It had been nearly three years since they had last seen Sam. Lennox couldn't help but sigh, wondering how she was doing. He could still remember the look on her face when NEST was ordered to take Bumblebee with them to base. He felt a flash of anger when he remembered how Galloway had gloated when he managed to get the president to agree to ban all civilians from having any contact with the transformers. They had no choice but to cut themselves off from Sam entirely and they all worried about how she was doing.

Lennox glanced at the clock anxiously. They had hoped that the new president would reverse the order and Optimus and Ironhide were meeting with him now. He looked around and was unsurprised to see all of the NEST personnel who had met the teenager as well as almost all of the autobots, even those who had never met her.

Nobody said anything, as if afraid to break the silence and so when the door opened to allow Optimus and Ironhide to enter every single person looked at them eager for news.

Optimus smiled and said, "The president has agreed to allow us to visit Samantha. We will be leaving within a few hours."

There was a beat of silence before Epps let out a whoop that started off the cheers from the soldiers. The autobots looked on in amusement, unable to contain their own excitement.

Do you think Samantha will be understanding? Ratchet said over the comm. Three years is a long time for humans.

Sam is very forgiving, Bumblebee said firmly. She will be happy to see us.

The excitement of the soldiers and autobots was not to stay, however. In an attempt to honor the president's order the autobots had not kept tabs on Sam and were now stuck trying to find her. There was a thick feeling of foreboding in the plane, flying to their destination. While they were searching for Samantha Witwicky they had found an obituary and they were all hoping desperately that it was merely another girl with the same name. Mudflap and Skids had actually been the ones to suggest asking Leo Spitz about her before going to her parents of Mikaela.

Lennox tried to ignore the way his body was screaming at him to leave and marched up to the door and knocked before he lost his nerve. Epps and the 'bots holoforms stood at his shoulder, all just as anxious. Lennox was about to suggest they leave when the door opened. Leo looked confused for a moment, and then he glared at them with such hate that Lennox felt very taken aback.

"What do you want?" he spat out.

Optimus decided to take charge, "We were hoping to speak with Samantha and were hoping that you may know where she is."

Leo looked at them in shock and anger before growling out, "Is that some kind of sick joke? Sam has been dead for three years!"

Lennox felt as though he had been punched in the stomach and he didn't need to look back to know that the others felt the same way. "How?" he managed to get out, feeling strangely breathless.

Leo looked torn between his anger and pity, his voice softening, "You really didn't know? She killed herself."

Bumblebee started at that, "Sam would never have killed herself! She wasn't like that."

Leo glared at him. "You don't know what Sam was like after you left. At first I thought she would be okay but after she got the bandage taken off everything changed."

"Bandage?" Ratchet asked. "What bandage?"

"You didn't really see her much after the fight but she had an injury on her face. They told her to keep the bandage on for two weeks and then she could take it off. When she did she looked in the mirror and when she saw the scars I remember her saying that she was ugly. I didn't really notice the tone she had when she said it, if I'd noticed I would never have left her alone that day. The next morning I went to get her for class but she had already been dead for several hours by that point." Leo's voice trembled slightly at this, and he looked away from them.

Lennox was shocked, "Are you trying to say that Sam killed herself because she had a scar on her face?"

Leo's eyes narrowed and he growled out, "Don't do that."
The soldiers looked at him in confusion caught up in their shcok and wondering what he was talking about.
"You're judging her. You think she's shallow, don't you?"
The soldiers looked at the ground, not making eye contact with Leo. Optimus stepped forward, trying to diffuse the situation, though he didn't seem to be able to believe what had happened. "No one is trying to say anything about Samantha; you must understand that after everything we have been through with Samantha it can be very distressing and unbelievable to learn that she is so concerned with her appearance that she would kill herself."
Leo glared at Optimus, not impressed. "And why wouldn't she be?" he asked. "It was all she had left."
Everyone looked at him confused at that and it was Lennox who voiced their thoughts, "What do you mean 'all she ha left?'"
Leo snorted, "Imagine you are sixteen and just bought a car. That car turns out to be an alien. And then you find out your great grandfather actually wasn't actually insane and the government has been hiding the existence of aliens for decades. Then you get dragged into an alien war and become this huge target by beings far more advanced than you."
He turned to the soldiers, "I don't know if it's because you were older or because you are soldiers that you were able to just accept this so well but something like that can really mess with a person's head. The autobots destroyed Sam's ability to trust the world. She lost her sense of safety and she became alienated from everybody because aside from her family and Mikaela there was no one she could talk to. She managed to get by though because she had Bumblebee and Mikaela to cling to.
"Now imagine you are eighteen and just going to college. You end up being dragged back into the war. More than that, you are the main target. And to top it off you have alien symbols in your brain. You manage to resurrect someone, but you also end up being killed. You end up meeting the ancient primes who tell you that resurrecting Optimus was your destiny. Sounds great right? Well think about it. You'd be pretty freaked out from the symbols in your head but now you find out that you just fulfilled your destiny. Think how that would feel, it would feel like you've done what you needed to do and now you're just waiting to die. Also, just think how unlikely it was for what happened to happen. One tiny change and everything would have been different. So then you have to ask yourself, did you ever really have free will? If you had been following this script so flawlessly without realizing it, how can you be sure of anything you do? And that's when Sam lost faith in herself.

"She may have still been alright if Bumblebee and Mikaela had been around but they left. Sam only had me to lean on and I was going through the same things she was and was no help at all. So she focused on her body. She figured that even if she couldn't be sure of her mind, surely her body was still her own. In the grand scheme of things, what did what she looked like affect her destiny? So she thought that at least she could find comfort in that that was still something she could trust. And then to have that ripped away too...she just didn't have anything to fall back on. She lost the last thing she had to hold on to. And so she just shut down she couldn't handle it. She couldn't take anything else and she couldn't cope with any of it anymore. I won't forgive you for leaving her. All it would have taken would be for one of you to just email her. Instead you left her all alone and this is what you get for it. Her death is your fault, her parents' couldn't take her death and they couldn't stay together anymore, they got a divorce and are barely living now."

The soldiers and autobots couldn't think of what to say and before they could think of anything Leo continued, "You all ruined her in a way the Decepticons never could. I won't let you do to me what you did to her. You need to leave. And if you cared for humans at all you would leave the planet altogether. You are a much bigger danger to us than the decepticons, they just want to kill us."

He closed the door then, and they all heard the lock slide into place.