old man slam poetry

[ceaseire]

OPEN POST

This is an open prompt post for IDW Megatron. Feel free to leave a starter or picture/music/quote prompt.

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[infomatics]

[ soundwave's visor darkens for a moment. they all have their share of wounds; new stinging ones, still too raw to be spoken of and old festering wounds, unforgotten but shoved aside for war and battle. their scars are many and their time for rest is almost non-existent. this is the best he can do for now. his own neck still prickles with a ghost sensation and he can imagine chains around his own wrists through their temporary link. amidst the whispers of messatine, the threat of mind alterations, soundwave focuses on megatron and notes the fatigue and the scars sounding loudly in his voice.

they've had a long day.

his attempt at bringing megatron to peace was an attempt at futility. there are too many offences; the moment he quells one emotion another springs up. megatron's a torrid of the one thing soundwae fears to be overwhelmed by. but he remembers the meaning of focus and the day he found it up upon the gladiatorial arena, remember the clarity of vision when he was too tired of serving ratbat's whims to think of any other way, and that makes him stay. his devotion makes him stay.

finally, soundwave speaks. he turns and face his leader, his voice is firm with caution laced in. ]

I suggest rest.

[ he doesn't order megatron to do anything but he knows the decepticons would never survive this without megatron; he is not capable to corral their sparks, shockwave cares for none of this and starscream's pitiful attempts at leadership is a joke. megatron is what they need, and megatron cannot lapse into old memories and old wounds. the megatron decepticons needs to see is the one that triumphs, one who carries the weight of leadership in stride. he knows this because that's the leader - the focus - that he needs. ]

They will need to hear the successful destruction of the New Institute. They will need to hear it from you.

[ he doesn't push his suggestion into megatron's mind. soundwave only keeps the steady calm feeling, reverberates it between them. should megatron want him to leave, with his suggestion in mind or not, he will. ]

shows up two weeks later

[ceaseire]

[ Megatron takes a step back with shoulders nearly but never quite touching until he stands catty-cornered to a large floor to ceiling window that kept the room alight in the severe angled shadows of open deep space. Looking back at Soundwave, feels the same empty shift between the plates in his abdomen when there was nothing between him and the rapidly shrinking ground but the air burning away under JATO engines.

Occasionally, and often without warning, the razors edge he walks per his association with Soundwave is made transparently clear. What engenders the unshakable bedrock of the trust his best officer places in him was a foundation whose cornerstone was one simple as it was impossibly maintained asset: That trust was mutual even as Soundwave could see right through him. The indomitable brutality in everything that Megatron was extended to how candid he was that some of his dissenters mistakenly assumed him to be ingenuous. Being bare faced with his long term goals and ideology is what skyrocketed this movement from festering like an ulcer beneath Nova Point to intergalactic total war.

And how it would all fall out from under him the moment he gave into the pervasive, basic need to lie. Soundwave would know before even he did, and then it all might very well be over. The red glow of his eyes shifted casting shadows on the bend of the malleable metal around his optic sockets as his gaze drew along the lines of Soundwave's masked face where he could almost trace the symbol burned into his spark casing. Something about the thought of falling out of favor with him through duplicity or an inability to stay up to par struck Megatron as intensely wrong. As if it were betraying the very Decepticon credo itself.

Megatron was the Decepticon fury. Soundwave was the promise that this was all supposed to get better. ]

Look at me - wallowing in past transgressions needing to be told to rest when the marks of your own ordeals are all too fresh.

[ He lists his hand; index finger bent close to the palm so close to tilting Soundwave's chin up to look him in the eye. Soundwave isn't so much short than him that it would be necessary, and Megatron doesn't touch him. Only close enough that Soundwave eases into the instruction without physical cues. It never occurs to him why he continues to balk at the jump beyond a dum understanding that Megatron had since the first shot fired not laid a hand on another soul without violence behind it. ]

Go see Flatline in the medbay then report back here when you've made contact with either Overlord or Starscream.

[infomatics]

[ there is a brutal honesty in their relationship; if the stratagem that megatron concoction is unsound -- and if starscream hadn't jumped on the opportunity yet -- he would make that note. but in truth, soundwave never doubts megatron's plans, even when they are mad and too costly for their shallow supplies, as much as he should. he believes in his leader's conviction too strongly, and feels too strongly the confidence in megatron's being.

it is only in such occasions, when the mind lingers too long in the past, that soundwave truly worries. the past is something they learn from, it should be studied and rectified for the future they are to create. when they linger too long on it, their focus shifts. that, soundwave keeps to himself. because megatron's wrath and rage is a weapon, just as his certain skill sets are. it is too be mined for and kept in supply for when the physical battles makes their frames shake and threaten to fall apart.

soundwave tilts his head at the unspoken command, almost placing himself in megatron's touch. his visor and mask, his emotionless seal, contains any mix reactions that might come from their proximity. to megatron, he is a loyalist first, and an officer second. and soundwave has no inclination to be anything more than what megatron expects of him. ]

Further medical examinations will be unnecessary, your examination is enough. [ while it is still a command and soundwave will no doubt follow, it is also his duty to let megatron know that he could be available for other tasks. ] But Soundwave, acknowledges.

[ceaseire]

[ Between the two of them scrounging at the bottom of the barrel until their fingers bled for anything ranging the numbers to swell the ranks and feed the starved war machine or the energy to stave off losing everything to attrition. Not a concept that was new to them. Megatron perhaps looked to Soundwave most in want of a contemporary who knew what it truly meant to have crawled from the bottom rung of the social to breaking the damn thing entirely. More than he should, and he knew this all to well. Even know Terminus's warnings of the dangers of attachment echoed in the back of his mind. Only echos. ]

Indulge my concern. It's not solely on my back alone the Decepticon cause is burdened.

[ It was as close as Megatron came to offering gratitude. Retracting his hand he feels even his innermost energon freeze as his knuckles rake gingerly against the side of Soundwave's face just below the seam of his faceplate which was never removed as far Megatron knew. Megatron snaps his hand to his side and in one great stride physically separates himself as far away from Soundwave as he could. Back turned facing the window. ]

You have your orders.

[infomatics]

[ he never forgets at they are in a war. they have crawled and killed, and so much of what makes him up isn't what he was anymore. from a shadow in the corner of the street, prying for information for his contractor, to the comms officer in a planet-wide rebellion, his orders, his missions, his goals, they align with the decepticon cause. and no where, no time in his off hours does he forget that they are at war. it's only the briefest touch against his chin that takes him away for a fraction of a second - a moment he would reflect on later, much later - before he turns sharply, lest his pause was seen as hesitation to follow the order.

he pause, near the entrance. his posture doesn't change so much as the feel of him does - the way the stands still, head cocked to a direction of a secret in the subfrequencies or some other bullshit. ]

Overlord ...approaches.

[ it's a while later when he sees megatron again. he doesn't question the new patch work and marks. ]