Chapter Text
The Lost Light is very different from the other ships Shockwave had been stationed on. The Nemesis, in all its hulking dark glory, was damp and cold and quiet. Though his time on the ship had been brief, as he had been stuck on Cybertron on his own battling against the Autobot resistance who remained, it struck him now as he stepped up the ramp into the belly of the ship that would be his prison for Primus knows how long-mechs were loud.
They hooted and hollared, made faces at each other, grabbed at one another. Yanked and pulled and laughed and laughed and laughed. Shockwave's audials were pinned down before he even entered the ship, his single hand curling into a tight fist while his blaster stubbornly remained limp. It had been forcefully turned off when he was captured, and now it hung uselessly at his side. Usually, Shockwave could get away with the feeling, ignoring how the flow of his energon leaving his arm and circling back into his body felt sluggish. Like the energon had become thick in the fuel lines. With the blaster ahdn now cuffed, and completely out of his control, it weighed Shockwave down like a lead brick.
It made him off-center, tilting heavily to one side as he struggled to compensate for the tugging of the dead weight on the stasis cuffs. It made his footsteps sound shuffling and clumsy, as if he were a mech leaving the bar overcharged by half a dozen drinks. Energon burned as it rushed around the fuel lines in his helm, hot and burning with no place to go, no thin face plates to push up against to show his embarassment.
The heat kept him aware. It kept him angry. If he could school his expression, he would. Thankfully, and the only thing he was thankful for in this new body of his, he didn't have the physical capacity to display such...Illogical emotions.
Illogical...That word stuck with him, even after his emotional processor had been restored, it was hard to not default to the mech he was. Hard to filter through these emotions that were familiar, but felt like a coat of paint laced with sand. It was easier to just shove those emotions away in some deep corner of his processor.
Optics shifted to him as he walked further into the ship, up the ramp and into the loading bay proper. The entire ship's crew was present, all 150 bots (it had been 200, but after the Lost Light had returned from their quest, many had fled with their processors filled with tales of death, Sparkeaters, and the DJD) gathered in the massive space.
Held in stasis cuffs, with all of those optics trained on him. A glimmer of a memory displayed in his HUD. A shaky, static filled memory of him before he was who he was now. When he was weak, soft-sparked. Thinking that he could change the minds of greed-drunk bots. The memory left, banished to the deepest part of his processor where all of those memories tended to settle. He forced his legs apart slightly, forcing his body to counteract the terrible weight of his dead arm that still tugged him to the right.
His optic did not scan the crowd, rather finding a place firmly on the bot who he had devoted countless cycles of his life to. With dark red eyes that stared him down, a face twisted in piteous agony. A dark servo clutching the arm where his fusion cannon used to sit, squeezing until the metal warped. A punishment, Shockwave remembered. He had coaxed out many of those dents when Knockout wasn't around, not asking questions as to why his leader continued the harm to himself knowing that it costed things that they were already in short supply of.
He did not need to ask, as he knew the answer already. It would have been illogical to ask, as Megatron would not have given him a straight answer.
If he had given Shockwave an answer at all.
Megatron did not meet his optic, and Shockwave felt his spark turn. Megatron's field was held tight to his body, but Shockwave could see it. Megatron felt shame. The thought made Shockwave's tanks turn, and he quickly flickered his optic away from the hulking mass of scrap that had once called Shockwave his most valuable asset, and one of his dearest friends.
The shame was not a new sight. When Shockwave had been captured, stopped only by Prowl and Jazz from shooting himself in the spark, Optimus had visited him often. The first visit, he did not speak. Just stared at Shockwave, face twisted in agony. Shockwave had stared at him, and for the first time in a very, very, very long time, he did not see his enemy.
He saw Orion.
That soft faced Orion, who had held Shockwave's face when his face was still there. Who kissed him like he needed Shockwave's lips to live. They both knew that Shockwave Orion had once knew was gone, stripped away from his plating the second the Council was able to get their servos on him. He had reinstated Shockwave's emotional protocols, but after so many millions of years being emotionless; these emotions were foreign to him. Uncomfortable, even.
Any hope that Optimus had that Shockwave could (or would) remember him was snuffed out when Shockwave continued to act out. He was released from his prison, only to be shuttled off world when he continued to attempt to offline himself in increasingly more troubling and gruesome ways.
He had tried provoking the guards of his cell with constant escapes, only to stop and stare at the barrel of their blaster. A hunger strike lasted almost a vorn before a medic slapped an IV to his arm (which then had to be replaced as Shockwave continued to rip it out).
Shockwave had taken a sort of delight in seeing the Prime falter and continue to become more haggard and exhausted. Seeing him bend, even if just the slightest, was enough for Shockwave to feel the same pain that Megatron was feeling now.
In a way, it was his own way of harming himself. Pushing away those who had known him, had known a softer part of him that had been snuffed out before it could fully grow. Senator Shockwave was dead and gone, and when Optimus realized that, he sent him away.
So now, Shockwave stood before the crew of the Lost Light, slowly scanning the crowd in a way that he hoped would cause some anxiety and anger amongst them. Perhaps if he played his cards right, he would be able to-
His optic stopped, meeting the single optic of another mech. One who stood tall, craning over the shoulder of a glowering Cyclonus. A single yellow optic, a tiny pinprick of light in a sea of darkness that was the rest of his optic, stared Shockwave down. Shockwave couldn't move, his hand clenched and unclenched, commands sent to his blaster to power on ending in error after error.
The mech was a flight frame of some sort, a helicopter perhaps. His helm was slimmer than Shockwave's own, ending in a single massive optic. What once must have been his hands were replaced with crude claws that glinted in the artificial light, a sheen that glinted over the smooth surface showed without any need for demonstration how sharp the edges were.
His paint was a dark teal, merging well with the yellow glass of his cockpit chassis. He loomed over Cyclonus, helm slowly titling to the side. As if Shockwave was the bug who was being inspected. It shot holes into his processor, far more than any gun could hope to. Just that little look, with the pinprick of an bulb growing to mimic how optics narrowed in a smile, had Shockwave feeling a little light on his pedes.
Then, the teal mech was looking away. Helm bobbing with the aid of a long cable of a neck, bobbing as he spoke to a blue and white minibot who struggled to look over the crowd of crew until Cyclonus took pity upon him and hefted him up onto his shoulder. The teal mech's helm bobbed again in silent laughter, claws clicking together and playfully snipping at the minibot's oddly shaped pedes. The minibot playfully kicked and waved the claws away, clutching onto one of Cyclonus' horns for balance.
Shockwave waited for the older mech to snap, to shove the minibot away. Perhaps even stick that impressive sword of his through their spark. Instead, Cyclonus' sharp claws rested on the minibots hip to steady him. Shockwave's hand uncurled in shock. The Cyclonus Shockwave had known before had no patience for such playful and illogical actions. Cyclonus was not one to engage in play.
It was so odd to see such a bot who had once destroyed thousands of Autobots without mercy, following out the orders of the mighty Galvatron...Looking up at an Autobot with such care and love and-
The crowd parted slowly as a bright red and yellow mech brushed his way through, and Shockwave's mood soured further. He stood rigid, vents clicking on as the heat of the childish mech grew closer and closer. In an amusing way, the young Prime's spoiler jutted above the helms of the other mechs, a bouncing show of yellow that made Shockwave want to gag. If he could.
"Scuse me, sorry, Captain coming through!" Rodimus' irritating voice grew louder as he approached, as did the grunting and hissing of the mechs he passed. Finally, he stepped through the shuffling crowd, almost tripping over his pedes before catching himself in a weird sort of cartwheel that ended in a flourish of fire from his palms.
There was some polite clapping, a single whistle, and a sigh from Ultra Magnus loud enough to reach from all the way across the room. Shockwave didn't react, other than staring Rodimus down with as much of an expression of distaste that he could muster with a single optic. Rodimus grinned up at him, his dentae a blinding silver chrome. He was polished more than Shockwave had seen a mech as in a while. Even Starscream, who was known during the war to sneak out with his trine on 'special missions' which always boiled down to them raiding some human mechanics shop and stealing all of the wax and buffers they had on hand. Even he, though, paled in how fragging shiny this Prime was.
"You're a lot bigger up close!" Rodimus was overly chipper, his excited voice carrying easily and echoing in a boom around him, his words almost like a second field that hid his emotional one. Shockwave easily could pick past it and found a harrowing unease that settled under the Prime's plating like a thick mud. It practically stank with the desperation to deal with the obvious danger that was Shockwave. The desperation was quickly overcome by a sense of false-excitement which somehow felt worse than his desperation.
"I could say the opposite about you, Rodimus Prime of Nyon," Shockwave rumbled, internally chuckling at the exaggerated look of offence that quickly took over the ex-Prime's expression, "perhaps the distance between my blaster and your helm made you look bigger than you actually are."
Rodimus' spoiler quivered at the obvious aggression, and Shockwave could hear the sounds of plating from multiple mechs shifting as it puffed out in a reaction of defense. Rodimus, though, grinned like a turbofox who had found a nest of cyberduck eggs.
"You've got spunk!" Rodimus laughed, smacking Shockwave's good arm in a pat, "I like that! Welcome aboard the Lost Light!" He spread out his arms, as if to show off the grandeur of his ship.
It would have been more effective if the rest of the crew had not been silent as a grave and glowering at Shockwave like he had personally injected waste into their energon. It was clear he was not welcomed here.
"Why don't we get those cuffs off of ya, and I'll get someone to show you to where you'll be staying?" Rodimus reached for the cuffs, only stopping when Shockwave's guard (a Seeker, who disappointingly was not Sunstorm) raised his wings in alarm.
"Rodimus, sir!" The Seeker hissed, claw smacking away the grounder's hand, "with all due respect, Shockwave is an incredibly dangerous individual and must be treated with the utmost caution!"
Shockwave cycled his optic as Rodimus sputtered, "we've got him out numbered 150 to 1!" He protested, pouting at the Seeker, "there's no way that he would be able to get away from us-"
"It would not be hard for me to defeat you," Shockwave interrupted, "even with one of my arms broken," he tilted forward and loomed over Rodimus, darkening the lights around his optics to make the yellow light glow brighter, "if you do not remember from history before you, before Orion became Optimus."
Rodimus' spoiler twitched up again, and Shockwave saw how his optics widened a fraction.
"When the Senate scrapped me, refitted me," Shockwave leant forward more, lowering his voice until it rumbled with his engine, "I took great pleasure in investigating my new body, and in doing so, I massacred their bodies like they had done to me. I took them apart piece by piece, and hung them from the ceiling like they were decoration."
Shockwave saw the subtle shift of a minibot in the crowd, an orange one with a bright blue spark casing that shrunk back away from Shockwave's looming form over Rodimus. Shockwave vaguely recognized him, but was unable to place a name to such an oddly familiar face.
Interesting.
He focused back on Rodimus, who by now was starting to look a little queasy, "I took so much pleasure in removing their sparks, and cracking them open like they were little more than energon crystals. And when their light poured from their sparks, the liquid that held their forms together, I mourned not having a mouth as I could not sup their life away like they had done to mine."
Rodimus actually shuddered at that but stayed firm. He looked like he was about to be sick, as did many of the other crew. Shockwave, content that he had made his point, leaned away from the Captain slowly.
The rest of the crew were silent, their unease hanging over the bay like a heavy blanket. And then, a laugh.
Shockwave's helm snapped up, shoulders raising to hunch and optic darting from bot to bot to see who dared to laugh at his blatant display of hostility-!
It was the helicopter. Single optic glimmering in mirth while the bots around him and stared at him in open disgust and disbelief. Even Cyclonus shuffled away a step, looking a tad bit queasy while the minibot on his shoulder winced and pulled back his leg from where it had been poking the helicopter on the shoulder.
The helicopter's optic snapped to Shockwave, the yellow bulb curled into a facsimile of a grin. He was practically dancing in his spot, claws clicking with mirth as he continued to chortle. His laughter sounded like twisted metal coiling, and although it was an ugly sound Shockwave found that he was...Drawn to it.
Rodimus' spoiler lowered in relief, the movement drawing Shockwave's attention back to him. The Captain was grinning, relief plain his field.
"Well!" He clapped, looking at the Seeker who was now looking a bit green in the face, "I guess we've found out who'll be taking over the responsibility of taking care of our guest! Whirl isn't my first choice, but if he's offering!" He shrugged, and it took all of Shockwave's strength to keep himself from falling to his knees.
Shockwave's spark spun in his chassis. He imagined Whirl (Whirl, his processor spun. Whirl, Whirl, Whirl!) wrapping his claws around his neck and snipping his main energon line. His energon would flow out, gushing and spurting and covering the odd bot in the pink glow of life.
There would not have been a better way to go, then from the creator of chaos and hell himself.