Disclaimer: do not own Transformers.
Rating: T
Summary: Drabble, Movieverse. In which there is character death, in more ways than one.
Title: Friends Forever
Friends Forever
"We'll be friends forever, right Bumblebee?"
He took him down. He had no choice. It—no, not it. He. He had been going after another human, after another soldier—after another child—to add to his collection. He'd tried to intercept. He tried to disarm, but something went wrong.
His charge blade went right through the spark chamber.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" he breathes.
The battle mask retracts, and he sees the face under the façade. The red optics flicker, and turn blue just for the briefest of moments. Hands abandon trying to pry the blade loose. One hand, covered in blood and energon, reach for him.
He flinches—the first time in several years—but the hand does not strike. A finger brushes gently against his jaw.
"Thank-you."
The optics fade to black.
X x X
Their squadron was celebrating. Spiderhawk was finally dead. His human captives, who the garish yellow 'Con had kept as "pets," had been freed. It would be a long road to recovery for all of them, but their hell was finally over.
He watched as General Lennox was reunited with his teenage daughter, and a thought suddenly came to him: where was the man of the hour?
"Hey," he asks the soldier next to him. "Where's the commander?"
"Hasn't left the battlefield," the soldier says, head shaking. He knows what the soldier is thinking, and he shares the same sentiments.
No one really knew who he was. The commander's strike unit was very small, consisting of himself, the SIC Banes, Lieutenant Lancaster, and a very few select others. They answered only to Generals Lennox and Epps. Their unit worked very closely with the Autobots, and were the first human strike units on scene at a Decepticon attack.
It was the commander of that reclusive unit who had taken down the 'Con.
The commander of interest was a very strange man.
He goes to the battlefield.
The commander is there, looking at the carcass. The young soldier looks at the lightless optics, remembers how the monster almost caught him, and looks away.
The commander murmurs something, and the young soldier misses the words. However, he doesn't miss the look on the commander's face—an expression that was strange and unfathomable.
He feels himself shake slightly.
"It's just a 'Con, sir," he says, his voice soft. He would have said more, but the look that the commander gives him stops him.
His gaze is intense and calculating, as though looking into the boy's very soul, and the boy finds himself shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably.
"You're from Johnson's unit," he says finally.
"Yes, sir," he says, surprised that the commander would know that.
"I've seen you. You hang around Prowl often." The commander's voice is even and impersonal, but the boy knows that there's a current of hatred under the mask of professionalism. No one knew why, but the commander and the rest of his unit hated Prowl almost as much as they hated Decepticons.
"He's…my friend, sir," the boy says, grasping for words. The commander gives a wry smile.
"How old are you, kid?" he asks.
"Sixteen, sir."
"Sixteen," the commander repeats softly, as though speaking to himself. "I met him when I was sixteen."
"Sir?"
The commander doesn't answer. His gaze returns to the cold, metal, yellow body on the floor. "Being human can be a bitch sometimes," he says finally. "But remember this: at least you know that your mistakes are yours, that your friends are yours, that your values are yours, that whatever choices you made, you made 'em, however painful…and at least you get the dignity of dying knowing that you're you."
The soldier can't find anything to say to that. All that he can say is, "Yes, Commander Witwicky."
"We'll be friends forever, right Bumblebee?" It's a silly, childish question, but Sam asks it anyway.
Bumblebee looks at him, smiling gently. "Of course."