like a child lost to something aimless and radical.
Above it all, Soundwave could hear singing. Behind him, Scorn had turned his gaze away and begun humming a tune Soundwave knew all too well. A song of love lost to unmovable forces. “My friend, they faded far beyond me,” Scorn sang softly as much to himself as the pair bathed in energon on the arena floor. “So low there was nothing but grey skies hailing. No warmth, no burning, cold as cold could be. Such was my life once my sunlight left me.”
Scorn’s mournful bellows matched the sickening wails too perfectly. As if the song had been written with this very agony in mind. And perhaps there was a measure of truth in that. A sense of pain all gladiators felt put to words by Scorn. And truthfully, Soundwave believed he’d known that pain. He’d held Ravage as she cried for fuel he didn't have. He’d ripped apart the sparks of strangers just as innocent as him. But none of his quiet tears shed in the dark recesses of Kaon’s underground compared to the shrieks of a newspark cradling the slain.
Sparkache drove him to his knees, to prayer. Soundwave expected the same from Megatronus. He expected to watch the poor mech be dragged away from Terminus’s body as limply as a corpse.
Instead, Megatronus rose.
Soundwave clutched the energon soaked earth as he watched the miner stand before the booing crowd. He watched as the towering mech raised his voice to unheard levels.
“Murderers!” Megatron howled with all the passion of a sinner seeking the divine’s acceptance. “You are all murderers and thieves! You come here in search of entertainment from the lowly ending each other’s lives. Is that your joy? My pain? The ending of countless lives?” He raised his hands. This time, he didn't embrace the sun. His palms clinched into shaking, energon coated fists. “Are you here to murder me without consequence? To steal without remorse? To be entertained without guilt?”
Impossibly, he screamed louder. Far louder than the collective seated in the stadium. “You are all lesser creatures than even me!”
Megatronus didn’t move anyone seated around him. They called for his demise, for his punishment, for better entertainment even as he sulked back to the body on the ground. They shouted their displeasure while Megatronus silently carried Terminus’s greyed frame through the arena gates, back towards the barracks.
He’d made a vow the night before. Before Primus, he kept it.
Soundwave held the newspark closer as he wailed. The night lulled in their restless singing, one of them reciting the lyrics to a song that matched the other’s cries. As the night wore on, so too did this dance. An ache swallowed Soundwave’s resolve the longer he sang. For the first time, the song picked him apart rather than sooth his deepest pains.
It was all too real. This kind of loss, this kind of harm, this kind of love. But still, Soundwave kept his word. He sang as Megatronus cried through the night and prayed his god would heal them both.
In the cycles that followed, it was as if the life in Megatronus had fled his body. The greys of his frame paled in a haunting reflection of Terminus’s corpse. The rims of his once stary eyes darkened to near blackness. For those first few cycles after Terminus was gone, Soundwave feared his promise was doomed to be broken. There was nothing, he believed, he could do to keep Megatronus alive if the miner’s very spark gave out.
But Megatronus rose with dawn one morn. Towering at his full height and with an age ill-fitting his youth, defiance rumbled from his chest. “Keep a look out for remnants of Term.”
Oh, not defiance, then. Delusion. “Remnants?”
“Before he died, Terminus told me we would find each other again someday.” A dead look landed on Soundwave. “Keep a look out for him, please. Until he returns to me.”
Delusion, yes. One born of misunderstanding. Terminus had known of the Well of Allsparks, where they were all destined to join in death. Of course, Soundwave knew what Terminus had meant. And of course, he would keep the matter to himself. Destroying what little light still lied in Megatronus’s spark was not his desire. And so, he simply nodded.
Had Megatronus really listened to his teachings, he likely would have known of the place and time Terminus implied they’d reunite. Then again, Megatronus’s focus had always been sealed elsewhere, to another he deemed more worthy of his attention.
Soundwave kept his promise. After every battle Megatronus won, he cleaned and wrapped the miner’s wounds. On nights when Ravage and Megatronus evaded sleep, he lulled them both into recharge with stories of Primes. When training no longer provided Megatronus improvement, he volunteered to spare with him.
Whether by his efforts or Megatronus’s sheer will, every match the miner entered was easily won. No amount of time erased what brought them both together. Soundwave still watched the matches through that slit in the walls. He still marveled at the speeches Megatronus shouted to a heedless crowd as the energon of the slain was used to paint a mech’s helm on the arena floor.
Every one of Megatronus’s matches ended that way. With a speech and a reminder. With the desperate words of a living gladiator and the visage of a fallen.
It made sense, Soundwave thought, to enter the final match with the painting already dawned.
His hands were steadier than Megatronus’s, so the symbol he painted across his friend’s chest was cleaner than those messily smeared in energon. Soundwave stepped away to admire his work. The violet paint they’d stolen was dark, yes, but it stood out well enough against Megatronus’s pale grey.
“I can carry him into my final battle,” Megatronus mused, careful not to smudge the paint as he traced the symbol adorning his chassis. “Mark my words, my friend. This is the last time I kill.”
Soundwave believed him.
Each victory’s speech was more eloquent and more defiant than the last. Some had ended with a speechless crowd. Others with objects thrown at Megatronus’s helm. It truly was insane the way this newspark sought to rile up the audience with striking accusations to their character. Soundwave had been far too afraid to be anything but a silent killer the fans could be mystified by during his season. But here was Megatronus, throwing remarks right back at the people supporting his gladiatorial reign.
And this final match was no less controversial. Megatronus managed to disembowel the mech pit against him after nearly a joor of taxing conflict. This was the finale. Terminus’s face was already painted, but the crowd still demanded the other half of their usual. They called for a speech. For Megatronus to excite them.
The gladiator heaved his fallen opponent’s axe in his grip. It was not words he threw at the crowd. No, he hurled at them something far sharper.
The axe embedded in the balcony edge of the high-caste viewbox. Specifically, in the support structure directly in front of the box itself. Soundwave doubted the occupants could see it, but the act certainly spoke volumes. For all but one of them cowered.
A mech perched on the balcony edge, his eyes dazzled by Megatronu’s bold finale. He was clean, like Ravage had been when Soundwave first held her. Wide blue eyes stared at Megatronus in complete and utter captivation not unlike the gaze Terminus once wore. When Megatronus glared a stoney look that should have killed the mech, he clapped instead of cowering.
It was no wonder, then, that Megatronus aimed his words at the newspark. “I do not live so that you may pity me.”
Strange, Soundwave thought, that he recognized that glint in Megatronus’s eyes. They burned brighter than they had in two long vorns. All of him seemed brighter, in fact. As if the sky had opened a little and let more sunlight gleam upon this new victor and the sole mech glad to see him speaking.
For everyone else, the season’s end was anticlimactic. Two vorns worth of speeches and unhinged tirades, and all Megatronus did now was walk away quietly, victory in hand.
Stranger then was the reason a high-class mech came to see them.
“I was fascinated by you,” the mech claimed. He smiled brighter than his lime-green paintjob. “By both of you, that is. Mainly your final statement, Megatronus. I heard you, then, and I intend to hear more from you.”
This mech—this senator from a place called Iacon—bought them. For how much, Soundwave would never know and never care. His worth was determined by Primus, no one else. And while all he’d ever known hid beneath Kaon, and though he had reservations in so suddenly leaving them, Ravage’s happy pleas for freedom put all his anxieties at bay.
For the first time in his life, Soundwave stepped outside the arena walls. He had to walk around Megatronus to fully bask in the sun’s warm rays, for his friend was seized by a kind of divinity standing there outside their prison. Here, the sun wasn’t added torture. Here, it soaked into their aching frames like soothing rain.
Their travel to Iacon lasted several joors. Soundwave spent most of it ogling the sights outside their transport with Ravage. Their faces smooshed together to share in as much of this experience as physically possible.
“We are going to introduce you to a friend of mine,” the senator explained. “His mentee will be your liaison. You two will receive an education and a place near the Hall of Records to stay, thanks to my monetary contribution, on the condition that you work with us politically.” The mech smiled something ruthless, almost yearning. “Bring that ‘change the world’ energy with you. The world will listen. I will make sure of it.”
Perhaps he should have been warry of such tremendous promises, but Soundwave couldn’t find a reason to care.
They arrived at the Hall of Records at dawn. A long staircase stood between them and the massive double doors. Megatronus made to tackle the ascent first. No sooner had he risen three steps did the doors open for another mech. A mech they both recognized.
Blue eyes as wide as they had been when gazing down from that balcony, the newspark dazzled them with a grin as large and imposing at the structure he came from. No, none of it was direct at them. Not both of them. Just Megatronus.
Soundwave stopped to watch as his friend continued to ascend. Dawn’s early light scattered rays about the two youths coming to meet the other halfway.
“I am Orion,” the mech said in a cheerful though hushed tone, as if his very voice was seized by awe of meeting this gladiator. “Orion Pax.”
A hand was offered and readily taken. Orion stayed a few steps up, so their eyes were level as Megatronus, too, introduced himself. Equally raptured. “Megatronus…after the Prime.”
Orion smiled impossibly brighter. “You don’t know how excited I’ve been to meet you, Megatronus.” His gaze never faltered as he tugged the gladiator after him.
Soundwave watched them rush through the Hall’s doors. He didn't miss the look in Megatronus’s eyes. The familiar glint of joy once reserved for a fallen scholar. And it was easy to see why it was there.
Orion was named after a constellation of stars. He was quiet as he listened to Megatronus’s youthful rambles, seeming to delight in delight itself. The two would linger after lessons to enthuse in everything and nothing. Poetry Megatronus found fascinating. History Orion thought far too complex. They crashed into each other in a haze of blinding lights and overwhelming volumes of knowledge.
Orion was nothing like Terminus. Terminus had been rooted in convictions where Orion was easily tossed about by the slightest influence. Terminus had been a towering presence both in his stature and in his words, but Orion was meek. Terminus’s hands were steady, useful. Orion’s shook with flimsy anxiety and guideless guilt.
Soundwave saw it all. The way Orion changed his tune depending on who he’d spoken to last. The way he shrunk down to some voiceless drone in the company of authority. The way he trembled trying to explain why the Gladiator Pits came to be.
Soundwave saw Megatronus overlook it all for the sake of fleeting feelings of similarity. And he understood why that was.
“Orion is magnetic,” Megatronus mused as nightfall turned him wistful. He turned to Soundwave in his berth, and Soundwave shifted to his side in his own in kind. “He sees me in a way I haven’t been seen since…in quiet some time. Am I going insane?”
What could he say? There was no denying Orion cared for them in a sense. But the mech was careless with his love. Orion held Megatronus’s hands, let the touches between them linger, hugged him tightly, gazed up at him excitedly. Orion wore all his emotions in his wide blue eyes, and the lens only seemed to magnify them.
It was no wonder Megatronus conflated treasured memories with this confusing reality. But then again, Soundwave couldn’t say he knew what love was. Perhaps this was it. Perhaps this was how Orion loved. In a manner so similar and mutated from Terminus’s divine devotion to Megatron’s very spark.
And so, he told Megatronus no.
The two became inseparable. Soundwave was left behind to watch them fall into each other. He said nothing as he noticed Orion’s hand holding Jazz’s or Ratchet’s in the same desperate manner. He looked the other way when Orion set his awed gaze on anyone who spoke to him. Because he knew better than to speak. The shattering of harmless fantasies would destroy Megatronus and all the progress his friend had made as a proper scholar.
And now, as an activist.
Soundwave stayed quiet, dawning his role as the silent threat, and stood behind Megatronus and Orion as the two made their way through Iacon. Speech after eloquent speech swept the masses off their preconceived notions of what a gladiator was capable of being. Here was a brute stood as an equal to a high-class archivist, both of them falling into the other’s address with ease.
Then Senator Areil entered the scene. She was tall and thickly armored. Bold in her movements and her blunt words. A “titan” Orion called her, his voice dripping with awe. There was a reason her supporters dubbed her “Elita One”.
Soundwave watched Orion leave them behind to meet her at the Hall’s entrance. He watched as excuses formed an impenetrable shield around Megatronus’s mind, hardening his eyes and straightening his mouth. He saw the moment his friend’s trust was shaken. Not toppled. Not yet.
Elita was so much like Terminus. Confident, assured. She listened well and amplified the unheard with her own, higher station. She was disarming despite being such a powerful presence, and she was steady despite how gently she cared. Not that Megatronus ever saw this. He was still blinded by Orion’s scattered lights.
“Orion and Elita,” Soundwave ventured to say, praying his friend would see the obvious before he had to break the fantasy.
“She is useful for our cause,” was the curt response. “Nothing more.”
But Soundwave knew better. They were quiet in their affections, but Soundwave saw the steady confidence Orion and Elita shared. The calm gazes, the subtle grins, the ease of their frames beside each other. They were the epitome of what he’d envisioned as love.
The truth didn’t matter, though, did it? Megatronus’s light had returned to his eyes. What did it matter how?
Looking back, he regretted his silence. Perhaps if he had said something sooner, Optimus Prime’s betrayal wouldn’t have broken his friend so thoroughly.
Megatron stood before the High Council, eyes covered in blue screens and sharp plating smoothed to gentler points. He tried. Primus, he really did try to play the part of a calm activist imploring their government to reconsider their actions. Rampant poverty, unequal imprisonment, the rise of horded wealth—these things were tied to the caste system. The same system which cast him out as a violent brute suppressed countless lives to suffering and mental anguish.
There was something to be said of closed minds blocking empathy on its path to equity. That Megatron’s fuse finally reached a limit was understandable. That Orion interfered, however, was a twist only Soundwave saw coming.
Of course, the Council listened to the preachings of Alpha Trion’s charge. They likely weren’t going to do anything, but they did at least pretend. They put on a show naming the meek archivist a Prime.
That was the moment Megatron’s spark broke a second time. Instead of wails, he threw a hand at Orion’s face.
That night was restless as Soundwave watched his friend implode. Their apartment was torn asunder not in grief but in rage. Orion may have been confused or even upset by the ordeal, but Megatron was as shattered as his perception of the archivist.
“He stole from me!” Megatron cried as he threw a berthside table at the wall. “I’ll kill him! He will pay for betraying us!”
Soundwave stood still as the eruption inevitably ebbed. He walked calmly to his friend’s crashed form leaned up against a dented wall, mindful of the vow he made to a long-lost friend.
But no tears were shed for Orion Pax. “He claimed to have loved me.” The voice was hollow, devoid of all the fury shown to their room.
Soundwave believed him. More specifically, he entirely believed Orion would throw around terms of affection with anyone he deemed pleasant company. “Orion is no liar. Just misinformed.”
Megatron’s mouth twisted around a growl. “You shouldn’t use a word if you don’t know its meaning.” He pushed his weight off the wall. Where he stormed off to, Soundwave didn’t know.
He was left alone to mull over the notion that, yes, Orion probably did understand the meaning of the word. Surely, he knew what love was if Elita was any indication. He also probably knew better than Soundwave or Megatron could hope to what different forms love could take on.
When Orion said he loved someone, Soundwave didn’t doubt the mech meant it. Just as he didn't doubt Megatron believed he’d been loved again.
War was drastically different than the gladiatorial or political arena in every way save Megatron’s tendencies. Soundwave wished, looking back now, that he’d paid closer attention to the slow implosion of his friend’s sanity.
In his defense, he became rather distracted. There was a scientist among their ranks, one who once had been a flashy, arrogant senator. Gone was the grin and hyperbolized promises. Shockwave was cold, calculated, blunt. He was nothing like Soundwave’s vision of love and everything he ever wanted to share his life with.
And share they did. It was a calm, subtle love that eased gradually into Soundwave’s life. So much so, few seemed to notice. Not even Megatron.
The last fact was his own fault. Awkward explanations of his love life were procrastinated. It became harder and harder to imagine telling his closest friend just who he had creations with when the number grew from two to eight to twelve.
Harder still was admitting to his friend’s ignored peril.
Megatron clung to one love after another. From vengeance to sacrificial honor to Optimus Prime. Then came the need for control. Soundwave could see the thin connections linking all these fixations. For at the core of them were three mechs.
Terminus was a brilliant red with passionate eyes and emboldened soul. Orion was red and blue and clever with his knowledge despite his inherent ignorance. Starscream was a bizarre combination of the two, his crimson and navy reflective of Orion while his fiery nature hinted at a resemblance to Terminus.
Looking back, the connection between Starscream and past loves was hiding in plain sight. In the moment, however, Soundwave had been too baffled to find Megatron and that traitorous seeker together to ask questions. He wished he had.
Of course, with a need for control came a need to dominate. To gain power over the powerful. How unfortunate it was that Starscream’s involvement coincided.
He wished he had noticed the signs sooner. He wished he’d taken every twitch and cower of Starscream’s form with the seriousness the seeker deserved. But he’d been too busy being in love. Not just with Shockwave and the family they made, but in the idea of someone.
He’d fallen so long ago for the image of a mighty Megatron howling at a crowd in spite of whatever harm might befall him. All because it was the right thing to do, the only way to save them from the darkness they were forced to reside within. He fell for the composure of a natural leader marching into battle ahead of their troops. He fell for the gentle poet who just wanted to put to words what it was like to gaze up at the lights of billions of suns dancing across the night sky.
He was in love with the idea of Megatron: the friend, the leader, the revolutionary, the poet. This was as much a fantasy as the one Megatron crafted all those vorns ago in Iacon. Like before, Soundwave didn't let any truths shatter it.
It was selfish, Soundwave thought, to not open his eyes until it was his family the warlord’s actions began to affect. Doubt didn’t consume his spark until a mountainside was lined with small graves, each bearing an engraving Shockwave had so lovingly drawn of the cassette resting beneath. Anger didn’t truly take hold of his spark until their world died and Shockwave was left behind to guard Cybertron’s remains. Loyalty went unquestioned until the Autobot’s victory forced him to choose who to stand beside.
In the end, he admitted to himself that the friend he’d loved died in that arena, screaming for the mech greying in his arms. All that proceeded was the fantasy.
Shockwave, however, was real. Their love, their bond, their family were all real and infallible.
The way his scientist held onto his every word, the way his optic gleamed with curiosity as he flooded Soundwave with all he knew—this was a love worth falling for. His scientist didn’t rush. No part of them was desperate. There was urgency in their shared gazes, not the haste with which Terminus and Megatronus clung to each other. There was purpose behind the squeezes to his hand, not the paranoia that plagued Megatron’s contact with Orion. There was respect and understanding between their differences, not shouts or physicality as in the abuse Megatron dealt Starscream.
So, Soundwave stood beside the tangible chill of Shockwave’s presence not the graspless rays of Megatron’s scattered light.
Looking back, he wished could have done more for the mech he left behind. But he could never regret his decision. There was no point in sacrificing himself and his loves for a friend he didn't know. This was not to say the love he gave Megatron was any less real. It simply meant that all he could do was pray Megatronus saw the sun again someday.