Author Notes: Crossover with Okami, but I'm just cherry picking. No special knowledge of the game is required. This story comes out of a dream I had awhile ago and the desire to answer the question: just how did Sam activate the All Spark anyway? Title comes from CD by Our Lady Peace of the same title. Set five years after the prequel "Long Time Gone." You do not have to read that story to understand this one or vice versa. They're just in the same 'verse' so to speak.
Prologue
August 2009
It had started out so innocently—just a long drive with Bumblebee at unattainable-for-non-sentient-cars speeds to celebrate his graduation from high school and his freedom for the summer. After roughly thirty minutes of joy riding, he noticed that Bee seemed to be...irritated, for lack of a better word...about something.
"'s something wrong, Bee?" Sam had asked, idly drawing abstract patterns on his steering wheel as Bumblebee sped down a deserted dirt road.
"Everything is fine, Sam," Bumblebee had replied in that soft British accent of his and swiftly changed the subject. "What are your plans for the summer?"
To say it bothered him was an understatement, but Sam had allowed Bumblebee to take control of the conversation not wanting to ruin the serenity of the day with an argument. Sam knew he was nothing if not persistent and he vowed from that point on, every time he got the feeling something was wrong with Bee, he'd just ask. No matter how many times he asked or how many different ways he asked, however, the answer never changed.
Eventually, he noticed that the occasional vague feeling of irritation he felt from Bee was being replicated, whether rightly or wrongly, in the other Autobots. He asked them what was wrong and would get a variation on the answer that Bee gae him. They never seemed to have a problem with Mikaela. When he asked her about it one day while they were washing down some parts for Ratchet, she just arched her brow and asked him gently if he was touched in the head. That had led to a massive water fight that had only been broken up when Ratchet had thrown a wrench at them. Maybe it was his imagination, but Sam though the medic had aimed at him.
Sam wracked his brains but he couldn't come up with a reason why every seem so angry at him. All of his questions were rebuffed time and time again. After awhile he began to spend less and less time with the Autobots to see if that would help the situation but it just made the whole thing worse. Even Glenn noticed something was going and asked Sam about it. All Sam could do was shrug his shoulders and reply with an anxious, "I don't know, man." Out of the corner of his eye, he noted Bumblebee was looking at him with an undecipherable expression on his face.
It all came to a head when he asked Bee to take him to the look out ne last time before he headed off to college. They hadn't yet discussed whether or not Bee would be joining him at college. Bee had made no mention of his upcoming trip or about wanting to go with him to Pennsylvania. In fact, every time Sam brought the subject up, Bumblebee would immediately change it. Sam was becoming desperately afraid the Autobot would say "no" and that was why Bee wasn't allowing him to ask the question. His plan that night, such as it was, was to ambush him when they were alone at the look out and not accept anything but a "yes" or a "no".
They never made it.
Half-way there Bumblebee suddenly unhooked his seatbelt, swung open the door, and flung Sam out. Sam landed with a yelp, cracking his head on the ground and feeling his shoulder wrench out of its socket. He laid there in a daze, unable to get his mid to focus on anything. He could hear the sounds of fighting behind him, but he couldn't quite shake off his injury and get t his feet.
"Look out!" Bumblebee shouted and Sam jerked towards the sound hissing in pain at the movement, then tried to gain his feet. He fell back down to his hands and knees with a sharp scream as he jarred his shoulder. He could see a dark shape near him and scrambled towards it, arm help protectively to his chest, hoping that it would provide enough cover. Bee said something else, but it didn't sound like English to Sam. Didn't sound like Cybertronian either, but he wasn't sure that he was the best person to make that call. There was a thunderous roar and then Sam knew nothing else.
When he came around, he woke up laying on something warm and hard and...vibrating? Maybe the tremors he felt were just himself, he reflected, the cold desert air chilling his skin. He blinked away the dark spots in his eyes and saw he was very near something colored a very bright yellow. He tried to shit up onto his elbows but his shoulder exploded in agony. He yelped and fell back down, his right hand clutching at his shoulder. His head rolled to the side and noted he was laying on something dark and felt like metal. They kind of looked like hands and he could see what looked like joints beneath his body.
"Sam." A hushed voice said and he shifted until he was looking at something that looked vaguely like a face. "Are you alright?"
He groaned in response, trying to jump start his brain. It was like trying to think through molasses.
"Sam?" The voice was starting to sound a little panicked.
He rolled his head back up to look at the being that he assumed was speaking to him. The face that floated in front of him was strangely familiar. He abruptly realized that he had absolutely no idea where he was or what he was doing there. He gasped for breath, panic and pain making his breathing ragged. He struggled to sit up again as the voice yelled, "Sam!" at him, but failed again and this time when he went down he let the darkness take him all the way.
-+-
September 2019
Sam was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming but it felt like a memory. The world was awash in gray except for when it flashed to tan and then the dream changed. Sometimes things fell down—cut in two, sometimes fires burned and water soothed, sometimes the winds changed and blew fiercely, knocking things down, and sometimes things grew. And sometimes, every so often, the sun rose and the moon slept.
He experienced the world at a different angle in his dreams. He saw hills and mountains. He saw rivers and streams. He saw prairies and deserts. He saw forests and jungles. He saw the oceans. He saw them together. He saw them separate. The characteristics of the land melted into one another until they were nothing remarkable. He experienced extreme hot and cold and temperatures in between. He experienced the mildest of days to the most ferocious of storms. He was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. He was everything and nothing. And he was running. He ran across the open meadow through the wildflowers and past the trees. Shades of gray where the should have been bright color, the world flying by, blurry and indistinct. Becoming featureless but no less beloved. There were long stretches where he couldn't see, smell, hear, or taste anything but he could feel the warmth of the Earth and the pulse of something no Earth but equally comfortable.
These dreams were always shattered by the presence of Barricade and Frenzy, sliding from the maybe-memories to actual memories seamlessly. The nightmares were always the same and never deviated from what he remembered and could never forget. In these dreams, he felt fear and pain, he saw everything in over-bright clor, the red of his blood and Barricade's optics the brightest colors of all. He could no longer feel the Earth and her pleasures and the thrum of the something-not-Earth was gone. These nightmares shook his soul and caused his feet to run, but it was different from the way he ran before. Here he ran through cities, through people, the wilderness far away from him, though he beggedwishedprayed that the moment would freeze and he could finallyfinallyfinally destroy Barricade in a single stroke, these dreams never changed. They were as real as the scars on his back and they were memories and the past couldn't be changed. Or outrun.
When he awoke with screams clawing at his throat, for the briefest of moments through the haze of tears, he though he saw flowers dying.