A world was falling from high above.
It didn't work.
People were screaming. Sam couldn't hear them: instead, he saw the future lighting up his very eyes.
It didn't work.
Dylan was dead. He was lying, a crumpled heap of bone and skin, on the gravel below him. Both of their eyes were trained on the Apocalypse above them all. Sam felt the metal bar he was holding slip from his grip. It slipped, and fell, and tumbled against the statue he stood on, landing with a loud, resounding, triumphant clank! on the ground.
It didn't work.
Sam hoped that if he pushed Dylan into the control pillar, the friction between the blast and the invading body would be enough to cancel the main control pillar.
It didn't work. The world was falling from above. Cybertron was falling from the skies, and the force of the incoming planet, Sam knew, would destroy the Earth. Carly's face, Bumblebee's,
Optimus's, Lennox's, Epps-
Hopelessness whimpered through his body, and the ground below his feet shook with fear. His hands were twitching, his chest was caving, and the streets of Chicago became a graveyard for the dead, the lost, and the first to see the end of the world.
"You think you're a hero?" Dylan screamed at him, eyes wide with fear-
"You're a messenger. You've always been a messenger," Mearing stated, as if it was simple fact.
Was it all too late?
Up above him, he could hear Megatron laughing with roughened glee, and the thunderous booms of bombs and gunfire and ash and smoke surrounded him, all too far away to look for help.
He knew they were out there, the Autobots, SWAT, NEST, every one of them fighting a losing battle. It was too late. All. Too. Late.
Was this how it was meant to be?
In stories, good always won over evil. In stories, the bad guys were killed, and the good guys stood over their dead bodies and shoved their swords high into the air. Good always prevailed. Always.
But this was real life. As weird as real life had become in these past few years, he had to keep reminding himself that. Good didn't always win, not when they were extraterrestrial aliens looking to take over the planet, looking to take over the entire universe.
In front of his tired eyes, the blaring red of the pillar mocked him, taunted him, told him he was useless. He wasn't going to argue there, not when the simple fact was he couldn't actually do anything to save the goddamn world when it freaking needed him. The world needed people like Lennox and Epps, strong people, people who had cause and meaning for every shot they took and every step they made in their lives. They needed people like Carly and Simmons, people who could bravely face the world when a piece of their beginnings were torn away from who they were. The world needed them, more than anything else. Heroes. Not messengers. Not stupid, stupid people like him.
"The messenger delivers," he whispered. "The messenger delivers death."
Yeah. That sounded exactly like him. He wasn't the hero, only the messenger. But… he was a good guy too, and this, right here, this was what good guys do. His heart stuttered, but he had no choice. The control pillar stared back at him, boring its red lights into his eyes, seared his vision with the colour of blood and looming death.
Raising his shaking hands, everything became crystal clear. He was…ready. It was a sacrifice. It was a victory. It would work. He was ready, for the pain, the death, for everything that came after. His heart sickened to think of Carly, of Bee, of the people he was leaving behind- God, he didn't want to hurt them-
No sacrifice, no victory.
The world flashed before his eyes. Electricity sparked the air around him, and he took a breath- and then-
The world paused.
Carly felt time stop between one and the next, and she stopped, standing in the middle of West Lake street, and her eyes were trained on Bumblebee's yellow back as they traversed one battle-ravaged street after another. Her heart broke to see the bodies, the chaos, the screams, the battered store-fronts. Her hands itched to hold Sam again.
"Bee," she whispered, and somehow, the scout's super-hearing heard her voice. He turned, metal cinching metal as he bent down to her, his cannon pointed in all directions at all times. Sam said Bee was his best friend: she didn't need any proof to see how much of it was true. Bee, Carly could well see, truly cared for his human friend, and Sam, in turn, trusted the tall, yet gentle, beast that stood as high as a God over all of them. "We need to find Sam. I've got- I-" she couldn't describe it, and her fingers grappled with the cataclysmic air around the pair of them.
"Sweet little lady- we gunna be a-okay," Bee's radio churned from one station to the next, and Carly licked her lips. A sharp sensation racked her chest: she couldn't explain it, and then-
The sky above both her and Bee exploded into a thousand glittering fragments, and every single one of the fracture lines emitted from the pillars all over the world fizzled out. Cybertron fell backward into a cloud of smoking ash. She could feel the earth beneath her split, and her feet came out under her in time for Bee to catch her with one hand. She screamed, grabbed one of his fingers, and held on for dear life, and in the sudden, deafening silence that followed, not one whisper of gunfire could be heard. She didn't realise her eyes were squeezed shut until Bee abruptly moved. She opened them, wanting to see the next catastrophe before she grew numb with dread.
Above them, the sky was clear.
The darkness was gone.
Cybertron wasn't there anymore, and distantly, she could hear the anguished screams of Decepticon and Autobot alike as the world they came from was gone, gone completely. Carly breathed, afraid. Bee said nothing, absolutely nothing.
"Sam," she whispered again, and his name, like a key, jolted Bee into action. He swerved fast, as if the sight of his dead planet was of no importance to him. Maybe it wasn't. To Carly, Sam was where Bee came from: Sam was Bee's home. It had been traced in every single story Sam had murmured in the tentative darkness when the moon hung above their heads and she was sleepy from a hard day's work.
"I just wish he would come back- just for a little while. I just-"
-I want to see him, even if it's one more time-
Carly could read minds better than she could cook.
Skids, one of the foul-mouthed Autobots Sam told her all about, brought up Bee's rear, and she looked over her shoulder to see serious eyes. She didn't see Mudflap, but further down the small street they were now on, she could make out two or three more of the Autobots racing up the street.
"Were heading back toward the main control pillar, aren't we?" Carly whispered. Bee didn't utter a word. They were heading for North Wells Street: she could see the tall buildings from here. Smoke dashed the sky high above them, and far below, Carly could make out Lennox and what she thought was Epps, as all NEST members made their way toward the one destination.
"Hey, has anyone seen Sammy-boy?" the question came from Skids.
Lennox looked up toward Bee, a question in his eyes. Carly gritted her teeth, then felt herself being brought back down to ground. She jumped off Bee's hand and rushed toward Lennox.
"You haven't seen him?" she asked. Lennox's eyes turned dark.
"The last time I saw-" he swore, before turning to the rest of the men who were quickly gathering on the street around them. "Okay, has anyone seen a kid running probably toward danger rather than away from it like any normal human being?" Vacant eyes stared back at him. "Shit. Look, Carly, I'm sorry, but we need to secure the bottom of the tower first before we send out a search party." Carly nodded, numbness overtaking her system. Lennox started walking away. She stayed where she was.
"All the Decepti-pains-in-the-ass have been killed. There's nothing that kid can do that could possibly bring another end-of-the-world situation on us right now," Epps added, swinging his gun from his shoulder to his front with ease. He stopped suddenly, then rolled his eyes. "Forget about what I just said." Carly tried to smile as all the men around her walked on ahead. She wasn't sure now. She gripped her hands to her elbows, suddenly cold. There was something seriously wrong- Jesus, what if Sam got caught under a building, or worse-
He said he'd find me. He said he'd come back to me.
She stepped forward, trying to control her laboured breaths. She had to hold on. Sam would be okay. Sam would be fine.
Bumblebee felt a tremor run under his spark as he launched onto the street.
He couldn't explain it: it was something unnatural, scary-
He could see the control pillar, or what was left of it, smashed and torn to shredded metal among the rocky debris of the street. Small fires and what was left of the cupola that hung from the top of the building above them scattered across the street like mismatched stars.
Dylan Gould's lifeless body lay stretched close to a fragment of the pillar. Sam was nowhere to be seen.
Skids stood behind him when Bee stopped. "You tellin' me that Dylan dude stopped the pillar?"
Bumblebee didn't answer, but something inside him felt so wrong- so wrong- so incredibly wrong-
"Bee? Missed hanging out? Yeah, me too."
Bee's optics took in the unnatural scene, and an eerie chill settled over the street. Everything was quiet, but the men were yelling their victories, throwing their guns in the air. Optimus was comm'ing in, and everyone- Autobot and NEST alike- were all calling rota. He distantly heard Lennox and Epps shouting, clapping hands and pumping fists in the background.
::Where's Samuel?::
Rachet's uneasy thrum in the background unsettled everything, sharpened everything. Bumblebee opened his optics further to scan the debris- and-
"Sam?" Carly called out, her voice a tiny whisper in the chorus of yelling screams and shouts. "Sam?"
Bumblebee simply stared at the body hidden from human view. It was behind the fallen cupola, crumpled in on itself. He took a faltering step forward. The residue heat left on the body was the same as Sam's. He took another step forward.
::Bumblebee? Do you see Samuel anywhere?:: Optimus.
Bumblebee still didn't answer. He off-linked straightaway, shutting down his systems just in time to catch Skids swerving to take in his line of sight. As Bee walked around the cupola, away from the masses of cheers, he found exactly what he didn't want to find.
"Bee? Missed hanging out? Yeah, me too."
"-not even one phone call, just something to say 'Ah, hey, I'm still alive'-"
There he was. His body, small, frail, lifeless, hugged in on itself. Burn marks stretched up and down his skin. It made sense: he would've done that, to help them all. He was always going on about being useless.
His hands hid his face, his back faced the sky. His clothes were torn, and blood seeped through from the many jagged cuts.
"Hey, Bumblebee, did you see- Oh. Oh shit."
Lennox hardly ever cursed. To hear him say that meant more than Bee could say. Bumblebee leaned down, and with one careful, gentle hand, he picked up the useless body. He'd carried many soldiers across battlefields before, but this-
This was different.
"Look, I know you want to come with me to college-"
"Bee, you take my family, and you run-!"
Primus, this was different.
Sam's arms dangled off the edge of Bee's massive hand. He really wasn't moving. His body temperature was dropping, fast-
"Can we get a medic-!" Lennox yelled at the top of his voice.
"Forget about it- we had a good run- it's all too bloody late- I'm going to say my goodbyes now-"
Bumblebee couldn't find the right words. He was holding his best friend's dead body. He was babbling. Someone started screaming- he couldn't tell who it was- he kept seeing Sam's smiling
face in his optics, not the dead body he was holding- not-
A hand clamped on his shoulder. He couldn't really feel it. Was that red and blue or black and green?
What was making that keening sound?
Was Carly screaming Sam's name?
He was lowering Sam's body: it rolled away from his fingers, revealing Sam's bruised and battered face- Carly reached for him and gathered him in her arms, and he was keening a low wail as Carly cried Sam's name again and again and again-
"Ssssammmm," his vocal receptors whirred. "Ssssammmm."
Silence. His hearing receptors shut down. He didn't realise he shut off his optics until the whole world around him became nothing but darkness and the replaying the image of Sam's alive and innocent face as he reached out for him in Carly's apartment only a day or two ago.
"Bee? Missed hanging out? Yeah, me too."
A/N::Hiya everyone! How's everyone been? What do you think? I spent literally a couple hours revising some of the chapters in my original The Messenger and decided that this needed to happen. Oh, man, the mistakes in the first fanfic were ridiculous! . This reboot will be a big bit different, so don't expect the same things as the last fanfic- there'll be different POV's, there'll be other side stories and so on. I'm hoping to get a little Ironhide and Will in here too, as well as Epps, Optimus, and Rachet, just for the sake of being different.
Anyways, I do hope everyone enjoys this! :D
Peace, love and roll-outs!
PassionandPromise, 28/7/2014.
