Hey, look! icanhascamaro can write multiple chapter stories. Go figure :D

Currently, this story will be non-compliant with Age of Extinction. To be honest, I reeeeally have no plans to make it compliant with AoE. You know, unless certain Cybertronians (far too many to list, in my humble opinion) happen to be revived. This is more of an introduction chapter, so short chapter is short.

Also for this story, Jolt has resurfaced - and wasn't killed off pre-DotM - and is just fine and dandy. The lesser twins? Not so much. I tried to fit them in, but I wasn't satisfied with my lack of ability to keep them in character. The greater twins? Weeeell, like my mom says, we'll see :)

Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers, or any character/name brand/island/movie/Cybertroniandeity/and/or/base mentioned within this story. This story has been created for entertainment purposes only.

Warnings: Sam has a teeny bit of a potty mouth. Like five or six times. Sorry :(

Please, enjoy. :)

my spirit's sleeping somewhere cold

until you find it there and lead it

back

home

Chapter One

Diego Garcia

I don't want to go to this meeting. I so don't want to go to this meeting. Unfortunately, it seems it's important and I'm needed. Optimus himself sent me the memo, and yeah, it was highly amusing to see the Prime sending a memo. By email, no less.

But still and all, Optimus sending out the call to me personally meant that I couldn't bow out of this one.

Damn.

"Sam, why are you so reluctant to go to a meeting?"

Bee's voice rang out around me, as I was sitting in his alt as he drove us to the hangar the meeting was taking place in.

"Well, it's like this, Bee," I paused, thinking, and then continued. "Does Sideswipe still miss his brother? Sunflower, or whatever."

"Sunstreaker," Bee's voice was highly amused. "And as they happen to be spark twins, I'd guess that yes, he misses his twin."

"Yeah, okay, well, I'd rather do one-on-one combat training with Sideswipe, with a spoon as my only weapon, when he's in one of his really angsty 'I miss my bro' moods than to go to this meeting."

Bumblebee, my guardian and (once again) all around best bud, snickered at me. It was the only way to describe the venting of air that came from him. Unless he'd burped and I doubted it was that. "That's pretty bad."

"Tell me about it," I said as I slumped in the driver's seat. "You sure we can't go and do something else? Pretend a Con was sighted somewhere in, oh I don't know, Antarctica?"

"You hate the cold, Sam."

"That I do, Bee," I said, reflecting momentarily on those cold winter nights in DC. Not even Carly had been enough to keep me warm...uh...sometimes. "That I do."

We got to the hangar all too soon. The huge doors were wide open, and would be until everyone was there. Then they would close for privacy's sake. The hangar was reinforced to guard against any surprise attacks and/or unintended audio leaks. Even with Soundwave offline, you never knew who could be trying to fire on us or listen in. Lesson learned the first time around.

As he rolled into the hangar, I could see Sideswipe, Ratchet, and Optimus in their mech forms, standing near the elevated platform that held the conference table the meeting was being held on.

Bumblebee slowed and stopped near Sideswipe (who muttered a "fragging, finally" in a not that low of a voice), opening the door for me. "Better now than never, Sam."

"Can't I pick never?"

"Nope."

With a groan, I slipped out and sighed. I heard Bee transforming behind me and, on turning around, I looked up at my guardian. "It's not that I want one, but can I get a lift?" Because there was a set of stairs leading up to the platform, but I was feeling lazy. Plus, who wanted to arrive at a meeting all sweaty and out of breath, when one could get a lift via Autobot?

Bee crouched down and offered a flattened palm. I stepped on and held onto his thumb as he stood up, and, up I went. It was like a really fast, but secure, elevator. Just with no walls or annoying muzak. Though if this was a different, and seriously less formal, situation I'm sure he'd offer some sort of music.

"Thanks, Bee," I said as I stepped off and onto the catwalk. Eyes turned to stare at me and I fought the urge to dive back onto Bee's palm, and demand that he burn rubber getting us out of there.

Except that we were on an island. We really didn't have far to run to.

Everyone that should be there was there. They were only waiting for us. Lennox fixed me with an annoyed glare and justifiably so. I'd dragged this out to the extreme. We were about forty minutes late. I was actually surprised Ratchet hadn't threatened Bee with a special exam.

Or maybe he had. Way to go, Bee, avoid taking one for the team. Team Sam, that is.

My eyes flicked over the gathered mechs and humans as I scrambled to find a seat. It suddenly felt very high school, maybe college, as I looked for an empty seat. The table was rectangular, with seats all around. The catwalk we were on was of a medium height that was tall enough for any mech from Bumblebee to Optimus to comfortably see all of us squishies. In my eyes, there were too many Cybertronians that weren't there. Too many that hadn't survived to see us win the battle in Chicago.

The mechs present were Optimus, Ratchet, Bumblebee, and Sideswipe. The Wreckers had decided that they were far too needed on the racing circuit, and to be honest, they were. Plus, with the schedule they had, they were all over the place, racing and looking out for stray Cons all at once. It was a convenient two birds/one stone sort of deal.

The humans, well...there were about as many humans as mechs, but we were the higher ranking ones. Me, Lennox, Epps, Maggie, Simmons and, surprise surprise, Leo. Now, Leo wasn't exactly highest ranking, but he was up there because he was just as good (or in his eyes, better) than Simmons. Those two were our eyes online.

And there was one more person. The very person who was the reason behind my procrastination.

She didn't say anything. She just had on that knowing smirk, which graced her gorgeous face. Yeah, you know it. Mikaela was here. She'd been on a base in England for three years, training under Jolt, until the shit hit the fan thanks to Sentinel. Then she was transferred to Diego Garcia to assist Ratchet after the battle had ended. She'd been here and I hadn't known. I'd been here for seven months and never crossed paths with her until two weeks ago. All that time and I didn't know! Did I ream Bee out? Hell yes, I did, because he and everyone on the freaking base knew. I didn't know why they didn't tell me.

Her eyes caught mine and my face flushed.

Okay, so maybe I knew.

"Dude, here!" Leo's voice broke the trance I was in and he waved wildly. "Saved you a spot, man."

Grateful for the escape, and the location because Leo was on one side and end of the table and Mikaela was on the other, I speed walked my ass over there.

"Thanks, Leo."

"Don't worry about it," he slapped my back. "Bill's in the mail, Sam."

"Can we get to business, please?" Lennox snapped out. "Now that everyone is finally present and accounted for, we've got a lot to discuss."

It was then that I noticed that what looked like a texbook was in front of everyone. Mentally, I groaned. This was gonna take forever.

It's weird how saying twenty four months, instead of two years, sounded like a shorter amount of time than two years. It was amazing what could happen in that span of time. Twenty four months ago, things were different. Things were better. Not perfect, but normal. Better than how things turned out. And that wasn't to say that life as I knew it was unrecognizable, because it wasn't.

Not exactly.

For everyone else, everyone that hadn't known about Cybertronians? Everything was different.

People hadn't been aware of Cybertronians. They did their own thing. Shopped, worked, played, loved.

After a long, hard winter, people (this applies to those who get a cold winter, mind you) had been looking forward to summer. No brains needed to figure that out.

And then things changed.

The world changed.

Bots went crazy.

Innocent people died.

Good mechs were hurt.

Mechs like Ironhide, that I'd once considered indestructible due to how badass he was, had been killed.

So many mechs died that day in Chicago. And before that, in DC, when Ironhide was the first to die. Taken out with a cowardly shot to the back by Sentinel Prime. There was nothing much left of him but a pile of rust. The GMC logo that had been on his alt form's grille had been found in the area. Somehow it had been blasted off and was unaffected. I'd made sure that Lennox had gotten it.

Much like just about anyone I knew, outside of movies, I hadn't seen death up close and personal. I hadn't known death as well as the Autobots knew it. They'd fought far longer than my entire species had existed. I mean, there were movies and news reports where you both see and hear about people who died. But I hadn't actually ever seen anyone die. Not until Sentinel introduced me to death. I'd been there. I'd seen Ironhide die. He was the toughest, no…fiercest...Autobot I'd known.

Okay, granted I hadn't known them for very long. Not even a decade, which was like the time it took an Autobot to sneeze, but it was long to me. In that time, I'd gotten to know them. It was intense to know that, not only was my car not just a car, he had friends that were the same as he was. Having them in my life, especially Bee, became the norm.

But that was before college, when it was cool to have a secret. When that secret was that you knew aliens that could step on those bullying you or otherwise making your life miserable. Not that Optimus would let them, but still, I knew aliens. It was kind of the shit. Going to drive in movies with Bee and Mikaela, the beach, and long ass road trips where you could be smug about not needing to refuel your muscle car.

College, before and after, was when adulthood smacked me in the face and I'd done my best to not know them. I'd done my best to make sure they weren't in my life. Maybe that's why Ironhide's death hurt so much, even now. Survivor's guilt? Maybe.

Looking back on it, I was slightly amazed that we didn't see Sentinel's betrayal from the start. I wished that I could have done something to prevent it. Something to have warned Optimus. Maybe Sentinel could've been killed first and there'd been less deaths, human and bot alike.

Because what ended up happening in Chicago was nothing like the attack in Qatar that first introduced people to violent mechs or Egypt where Devastator was humping the great pyramid. This had nothing on the Fallen showing my picture to the world and demanding that I be turned over to him. What happened then was almost child's play. What happened in DC and Chicago was pretty much a live action Independence Day. Only without Will Smith to save the day.

For a brief moment, Cybertron, as in the planet Cybertron, had filled the sky. It was as awesome as it was terrifying. I couldn't imagine what it must've been like for Optimus or the others to see their home planet – so close but so far away – and I never asked either one of them.

I could only guess it must've hurt. Yeah. If the situations had somehow been reversed, it would've hurt me deeper than anything I could possibly imagine.

Me. Yes and then there was me. In Chicago, I had to stay back and hide as if I was any other person. Nothing special about me. I was just Sam Witwicky. I didn't have the All Spark, didn't have the Matrix, and my guardian was kneeling with Soundwave's cannon to the back of his head.

Carly had been sobbing at that point, but I think it was more out of fright for her safety than Bee's. It showed. I couldn't blame her, yet I was struck at how different she was from Mikaela.

Brave "my dick's bigger than his" Mikaela.

Mikaela had raced into battle in Mission City with Bee. She ran with me through the desert battlefield in Egypt. I know damned well she would've done similar in D.C. and especially in Chicago.

I mean, I think she would. At any rate, she'd have done something other than cry inside of a trashed car.

Could I diss Carly like that? Nah. She was supermodel gorgeous, and the roughest thing she normally did had nothing on running from killer Cybertronians, or Soundwave's disgusting tentacles, or Shockwave's huge worm mech thing. Did it even count as a mech, or was it just a robot? And lets not forget the slip sliding through a tilting skyscraper thing. I'd had nightmares about that for months after the battle. Just me, the beam, and a whole bunch of dangling over the Chicago business district. Sometimes I fell. Sometimes Optimus caught me. It sucked either way.

Anyway, when we were hiding in that upturned car, it made me realize something. Carly and me...not gonna happen. She seemed to realize that as well. Despite sharing more kisses after the danger was gone, the heat wasn't there. We were kissing because our butts weren't toast. Because we didn't end up as a pile of bones or ash on Wacker drive. It still shook me to remember seeing the abandoned cars on the expressway into the city, to see a person be hit with an energy blast and have nothing left of them, of their entire life, but a pile of ash. If they were lucky, they were ash. Some people had just vanished. Mere seconds for full annihilation.

But not us. We were alive.

Carly would say that she was the one to dump me, but it was almost a mutual thing. It happened a month after Chicago. It was almost a replay of Mikaela dumping me, but with Carly breaking up with me there was relief. With Mikaela, there had been the feeling of my heart being ripped out and stomped on by her combat boots.

A few weeks after the break-up, Will Lennox contacted me and let me know that NEST was up and running permanently. Apparently it was safer to have NEST there and working with the Autobots, than for there to be no Autobots and having a repeat of Chicago, or worse.

Lennox let me know that he, Epps, Fig, and the whole crew were back on Diego Garcia. That they had a place for me there, if I wanted it.

Honestly, I had almost said no.

I'd thought long and hard about it. I had been home back in Tranquility (luckily mom and dad hadn't repurposed my bedroom) and had gone back to the Overlook, for old times sake, and to just think. A greater part of me said to stay and look for a job. To just let Lennox's offer go. A lot of Decepticons had died in the battle, and whoever was left was surely running on empty, either in hiding or doing their best to leave earth. Surely I'd be safe and not have to worry about much more than making sure I had enough money for rent. I could live my life, not worry about Decepticons trying to take over the planet, and worry about finding that girl that was right for me.

Because nothing could top what happened in Chicago. Right?

Of course, I'd assumed the same thing after battling the Fallen in Egypt and I'd been very wrong. Chicago had happened. And wouldn't it be better if that didn't happen again?

So there I was, staring beyond Bee in the general direction of the sun, reflecting, remembering, and reminding myself of all the reasons why I should go to Diego Garcia, instead of why I should let it go. With the sun setting behind him, Bee (who had been standing in front of me, looking exasperated) had slid into his sleek alt mode and gently revved his engine as he opened the passenger door.

I'd hesitated for a moment until Bee's radio came to life. My cheeks had flushed with slight embarrassment when my voice flowed through his speakers:

"In fifty years from now, don't you want to be glad you had the guts to get in that car?"

My radio-tuned voice had that slightly choppy, static quality of Bee's, but it solved my internal war.

I got in the car.

Again.

My job turned out to be the Autobot's liaison, and it wasn't as if that position wasn't a given. The Autobots knew they could trust me, knew I wouldn't block their efforts to do things like Galloway had, and I wouldn't be a bitch like Mearing had been. The position paid disgustingly well and I had my own private quarters on base. Mom and Dad hadn't put up a fuss, mainly because they were glad to get me out of their house – again. You know, other than having me promise to visit at all holidays, not just government ones. My leaving for DG wasn't nearly as bad as when I left for college, or when I left for DC.

DG, DC...I sure had a thing for living in the D's.

I slipped into a routine on DG. Life was good. Not great, but good. I discovered that while all of the 'Con bodies had been, on order of the President and all his little men, dropped in the trench, Optimus had successfully recovered all 'Bot bodies. Or in Ironhide's case, what was left of it.

Even though I knew how precious each Autobot life was, thanks to me destroying the All Spark, the battle in Chicago had hit me upside the head even more about just how important each Cybertronian was. Autobot or Decepticon. Jazz's death sucked, but it hadn't been hard to swallow because I hadn't known him long. Ironhide's death was a punch in the gut because I had gotten to know him.

In the heat of the moment, killing Starscream had been exhilarating. But thinking back on it, it was almost a pathetic way to go. No one had really mourned the deaths of the Decepticons, not like they had with the fallen Autobots. It was almost sad. Millions of years fighting each other, and no one to mourn your death? At times, I wondered how more advanced their species could've been if they hadn't been fighting each other. And I wondered if they remembered the true purpose of their war.

There were times when I wished that I hadn't killed Starscream. I know, stupid to think because he'd have had no such qualms in killing me. But I did regret it. I wished that none of them had died here on Earth. It seemed kind of pointless, you know? Well, except for Sentinel. Traitors sucked. At least you knew the Decepticons were, generally speaking, the bad guys. You knew where you stood with them. Pretty much as a smudge under their feet.

It still blew my mind as to how old they were. Even Bee was seriously old, and he was young to his species. They weren't newly sparked. They were mechs who had fought side by side for millennia. They were older than the human race. Older than our planet. Ironhide himself was supposed to be older than Optimus. Jetfire had been far older than Ironhide.

And they had lives, loves, hates.

It struck me on how every person in Chicago who had died by a Decepticon weapon shared something with any Bot killed by a Con (and for argument's sake, vice versa). We humans weren't as long lived, obviously, but we all wanted to live.

Bah. I'm digressing. See? Big word. Digress. I went to college and actually graduated. Yeah, I'm feeling kinda smug.

So, DG, routine. It was cool. I adapted. Adjusted.

But then the dreams started. Freaky dreams that were uncomfortably similar to meeting the Primes.

Mainly because I was meeting the Primes.

:We need you again, boy...:

AN:

So, Sam was doing a lot of introspection there. Hope it wasn't too boring. More action in the next chapter!

This is set roughly two years after the movie release date. I don't think that Bay ever set a specific year in the movie, but I might be wrong. Drop me a line if I am.

Regarding Bumblebee's voice. I don't believe he's got a whole British accent thing going on. In my humble opinion, that whole "I wish to stay with the boy" seemed too old for his character. To me, Bee sounds more like Mike Shinoda, aka Mr. Linkin Park, the guy who sang the Second to None "check on the rep, yep" clip he played when Optimus was introducing everyone to Sam and Mikaela. If the British accent thing is more your cup of tea, hey, whatever floats your boat. :D

Updates will come on Wednesdays!