▸ Column · Cybertronian war-era, framed through Soundwave's Decepticon communications-and-surveillance lens
SOUNDWAVE replies.
The letter
Derrick and I bonded eleven cycles ago, and for the last three the connection has all but gone dark — four merges total, each one feeling like a rationed favor instead of anything real. I've raised it calmly. I've raised it in tears. We spent eight months with a counselor. His answer never changes: he's "just not a very physical mech, never has been." Except the first two cycles say flatly otherwise. I'm past the midpoint of my life, I love him, we still laugh every day, we raise two sparklings well together, and detonating all of that over something that looks so fixable feels dramatic and selfish. But I lie awake feeling like a roommate who co-signed a lease she never finished reading, and I'm running out of cycles I can keep filing under "it's just a phase."
Soundwave replies
Conclusion. The intimacy is not the problem. The cover story is.
Observation. You have revealed everything — calm, tears, eight months of counsel, the precise shape of your need. Derrick has revealed nothing true. "Not a physical person" is contradicted by your own data: the first two cycles. A claim that fails against the record is not a reason. It is a wall, placed to end inquiry. He has trained you to manage your wound in front of him. He has not answered it.
Correction. You are reading your own pain on a loop. The signal is elsewhere. Three cycles ago, something changed — attention, time, where his focus now travels. That shift is the data. His stated explanation is noise designed to keep you reading the wrong channel.
Instruction. Reveal less of the ache. Observe more of the pattern. I read Starscream's betrayals before he speaks them by watching conduct, never his words. Watch conduct. The mismatch between what he says and what he does is your only leverage, and you have not yet looked at it directly.
Comfort is outside my function. Accuracy is what I offer. The "phase" ended three cycles ago. You already know this.
— Soundwave
Bumblebee weighs in
No. Surveillance is his answer to everything, and look how warm his life turned out — nobody left but Megatron's shadow.
You don't run a stakeout on the mech you love. You've HAD three years of silence; the cure isn't more of it. Open a channel he can't deflect — put on something honest, Bonnie Raitt territory, the kind that asks plainly and won't take a dodge. Here's a free one: "I read the whole lease this time, partner."
And the smallest one in this? You, lying awake. Somebody should show up for her. If he still won't after the song plays — that's your answer, and choosing yourself isn't dramatic. It's brave.
— Bumblebee
▸ Read next