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Rafael moved past Ratchet with the grace he had come to expect- it had taken him a long time to accustom himself to the suit he'd eventually built, a bulky thing that stood a short five meters, oversized vents on the back compensating for its massive energy requirements that made him look like a grounded flight model and gaudy leg struts. It had been a clever build, but it certainly wasn't perfect, and they would inevitably need to build quite a few more of them before his natural lifespan ran out.

He handed Ratchet the power drill with a well practiced smile.

"Alright, roll over, let's take a look at those vents," Ratchet prompted.

His patient rolled over, red metal glistening in the overhead lights. The vents were making a clicking noise- one his databanks recognized easily as a broken fan blade.

"Knockout, would you mind taking the casing? I'll replace the blades."

Knockout made a cheery noise of agreement behind him, and Ratchet bent over the vent's connections.

Jack leaned back against the hard plastic swivel chair, taking a long drink of the watered down cola lazily.

"You missed last month," Raf said, between fistfuls of french fries. Jack shrugged amiably.

"Missions, stuff, you know the drill. We can go twice this month, if you want. It's my turn to pick after this, anyway."

Rafael shrugged, unwrapping his dollar menu cheeseburger, "You know, no matter how many times you ask me, I'm always going to pick this McDonalds. It's the best one."

Jack waved around him, "Then why are we always the only ones here?"

Raf smiled with a raised eyebrow and gestured toward him with his burger, "I like it because we are always the only ones here. Honestly, I can't figure out how this place is still open."

"Corporation stuff, I guess," Jack said, dumping his fries out onto the plastic tray.

"Mm. Ah, did Arcee show you the new suit I'm working on? Knockout helped me paint this one orange. It's looking pretty fierce."

"No, she didn't," he said, mouth full, "Sounds pretty slick, though. Is it battle-ready?"

"No, but I think the next model will be. Reinforced plating. It'll probably be a lot bigger, though. More expensive."

Jack shrugged and gestured dramatically to the dollar menu spread laid out over the cheap plastic table, "Unlike this grand feast, here, I am not the one footing the bill on the giant robot suit project. Hows the radiation guards?"

"Better than the last one, I think I've worked out all the kinks now. A little more testing and I'll send you the specs. Should be good to go for mass production within the year, I think. New comm unit installed, consolidated the ventilation system, worked out that weird problem with the knee joints."

Jack brightened at that, "Good. We could really use it."

"Ah!" Raf cried suddenly, clapping his hands, and Jack nearly dropped his cup, "It's Miko's birthday next week. She told me to make sure you don't forget again."

"That was one time..." Jack mumbled through his straw, "And I bought her a whole stack of those weird indie grunge CDs she likes. I had to go to some dude's house to buy one. In Germany."

Raf gestured at him accusingly with a fry, "Well, don't forget this time. She's doing one of those things with her family again this year, and you know how bad my Japanese is. Don't let me embarrass myself again."

"I won't, I won't," Jack assured him, standing up to empty his tray in the trash, before adding in a mumble, "Not like twenty-three was even an important birthday."

"Coming up for a visit after this?"

"Mm, no, I've got orders to be somewhere. But," he said, sitting back down as Raf started in on the second cheeseburger, "tell Arcee I said hey. I'll keep my schedule open after Miko's party. "

"She'll be glad to hear it," Raf said, "She got a new paintjob."

"What? Seriously? Frag, Raf, what is it?"

"Secret, promised her I wouldn't say. Now you'll just have to come back and visit if you want to know."

"Raf, no, come on, you're killing me here. It's gonna bug me all week. I won't even have comm access until Wednesday!" Jack pleaded.

Raf shrugged and couldn't hide the mischievous grin on his face, even with his burger, "Suffer, Darby."

Jack groaned.

"We're going to Taco Bell next time, and you're trying that dorito thing," Jack hissed, and Raf whined.

"What? No, that sounds terrible."

Jack laughed, "Suffer, Esquivel."

"You can just go, you know."

Soundwave turned away from the flickering stars to look at the human standing nearby in his ridiculous gaudy fake Cybertronian suit. It may have been practical, but it looked entirely silly to him. The semi-rebuilt ruins of Tyger Pax rose up around him, glimmering in the double moonlight, an odd contrast.

He shook his head.

"I know you miss Megatron. Just... go find him. And quit moping around here."

Soundwave played an error noise.

"Come off it, you have so been moping about for the last decade. He's not coming back here," Rafael moved to sit next to him.

Soundwave let his standing orders scroll across his visor. All prior Decepticons are hereby ordered to cooperate with the Autobots in the restoration of Cybertron.

Rafael snorted, "You're not here because of orders, Sounders."

He played a very loud error noise, but the human just shrugged, and gestured toward the audio receptors he had apparantly disabled. Frag him. Human knew him too well.

"Seriously, though," the human said, leaning back against the wall, an odd habit of his, "I'm not worried about you teaming up with him and reviving the war," he laughed, and Soundwave turned away, surly, "But if you'd be happier out there with him, you should go. Family, and all that."

Soundwave considered it for a moment, watching the stars. Considered Megatron, off in space somewhere, who had once been a great mech with great ideals who had promised to deliver him from the pits and bring him to the sky with him. Who had. And the mad warlord he had watched him become with unfaltering loyalty, even as he burned down the skies the had worked so hard to reach.

The bright planet Cybertron had become in the last solar decacycle, the patches of colonies spread out on its surface, the way prior Decepticons looked at him with awe and fear and confusion when he stood next to Autobots- something he still refused to himself be. They would look at the Decepticon emblem on his arm, the one he wore out of respect for the cause he'd joined, if not the cause it had eventually become, with confusion and alarm, and nearly always cowed and forfeited their fight when he ordered them to lay down their weapons and surrender.

He thought of the raids, and their increasing frequency with the resettlement of Cybertron. Those scraps would end less favourably without his influence, he was certain. He eyed the human beside him cautiously.

It had been a good solar decacycle. Something he couldn't say he'd had otherwise in eons. He lived in a sort of exile in Tyger Pax, in a chamber on the surface, and had intended to remain alone, and wasn't sure how he'd managed to find himself surrounded by surrendered Decepticons that respected him and the old cause. A sort of de facto leader in an ungoverned sort-of city. The human visited more often than Soundwave really though necessary- and though he wouldn't admit it, he'd come to enjoy the company, most days. Very few mechs were comfortable with his silence. Though, recently, the old relief that the human's short lifespan would run out in short time and any embarrassment he might have would be lost with him was no longer comforting, though he tried to ignore it. He'd known countless mechs with far shorter lifespans than this human had- though still somewhat young for his species- managed to survive thus far.

But that was how war went.

He pulled up Megatron's location on his visor, a pulsing beacon several light years away. Of course he'd been tracing him. Of course he had known where he was- he was too important not to keep tabs on.

Rafael did not seem surprised.

"Everything will still be here when you get back. If you come back," he said after a moment, looking up at the swirling galaxies. Rafael did not possess the integrated systems to absorb the data he'd displayed and pinpoint Megatron's location based on that, but he knew enough of the general universe to guess the direction based on what he'd seen. Soundwave shook his head.

"Seriously, it's not a worry- Ramjet has shown really promising leadership, and I think he could take over Tyger Pax in your absence, and-"

"Family."

He said it in his own voice, despite the chills it sent down his chassis to do so. He hadn't willingly used it- within memory- in hundreds of thousands of cycles, but there was an unusual comfort in hearing that voice again. He had not heard it outside of duress since it's original owner had gone offline.

Rafael was looking at him in a sort of wild confusion and alarm. He realized belatedly he'd startled him, and almost found it funny. Soundwave pointed at him with a slender finger, then waved it off in a way he hoped the alien would interpret as casual.

"Family. Not here later," he said, voice awkward with disuse.

It was... actually, oddly good to hear it again. Outside of war, the fear of death something duller, quieter, far more unlikely than it had been since he was a sparkling.

Rafael eyed him with a profoundly intense contemplation, before he turned to look back at the stars.

"...Woulda missed you, anyway."

"Oy, Knockout. You'll never guess what I found in the last pass at Vos."

"Ooh?" Knockout purred in the way he always did, reattaching the injured- and temporarily stasised- Vehicon's arm. The last raid had been particularly bad, but the Predacons final, begrudging acceptance of an alliance had been helpful.

Raf held up a crate, "A whole aborted delivery of med kit packs, pre-war. You will not believe the data in here."

Knockout's faceplate lit up, and he promptly dropped what he was doing to pull the crate from his hands and begin rummaging through its treasures. It had been a lucky find- one he hadn't been expecting or even looking for, but he'd known exactly what to do with it when he'd found it.

He picked up the the welder, and went to tend to the Vehicon's arm while Knockout was distracted. It was a simple fix- one he'd done enough times by now himself, and Knockout didn't even cast him a second glance once he noticed the operation had been taken from him. He was far too distracted, anyway.

Raf finished sautering the left side tertiary wires into the joint, and looked over his metal shoulder back at the actual doctor, who was trying to power on an old datapad.

"Also..." Raf began, and Knockout looked up at him expectantly, "I was going to go out by Praxus tomorrow, check on the settlement that way, you know?" Knockout's faceplate froze, but Rafael continued, "And I wondered if you wanted to go with me."

There was a beat, and Knockout lowered the datapad back into the box with a sigh, "Yes... I would, actually. It has been awhile."

The memorial for Breakdown wasn't large, or ornate. It was a small thing, in Praxus, where most of the Vehicons had immigrated. It looked so out of place where it was, a simple metal sculpture amongst the gardens of Praxus the locals had been working to reestablish.

They spent a long time by it, under the midday Cybertronian sun.

Rafael had the foresight to bring lunch.

Bee turned his tires a little too quickly, sending him off the road and losing the corner- he was back on nearly immediately, but it had lost him a few precious seconds, and Raf had nosed up past him, just a few inches ahead.

The red Nevada landscape flew by, forgotten, nearly irrelevant as they closed in on their finishing line- a weathered, ancient tin sign, half submerged in the Earth, that had once read "Jasper, Nevada" but now read nothing. He sped forward, a little dangerously, trying to pull forward and finding himself, for the first time, unable to, something he had never expected.

They flew past the sign, Rafael with a distinct, undeniable lead. He skidded to a halt a fair few meters down the road, before kicking open the window with a cheer and pointing at him triumphantly. Bee transformed, totally baffled.

It wasn't so long ago he could have beaten him at video game driving, while simultaneously actually driving- and now, even trying, he found himself beaten.

"I told you I was a fast learner," Raf said, huffing and puffing- even though driving the car he'd been building for so long had hardly been exhaustive, unlike it had been for him.

Bee just laughed. He couldn't believe he'd actually lost.

"You know, there used to be a café here," Ratchet said, and Rafael turned towards him, away from the float palette he'd been repairing.

"Here? Specifically?"

"Yes. Optimus and I used to 'do lunch' here. Like you and Jack do."

Rafael set down his tools and stood up, looking at the wreckage.

"Do you think we should rebuild it?"

Ratchet paused for a long moment, before shaking his head, "No."

Rafael waited to see if he'd continue, but he didn't, so he knelt back down to finish repairing the float pallet, so they could continue back to the inner part of the city, where the New Iacon residents were expecting a delivery of medical supplies- held up by an unfortunate encounter with some scraplets they had fended off.

"It has been a long time since I said so," Ratchet said, not looking away from the old ruins of the café, "But I am glad you came back, if I am still saddened by the circumstances that allowed it."

"What circumstances?" Rafael asked absently, picking up the discarded welder to reattach the outer casing.

Ratchet frowned, "Your parents."

"What about them?" Rafael grunted, pressing the flame to the edges.

Ratchet turned around, "They hurt you. You wouldn't talk about it for months."

Rafael laughed, and flicked off the welder. The float pallet rose back off the ground, a sort of hovering cargo carrier of manageable size.

"They were scrap parents, but they never hit me," he said, collecting his equipment and returning it to the float pallet, "I lied."

Ratchet's optics widened, realization spreading across his face, "You..."

Rafael reattached the pallet's tow lead and pulled it forward gently, nodding in the direction of their destination, "My family needed me. I did what I had to."