Sunrise

Sam's hazel eyes slowly blinked open as the warm rays of the morning twilight glazed over his skin and the soft breeze rustled his blonde hair.

And all he could see was a yellow blur.

He tilted his head up to find the bright blue optics of his guardian Bumblebee shining kindly down on him.

"Good morning, Samuel."

Sam delighted in the sound of Bumblebee's voice. His British accent always sounded reassuring, authoritative, and many times, even comforting to him.

It made him feel secure, warm.

Sam tilted his head to the left and right, finding his body cradled by Bumblebee's giant hands that were cupped against his metal chest.

"Hey Bee." Sam replied with a groan and small smile, his eyes crinkling at the sight of his angel. "How long was I out?"

"Approximately 12.36 hours."

"Pshh, wow! I can't remember the last time I slept that long."

Sam's tired stance shifted so he was sitting against Bumblebee's chest, feeling the warmth from his Spark crawl over his body. The robot hummed at the contact.

"Well Sam, according to my data, the last time you slept that long was almost 3 months ago. I noticed that recently, you've been tending to stay awake studying for your tests, participating in "all nighters" as you humans say."

Sam yawned, causing Bee's yellow paint to fog from condensation at the warmth from his breath.

"Yeah, yeah. My school is into this weird, state-wide standardized testing thing. It's ridiculous."

Bumblebee's head tilted to the left, his optics lighting up with contemplation.

"This doesn't seem healthy for you. Would you like some help with your studies?"

Sam paused at this offer. He always seemed to feel embarrassed when Bumblebee offered the assistance he so often needed. Many times felt Sam as if he was a burden or a liability to the mech.

Sam's inner conscience told him his relationship with the robot was arbitrary.

Did the pair's relationship exist purely due to military orders by a Prime?

And in his heart he held an unspoken guilt.

Bumblebee was an independent /person, so to say, right? Why should a human invade his time? Why should such an advanced being help such a small boy with amateur AP abstract calculus? Bumblebee was an excellently trained solider built for slaughtering enemies and performing high-risk scouting missions.

He was a weapon disposed to kill, a weapon to be used by his military superiors.

Wasn't he?

Sam wonder how many he had killed.

"Sam?" Bumblebee's voice pulled Sam out his inner turmoil, and his hesitation to answer quickly made him blush.

"Oh-uh, sorry, yeah I'd really appreciate that. Thank you, Bee." He replied, patting the Autobot on his forearm.

Bumblebee chirped in a questioning fashion. "Are you okay? Your heart rate has jumped 20bpm over what it should be."

"Yeah I'm fine." The boy paused again and realized he should change the subject before the scout rolled him into Rachet's medbay.

Instead of replying with something more casual, he decided to test his conscience.

"Bumblebee?"

"Yes, Sam?"

"Do you think happiness is a choice?"

The question caught Bumblebee off-guard, leading him to set the boy onto his lap, leaving Sam feeling rather puny. The Autobot hesitated before responding, his head antennae shifting up and down as if he was repeating the question over and over again in his head. The mech responded with something the boy had never heard him say before.

"I..don't know, Sam."

Bumblebee gazed down at him and the pair made eye contact. Sam couldn't help but notice that the blue optics he stared into held slight twinges of questioning in the edges. Without elaborating, Bumblebee reached out one large, metal digit and gently touched Sam on the back, letting his finger naturally transition to a stroking motion.

Bumblebee's gaze broke from Sam to the surrounding area, scanning the landscape and the sky. The rustling of bushes and the chirps of morning birds encircled the pair. The lush cliff they resided at the end of was bathed in the golden glow of the rising light. In the east lay a great blanket of orange, shifting gradually back to blue in the west where the white waxing crescent of the Moon was suspended in the Earth's orbit.

And as Bumblebee thought, he realized that in the distant past, he had never dreamed of experiencing a place as beautiful as this.

Colors like this.

Diversity like this.

A landscape like this.

A planet like this.

But here he was.

Sam followed Bumblebee's lunar gaze and observed the small white dot that hovered below the moon by several degrees.

His eyes lit up with child-like enthusiasm.

"Look Bee, that must be Venus!" The boy quickly patted the metal plates, making Bumblebee chuckle at the boy's splendor.

"You're right, Sam! I remember Venus."

The boy's head spun around in awe.

"You've been to Venus?"

"Well it was only a fly-by mission, one that preceded my landing on Mars in 2004."

Mouth agape, Sam slunk back in the robot's lap. His robot never ceased to amaze him.

And Bumblebee thought.

He considered the planet that humans so often referred to as "Earth's twin" because it was similar in size.

But oh, how different it was, orbiting at 864 degrees Fahrenheit, covered with rain clouds of sulfuric acid.

Devoid of all life.

Devoid of color.

Devoid of diversity.

Devoid of peace.

Not unlike my home, he thought.

But who would want to call a place like that their home?

And what a contrast that was to the place he sat now, cradling his charge from potential harm, engulfed in a blue atmosphere on a wet mud-ball traveling through nothingness at more than 67,000 miles per hour.

Whatever fate was in mind for him, he accepted that out of all the realities, dimensions, galaxies, and solar systems in the universe, this was the one chosen for him.

He was right where he needed to be.

Bumblebee's gaze shifted down to the boy who was peering at a robin quarrel occurring in the top branches of an old oak tree. The boy smiled at the funny sight of the animals who bickered over nothing significant in the grand scheme of the stars.

He wondered why humans worried so much. Why there was war, famine, and terror. Bumblebee had long since come to terms with things such as these, being that he had lived for thousands of years.

It might take the boy a long time to come to terms with the things he cannot change, but that's natural. It's the process.

Sam's eyes turned upwards, and when they met the robot's, the boy asked a question.

"Are you happy, Bumblebee?"

And Bumblebee thought. He thought about all the years of war and violence.

He thought about everyone he had killed.

And for what?

Glory?

Though he did not understand why his fate was the way it was, he did not drown himself the struggles of understanding reality. He only accepted what he could not control.

After all, fate was what led him here.

To this land of green and blue.

To the boy whose soul resembled his own in such a profound way.

Despite their differences in physical appearance, the robot found the boy more alike to him than he had any other being.

The boy had brought life back into Bumblebee.

Sam was a miracle of the stars, born of star dust, and so was he.

And so they were one.

Aliens didn't exist, because nothing was alien.

And so after careful thought, Bumblebee gently picked up the boy, brought him to his chest once more, and whispered to the human.

"Yes, I am happy."

And the sun had risen.


Author's Note

I hope you guys enjoyed that. I wanted to capture the pair's relationship in a way that I have not seen before within any literature. Tell me what you thought of it, and please leave a review! If you liked it, mark it as a favorite! Let me know if you want to see more stories like this in the future. I may do something similar with Optimus.