A/N: Orbital cycle = ~ 1 month
A faint breeze caused tips of long purple grass to rustle softly, the sheen from their leaves glistening as the edges caught the moonlight. Two natural satellites hung in the distance, illuminating the surroundings in a bath of white light; uncharacteristically bright for night time, but that was what had appealed to Bumblebee when he first visited the small garden-like world in search for the Cube.
He lay amidst a field staring upward at the sky; a small hint of a smile on his face as he listened to the feminine voice chatter endlessly beside him.
Bee's head tilted slightly as he looked at his companion who was sprawled out on her own back next to him. Alexandria gestured with her hands as she described the day she'd had at school and again he found himself fascinated at how complex the lives of humans were at such a young age. Bee remembered when he'd been a youngling there hadn't been the challenge or complexity of social acceptance among peers that she seemed to face but, then again, he had grown up surrounded by fully mature bots during the midst of a planetary war; time was spent training and fighting, not worrying about fitting in.
"What's the name of that moon over there again?"
His musings on hold, Bee followed the direction Alexandria was pointing; toward the larger of the satellites.
"Selvos, only it really isn't a moon but the twin planet to this one," Bee said.
"And the planet we're on is Chalkhos, right?"
"Yep."
Alexandria grunted softly as she sat up and looked around at the grass, which extended out into dunes of silvery purple extending as far as the eye could see; a sharp contrast to the pure white surface of Selvos. "They don't really look alike for being twins if the rest of the planet looks like this."
Chuckling softly, Bee agreed with her. "True, but maybe at one time they did. When I came here, Selvos already had lost its atmosphere. Now it's a barren world buried underneath a giant sheet of ice."
"Oh… Will that happen to this one too?"
He shrugged. "I'm not sure. It's pretty likely since the orbit of binary planetary systems tends to be unstable." It was his turn to point, motioning at the moon that revolved around both planets. "It's also likely that Ao there will collide into one of them. If that happens to Chalkhos it'll turn this place into a ball of molten rock."
"That's sad." She sighed softly, continuing to take in the scenery of the holo. "It's so beautiful here."
"Very."
Alexandria reached out to hover her fingers just above the grass, a few longer strands cutting through the depiction of her hand; the purple a striking contrast to the green of stasis' digital coding.
"How far away is this world from Cybertron?" she asked, looking between him and the sky.
The seemingly endless fountain of questions about his kind and their world continued to amuse Bee and he likened the deep curiosity to her age and the naivety of her species; Alexandria having once explained how humanity had yet to make first contact and, to his surprise, how some of Earth's population still believed they didn't share the universe beyond their own planet.
He thought briefly before replying. "Thirteen and a half light-years, give or take."
"And how far is Earth from Cybertron?"
Sitting up, Bee grinned at the youngling. "Much further."
The teasing answer had her rolling her eyes. It wasn't the first time Bee avoided direct questions about his world.
"Worried I'll tell someone where your planet is?" she said; bright, innocent eyes batting up at him.
He chirped with amusement. "You can never be too careful."
"I'm sure you'll have a lot to worry about from us. We've made it all the way to our moon," she said with a waggle of her eyebrows.
"Well, it's always good to be prepared for the future. The… far, far future that is."
Her gentle laughter echoed in the still of the night; the sound always pleasing to the Autobot.
Bumblebee had grown accustomed to sharing his stasis with the good-natured organic over the past three orbital cycles and looked forward to her nightly visits. At first, he had been a bit worried about how he was going to entertain Alexandria, however, as he found out rapidly, she was one for conversation especially once she realized he was good at listening. Both had been exploratory in their topics, each trying to learn about the other's world and species. Alexandria was generous with providing information freely and with great detail, while Bee tended to hold back in certain areas or divert the subject whenever it infringed on the war. It wasn't purely out of a necessity to protect classified information but rather he just didn't feel like talking about it; viewing his time with Alexandria as a reprieve from his soldierly duties. It also didn't sit well with him to discuss the violence and atrocities he'd encountered with a youngling.
In addition to providing a partner for conversation, Alexandria had breathed new life into certain stasis activities Bee considered mundane; their novelty having worn off long ago. When she learned one could "draw" in stasis, often used by Ratchet and Wheeljack for writing out formulas longhand, Bee had given her access to the program and soon the platform on which they stood had been covered in bright green etchings. That led to Alexandria showing him several written games; some with less appeal than others, especially the one where he ended up living with Starscream in a mansion.
The holos were probably the most well received as they allowed Alexandria a chance to see distant worlds, although Bee quickly learned it was easy to overwhelm her, especially when the holo contained other alien species. It had actually been a rather distressing moment for himself as well when he had shown her a holo of the bustling biomechanical metropolis of the Poleepkwa. Alexandria's eyes had gone wide when she suddenly found herself surrounded by the large insectoid beings and her heart rate had spiked to alarming levels, causing him to shut off the holo with a hasty apology. From then on he'd stuck to purely scenic images or ones with small and docile non-sentient creatures.
As if knowing his thoughts, Alexandria quirked her head, a thoughtful expression playing across her face.
"Tell me more about other aliens that are out there," she asked, lying down on her side and cushioning her head in the crook of her arm; looking up at him with anticipation.
"There's a lot of them," he replied.
"Which ones are your favorites then?" Alexandria tucked a few wayward strands of hair behind an ear and gave him a smug look. "Besides my species of course."
"Of course," he echoed with a chuckle. "Well… there was this desert planet Ratchet and I visited, which was inhabited by living rocks."
"The rocks were alive?" She raised a brow. "Like, they were aliens who looked like rocks?"
He shook his head "Nope, they were rocks. Silicon based rocks," he said, recalling Ratchet's excessively detailed investigation of the creatures. "Ten feet tall and weighing close to three tons. They were slow moving; emitting vibrations that allowed them to shift over the ground."
"Did they have to eat and drink?"
"We never actually saw them doing that but Ratchet thinks they were scavengers that absorbed nutrients from decaying matter."
Alexandria thought for a moment, trying to picture the creatures in her head. "Do they have a name?"
"Species Si-217," he replied.
Her face scrunched up. "Well, that's… different."
"Ratchet came up with it. We weren't able to figure out a way to communicate with them so we weren't able to ask what they called themselves." Bee pointed southward in the sky. "The '217' is the sector their star system lies in and the 'Si' refers to the silicon composition of their bodies."
"And what about them made them one of your favorites?"
"Well, when the creatures were awake, they would glow a vibrant spectrum of white and yellow. One night we came upon a migration of them. Ratchet and I watched a mass of moving, glowing stone, probably well over a million beings in number, make their way down a dried river bed…" he trailed off, remembering the look on Ratchet's face as they sat on an overhang above the unique lifeforms. "It was like watching a river of flowing, liquid gold."
Alexandria's mouth dropped open in awe. "That does sound amazing. No wonder you liked them."
Bee shook his head slightly. "Actually, I think it wasn't really the creatures that I liked so much, but rather the effect they had on Ratchet. He found them fascinating; enough so that he stopped his research to watch the migration with me. We spent the entire night just… sitting there, enjoying the view." He hummed in amusement. "And it's a rare thing for Ratchet to take off time from his work."
"He's a workaholic, huh?"
Bee gave her a questioning look. "Workaholic?"
"Sorry, Earth term." Alexandria grinned, twirling a long lock of her hair in her fingers. "It means he works a lot."
He hummed. "That's almost an understatement then."
"Ratchet sounds a bit like my mom. She always has to work long hours at her job and she's usually busy on the weekends with housework and stuff." There was a hint of wistfulness in Alexandria's voice and Bee watched as she sat up to draw her legs close, wrapping her arms around them and resting her chin against their support. "At least I get to see her after school for a few hours during the week."
Bee whirred. "You've mentioned this before. If you're bothered by the separation from your parental unit, why don't you tell her?"
Alexandria scoffed and rubbed at her arm. "I'm not bothered by it."
It wasn't the most convincing statement and Bee peered down at her in silence; enough so that she began to squirm under the knowing gaze.
"What?" she asked, hunching her shoulders.
"You're not very good at lying."
Alexandria stared at the ground as if it were the most interesting thing in the universe; her fingers attempting to scratch at its surface. Bee waited patiently and finally she snorted, her reply mumbled, "Even if I was bothered by it, I could never say anything."
He went to ask why, however, Alexandria continued, changing the direction of the conversation back to her prior question. "So there are robot aliens, insect aliens, and now rock aliens. Are there any aliens out there that are human-like?"
As disappointing it was to not obtain an answer, Bee decided not to press the issue further, least of all he upset the youngling. Instead he nodded. "Of course. As for which of them would be my fav—er second favorite—I'm not too sure."
The majority of humanoid-structured sentient races residing near Cybertronian-controlled worlds all had some measure of mechanical biomatter within them and Bee felt Alexandria was wanting to hear about a species as close to her own as possible. It wasn't until one ventured far from Cybertron did they find purely organic creatures and even then, once an organic race reached a certain level of technological prowess, they tended to start replacing their biological tissues with synthetic components. "I honestly haven't met many species like your own," he admitted with a shrug. "Even though I've traveled quite a bit, I've only seen a fraction of the galaxy and the aliens I've come across tend to be like the ones I've already told you about."
"Oh, that's weird."
"How so?"
"We have a lot of movies—er holos—about what we think aliens look like and usually they look human. Well… most of them anyway. It's just weird to think we're unique that's all."
"Is uniqueness not an admirable trait among humans?"
"Of course it is..." She was quick to respond but the hasty reply was less than convincing as the statement trailed off to leave her glancing off into the distance. Bee waited, recognizing Alexandria's expression as one she tended to wear when mulling over an unsure statement; lips pursed slightly and brows lowered as her thumb ran across the AllSpark runes near her wrist.
"Maybe?" she finally said, peering up at him as if seeking assistance for the correct answer. "Is it good for Cybertronians?"
A hum of approval echoed in their peaceful sanctuary as Bee responded. "Very much so. The differences that separate bots make a single unit more efficient in one field of expertise over another. For example, I'm a scout and the class requires me to be good at getting into and out of high-risk areas quietly and without being noticed. Being a smaller sized mech puts me at an advantage."
Alexandria remained quiet and Bee worried he hadn't fully answered her question.
"Does that help?" he asked, peering down at her with concern.
She nodded but the smile she gave him didn't quite light up her face and Bee knew there was more she wasn't sharing with him. However, just as she allowed him to have his own reservations regarding certain topics, he would provide her the same courtesy.
Not wishing to maintain the somber feel the conversation had acquired, Bee trilled lightly. "I still haven't told you about the rarest of my favorite alien species," he reminded her.
"Oh?" she perked up with renewed interest.
"Now, I've never actually seen these aliens myself and sightings are few and far between."
Alexandria scooted closer to Bee as he spoke.
His helm tipped as he looked upward at the sky, motioning to the band of stars that were just visible along the edge of Selvos' white glow. "These creatures, the Aehlorhra, are serpentine organisms of pure energy and can only be found in the darkest and coldest areas of deep space." With a flick of his wrist he brought up a data file of known xenology and extracted the two-dimensional image of the creature; superimposing it over the current holo for Alexandria's viewing.
The still picture of the Aehlorhra hung suspended at the edge of the clearing and Alexandria got up to inspect it at a closer angle.
"It reminds me of a giant eel," she said, tracing her fingers along the edge of its dorsal fin. She moved up to its head and tossed him a questioning glance. "It doesn't have a mouth or eyes."
"Aehlorhra don't need digestive systems as they absorb radiation directly. As for how they navigate surroundings, some believe they use a type of echolocation system but we're not quite sure how it works since sound waves don't travel very well in the near perfect vacuum of interstellar space," he explained, faltering slightly as he heard Kup's voice in his words; the old Autobot having sworn he'd seen an Aehlorhra once, much to the skepticism of his fellow team members. Bee, however, had been enraptured by the tale and Kup enjoyed the attention he had gotten from the youngling.
"Do you know anyone who has seen them?" Alexandria asked; again seeming to pick up on his thoughts.
He cleared his vents and focused back on the human. "My uh... friend told me about them. His name was Kup."
Catching the past tense, Alexandria stilled. "Was?" she asked hesitantly, returning to his side.
"He died in an airstrike led by Megatron," Bee said simply, not knowing how to put it otherwise. One moment the Kalis outpost had been there and the next it was a smoking crater in the ground; a Decepticon nucleon bomb having vaporized the structure, along with every Autobot within as well as several hundred neutral Cybertronians who had resided in the surrounding area.
"Megatron… the one who hurt you?"
Bee nodded slowly, having briefly told her about the incident at Tyger Pax that had left him mute.
"I'm sorry about your friend," she said, reaching out toward his lower leg as if to lay her hand on it. She paused, holding it just beside him as the signatures reacted sending a light pins-and-needles sensation across his plates. Her hand hovered there for a brief moment then returned to her side.
"It's alright," Bee responded quietly, appreciative of the gesture that was meant to comfort in spite of being unable to provide true tactile stimuli. "It happened a long time ago."
Another breeze whispered through the clearing sending the grass into a swaying dance. Bee watched the movements of the plants while Alexandria watched him.
"I can see why you consider them special; they remind you of your friend," she said, noting the soft hum he made at her words.
"Yes, they do," Bee replied before running a sequence of code that faded out the current holo, only to replace it with one depicting a star field. Thousands of pinpoints of light glittered around them with the Aehlorhra at their center. It was now that Bee began to get a bit creative with the programming, manipulating the still image of the creature with matrices and modular points, creating a three-dimensional skeleton on which he rendered in solid shapes and textures.
"Prior to seeing them, Kup's navigational unit malfunctioned during interspace travel and it sent him off course into uncharted territory." Bee spoke as he worked and the Aehlorhra shimmered brightly as its body began to shift with wavelike motions. "This is how Kup described them; how they looked and moved within the void."
Scales rippled in mesmerizing patterns with the slow shifting of the long slender form of the creature; billowy fan-like fins whispering along its length. A relatively featureless head, with its gentle appearance, dipped and lifted; leading the trailing body to curl and flow as it swam in place in front of them.
"The Aehlorhra are said to watch over lost travelers; helping to guide them back to where they came from and staving off sickness from isolation." Bee finished his modifications and regarded the final result with a small measure of pride. "I believe they helped Kup find his way back to us and for that, I've always appreciated the stories about them."
"They're like guardian angels," Alexandria said, captivated by the creature.
Bee's antennae lifted. "What are those?"
"My mom says they're kind spirits who guide and protect people with noble souls. With a guardian angel, you can never be truly alone."
Bee whirred in thought. "They sound like you."
"Hm?" Alexandria blinked up at him with mild surprise. "They do?" she asked.
"Yes. You've shown me kindness, even just after meeting me and you visit me here in stasis, keeping me company," he explained.
Bee expected Alexandria to approve of the comparison, perhaps smile or laugh in response. Rather she stood there for several moments, eyes searching his face and her next comment made him start; unprepared for the sudden raw realization it brought forth.
"You're lonely," she murmured; the words not meaning to pity or express sympathy but rather just a statement of understanding.
Bee wasn't quite sure how the youngling had come to that conclusion and he sat there quietly, unable to respond right away. Was it an insight drawn from their many conversations together or had he done something that implied as such? Whatever it had been, he mulled over what she said and, to his disappointment, he found himself agreeing with her.
Even when surrounded by his fellow Autobots on the Ark, with the close familial bonds they shared, there had been something missing for a long time; resulting in a certain measure of loneliness. Bee, trying to pinpoint the cause, could feel the answer teasing him as it lay just on the fringe of his thoughts. He ran through memories of his time on the Ark in search of the AllSpark, of the time spent in battle with the Decepticons leading to the exodus off of Cybertron, to even his time as a guardian of the Cube at the Temple of Simfur.
When the answer came to him, it felt as if he was struck right in the spark.
Over the recent years of the war, he had continued to lose allies, which, in all honesty, wasn't something he was new to experiencing. However, while in the past the pain from these vacated spots would have been somewhat offset by the addition of new faces to the Autobot ranks, now there were no more replacements. No new companions coming into his life.
That was until Alexandria.
Bee stared down at the youngling, who had moved back to her prior spot on the ground close to him and was returning his gaze with warmth and admiration.
"I was lonely," he finally said, a smile crossing his face. "But not anymore."
The green tinge of her cheeks deepened in their color and her smile was as sweet and sincere as her words. "I'm glad to hear that."
He trilled and lay against the ground, Alexandria following suit. The scenery changed back to the fields of Chalkhos and the pair resumed gazing up into the beauty of the night sky; conversation, coming forth with the ease of comfort in one's company, passing between him and the little organic whose sudden appearance into his life couldn't have come at a better time.
Alexandria, his friend.
His angel.