Sigh.

It's late at night and you’ve been at your workbench all day, staring at multiple datapads, typing out formulas, and running through every hypothesis you could think of. You’re fragging exhausted. However, despite all your efforts, this experiment of yours is going nowhere. It's a mess. It's your mistake. You sigh again, feeling the frustration build beneath your processor. Something has to be off in your calculations, or maybe there’s a flaw in the formula you missed. Your optics flicker as your systems start to demand recharge, You are also running on minimum energy just to keep you awake. In the back of your helm, the unwanted doubts start creeping in. Are you really good enough for the Decepticon cause? Maybe if you’d been more careful, things wouldn’t be falling apart like this. Your mistakes are only slowing you down.

As your thoughts spirals to the never-ending abyss of your own emotions, a voice calls you out. You turn your helm to see a purple figure, ah, Shockwave is standing there, his single optic fixed on you. He asks why you’re still up, and before you know it, you're not the type to tell anyone your own burden but maybe it's due to your own exhaustion and emotional distress made you spill everything out. You tell him about your pile of failed experiments today, the overwhelming thought to feel and be seen as a huge failure. You are a failure.

You half expect Shockwave to just nod and leave, but instead, he quietly moves closer, placing a servo on your shoulder and giving you a few sympathetic pats.

"Experiment failure due to miscalculation is logical. However, you shouldn't be too hard on yourself. Emotional distress is a logical outcome for such events, but to think that you are a failure after some experiments gone wrong is illogical. You are not."

His voice is calm, and his small antenna twitches in a relaxed way, you can tell he’s genuinely trying to support you in his own way.