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"SOUNDWAVE NO!"

Arcee woke up suddenly and violently, panting deeply and loudly, groping with her hand on the berth searching frantically for his familiar body next to her.

He onlined slowly, still warm and dreamy he extended his wing half consciously and held her close while she cuddled her head into him and pressed herself into his embrace with all her strength.

~/Hey my spark, it's all right, I am here with you/~

She still felt the heavy tears gluing her optics and voicebox, while her frenzied spark pulse was almost tearing her chest apart.

~/Don't ever leave me/~ she uttered in an uneasy bond transmission. ~/Stay with me.../~ she almost whispered, her field trembling in desperation from the terrifying dream.

~/I am here/~ he calmed her down and embraced stronger with all his field, holding her with his wings, braiding one leg with hers and wrapping his tentacles around her delicately extended to all their length so that now she could feel him almost everywhere.

~/I'm with you, I'm not going anywhere, Arcee. Did you have a nightmare?/~

She nodded silently, clutching into him strongly while her frame was still sobbing silently in his warming embrace ~/It was the same… as before… with you trapped in the shadow zone, dying and me waking up alone without you…/~

~/I'm here/~ he stroke her delicately with his fingers while sliding a little tendril of one of his datacables under her armour on her neck caressing delicately her energon veins running just below the thin surface of protoflesh and microhydraulics.

~/Love me Soundwave, please…/~ she uttered as if the dream did not disappear ~/I felt it so strongly, like if I were you, and it was so empty and painful. I'm so afraid, there is something odd with this reality, that everything will disappear.../~

~/I love you Arcee/~ he squeezed her tighter and she finally started feeling their slow surface interaction, and how his datacable tendril stroke her gently around her neck scars left by the fight with Megatron. ~/Come here to me, my spark/~ he kissed her delicately ~/I love you/~

She returned the kiss feeling the tension easing somewhat under his caresses. It was reassuring to feel him again with her, to feel his body and his kisses, and the tendrils of his datacables now embracing her delicately moving slowly towards her main data ports.

~/Love me, please.../~ she whispered again letting the dataports click silently and inviting the tendrils to go inside her, gently connecting to her sensory network, while she relaxed slowly, immersing in that connection which she needed now more than ever, not of any lust but out of fear that was consuming her. But with him all around her finally the delayed feeling of desire started replacing the despair that still lingered somewhere at the back of her RAM from the horrifying dream. She rubbed herself against him softly to feel him better, in and out, to begin to believe stronger and stronger again in what was eventually... real? In that single thread of reality. One in a million. While parallel threads of life passed them by, and he saw them with the corner of his extrasensory vision, the same ones that brought her the nightmare, the same ones that showed the truths they did not want to believe, seeing himself trapped and hungry and empty, watching her through the invisible barrier of the shadow zone, hugging her the same way as he did now, but intangible, on the empty berth, lonely and not feeling him at all. And myriads of other multiple threads wherever she would be, whatever she would do, on Earth or Cybertron, rebuilt in some of those lines of vision, destroyed permanently in other ones… which all he eventually rejected paying for it in scars on the body and the soul, and choices that could not be reversed. He hated that blessing, and he hated how she was now infected with the cursed gift of understanding that she did not need, that nobody ever needed.

And now, when he calmly and reassuringly immersed inside her trying to ease her fear, he saw something new. A little bright light pulsing inside her. The tiniest of tiniest lights, almost indiscernible, attached to her spark, floating now also to him and linking to his own spark all the same. He reached out for it and felt it also within himself. The smallest of living pulses, not his and not hers, but branded with life signatures of them both and their mixed genetic coding.

He vented deeply and held Arcee close to himself hugging her in the strongest of embraces. Then he kissed her again and led her gently to the tiny spark in mute amazement and fascination ~/This is what we are, Arcee... our love... we give life…/~ he whispered cradling her with all his might.

~/This is what matters/~