Chapter 2

(One Week Later)

Alexis Knight blew a strand of red hair from her face, and closed her green eyes in annoyance. The press was starting to gripe her ass. They were making her out to be some sort of saint, actually dubbing her the "Angel of Mercy" for saving that little boy. Ryan was his name. Actually, she was glad she'd managed to get him out of danger with nothing more than superficial scrapes, but the bottom line was, she wasn't some hero running about town looking for people to rescue like the papers and television made out. She'd seen what was happening, had seen it in near slow motion, and she found herself between the boy and the yellow camaro before she realized she was going to do it.

And he'd survived. Granted, her wounds turned out to be much more than superficial, MUCH more, but they weren't as bad as they could have been. Not nearly. When the car had hit her, it seemed to her that the metal that slammed into the back of her legs had… softened somehow. She didn't tell the investigators that. They'd think she was nuts.

The car didn't want me to get hurt, she thought, and immediately chided herself for being silly, or insane. Whichever seemed most likely. Still though, insane or not, she HAD gotten off easy. Two green stick fractures of the tibia's in each leg. No crushed and pulverized bones, no amputation needed, nothing of the horrors that were common in accidents like hers. Only simple, clean breaks (because the car had absorbed the damage) and a massive concussion. When she landed on the pavement, her head snapped back, and hit the street with brutal force. There had been no skull fracture, but her scalp had split from the force of the blow, and stitches had been necessary. Lex believed that her head injury was making her believe the odd things, like the idea the metal of the car had somehow softened up as it hit her, and even worse, that it had made her imagine the mechanical yet agonized wail of grief that had come from the car just before she blacked out.

Definitely had to be the head injury. Had to be.

Bumblebee wallowed in misery for a week. He would have continued wallowing in said misery if it hadn't been for Sam.

The guilt of hitting the woman (he later learned her name was Alexis Knight) was eating him alive. Autobots did NOT harm humans if it was at all avoidable, and the fact that the others seemed to think there was no way for Bumblebee to avoid hitting her did him no good whatsoever. He kept replaying the events of that day over and over in his head, wishing he'd just stayed in the school parking lot, wishing he'd never turned down that street, wishing he hadn't taken his optic sensors off of the road even for a second. All of the wishing did him no good. If ya had shit in one hand and wishes in the other, in the end, you were just left with shit. Bumblebee knew this to be fact.

The woman had blacked out pretty quickly after being hit, and he'd immediately sent a data transmission to both Ratchet and Prime, nearly begging for their assistance. Ratchet contacted the closest emergency services, and Prime, while en route, contacted their government affiliates. Thus, the cover-up had begun. Bumblebee knew that Alexis Knight would be told there'd been no trace of the person that hit her, despite all efforts to find him/her. In reality, there would be NO effort to find him. The United States Government would see to that.

This denial made Bee feel worse. He wanted to tell her it had been an accident. That he'd never meant to harm anyone. He wanted her to know he'd done his best to soften the blow she'd taken from his smooth metal body.

"No, Bumblebee." That is what Optimus Prime told him.

"Why not, sir? The humans will find out about us one day. And probably fairly soon."

"Because Bumblebee, for now, we are hiding amongst them. To reveal our presence would likely cause a panic that neither ourselves or the government are currently prepared for. We agreed with them, that we would consider revealing ourselves only after our base was fully completed. We may need shelter from attack after our presence is known."

Misery settled even deeper into Bumblebee's systems. He glanced at the large screen television in their half finished rec-room. Once again, he saw her image on the screen. Her frail body being loaded into an ambulance. Pictures of her laughing with her friends. If only she hadn't been so heroic…

It was Sam Witwicky that helped him to lighten his burdened Spark. They'd been outside in the large, secluded field that would contain their base. Sam was sprawled merrily on his back, gazing at the sky. He glanced at Bumblebee, and felt a pang for the Autobot. If Bee's eyes (optic sensors) had been capable of leaking lubricants like a human's, half the state would have been flooded.

"Did Prime give you permission to try and explain to her what happened?"

Bumblebee shook his head. Sam got up, walked over to Bee and sprawled on the mech's foot. He knew the contact would help soothe his friend, and he desperately wanted to help. Bee's appearance in Sam's life had changed it for the better, in so many ways.

"Well, he didn't say you couldn't go see her, did he?"

Bee fixed Sam with a steady blue gaze, "I cannot disobey an order from a commanding officer, Sam."

"Well, see, it wouldn't really be disobeying an order would it? Optimus said you weren't allowed to talk to her, to make your presence known. He never said you couldn't, you know, just go look in on her, make sure she's doing as ok as the news says she is. That'd help you feel better right? If you were to watch over her a bit?" Sam looked a bit nervous at his own suggestion… he wasn't too keen on defying Prime himself. He was however, very keen on helping out his companion, and if his suggestion helped, so be it.

In the end it had. Bee had wrangled with the decision, but told himself he'd only see her once, just once, to make sure she was well. Her room was in the back of the hospital, on the second floor. He went there, in the dead of night, projecting a hologram in front of him, to avoid being spotted by other patients and looked carefully in her window. To his surprise, she was awake, even at 5 a.m. He watched entranced as she worked on the most fanciful painting he'd ever seen, and then went into a fit of giggles as she tried to maneuver her wheel chair into the bathroom and failed miserably the first three attempts.

The one night he'd given himself to check on her quickly turned into 7 and then to 14. Even after she went home, he followed her there to peek in on her. He was charmed by her cheerfulness and kind nature. He also noticed that with her red hair, green eyes, and cream complexion, she didn't look bad for a human. He liked her, and he liked her shape.

Lex felt as though she was being watched. She'd had that feeling for quite awhile now, usually in the wee hours of the night; it was like an itchy spot in the center of her back that wouldn't go away. However, whenever she turned around to look, there was no one there. She called Nick, the closest thing she had to a father, to ask if perhaps Lucien had been down, spying on her while she was gimped out, despite her stated wishes to the contrary. She really didn't like showing mortal weakness to them, especially not to Lucien Lacroix. Nick assured her that neither of them had been down there, but quickly pointed out that they would be there in a heartbeat if she decided she needed them.

Lex loved them, the both of them, more than anything, but she really didn't want them there to see her confined to a wheelchair (no matter how temporarily it might be). She didn't want their pity. But most of all, she didn't want them upset. They'd been especially protective since Jeanette's death.

Now, as she sat brushing her hair in the downstairs guest bedroom that was currently serving as her own room, she felt that same itchy spot in the middle of her back again. Lex began to worry. She bought her house because it was set well away from her neighbors on a very large property. Normally, this was great. But now, if someone really was stalking her, say, the same person that ran her over, or someone worse, she was all alone in a place where no one would see anything, no one would hear her scream. The bright side was that at least the nurse that stopped by to check on her throughout the day, would find her in the morning, before her corpse got too ripe. On second thought, Lex decided this wasn't much of a bright side at all.

Not at all.

Pretending that nothing was wrong, she looked as though she was absorbed in brushing her long red mane, as well as watching cartoons on the television. Because of that, when she suddenly whipped around, she took Bumblebee completely by surprise. Shocked as he was, though, he had nothing on her. Lex's mouth opened, and her bottom jaw seemed to drop to the floor. She stared openly, and the brush dropped from her hand. She took in the (to her) huge robot with bright yellow paint and even brighter blue eyes, crouched outside her window, and said, of all the dumbass things that could have possibly jumped into her mind, "Holy man eating plants, Batman!"

Note: There is a slight Forever Knight crossover here. For any FK fans that read this, enjoy the reference, for those of you that have no idea what Forever Knight is, don't sweat it, I'll make the story stand alone, you won't have to know any of the FK back-story to get it.