Chapter Text
Everyone has secrets — especially the kind never meant to be uncovered.
The Nemesis itself was built on them.
Hidden agendas behind loyal words. Silent betrayals buried beneath reports and missions. Mechs hiding fear behind violence, devotion behind obedience, and desperation behind war cries. Secrets were survival aboard the Decepticon warship.
And Shockwave was no exception.
The feared Third-in-Command of the Decepticons had always been regarded as something beyond ordinary Cybertronians. Cold. Precise. Terrifyingly functional. A mech ruled entirely by logic and data, incapable of hesitation, mercy, or emotional compromise. His presence alone was enough to silence entire rooms, his single optic glowing through the darkness of his laboratories while screams and metallic tools echoed behind sealed doors.
Shockwave experimented on anything that interested him.
Frames. Sparks. CNA. Weapons. Evolution. Mutation.
His experiments were the source of countless nightmares throughout the galaxy, creating horrors that left bots uncertain whether to feel fear, disgust, awe… or all three at once. Even Decepticons avoided remaining alone in his laboratories for too long. The scent of chemicals, overheated metal, and old energon permanently lingered around him like a warning.
And then there were the rumors.
Rumors that Shockwave had once possessed emotions.
That before the war, before the functionist councils and scientific fanaticism, he had been another mech entirely. A senator. A scientist. Someone capable of feeling.
But according to official records — and Shockwave himself — those emotional programs had long since been removed. Torn out in the name of pure logic and superior efficiency.
Or at least, that was what everyone believed.
The truth was far more complicated.
Shockwave had never truly rid himself of emotion. He simply no longer understood how to express it. Emotions had become fragmented things inside him: difficult, irrational, inefficient. So he buried them beneath calculations, statistics, and clinical speech because logic was the only language he still knew how to use.
Where another mech might express concern, Shockwave increased security protocols.
Where another would offer comfort, Shockwave adjusted temperatures, fuel intake, and medical care with terrifying precision.
Where another would say I care, Shockwave simply ensured survival probabilities remained optimal.
And perhaps that was why nobody discovered his greatest secret.
Because no one would ever imagine Shockwave capable of such a thing.
The true secret hidden deep within the restricted sectors of the Nemesis was not a weapon, an experiment, or forbidden data.
It was the fact that Shockwave was a sire.
And that for years he had been secretly raising a sparkling aboard the Decepticon flagship itself.
A brilliant young tricolor seeker hidden within abandoned laboratories, silent corridors, and heavily protected private sectors no bot — not even Soundwave — had ever successfully breached.
Shockwave’s fascination with Cybertronian anatomy had always bordered on obsession.
To him, the body was merely another system waiting to be understood. CNA strands, spark signatures, transformation coding, processor development, frame adaptation — every tiny detail of Cybertronian existence fascinated him to an almost unnatural degree. While other scientists searched for weapons or methods to prolong war efficiency, Shockwave searched for understanding itself.
And, inevitably, experimentation followed.
At first, it began as simple curiosity. During his countless experiments, Shockwave occasionally mixed fragments of his own CNA with samples extracted from other Cybertronians he studied. Sometimes the results produced nothing useful. Sometimes unstable masses of corrupted metal formed before collapsing into inert sludge. Other times the experiments generated malformed protoforms incapable of survival.
None of those failures bothered him.
Failure was simply data.
But over time, his curiosity evolved into something deeper. More personal.
Shockwave began creating synthetic CNA strands inside his laboratory, combining his own coding with artificial structures and experimental genetic sequencing. He altered traits, removed instability markers, inserted superior adaptations, and erased characteristics he deemed inefficient. It was never intended to create life. At least, not initially.
Then the impossible happened.
One of the experimental vials began to change.
The liquid CNA suspended inside the glass container started organizing itself into patterns far too complex to be accidental. Metallic fibers formed where there should have been none. Energy signatures stabilized. Tiny skeletal structures slowly emerged within the glowing fluid.
A protoform was developing.
Shockwave spent orn tracking the phenomenon in complete silence, optic fixed on the small container while calculations flooded his processor endlessly. Every logical probability stated the protoform should not exist. Yet it continued growing despite all projections.
So he continued experimenting.
He adjusted coding sequences, removed unstable traces, reinforced transformation pathways, and carefully preserved the traits he considered beneficial. The protoform adapted to every modification with astonishing compatibility, developing far beyond Shockwave’s original expectations.
The tiny shape inside the vial continued growing.
Small servo digits formed first, followed by delicate wings folded tightly against a tiny frame. The energy readings became stronger with each passing cycle until the original containment unit became insufficient. Shockwave transferred the growing sparkling into a larger incubation chamber deep within the hidden sectors of his laboratory.
At that point, the sparkling was still merely an experiment.
An extraordinary one, certainly, but still an experiment.
Until the day everything changed.
The sparkling opened his optics for the very first time.
Bright optics stared directly at Shockwave through the glass containment chamber — curious, alive, aware.
And something inside Shockwave shifted.
Not logically.
Not scientifically.
Something deeper.
Something he had spent vorns convincing himself no longer existed.
For the first time in countless stellar cycles, Shockwave felt something beyond logic surge violently through his systems. Not fascination. Not scientific triumph.
Protectiveness.
The tiny seeker inside the chamber was fragile. Newly formed. Vulnerable in ways the galaxy would exploit without hesitation. The Decepticons themselves would dissect him for parts or experimentation if they discovered his existence.
The conclusion became immediate.
The sparkling would not survive alone.
And therefore, logically, Shockwave would ensure his survival personally.
From that moment onward, the experiment ceased being merely an experiment.
The tricolor seeker became Shockwave’s sparkling.
And Shockwave became his sire.
Shockwave gave the sparkling a name: Starscream.
A star that cries at birth yet is never heard.
The designation was strangely poetic for a mech like Shockwave, though no one would ever know that. To everyone else, Shockwave was incapable of creating something with emotional meaning behind it. But alone inside the silence of his hidden laboratory, optic reflecting against the soft glow of the incubation chamber, the name had felt… correct.
So Starscream became his.
And from that moment onward, Shockwave gave the young seeker everything necessary for optimal development.
A proper recharge berth carefully constructed inside secure hidden quarters. Educational data tracks tailored for accelerated learning. Small metallic construction toys designed to stimulate processor growth and fine motor coordination. Flight simulations. Logic puzzles. Advanced scientific archives heavily simplified for a developing processor. Nutrient-balanced energon mixtures calculated specifically for a growing sparkling frame.
Everything was done with absolute precision.
Everything was logical.
Shockwave never coddled. Never spoke softly. Never openly displayed affection the way ordinary carriers or sires might. Instead, his care manifested through efficiency and terrifying attention to detail. Temperatures inside Starscream’s quarters were always perfectly regulated for seeker physiology. Every object was positioned to prevent injury. Security systems updated daily. Escape routes mapped constantly. Statistical survival probabilities recalculated obsessively.
Where another sire might offer warmth through touch or words, Shockwave offered safety.
And somehow… it was enough.
Starscream grew beneath the shadows of laboratories scattered across Cybertron and later deep within the hidden sectors of the Nemesis itself, unseen by the rest of the galaxy for countless stellar cycles. Entire sections of the warship became secret territories known only to the two of them — silent corridors, abandoned maintenance routes, forgotten laboratories buried beneath layers of restricted access and encrypted security protocols.
Where Shockwave went, Starscream inevitably followed.
At first as a tiny sparkling clinging curiously behind his sire’s pedes, and later as an energetic young seeker endlessly asking questions about everything he saw. Why transformation cogs functioned differently between frame types. Why warp drives destabilized under certain temperatures. Why sparks reacted emotionally to music frequencies. Why mechs fought wars instead of solving problems logically.
Questions. Endless questions.
And Shockwave answered every single one.
It did not take long for the signs to appear.
Starscream was brilliant.
Not merely intelligent for his age, but terrifyingly advanced.
Shockwave conducted test after test in absolute secrecy, analyzing processor growth, memory retention, reaction timing, spatial awareness, scientific comprehension, and tactical reasoning. The results remained consistently impossible.
Starscream was a genius.
A naturally occurring intellectual equal to Shockwave himself.
Perhaps even beyond him in certain areas.
Yet despite inheriting Shockwave’s intellect, Starscream differed from his sire in nearly every emotional aspect imaginable.
Where Shockwave was silent, Starscream was expressive.
Where Shockwave concealed everything behind logic, Starscream felt everything openly.
His wings betrayed his emotions constantly, fluttering excitedly when curious, lowering dramatically when upset, flicking sharply whenever irritated. He spoke whatever entered his processor without hesitation, completely lacking the social filters most Cybertronians gradually developed with age.
If something interested him, he said it.
If something annoyed him, he said it louder.
And if Shockwave’s experiments looked horrifying, Starscream informed him of that too without fear.
That was Shockwave’s true life.
The existence no one aboard the Nemesis knew about.
While the Decepticons saw a cold scientist obsessed only with experimentation and war efficiency, the reality hidden deep within the restricted sectors of the warship was far stranger.
Shockwave had a sparkling.
A healthy, brilliant young seeker who had spent eons secretly growing up inside the Nemesis itself, hidden safely from the brutality of the outside galaxy.
Starscream knew about the war. He knew the names Autobot and Decepticon. He heard distant alarms echoing through the warship and understood that battles constantly raged beyond the laboratory walls.
But despite all of that…
Starscream never truly understood how terrifying his sire was to everyone else.
To the galaxy, Shockwave was a monster.
To Starscream…
He was simply Sire.