He can still sense the attempt at reigning in that overwhelming EMF, and his own fills with a weak gratitude, at least for a moment. Understanding. How could anyone understand what he was feeling, what his frame felt like? He was a walking corpse, and he damn well knew that. So, just to be spiteful, he stabs outward with his EMF, in anger and hurt, directly challenging that understanding as much as one can without words.
He already witnessed another Soundwave's reaction to his loss of a voice, so he barely pays this one's reaction any mind. It wasn't like he used to talk all that much, anyway.
Soundwave has to reach for the datapad back, eyeing his alternate with some suspicion. The way he brought it up - the decay, starvation, the way he doesn't seem horrified or surprised by his condition, by the dead-frame dust that clung to him like cowardice to a Starscream...he wondered if this one had seen the nightmare of that Other World too.
He reaches for his datapad back, balancing it on one of his thin, crooked knees while his other, decay, half rotted away hand reaches to take that cube, if only to stop that insistent wriggling. He's only got two digits left on that hand, but if he holds the cube at an angle he'll be fine.
The dusty mech hands the datapad back with a new message; how do you know this will help? All fuel as to be diluted, causes injury otherwise...I keep the coolant for that under that tarp, could you...? Legs don't work well.
The stab within their fields doesn’t just have him flinching. Like a switch was flipped, the pale mech falls back entirely, barely keeping his pedes beneath himself in lieu of falling right on his aft. He doesn’t stay like that though, not remotely; there’s a slight scramble towards the indicated tarp, long, shining digits reaching to pull it aside with an energy that betrays how he’s still affected.
Not once does the understanding fade. If anything, it flares stronger.
Soundwave gathers what he needs, even replaces the tarp before returning back to his alternate. His movement in handing it over is as languid as it was before his startle, and tiny vestiges of anxiety dancing along the EMF are all that’s left, no attempts being made to hide the weakness. It might even be noticed that his momentary fright and it’s remnants are the rawest to be felt so far, as if everything else exists under a careful haze.
“It’s what I drank,” He says.
There’s a large part of him that wants to leave it at that. Never has anyone said that Soundwave dislikes being playful (at least, y’know, no one about this Soundwave), and he’s so used to defaulting to fewer words. Leaving others to fill in the holes and seeing what they come up with is half the fun. Here, he notices that the other’s already typed more than he’s spoken, and it almost feels like he’s slacking once that sinks in. The silence of being audible alone sits uncomfortably on his finials. So, his fans kick on, and his mouth opens again.
“Bein’ assumptive, maybe, but I’ve been where you are. I was trapped in -- they call it the Shadowzone now -- for a long while. Past the end of th’ war. It’s not the same anymore,” he says with a roll of a shoulder, a vague roll of a wrist, “Never will be. ‘M not flaking anymore.” That he adds with a rasping chuckle. The sound fades out unnaturally, however, eeking from his vocalizer before being cut off entirely. “Nobody knows how I didn’t grey out, not even me, but lookin’ at you says we just suck at dying easily.”
