Procrastinating on that Becoming bunny…yet again. =( At least we're getting progressively closer to the human-friend-is-Decepticon angsty angst that the bunny loves so much…
Disclaimer: do not own Transformers.
Rating: T
Author note: Bumblebee is my woobie, except that sometimes I don't comfort him. Instead, I leave him writhing in emotional pain. I also enjoy hurting him by hurting his friends. I feel like such a villain (smirk of evil).
Summary: Oneshot. One friend was with him, and one friend was gone, and it was all his fault.
Autobot?Mikaela/Decepticon?Mikaela. Autobot?Sam/Decepticon?Sam. Yes, those are question marks, not exclamation marks. No, those are not pairings (that'd be cool to read, though I don't know how that'd be pulled off…)
Gone
Slinking through shadow and moonlight, Bumblebee's quarry finally moved into his viewing screens. Ravage carefully watched her prize, audios and optics on high alert. Bumblebee could not get closer. He could only watch as a little quadruped protoform-cassette went progressively further from Ravage, before bounding back again.
Bumblebee would not engage Ravage in battle. They were nowhere near the Autobot base or human habitation. Attacking now would prove costly, provoking an unnecessary retaliation.
The cassette was clumsy, still getting used to the new upgrades. Very much like the little cassette that the whole Autobot base lavished attention over, sometimes almost in a guilty way, as if to make up for a wrong that could never be put to right.
He didn't know it at the time, but the day that Bumblebee's friends touched the Allspark was the day his world stopped turning. At first, it had been the best thing that had ever happened to the Autobots in vorns; humans who had had direct contact with the Allspark were becoming like them.
Sam and Mikaela had given his bouts of childish selfishness an affectionate nickname: The Id-Bee. And when Id-Bee realized what the Allspark had done, Id-Bee did a little dance of joy, because he wouldn't be losing his friends.
But then surprise and uncertainty and anticipation gave way to pure horror. Sam and Mikaela's spark frequencies weren't like the others.
You couldn't change frequency; you couldn't change what you were. Sam and Mikaela had the frequencies of cassettes. They were cassettes. They needed a technopath to bond to. As each day passed without a host, their spark energy starved, writhed, faded.
Frantic, they hastened Blaster's arrival to Earth. Blaster was the only technopath close enough with the skill to bond on such short notice, with cassettes that he had no hand in making.
The problem was that there were two of them, and links were made one at a time. By the time a proper link had been established with one, the other would have already died several times over. No one had ever managed to link to two non-spark-split cassettes in such a short time span. The implications were clear.
They were haunted with the fact that they could only save one.
Which one? The stronger one? The one most likely to survive? The one most likely to become an efficient fighter?
Bumblebee, his judgment impaired by panic, suspicion, paranoia, and an increasingly frantic Id-Bee, suspected the little Id inside the higher-ups were thinking along those lines. They were only mortal, after all.
But ultimately, they thought that the only answer was to try and save both. They would be careful; they make a tentative link to one, wait until it settled, and then link to the other, solidifying both at the same time. To solidify the first immediately would be a death sentence for the other.
They could only save one. They couldn't bring themselves to tell them their odds.
They didn't need to. He told them to save her; she told them to save him.
But there was still hope. Wasn't life worth fighting for?
One day, in a very quiet voice, Bumblebee asked them if they were afraid to die. They had laughed then. Their eyes were glazed; they weren't lucid. With tiny, serene smiles on their faces, they had each answered him, "Maybe."
Ratchet told him later that that single word of calm uncertainty given under a haze of drugs and pain and fatigue was nevertheless the most honest answer he would have ever received from them.
The first time had been disastrous. The links simply did not take, and the attempt had left Sam and Mikaela weaker than before.
The second time had given them hope. An extremely weak link had been made between Blaster and both Sam and Mikaela. It had lasted a fraction of a nanoclick, but for that briefest moment in time, they had done the impossible.
The third time, Blaster's spark had gone into arrest, and they had nearly lost all three of them.
What were they to do?
They couldn't save both.
They had to save both.
Their salvation and their damnation came from the unlikeliest of sources.
"Soundwave contacted me," Blaster said grimly one day. "He basically wants to know how soon he can take one of them."
The situation, Soundwave stated, was ideal. Two technopaths, two cassettes, two lives intact.
His message had been met with outrage and disbelief. How dare he think that the Autobots would be so willing to give up one of their friends? But this reaction gave way to the shocking truth: whether or not they accepted Soundwave's "offer," the fact was that they could only save one.
There was choice.
There was no choice.
They wanted to be the good guys. They wanted to be the brave and noble knights in shining armour. They wanted to be kind, they wanted to be compassionate. They wanted Sam and Mikaela to be happy and healthy and alive. But sometimes, they had to be brutal. Sometimes, the cold questions had to be asked. They were fighting a war. Needs of many, needs of few.
As always, it was Prowl who asked them. He asked them in a rational, calm, cold voice. Which of the two should be given up? Which of the two was the weaker fighter? What threat would Sam or Mikaela be to them as Decepticons? Should they be given up at all? What was the price of a single life? Was it to be essentially handing the Decepticons a new weapon? Would not Soundwave be cruel to this cassette, a cassette he had no hand in making? Choosing to save both by giving up one—was that not just selfishness on the part of the Autobots? Was not death kinder than joining the Decepticon ranks?
As always, it was Prowl who was hated. Every one of his words were met with gasps of horror, optics shuttering in disbelief, his friends being ashamed to be seen with him, other high-ranking officers deploring him for his coldness while secretly grateful that someone else was doing the necessary cruelty.
As always, it was Prowl who had the biggest spark, and forgave them—he even forgave Bumblebee, even though Bumblebee would never forgive him.
He asked these questions even though they pained him too; even though he knew that a twisted, hurt life was still a life. But he was forced to balance out everyone's uncertainty with a harsher version of reality. He wanted them to see the extent of what they were doing.
Prowl had a very big spark. The problem was, sometimes, that it was too big.
They never asked Sam and Mikaela whether or not they would choose the Decepticon faction over death. They knew that both would have vehemently declared the latter option.
Wouldn't they?
The only answer was: Maybe.
"What do you want me to do? Guys? Guys? Come on," Bumblebee begged softly, but by now Sam and Mikaela were far beyond the strength of his presence. "I need you to tell me what to do."
But they didn't answer him. It was just him, there, alone in the dark, with their lives in his tied hands.
He didn't know how and he didn't know when, but somewhere along the lines he made a decision. As though his spark became divorced from his processor, he walked calmly to the med-bay, gathered up Sam and Mikaela in his arms, and said goodbye.
I love you guys, and nothing will ever change that.
Blaster took over from there. Bumblebee would never had made it; his resolve would have broken, he would have raced off with the both of them, killing them both. Blaster met up with Soundwave, and no one knew how the choice was made.
Did Blaster, doing what he needed to do before his resolve broke, just thrust one into his enemy's awaiting arms? Or had Soundwave looked carefully at them both, deciding which one of them best suited his purposes? Or had Blaster tried bartering with him, trying to convince him to take which one he thought was weaker? Or had Blaster tried to somehow get Soundwave to promise for the well-being of this new addition? Or had Blaster tried to back out of the deal, desperately clinging to the false hope that he was strong enough to make a successful link to both?
The countless situations played over and over in Bumblebee's mind as he refused to recharge, the two empty beds in the med-bay haunting him.
Empty, empty.
Gone.
What really happened? Only Blaster and his team knew.
They were gone from the base for a full week. Three days to get to a designated meeting place, three days to return…and one day unaccounted for. The new cassette's spark to go into arrest, and Blaster had been forced to hastily build the protoform-skeleton and perform a spark transplant to better support the traumatized spark.
He had linked to the cassette immediately. Like a reboot, the action saved the cassette but deleted many of the memories.
So when Blaster finally returned, it was without one part of Bumblebee's spark, and Bumblebee couldn't tell which.
"Do you want me to tell you who this one is?" Blaster asked guiltily, delicately, carefully, the rest of the Autobots spaced carefully around him and his new bundle of wires, all of them watching as Bumblebee's optics widened and shuttered as the scout took in the alien form cradled in his arms. The single lone form, without a partner. And he didn't know who was there, and who was missing. An agonizing pause. "Bumblebee?"
"No," Bumblebee said shakily, backing away and retreating quickly, thinking: What have I done?
And Bumblebee didn't want to know. He knew it was very cowardly, but he didn't want to know which of his friends he had betrayed.
Smokescreen and Prowl, the psychiatrists and borderline mind-readers that they were, would have said that Bumblebee was torturing himself with the uncertainty, punishing himself for giving up one of his friends, for not being able to save them.
They would have also said that it wasn't Bumblebee's fault.
In any case, Bumblebee wouldn't have believed them on either count.
And though years had passed, Bumblebee still didn't know which one of his friends Soundwave had taken.
Sometimes he became tempted to ask Blaster, but he ultimately he didn't. They would know one day, the day that Bumblebee equally dreaded and yearned for, when the little cassette finally regained those missing memories, but even then, knowing would not change what Bumblebee did.
One friend was with him, and one friend was gone, and it was all his fault; that was all the truth that Bumblebee could bear for the moment.
Ravage might have picked up his presence, or she might have been summoned by Soundwave, or she might have just gotten bored. In any case, she utters a harsh cry, and her protégé is by her side in an instant, red optics peering into the dark curiously.
Then they are both gone, shadows melting into shadows, and Bumblebee is once again left alone in the crushing dark.