Some Secrets Must Never Be Told
Some Secrets Must Never Be Told
Chapter One
Cybertron, approx. 30'000 years before the present time.
Optimus Prime dodged from shadow to shadow, the muted greys and blacks of his colour scheme helping him to blend in with his surroundings, at least to the unspecialised optic. A specialist implant suppressed his Spark and heat-signature, but this was only a temporary adaptation – they tended to burn out after a few vorns of use, and this one was near the end of its life.
He didn't think he was in any danger, the Decepticons had gone through this part of the city and seemed to be showing no signs of turning back, but Optimus was taking no chances. Too many Autobots had been surprised by Decepticons waiting in the area after the main force had passed. Too many had died as a result, and Optimus Prime did not intend to risk joining those ranks of fallen heroes.
Bodies in the street, suddenly he was in a main throughway, and there were so many bodies lying in the street. As usual, the Decepticons had swept through this part of the city, taking on any Neutrals who accepted their veiled threats to join their ranks, and slaughtering any Autobots they found, and any Neutrals who refused to join them. As he always did upon encountering such scenes, he scanned the bodies looking for a Spark-signature, someone who had survived. Such signs were rare, for the Decepticons were nothing if not thorough.
As his scan flickered over a limp femme, her limbs broken and her abdomen covered with the black residue of laser fire, the scanners registered a very faint Spark-signature. Optimus stopped, checked again for any more Spark-signatures – strong ones would register but those of the ill or damaged tended to be weaker and needed a more thorough scan to pick up – within a mile. There were none.
He stooped by her, marvelling that with the damage that she had taken that she might still live, but as he saw the blast hole at the base of her neck, a blast that would have travelled up and down her body and cables, and destroyed her Spark and processors, he knew that there was no way she could be alive. He grabbed hold and rolled her over – and there was the body of the Sparkling that the femme had obviously died trying to protect.
He scanned again: yes, this was definitely the source of the Spark-signature that he had detected, and the Sparkling had obviously not gotten clean away without being damaged. It too had laser residue on it, although the shots had been glancing, probably deflected or weakened by the mother.
Optimus picked it up, cradling it in his arm, hunching over it to protect it. He looked again at the femme, his optics widening as he noticed a small detail beneath the charring of the femme's plating. He stood, scanned a few more bodies around him, and then broke into a run, hoping to get his fragile, precious burden back to the Autobot base in this city.
He scanned every body he came across on the way, but found no more survivors. When he reached the Base, he handed the injured Sparkling to Ratchet, who had given him one startled look, and then walked into his med bay, broadcasting on all short-range Autobot frequencies that he was not to be disturbed unless somebody was in imminent peril of permanent deactivation.
A week later – with two interruptions for urgent cases – Ratchet came out of the med bay to talk to Optimus.
"I have transferred the Spark to a child body. It's too old to be Sparkling, was supposed to have been transferred to a child body with more processor capacity a few thousand years ago, but I guess with a war on, the parental units thought it could wait until they had the time and resources. I would have had to transfer it anyway, the body was so badly damaged."
"How is it otherwise?" Optimus asked.
"He." corrected Ratchet. "It's a mech spark. He is now interfacing with my computer, learning as many facts as he can. Seeing as his memory chips got filled to capacity quite some time ago – this is one inquisitive child – most of his current memories are very early ones. Primus, the sparkling body was short on memory chips anyway, it only had half the normal amount! There's not even the memory of his name! He knows a few syllables and has been trying them out. 'Buh-buh-bee' seems to be a favourite."
"Then maybe he could be named Bumblebee." Optimus said. "It's as good a name as any other, and at least he will respond to it."
Ratchet nodded. "Bumblebee it is, then." he agreed. "As you seem to have taken on the parental role in that respect, perhaps you could act in that capacity to this child?"
Optimus nodded. "I shall." He agreed.
Ratchet looked down at the floor, then back up.
"Optimus, where did you find this child?" he asked.
"I found him under a fallen femme. It appears that she died to protect it." He said.
"A Decepticon femme?" asked Ratchet. Optimus' optics widened: he had not told Ratchet about the femme's red optics, or the almost-obscured Decepticon logo barely visible under the laser burns on her chest.
"How did you know?" asked Optimus.
"The sparkling body had red optics." Ratchet said "and a very small Decepticon logo on the top of the central area of its back. Painted on, rather than the usual embossing or acid-etching, admittedly, but it was there."
"Ratchet, have you seen all of that child's memories?" Optimus asked the medic. Ratchet nodded. "Are there any there that would tell the child if he saw them." Optimus queried. Ratchet shook his head this time.
"A few views of a logo, a few memories of hearing Megatron's rants on the datawaves, but there are Autobots who can remember seeing Decepticon logos on other mechs and graffitied on buildings, and many Autobots who can recall Megatron's speeches too, including both you and I." Ratchet told him. Optimus nodded slowly: he remembered. His brother was an excellent public speaker and knew just how to stir up a crowd and inspire certain sorts of people with his words. He nodded.
"May I suggest that this knowledge not be shared with anyone else, that we tell nobody, not even Bumblebee, unless there is some very good reason. To tell him could confuse him, and he might feel unwelcome under our roof. I would hate him to flee out of guilt or uncertainty, and possibly end up hurt or killed. We can tell him when he is older, perhaps."
Ratchet nodded. "Yes, I agree." He said. "Let him have his childhood. Let's try and shield him as much as we can from the evils of this war."
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Earth, Present Day.
Of course, Optimus recalled, as he became aware of his surroundings again, surfacing from those memories, that time of shielding had not lasted long. They had had to move from the Base a very short time later and find a new one, plus Bumblebee's inquisitiveness would have meant that they could not have hidden the fact of the war from him much longer anyway – he had already began asking awkward questions, and was learning to recognise when they tried to evade the question by changing the subject.
Late one night, Optimus recalled, he and Ratchet had sat Bumblebee up with them, and explained about the war, explained, in all fairness, both sides' viewpoints, and explained the war's origins. Bumblebee had then pledged himself (quite vocally, Optimus had recalled) to the Autobot cause, although both Optimus and Ratchet had stressed that he should not feel he had to make a decision, at least not until he was older, and could even stay Neutral, under their protection if he wished.
Bumblebee had been placed into an adult protoform body a few thousand years later, due to a dwindling supply; they wanted him to be able to have the full adult range of abilities and capabilities, they didn't want him stuck in a half-sized child body with limited capabilities for the rest of his life.
After a while, they realised that Bumblebee was determined to be an Autobot, following in the footsteps of the one he viewed as a father – Optimus Prime. Optimus had quizzed him on his reasons for his choice of side, worried that the response would be "Because you are." and had been surprised by Bumblebee's sensitive and insightful reasons, plus Bumblebee's awareness of the perils and tasks he might face as a fully-fledged Autobot soldier. By the time Optimus had finished talking to Bumblebee, he could no longer deny him his choice, and had accepted Bumblebee's decision as one he now knew Bumblebee had the full awareness of what it meant, and thus the right, to take it.
Bumblebee's inquisitiveness and curiosity meant training him as a scout made the most sense. That curiosity, coupled with his small adult size, and his early-on noticed knack of being in places, unnoticed and silent, without nearby people realising, all made sense that Bumblebee's training be in surveillance rather than as a front-line battler.
That didn't mean that Bumblebee was harmless, or unarmed, by any means. Bumblebee could fight all right, regular drills in cannon-use and targeting lessons from Ironhide, as well as close-combat melee fighting techniques took care of that concern, because it was unrealistic to hope that Bumblebee would never get in a fight, either as part of a group or on his own, but fighting was only his secondary skill rather than his primary one. His fighting skills, it was hoped, would primarily be for defensive purposes only, he would not be expected to be on the front line – they had large, trained warriors, such as Ironhide and Bluestreak, for that.
Then there had been the battle at Tyger Pax.
Optimus had hoped that leaving Bumblebee and five other Autobots, including Arcee, a femme who had no qualms about attacking Decepticons, would be an unneeded precautionary measure only. After all, he and a much larger force of Autobot soldiers had assembled, with only half-hearted attempts to 'hide' their presence in the province of Simfur, in the hope that Megatron would assume that the AllSpark was there, being defended by the large force, rather than at Tyger Pax, guarded by just a small group of Autobots as it quietly counted down to its launch into space.
As Optimus had hoped, the main force of Decepticons attacked them there at Simfur, but what he hadn't realised was that that attack was a decoy, drawing attention away from the fact that Megatron was not there with them. Instead, he had second-guessed the Autobots, worked out where the AllSpark really was, and had headed there with a small but deadly team of his own.
It was the first and the last time that Optimus had underestimated his brother, Megatron.
The end result had been one Autobot dead, his Spark ripped from his body by Swindle, as the other Autobots were forced to watch, part of Swindle's torture methods, in an attempt to force the Autobots to reveal the exact location at Tyger Pax of the AllSpark. Only one Autobot in that location had known this information – Bumblebee – and although Megatron, (after sending the other Decepticons out of the room) had torn Bumblebee's right arm from his body to try and make him talk, Bumblebee had refused to admit that he knew.
Only the launch into space of the AllSpark had stopped Megatron from tearing off each of Bumblebee's other limbs, one by one, to try and force him to speak. Instead, in a strange twist, Megatron had stopped just long enough to rip Bumblebee's vocal processor from his throat, planning that Bumblebee would never say anything again before flinging himself into space after the AllSpark. The other Decepticons, bewildered and unnerved by the precipitous departure of their volatile leader, had themselves left, for they assumed Megatron had dealt with all the Autobots.
The survivors had managed to get Bumblebee back to the nearest Autobot base, where his arm had been reattached, but his vocal processor was completely shattered, and it had taken time, Ratchet's medical expertise, and the regenerative powers of the AllSpark in the Hoover Dam to restore Bumblebee's voice to him, an event that had occurred just a few months ago.
Optimus looked down at the brave little scout, now in total voluntary shutdown in his arms, and reflected that had the femme Optimus had found sheltering Bumblebee herself not been killed, he and Bumblebee could have so easily ended up on different sides of this fight.
Optimus still wondered why the Decepticons had killed her, killed one of their own. Had they tried to force her to abandon the Sparkling because they felt that by taking him with her, she was slowing them down? Had they tried to kill Bumblebee, and been forced to kill her as she tried to defend the life of her Sparkling by firing on her own fighting comrades? Had they felt forced to kill her because they had then lost her loyalty? Optimus supposed that that was a question he would never know the answer to.
The issue of Bumblebee's origins had also never come up: Bumblebee was aware that Optimus was not his real father, but had never asked to know more. Had he done so before deciding to be an Autobot, Optimus might have told him, for that would have been his right, his freedom, but Optimus did not know what he would do if Bumblebee asked now, unlikely as that possibility was.
Bumblebee believed passionately in the cause of the Autobots, in their views on freedom, the rights of other species besides their own to exist, and in protecting the weak. Optimus suspected that if Bumblebee found out the truth about where he had come from, that truth would do more harm then good. It was no longer an issue of Bumblebee's freedom to know, if that information were to destroy Bumblebee's sense of self and peace of mind.
No, Optimus thought as he held the scout to him, Bumblebee had already been through more than enough. There was no reason at the moment for Bumblebee to know, and it was highly unlikely that he or Ratchet would ever find a reason to tell him.
Secrets were odd things, he thought, some kept for the right reasons, some for the wrong ones, and some kept stubbornly by some although, because other people had been told or had found out some other way, the 'secret' was widely known.
However, Optimus reflected, there were some secrets that should never be told.
He was still thinking about this, and holding Bumblebee gently on his lap, when the sun rose, banishing the darkness of the night with its rays.
