the road not taken

When Shockwave’s image appeared, Ratchet straightened up with a satisfied look and a nod. He opened his mouth to say something only to snap his jaw shut at the snippet of music. Earth music, and it took him a moment for his translator to catch the meaning.

"Very funny," he snapped.

The only thing that kept him from trying to hit the other mech was the remembered pain of being slammed into a wall. Among other things. He hadn’t yet fully repaired from that incident and didn’t think any of the other medical staff would take lightly to him aggravating his injuries.

"Then I was right. About both things, actually. We’ve certainly been trying to get an idea of Shockwave’s whereabouts. I assume you’ll continue peeking into protected files, so you’ll know if we find anything."

Interesting.  So the Autobots were as curious to know what had happened to the mech as he was.  But for what reasons?  He knew his own, and no other bot would have ones anything like them.  Did they still view Shockwave as a threat?  Were they just as afraid of what he might be doing out there in what remained of the untamed wilderness between piles of rubble now as they were back when Megatron was leading them all?

If they did beat him to finding out something - anything at all - that indicated Shockwave was alive and well instead of a pile of grey metal back where Starscream had last seen him, then he would do his utmost to beat them to getting there.  Soundwave would not fail the bot and lose him yet again.

But... that was all assuming that he was wrong to have done his grieving.

"Starscream’s spark activity has increased by seven percent since you tried communicating with him. The science team has doubled its efforts to figure out a plan that may enable him to communicate without putting a Cybertronian at risk,” he explained, thinking of Jetfire’s determined expression when he had been updated on Starscream’s condition. “I’d like to know exactly what happened - what you were trying to get from him and what may have triggered him to attempt what he did.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie, but Ratchet needed more to say than just a series of questions. Soundwave worked in information, and without giving up some of his own, Ratchet could be certain the other bot would shut down quickly.

So Jetfire still labored under some form of affection for the former Air Commander despite all the betrayals and time spent as an enemy, did he?  Soundwave didn't understand why - in his opinion, Starscream was no prize - but he did have to admire Jetfire's dedication to an old flame.  Such lasting loyalty!  It was almost impressive.

More importantly to Soundwave, it was also exploitable.  He'd be sure to pay a 'friendly visit' to the mech at the earliest opportunity.

But before that, time to reward Ratchet's unintentional report with what appeared to be willing compliance and put a few points in his own favor with the Autobots.  Besides, he had no reason to hide what he'd sought; he didn't need to make it known why he'd tried finding the information.  Most would simply assume that he'd been looking for a fellow high-ranking officer in the aftermath of the war out of his loyalty to the Decepticons, and he was content to let them do just that.

He placed the first page of Shockwave's personnel file up on his visor and prepared for the second part, chin tilted up and weight subtly shifted, ready to dodge a possible blow.

What may have triggered him to attempt what he did.

Soundwave carefully selected a bit of human music with which he could truthfully answer the question.

(That it also served as a taunt based on the rumors he knew were going around regarding what Smokescreen had walked in on in the medbay was a happy little bonus that he could easily deny ever having intended.  No doubt Ratchet would find the snippet utterly distasteful, considering his faction loyalties and the fact that he still wasn't past the Prime's termination.

All in all, one of his cleverest little jabs in recent memory.)

▓▒░ ♫ If you want my body ... just reach out and touch me. ♫ ░▒▓

Several orns passed quietly by after the incident in sickbay. That was what bots were calling it. All anyone besides Ratchet and Soundwave knew was that Smokescreen had walked in to find the Decepticon writhing on the floor with Ratchet hovering over him. Ultra Magnus had several questions to which Ratchet had blithely remarked that he couldn’t violate patient confidentiality.

That hadn’t stopped him from taking permanent possession of the Phase Shifter for examination. His findings had been inconclusive. With no Matrix or Allspark, he couldn’t really test his hypothesis. The realization hadn’t eased the empty ache in his chest or the uneasy feeling that with enough time, he could have done exactly what Bulkhead had said.

It wasn’t until Ratchet had finally given up on the relic and returned it to Smokescreen that he even remembered there had been a reason for Soundwave trying to communicate with Starscream. The rookie’s curious inquiry about “tall, slender, and creepy” was enough to remind him that he had utterly dismissed Soundwave. Applying only a marginal bit of thought led Ratchet to him, standing once more on the other side of a door to a room in which Soundwave resided.

At least this time he wasn’t ready to tear the mech’s helm from his shoulders. Bumblebee’s chipper words about progress and learning to get along filtered through the forefront of Ratchet’s mind and he snorted derisively.

No, Ratchet was here for only one reason.

He wanted to know what Soundwave had learned and if he could persuade the mech to share. Somehow. After vorns of being at each other’s throats, Ratchet didn’t have much faith in his abilities to be persuasive.

Still, he could not shake the idea, and so was not the least bit surprised to find Ratchet standing there when the door slid open.

Displeased, yes.  Surprised, no.

He lifted his helm in inquiry, waiting to hear the reason for the visit.  It was far too late for a checkup after the incident in the medbay with Starscream's spark.  The good doctor had been quite negligent in that respect.  What else it could possibly be, though, he had no clue.  He'd not been digging around in any off-limits files as of late.

Without waiting for a second assurance about Soundwave’s status, Ratchet slipped a servo under his back and knees, finding the best places to lift from. He knew how much Soundwave weighed and if the mech was willing to cooperate, Ratchet wouldn’t have any trouble supporting his weight.

Hydraulics hissed as he lifted the Decepticon up from the floor and stumbled at the first touch of another mind against his own, the invasion unexpected and entirely unwelcome. With a warning growl of his engine, Ratchet rebuffed the intrusion and dumped Soundwave onto the empty medical berth.

He returned the warning and nothing else.  As long as he was not pried into during the repairs, he would behave like a proper patient - but only because Knock Out was not skilled enough to handle the work himself and he wanted to get back to his quarters as soon as possible.  He had thoughts that needed working out and he could not do that in a place as public as the medical bay.

"Do something so I can be sure you aren’t going to die on me," he said roughly. "What did Starscream do?"

No.  He felt like he'd collided with Elita One's alt mode at speed, but he knew he wasn't so far gone that death was an option... though the more he thought about all he had lost, the more he contemplated whether or not he should accept that it could be.

At least Laserbeak remained behind with him.  Yes - as long as she survived, so would he.  His programming required that much, and he would not put her through the strain of a proper separation just to be selfish.  The Shadowzone had been enough for them both.

Not to mention that he'd soon need her around as a reminder that he hadn't completely failed everyone important to him.

Soundwave listed some of the more obvious damages to his frame on his visor, highlighting trouble spots in red.  Evidently unable to walk, he wouldn't be able to get onto a medbay table by himself.

He could think of no reason for doing this other than the driving need to not watch Soundwave glitch and shake himself into going offline as Starscream did whatever he was trying to do. The chorus of help only spurred him into action when it became clear that Soundwave couldn’t comply.

It had been a long time since Ratchet had opened someone’s spark chamber without their explicit consent and he could taste the rust in the back of his throat at the memory. Stroking over the thin metal, he pried quickly and carefully at the plating until he found the transformation seams and could force the armor aside. It only took a few astroseconds but with each jerk and blast of scalding air from Soundwave’s vents, it seemed like cycles.

Eventually, he had it and stopped himself only last moment from simply reaching in to pull Starscream’s spark out. No, he would need to separate them without putting himself at risk. But how? He had coaxed spark separation during a bond, but this? This wasn’t anything he had ever seen before. One wrong move and he could kill them all.

"Ratchet, what’s happening?"

A voice broke through the haze and Ratchet’s optics snapped immediately to the blue and yellow mech standing a few paces away.

"Smokescreen!" he yelled, and levered himself up onto one knee to motion for the rookie to come closer. "The phase-shifter. Now!"

"Wha—" Smokescreen didn’t have time to ask as Ratchet took the device from his arm and attached it to himself.

The removal wasn’t even difficult after that, the intuitive nature of the relic kicking in and responding to what Ratchet wanted to do, and it was only Starscream’s spark he removed. Part of him briefly wondered how well this would have worked with the AllSpark before the writhing energies trying to wrap their way up his arm refocused him.

He didn’t waste time examining the spark in his servos, just slamming it back into the container it had been in while Smokescreen stood wide-opticked nearby.

Ratchet vented hard and turned toward him.

"Out," he gasped.

It occurred to Soundwave while he lay there trying to regain control over his body that although he often heard others in his helm while listening in on their thoughts, he'd never actually had someone in there the way Starscream had just been.  A world of difference lay between the two, and he, for one, was relieved to be free of the second.

If he'd been exposed to foreign memories from the brief bursts of contact between Starscream's spark and his own - and he had - then it was all too obvious to him that the disembodied mech had probably been able to do the same.  No telling which ones they were, or how badly compromised he was now.  Good to be rid of that before it got worse.

Good to be rid of it before he was extinguished.

No doubt he would have been.  Starscream's seemingly immortal spark would have had no difficulty overpowering his own rather fractured one and surviving the initial support failure.

Various internal reports began pouring in, telling him of the physical damage done; a blown vocalizer fuse here, shorted circuits there, a (thankfully redundant) component melted to slag...

...His spark chamber unarmored and exposed to the open air as plain as you please.

Soundwave extruded a feeler and feebly slapped Ratchet away before rolling onto the flat of one shoulder, trying to will the protective plates to close themselves back up.  There was only one non-deployer bot he would have considered gifting that sight.

And according to Starscream's memories, that one bot was no longer an option.

He should have expected something would happen. Maybe not this exactly, but despite all of the testing he and the science team had done, none of them had ever tried to actually physically handle Starscream’s spark. None of them were telepaths, so maybe the results would have differed, but Ratchet wasn’t willing to make himself a test subject.

The tricorder bleeped wildly as the energy he was recording suddenly skyrocketed and what had been a rather dull moment of monitoring suddenly turned into a flurry of activity.

He cursed, watching as the peregrine’s spark seeped through Soundwave’s chest and the mech collapsed to the floor. Without waiting to see what would happen, Ratchet knelt down to help, servos grasping the carrier by a shoulder and shaking him, hoping for some sort of response.

The request to respond finally drew a long and tortured-sounding help composed of numerous voices that rose into a shrill electronic whine and then popped.

Ratchet couldn’t remember if the seeker’s field had always been like that or if it was a side effect of being without a frame.

Some of the mecha involved in the decision had honestly wanted to do it out of some sense of right and wrong that Ratchet hadn’t exactly agreed or disagreed with. The decision had ultimately fallen to Elita One and Prowl and they had agreed that since execution didn’t seem to be possible, it would be less of a drain on their resources to rebuild the seeker’s frame and hope he could be reasoned with.

If not, well, that wouldn’t be Ratchet’s decision to make.

Soundwave lifting his servos up gave Ratchet pause, the CMO tamping down the memories that came with that gesture. The other mech’s hands had been different then and the offer was not being made to him, he realized. He shook away the thought with a scowl.

Want ... data from him.

The second gestured to Ratchet before rejoining the first.

You want?

He hoped Ratchet could be persuaded to give him permission if it meant the Autobots would be able to skip the entire frame-construction step.  All biomechanical material was desperately needed for other matters anyway; it couldn't be too hard a sell.

"I don’t know why you’re asking me considering you’ve probably already seen his medical files," he quipped, checking the spark support connections. "There’s been no change. We’ve decided to go ahead with completely building a new frame but that will take time since we’re still going through the recovered supplies from the Nemesis."

He gave Soundwave a short look, trying to figure out what the other mech could even care about. From what he remembered of the two, they hadn’t exactly been friends. In fact, aside from Knock Out and a few of the Eradicons, no one seemed to care what was happening to the Peregrine.

It was easier to think he wanted the same things the Autobots did. Information.

The idea that it might be a simple show of hospitality and concern for a fellow Cybertronian never crossed his mind.  Starscream had complained on more than one occasion that Ratchet hadn't helped him without getting something in return, and Soundwave doubted the old medic had suddenly changed his ways.

...That was it, wasn't it?  Data.  Just like before.  They wanted to try to trap Starscream into giving them information because they'd done the 'noble' thing and granted their former enemy a new frame.

How terribly wicked of them.

He approved.

Soundwave lifted his helm and stared at Ratchet, contemplating whether or not it would be worth potentially being banned from the medbay to try and get what he wanted from Starscream and put Ratchet in debt to him.  If the Autobots thought him willing to cooperate and save them some trouble, then there was a chance they'd unknowingly put on blinders and overlook his shadier personal activities from time to time.

Some of them, anyway.  The others could be dealt with using a different method.

Yes.  Worth the risk.  They'd have to let him in when he got injured anyway; he'd just set himself up appropriately and continue his business then.

Soundwave raised his servos, holding them palm-up before Ratchet.

Even if Soundwave was not personally responsible for Jazz’s demise, Prowl seemed determine to maintain the rivalry and dislike that had existed between the two spies out of respect and love. Ratchet could understand that level of devotion.

It had only been Elita One’s authority and the Troqus’ desire to make Ratchet comfortable that had prevented anything further from happening. Ratchet had been satisfied with ensuring that if Soundwave was going to use Optimus’ death against him, he would be able to control how it was done.

Soundwave’s inquiries into Shockwave’s location had not gone unnoticed, so when the mech appeared in the medical bay some orns after their confrontation, Ratchet let him wait a few kliks before coming out of his office.

Quietly, he wondered if anything could kill it.  According to more records he'd sneaked, Starscream's spark had still been functioning despite sitting in the middle of a shattered frame that lacked the proper support abilities when the Autobots found it.

An anomaly, the notes said.  The state of the pieces gathered and the age of the injuries showed that the spark should have faded out long ago.  The life support it was on in the medbay was really more of a precaution than anything.

But back to the present.

He lifted his arms, digits wavering with uncertainty in midair.

Some mecha said important memories and the things last seen when the frame died were permanently engraved on the spark.  It had never really been proven - how could it be? - but such beliefs had to come from somewhere.  Most rumors contained a grain of truth, no matter how tiny.

When he heard the sound of Ratchet's door opening and the mech's pedes striking the floor, Soundwave abruptly dropped his servos, hiding the fact that he had been about to attempt a telepathic connection with it, and backed away to allow monitor access.

Ratchet confronts Soundwave about the communication officer’s extracurricular research into Autobot medical files. Things escalate. Warnings: violence and brief mentions of suicide.

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