Work Text:
The house was quiet...Devoid of the humming that Verl would once fill the room with as she worked on whatever she had planned. It was always quiet now...Even when she was home. Gone were the laughs that filled the air as the two danced. Gone were the soft 'I love you's' that she'd whisper to him as they laid in their berth together while she held him tenderly as if he was a precious china to be protected. Gone were those days. Verl was home for once, having spent the last couple of weeks with Silverstreak. She sat in the quiet lab, staying in her little space where she would build her little experiments. They were never anything large or impressive. Just little things to make her happy, or to help solve an issue someone she knew was having. But today, her servos were still as she stared at the blank workspace. She knew that she had been working on something before she left, and knew that she had left it out to complete when she returned home. But now, as she stared at the blank space, she began to wonder if Shockwave had finally noticed her growing absence and lack of involvement.
The slow and steady footfalls of Shockwave began to come towards the lab the two shared, a place once filled with casual banter. The purple mech stopped in the doorway of the lab when he spotted the slightly hunched form of his Conjunx at her station. The emotions he thought would fill him after her weeks long absence never came as he just stared silently at her before continuing into the lab and over to his station. She did not look at him. She never looked at him anymore. It was something that he should’ve picked up on sooner. Why didn’t she look at him anymore? Soon, the heavy fog came over his processor as these thoughts were whisked away just as quickly as they came and he resumed his work on a project that laid half completed on his station. Silence filled the air for another hour before Verl finally spoke. A voice that once soothed his mind and calmed his spark. Now it just annoyed him.
“Shockwave, did you clean up my station whilst I was gone?” her soft accented voice was once music to his audiols…sweet honey to his processor. Now it made his audiols ache and his processor hiss.
“Affirmative.” Shockwave stated to her. It was a fact. He did not think she would return, so why leave the mess out? One should always have a clean workspace. Clutter doesn’t belong in a lab.
“Where did you put my work?” was her next question. She glanced over at him when he set down his tool to turn and face her.
“Where have you been for the last three weeks?” Shockwave inquired as his yellow optic stared into her azure and lavender optics. Optics which once seemed like bottomless pools of love and adoration now appeared to be an empty tide pool in his mind. There was no love in her optics, only exhaustion and…sorrow.
A soft sigh was elicited from her as she looked up at him. “I was at Silverstreaks.” she answered honestly. And a quick scan of her biometrics confirmed that to be the truth. “I’m sorry if I worried you. I should’ve reached out to let you know I wasn’t going to be home for a while.”
He was silent as he stared down at her.
“Your answers are logical and illogical.” he stated, his voice cold and empty. “Statement; I am your Conjunx Endura. You should’ve told me where you were going and the duration of your stay. Hypothetical; What if something had happened to you?” he added. Where there would normally be concern, there was only the cold harshness of someone who deep down didn’t care what the answer was.
It was her turn to be quiet as she gazed up at him for a few more minutes before averting her optics and looking away from him. “I’m sorry.” she repeated softly while refusing to look at him. A gentle clawed servo was gently holding her chin as Shockwave made her look into his optic. “You do not look at me. Have not looked at me in many months. You have avoided conversation and touch. Attempts of modified interface have been declined.” he began to list off his observations while staring down into her optics. Truthfully, he could have cared less about the last part. It was modified for his pleasure, not hers. Verl had no valve or spike to interface with, those parts having been removed long before they met when he was still kind and she was still warm. “You do not return home anymore. You do not share our berth anymore. These are all facts.” he finished.
She was quiet for a moment longer. The grip on her chin made it impossible for her to pull away from him. She was trapped like this, forced to tell him the truth. But what was the truth? That she was longing for the mech he once was? That she thought she could look past this new version of him and carry on as if nothing was wrong?
“Inquiry. Why?” Shockwave whispered to her.
“I remember you as you were.” Verl finally answered as she stared into his emotionless yellow optic. “And it hurts. ” she whispered as he released her from his grip. For a moment she thought it was the shock of her answer, but it was likely just him letting her go because she gave him an answer he deemed satisfactory. “Everyday I wake up, longing for the last seven million years to have been nothing but an awful nightmare. To reach over and feel the warmth of someone lost to time. I hear your voice and expect to see someone that you are not. And it makes my spark weep for someone you used to be. I know it is not your fault that you are like this…And I know it is wrong of me to punish you for this.”
…She was telling the truth. Shockwave tuned out her words as he processed the scans of her systems as she spoke at him…To him about a figure lost to time…Someone else who had bore his name before he did, someone who possessed his spark before he did. He was not a fool. He had read about his past when Verl made him aware of it, but a small part of him had truly hoped and believed that she would be able to look past all of that. And for a while he had truly believed she had been able to look past the past and towards the future. He had seen her at his side in the future he had imagined. Now? She wasn’t anywhere in his future. She was still talking. Primus when she would talk she’d talk forever.
“Shockwave?” her voice raised slightly. It wasn’t a lot, just enough to get his attention. Attention that she would have been better off avoiding. The warm splatter of energon hit his shoulder as he plunged his arm deep into her gut. Her entire body tensed around his arm as she stared up at him before slowly looking down at where he was buried elbow deep into her body. He felt..nothing. He thought he’d at least feel something as he killed the one who had shared the last seven million years of their life with him. But there was nothing as the lifeblood of his once beloved flowed onto his arm and down her chassis as he pulled his arm out of her chassis and guided her down to the ground. Her optical lights flickered and faded as she struggled to keep her helm up to look at him.
“Wh…why?” her voice was no louder than a whisper. Easily missed if he hadn’t been kneeling on the ground beside her. He didn’t know why…Perhaps the thought of her fearing him in life drove him to put her out of that misery? No…That wasn’t it. And he knew that.
“Because…In all of this wonderful, beautiful, miraculous world…” he started as he gently and tenderly stroked the side of her face as she stared up at him. Her vents and fans were growing soft as her systems began to shut down as her blue blood continued to spill out and onto the floor below her.
“I alone had no body.” he continued as she stared at him in quiet disbelief. “No senses.”
Wires and lights surrounded him. He couldn’t feel the pain as they ripped his body apart. Piece by piece. He could hear them. Their words of gleeful delight as they changed him. Changed his mind and body. The cold fog of Shadowplay weighed heavily on his processor, muting any and all emotion he may have felt in regards to his current situation.
The gentle laughter rang in his audiols like chimes on a warm summers eve. “Shockwave, come here.” an unfamiliar face smiled at him, the unfamiliar look of…love in her optics. Who was she? Why did she love him?
“ZETA!” The same voice from the forbidden memory boomed in the room as a green femme threw open the doors, causing those who were working on his body to scatter to avoid her wrath.
“No senses! No feelings .” he continued as the memory was whisked away just as quickly as it came. Her body was starting to cool and go limp in his arms. But she was still alive. Listening to every word he spoke. “I…Was machine.” he whispered tenderly to her as he gently stroked her faceplates once more. “And you…were flesh.” his thumb wiped away a single tear that had begun to roll down her cheek. “A machine could never, can never love one made of flesh…” he murmured to her as her optics began to dim. She had no strength left to speak as she raised her servo up to his helm, her touch as gentle and warm as he remembered it to be. It would be the last thing he felt as the unfamiliar dull aching burning sensation filled his processor before he slumped over, his body covering her own as the two laid on the floor of the lab, his energon spewing out of his neck like a punctured hose and joining hers on the cold metal floor.
As they laid there, dying, the faintest twinge of guilt and regret drifted into his dying processor as she used what little remained of her strength to hold the back of his helm. Like she had done countless times before this. Her body rattled loudly as her systems finally shut down fully. He was quick to follow her in death. Just as he had done in life. For he was a machine. And she was his flesh. His body. His senses. His feelings. For in his world, she was beautiful, miraculous, his wonderful Conjunx. She had been his humanity. And who would he be without his humanity?