Prime held her/his wrist for a moment longer, his strength nearly breaking it. The blinding white glare came from inside his chest, flung wide before Soundwave's eyes, and from within Prime's helmet, blasting out through his optics, turning his face into the x-ray silhouette of a skull. Prime spoke, his voice echoing, the sound of a thousand voices, so loud it seemed to shatter the universe:

"You're mine."

He forced his/her hand against something hard, something that burned...

...burned...
...everything...
...gone...
...No!...

Soundwave jerked out of recharge with a panicked cry, waking alone in a strange room. After a moment of alarm, he finally recognized the fixtures as those of his new quarters on Charr. Wearily laying back onto his recharge berth, he consulted his internal chronometer to find that nearly the entire night had passed by, yet he felt just as worn and exhausted as at the beginning of the night.

The nightmares...

The nightmares would be the end of him.

Each period of recharge chipped at his reserves of strength. The nightmares came for him despite any barriers he could erect around his mind. He turned his head to the side to regard the few familiar objects in the room, his crimson visor glowing in dim exhaustion.

But shadows flickered at the edges of his vision, shadows and wisps of a terrible blue light.

I am still dreaming, Soundwave told himself desperately, yet knew it was untrue even as a soundless voice full of madness and malice laughed at him.

Awake or dreaming... you are ours, just the same, it whispered. And one day, so shall be your sons, it added, striking as always into his greatest fear. Reflexively, Soundwave started to mentally reach out to his creations to reassure himself, then with his new, unwanted, necessary habit, stopped. To make contact with his sons was almost certainly what the Matrix-shade wanted.

Silent laughter mocked him until the telepath put up the strongest shields he could muster with a hidden grimace of effort. The voice, the lights, and the shadows faded, leaving Soundwave weary and uncertain, and vulnerable to the memories of his last moments with his creations.

"But why?"

Buzzsaw's soft, utterly bewildered question pierced Soundwave to the core.

"I cannot remain here," he told them, his voice ringing in soft, minor harmonics. "I am needed to reform the Peace Academy, and you are needed here to aid the others against the Autobots."

Did we do something wrong?

Rumble's quicksilver worry slipped past the layers of his private thoughts to bury itself like a piece of shrapnel into his father's soul. Struck, the telepath longed to reopen himself to his creations, to unfold the neatly tucked in edges of his mind and surround all of five of them with his loving mental embrace.

But he dared not. The deep shadows of the room seemed to laugh in cruel appreciation of his pain, and he dared not.

Ravage's mournful gaze altered subtly as the most perceptive of his sons recognized that beneath the brittle exterior shell of calm, Soundwave was terrified.

"Father... don't go," he still asked, his deep velvet voice strained. He put an appealing paw on Soundwave's knee, softly pleading, and nudged his head underneath his father's palm.

Soundwave felt as though his very spark were being shredded to pieces.

"I must," he said, his voice hollow, even the minor subharmonics failing him. "I love you, my sons," and for a moment they all desperately embraced in a tangle of strong midnight blue arms and wings and paws and small hands.

And then, before his love could betray them, he stood, and walked out the door and kept going until his treacherous feet lead him to the docking tower bay, where Astrotrain was waiting.

Seven solar cycles - could it really have been so short a time since he had left his sons behind on the alien world of Earth? The memory of his leave taking haunted every waking moment, just as the Matrix-dreams possessed the time spent in recharge.

A memory came then, of the night before his mindless devotion to the cause of another's spiritual freedom had led him to disaster. That night, Soundwave had woken from fell dreams to find Ravage's warm spirit reassuringly touched to his own.

His son had promised to chase away any evil dream that dared to plague him, and Soundwave wished with all his soul that his son could be there now.

In a high corner, Ratbat shifted uneasily in his sleep. Distracted by that small movement, Soundwave sat up and resolutely attempted to put his memories behind him. The chronometer indicated that Charr's night had nearly passed, and with relief he realized that he could soon immerse himself in the distraction of the gargantuan task of rebuilding the Peace Academy.

If he could not be with his sons, he could do his best to keep them safe by bolstering the strength of the Decepticon forces.

The room felt so empty with just the five of them. Ravage found himself habitually weaving around the desk, allowing precisely enough room so that if Soundwave's leg had been in its usual spot, the panther's side would have lightly brushed it as Ravage walked past.

Instead, the gleaming ebon shoulder touched only air. With unhappy optics, the feline settled on his haunches to regard the empty office chair where Soundwave should have been.

Two sets of perches had been set up on the back wall of the office, and Laserbeak and Buzzsaw paused their quiet conversation to observe their older brother. The feline hesitantly reached up to paw at the metal seat, a plainly made, swivel-backed affair. It turned slightly at his touch, the small shift only emphasizing the fact that it was empty.

“Come on, Rav - it’s time to recharge,” Frenzy said without rancor from a corner, where he had hauled one of the trundle recharge berths. He raised his head to look at Ravage, his crimson visor gleaming quietly in the dim light. From the opposite corner, Rumble’s concerned look joined the others as they all watched the eldest brother as he stared at the empty spot they had all been avoiding.

Without responding, Ravage leapt lightly into the chair, sniffing the back and the arms for a familiar scent, a barely audible, sad sound emitting from his vocalizer. Like someone clasping a framed picture of a missing loved one, Ravage nosed at the chair, then turned in a circle to finally settle in it, front paws dangling slightly off one edge.

The room felt so empty with just the five of them.

Megatron waited for them also, chatting softly with his longtime friend, crossed arms held tightly over his silver chest the only outward sign of his own tension. Ratbat clung to the ceiling, and as Soundwave and the others entered, the small bat put away his ever-present datapad.

Laserbeak was perched on Soundwave's left forearm, and Buzzsaw his right. He continued to feel Buzzsaw's bewilderment and the beginnings of a vague anger in Laserbeak, and mourned inside.

Ravage followed anxiously at his heels, and Rumble and Frenzy were alongside him, reaching out with their small hands to touch his legs. Their hurt was a palpable thing, beating at his mind, and he could only accept it as his due.

They all stopped before Megatron, and for a moment the two great Decepticons confronted each other silently.

Take care of my children. The distraught telepath projected against his better judgement but in accord to the demands of his heart. He fixed Megatron with a crimson glare, his optics flashing.

I will protect them, Megatron vowed, having long ago learned the trick of projecting his thoughts for Soundwave to hear. He gazed at the cassettes with compassion, and silently held out his silver arms.

Slowly, reluctantly, Buzzsaw and Laserbeak stepped from the deep blue metal of their father's arms to perch upon the Decepticon leader, the clicking of their claws the only sound in the bay for a long, interminable moment of transition. Rumble and Frenzy followed, distress and bewilderment plain on their faces as they walked to stand together on one side of Megatron.

Ravage padded to the other side, trying to make sense of this abrupt departure. He extended his empathic senses and strained; but he could read very little from within the tightly knit set of shields Soundwave had constructed about himself, merely enough to know that Soundwave was as agonized over being separated from his children as they were. From Megatron, he sensed regret but resignation, and for a moment wondered if this separation was their leader's doing. But no... that did not match up with the rest of the situation.

Soundwave's decision to leave had been made after his battle within the mind of the Autobot, MetalliCat. Ever since Soundwave had finally waken, he had been remote, even aloof. Ravage still carried the hurt that even though all of them had been right there at his side, Soundwave had chosen to wake none of them and had instead slipped away. The brothers had all been frantic when they woke up to find Soundwave gone, and when they finally tracked him down, it had been like meeting a stranger. A cold stranger with sad optics that rebuffed their desire and need to reconnect with him. A stranger who had no comfort for them, but only farewells.

Yes, something had happened during the awesome mental battle within the winged puma's mind. They had tried to save their father from a burning force that Ravage did not recognize, and for a time he had believed they had succeeded. But whatever lay within the Autobot's mind had proven too strong, and now their failure lay before them as Astrotrain wordlessly nodded to Megatron, respectful of the sorrow he saw in the parting between Soundwave and his Cassettes, and transformed.

The shuttle opened his bay doors. With a steady look to Ravage, Ratbat wordlessly sent what assurance he could that the bat would look after Soundwave, then turned and flitted into Astrotrain's hold.

"Be well, Soundwave." Megatron's voice held a note somewhere between a command and a serious request.

"Until all are one," Soundwave returned, not just to his leader, but to his sons as well. The telepath hesitated, then resolutely ripped his hungry gaze from the faces of his creations. One step at a time, he walked away. Behind him, Buzzsaw keened a soft mourning note when his foot touched the ramp to the shuttle, the first and only verbalization any of the Cassettes had made since entering the bay. The cry tore at the ragged edges of Soundwave's spirit and gave him pause, and he stood poised for another infinite moment on the silver ramp. He did not turn. And then he bowed his head, broken inside, and took another step.

Astrotrain's doors closed, and the shuttle slowly rolled himself to the end of the bay, before his powerful engines ignited. Within seconds, he had passed from their limited view of the sky, and it was only seconds more before the echo of their passing had faded away.

Left behind, Ravage thought of an Autobot they had tried to save... and allowed a burgeoning flame of anger to grow within his soul.

The memory of the last sight of his father played again for the thousandth time in Ravage's mind, but finally he powered down his optics and slipped into uneasy recharge upon the seat of Soundwave's chair.

Together, the cassettes made it through the next several long days and weeks. But as each of them searched for some way to deal with the loss of Soundwave's presence, it seemed to Ravage that they were somehow slowly growing apart. A few of them found other Decepticons who were willing to provide distracting company. The panther himself began to spend long hours prowling the edges of Autobot territory, restlessly looking for something that he could not define.

And then, late one night, he intercepted a transmission between the Ark and the Autobot's energon factory on the California coast,

" -tory has finally been completed at the source of the organic fuel. You should be receiving the last of the tankers tomorrow. After finishing with them, the standard procedures will apply. Expect a shuttle for you and the remaining energon at dawn the next day." Prowl spoke with cool efficiency.

Ravage restrained a hiss only with a considerable amount of difficulty as he readily identified the voice of the Autobot Second-in-command.

"Understood, sir. It will be good to break in a new crew - the current set have come to the end of their strength," replied another voice, smug with cold satisfaction at having wrung the most out of a resource.

"Your contributions to the Empire are noted and commended," Prowl answered. "Prowl out."

With a click, the transmission ended. Finishing his trace, Ravage correlated the location with known Autobot facilities. With a sudden, chilling surge, he matched the location and deciphered the meaning behind the bland words of 'standard procedures'.

Within the space of a thought, the panther bounded into the midnight air and sped under the stars to report back to base. Sleek and silent with all radar countermeasures fully activated, he flew over Autobot-controlled territory with impunity, then reached the soothing waves of the Pacific Ocean. The sea was subdued below him, and he was able to make good speed through the quiet air.

A few miles from headquarters, he sent a coded radio signal ahead. When the docking tower was raised in welcome, Ravage noted with relief that Megatron was there to greet him.

"Megatron! We have an urgent situation," the panther's deep voice reported as he landed in an elegant motion of ebony and silver. Ruby optics glittered in the dimness of the docking bay as Megatron inclined his head.

"Starscream is waiting for us in the command center," the great silver Mech assured him, indicating that Ravage should delay his report until the Air Commander could hear it as well. Together, they waited for the docking tower to complete its descent to the base proper.

The walk through the halls was mercifully brief, and it was within minutes after returning that Ravage began reciting the intercepted conversation.

Once he finished, Starscream responded.

"The 'usual procedures'. I'm always surprised when the Autobots bother to use euphemisms for killing," the Air Commander said wryly.

Megatron's tone indicated relief from a horrid situation of long standing.

"At last, we can take the risk of rescuing those unfortunate humans the Autobots have enslaved," he assessed the situation, thoughtfully holding his chin with his left hand. "I despise having to leave their factories alone, but the death rate for the workers on prior attempts have been prohibitive."

Starscream nodded. "But now that we know that the Autobots plan to kill them anyway, we have no such constraint."

"Exactly. By this time tomorrow, there will be a number of freed humans and one less Autobot at large. Well done, Ravage."

"Thank you, Megatron," the panther answered gravely.

And with that, Ravage was dismissed for recharge while Megatron and Starscream drew up a plan of attack for the morrow's battle. He looked forward to the action as a relief from the nearly unbearable tension of the last weeks, although at that time, the feline had no idea what manner of change the rescue would bring to his life.