The next day was spent in much the same way as the day before, except it was Mom waiting in the visitor's room instead of Mikaela. I happily put up with being blubbered over for an hour if only for the change of scenery. She wasn't any more convinced I was fine than Mikaela had been, but at least her eyes were dry when she left.
After that, I divided my time between reading, daydreaming of Cybertron, and checking in mentally with Optimus. In the absence of anything sharp to scratch a tally of the days on my cell wall, I was left with just a mental count: four days since the accident and eleven more to go until I could go before the judge again and try to get out of jail.
That night, Optimus wasn't in our usual meeting place. Instead of being on the aircraft carrier, my mind found him on a small planetoid, standing beside a completed solar harvester as it drained a star of its power. It was a memory of my own that he had borrowed, a memory of the vision the All Spark had given me more than four years ago now.
"Sam," he greeted me, wrapping me up in an unusually absent-minded hug of the heart.
"Hey," I answered, letting him feel my own affection.
"I find it both puzzling and troubling," he mused without preamble, "that you could so clearly see the route from your world to this star but you could see none of the mechs who surround me in this moment."
"Our conversation about Elita One made you think of this?"
He nodded and slowly turned, studying the shapes in the shadows around us.
"Maybe it's not clear because it's not important," I suggested. "I mean, obviously we'll need help to get to this point, but…" I shrugged when I sensed he wasn't buying it.
"I think it's more likely that you didn't know these particular mechs and that's why they didn't register in your mind."
His doubt was still strong enough that I said, "You don't believe that, either."
"I do not."
"Well, then…?"
"I am uncertain, Sam." His optical hardware squinted, trying to break through the fuzziness of my human memory. "Where are Bumblebee and Ironhide? Why are they not here? Where are Ratchet and Arcee? Prowl and the twins? In this moment of triumph when our hopes are realized, why do they not stand with me? And who are these?" he gestured toward the indistinct mechs around us.
I frowned thoughtfully. It was a good question – one I'd never really considered. "How would Arcee or Ironhide even get here, though? I mean, you've got your Blackbird armor on, so you could fly here, but the only other flight-capable Autobot on Earth is Sideswipe."
"There are very few flight-capable Autobots left anywhere," Optimus reminded me, and his mood turned from brooding to foreboding.
This wasn't the sort of thing I needed right now, and Optimus was instantly contrite when he sensed my unease. "I am sorry, Sam. You fell asleep sooner than I expected. Where would you like to go tonight?"
If he wanted to think about his mate, I could definitely accommodate him with more cheerful thoughts than these. "Let me see more of Elita before the War."
His gratitude washed over me and we went to Simfur, to the early days of his life with her.
...
Dad was the visitor waiting for me the next day. "You've been on the straight and narrow for six years, son," he gravely said, though he caught me in a tight hug. "I was beginning to hope I'd never have to bail you out again."
'Great,' I thought. 'Remind me about being charged with trespassing in a junkyard.'
"How's prison treating you?"
I grimaced. "It's jail, not prison, Dad. I haven't been convicted of anything yet. And I won't be."
He gave me a hearty clap on the shoulder. "That's my boy - keep your chin up."
I rolled my eyes. I wasn't keeping my chin up - I was innocent. "So how's Mom, really?" I asked, more to change the topic than anything.
He shrugged. "She's ready to trash...your car. What's left of it anyway. She blames him for you being here in the first place."
"She's gonna have to stand in line."
"Yeah, that's what the Big Guy said, too."
It was kind of funny to try and wrap my head around Mom, Dad, and Optimus just hanging out and talking without me. At that mental image, I realized it would be a small miracle if Optimus and the other Autobots would be willing to stay on Earth after enduring my parents without me for a buffer for however many days or weeks (or months) it took for Raquel to get me out. "Just promise me the whole family will still be on speaking terms when all this is over and done."
He chuckled. "I think we can keep it from turning violent, at least."
"Sold." At this point, I'd take whatever I could get.
We spent our hour talking about nothing in particular. He told me about the upgrades he wanted to make on his and mom's RV and I told him about the books I'd been reading. Anything more probably would have gotten us into trouble. His parting words were, "I like the lawyer you found for yourself, Sam. She's watching out for you like a hawk. That was a good call."
"Thanks, Dad," I said, and I meant it. "As long as I'm stuck on the inside, I can't see everything she's doing for me. I'm glad you're seeing good things on your end, too."
Later that afternoon, Optimus took a turn patrolling Mission City and mentally took me along for the ride, but eventually he had more meetings, and I made another trip to the jail library. I whiled away a few hours with another history book, this time about Chief Justice John Jay. Optimus nudged me about 7:00 pm and I turned in for the night. Knowing he was waiting for me, I fell easily into sleep.
Optimus was on the aircraft carrier like usual, and he lifted an optic ridge in curiosity as I approached. "Arrested in a junkyard?"
I rolled my eyes – of course he would have caught that fleeting thought earlier. Resigning myself to the inevitable, I showed him the memory, along with a few others from that time when the Cube was still on the Earth.
The next morning, my package of stationary arrived, and I eagerly opened the box in my cell. Growing up in the Digital Age, I never thought I'd ever get so excited about paper, envelopes, and pencils, but they were… civilization itself. I felt so much more human now that I could write. Optimus was amused at the thrill I felt when I put pencil to paper, but I mentally nudged him and he left me to work in peace. I had just made five tally marks for my five completed days in jail when one of the guards came to bring me to the visitor's room again.
Mikaela was there, as gorgeous and out-of-reach as last time. We were careful to avoid anything potentially incriminating, instead talking specifics about our national park road trip. Mikaela was more excited about it than I'd realized. Since we weren't sure if I would be out of jail before the summer was over, we made plans for the second week of June for next year. She'd brought a map of the United States and we plotted out how many days we'd spend in which park.
After Mikaela had to go, I spent more than an hour just taking notes and organizing my thoughts for my letter to her before trying to put into words what I felt about her, how much I missed her and loved her. I went slowly, making sure my handwriting was legible, and finished it just before dinnertime.
When I found my brother that night, he was again in an unexpected place, but this time it was one completely unfamiliar to me. It looked like a bunker of some kind, windowless with heavy-looking metal doors. Optimus was with Ratchet, Chromia, and a green-and-white 'bot I didn't recognize. The medic was repairing something on the femme, and Optimus had his arms crossed, though he was feeling more thoughtful than annoyed.
The new mech was talking but Optimus paused the memory as soon as he was aware of me. "Brother," he warmly greeted me.
I returned his affectionate nudge. "Hey." Glancing at the new 'bot, I asked, "Who's this?"
"Wheeljack. Our foremost inventor. It was fortunate indeed that he aligned with us instead of Megatron, or he would have won the War thousands of years ago."
I looked over the new 'bot carefully. "Really? He was that important?"
"He would roundly deny it, but in my opinion, yes. It was with him, Chromia, and another mech named Perceptor that Ratchet developed the battle protocols we needed to survive."
I looked at Wheeljack with newfound respect.
"He was a bit more...unpredictable than most 'bots, but I think he would adjust well to Earth."
I smirked at him. "Better than Prowl, anyway."
"Much." My brother's amusement drained away to something almost melancholy. "I do not believe we will be able to build the Solar Harvester without him."
The weight of that task fell heavily on me again. It wasn't something I liked to think about much, and for the last four years or so, Optimus had squarely shouldered it for me. With my graduation, though, that would soon change. Not that I could do anything about it while rotting in jail.
"You think he's still alive?"
"Ironhide and I both do - he remained on Cybertron with Elita and Chromia. His location is currently unknown, but he was still alive and with Chromia as of last report about a decade ago."
I smiled a little at the swell of hope I felt coming from him. "Have you talked to the Dynasty about him? See if they can't get him here quicker?"
"Sam," he chided, "you know that their ability to act in our dimension is extremely limited."
I sighed. "I know, I know. But if he's that critical to the Solar Harvester, we need him here ASAP. It would help if they could even just let us know if we need to go looking for him or something."
His wry amusement threaded across the bond again. "You could ask them yourself, you know."
Grimacing, I said, "Yeah, but I think they prefer you for casual conversation. They don't really talk to me unless something epic is going down."
He softly snorted. "Wheeljack's arrival on Earth will be epic, I can assure you. As I said, he's rather unpredictable, and his inventions are even more so."
"So he'll make his mark with a boom?"
"I anticipate as much, yes."
…
The next morning I added a sixth tally mark to my calendar before I was brought down to the attorney conference rooms again. As soon as the guard closed the door behind him, I handed Raquel the letter I'd written.
"What's this?" she asked.
"It's for Mikaela."
She searched my eyes for a moment and then placed a steadying hand on my shoulder. "You're worrying unnecessarily, Sam. It's going to work out."
"I know. I'm in good hands. But…life is short, even if you're not…rolling with a wild crowd like me." I shrugged out from under her hand and started pacing. "I've got a lot of down time right now, so I decided to put it to good use. There are worse things in my life than judge, jury, and executioner, and I want Mikaela to have something tangible to hold on to if something ever happens to me."
"Do you mind if I check it for anything incriminating?" she asked. "It'll need to go through the jail postal system which means it'll be reviewed before being sent."
"Oh. You can't just give it to her for me?"
Raquel shook her head and my shoulders slumped a little. "Maybe it should wait, then. I was hoping to give a letter to Optimus, too."
She tilted her head curiously but didn't ask whatever question popped into her brain. "I would recommend against that until you're out of here, Sam. Same thing for the other aliens."
"Autobots," I automatically corrected her, smiling a little. "They're hardly alien to me anymore."
"Autobots," she echoed me, warming up to the term. She nodded thoughtfully. "The jail staff can search your cell at any time, so be careful about anything you write. But letters to Ms. Baines and your parents would always be a good idea, as long as you don't make any reference to the … Autobots, was it?"
I nodded, and she continued, "I could even cite your letters to each other as evidence that you've got a strong support network to help keep you out of trouble once you're out of jail."
I snorted at that and she grinned before sobering a little. "And speaking of support network, I told your parents and Mikaela the same thing I told you – every word spoken between you is discoverable. Don't say anything that will make my job harder than it needs to be."
I smiled a little at that. "Deal."
As she returned the letter to me, she said, "I can't pass this on to Ms. Baines, but I could place something you wrote while we're together into your confidential file - unopened - and hold it for you until you're released."
Relief washed through me at this work-around. "Sounds good to me. Let's do that."
…
I was able to eat breakfast and run laps around the exercise yard before the guard came for me again. It was funny how predictable my parents and Mikaela were getting. Sure enough, my mom was waiting for me in the visitor's room. She still fretted over me, asking if I was eating and sleeping okay, if anyone was bothering me, if I was showing any signs of foot fungus. Still, I was happier with her than I would have been in my cell and we ended up talking all the way until the guard told us our hour was up.
When I got back to my cell, I sat on my bunk and tried to gather my thoughts about what I would say in my letter to my mom. Sure, she was quirky and embarrassing more often than not, but she was my mom, the one who brought me into this world and who sacrificed her own career to be there for me. I hadn't thought about that much when I was still a teenager, but a few years in college on the other side of the country had made me appreciate her a little more. Besides, she was also the one I got my outrun-the-Decepticons genes from. If my dad had married somebody who hadn't been on the track team in high school, I probably would have been goo under Megatron's toes years ago.
I'd written and then scratched out notes for the first paragraph of her letter three times before I decided to write two letters - one that would be safe for jailors' eyes and one that I would give to Raquel for safe-keeping. I'd just finished the safe letter when lights-out was called.
Optimus met me on the aircraft carrier flight deck like usual this time. "Brother," I said by way of greeting.
"Sam," he answered, looking at me sidelong.
He was itching to tell me something, and I said, "Okay, drop whatever bombs you've got for me tonight."
He chuckled softly. "I have no bombs for you, just unsolicited advice." Looking me square in the face, he said, "Tell her you cherish her. When your mother is gone, that is what you will wish you had said more often."
I sadly smiled and rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "You're right."
He nodded decisively, and while he didn't say, "Of course I am," I felt his smug confidence loud and clear. "So where would you like to go tonight?"
I considered that. "Mostly, I'm curious about Wheeljack. Can you show me more of your memories about him?"
We spent hours with the inventor in his lab and on the field of battle, and that led to Optimus introducing me to Perceptor and several other of the science 'bots he wished we had around.
When we felt the little tickle in his processors that was a 10-minute warning before wake-up, I asked him, "Have you talked to the Ancient Primes yet?"
He eyed me curiously. "You have more free time than I do."
I sighed in frustration, mostly because he was absolutely right. The thought of doing what was necessary to essentially have a séance with dead aliens kind of creeped me out, though. Been dead already once, thanks. I'd rather not do it again.
"They are our brothers," he reminded me, placing an encouraging hand on my shoulder. "If you feel the need to contact them, then make the attempt."
"Or stop bugging you. Got it."
His amusement washed over the bond, but he said, "Your words, not mine."
