Time was passing, but Bumblebee was only intermittently and begrudgingly aware of it. After the heavy rains, the mud had been too treacherous for driving, but now that a steady sun-driven heat had begun to settle, the mud dried into dirt, which in its turn flew up into dust as Bumblebee drove over it.
He bitterly missed roads. Rough terrain was hard on the shock-absorbers, and the area he was exploring now seemed to be the roughest yet. Rocks jutted up with unexpected cruelty to stick him in the tires or undercarriage as he drove, scraping what little remained of his paint job and giving his armor a few new scratches he could've done without. Trees and brush blocked his path, forcing him to swerve sharply and often, and preventing him from scouting with any real speed.
The rains had left their mark. For all he could do to get dry and avoid each downpour when it came, he still couldn't quite prevent the rust from getting started in places he couldn't get properly exposed to air. He could feel it in there. It didn't hurt exactly, it was just a feeling of being... well, a little bit off. Worse, the rains had left floods in their wake, rivers and lakes that had been long dried up before Bumblebee came, but which now ran deep and fast. Submergence was not on Bumblebee's bucket list, and he did what he could to go around or over these obstacles, further slowing his explorations.
It was frustrating, and Bumblebee's limited patience was fast running out. It was beginning to seem to him that too much life was overrated. Having driven cycles in empty cities devoid of life had seemed depressing, but at least then there wasn't an abundance of foliage blocking his way every few feet; at least then he'd known where he was going and how to get there.
Sometimes he felt like he was acting randomly, just wandering with little aim or purpose. He was so far from Cybertron, it was difficult to believe anything he did here could ever really matter. No matter how many cliffs, canyons, mountains and valleys he mapped, what difference could it really make? In the end, who on Cybertron would care about what was on this miserable rock, infested as it was with organic life, overrun to the point of there almost being nowhere to stand, and filled to the brim with -ugh- water? Surely this was no place for Cybertronians to live!
Of course, in war, sometimes the most inhospitable places make the best strongholds. The same things that make them unwelcoming also make them hostile to the enemy. Bumblebee had more than once used that to his advantage hiding behind enemy lines. The best places to avoid enemy contact were unexploded mine fields, scraplet infested plague cities, that kind of place. Just so long as you avoided the hostiles in the environment itself, you'd do pretty well in spots like that.
It should have been hard to imagine Earth as a stronghold, but Bumblebee could do it only too easily.
Distance and time were working on him in many ways, not the least of which was a recovery of his shattered nerve. After his torture at the hands of Megatron, Bumblebee had been broken in more than body. Just before his reassignment, an incident involving a Warrior named Cliffjumper had initiated a turnaround in him, but it took time to go from a sense of utter futility, of bitter anger and fear and weakness to something... better. But his distance from home and time alone was also instilling a spark-deep loneliness more profound than any he'd felt. Missing his home, he found reasons not to like Earth. Since he never received any indication that his reports were even received, he began to feel as if he'd been forgotten these millions of miles away from home. The war was going on without him, might even be over (for better or worse) for all he knew.
Sometimes at night, Bumblebee was plagued by the fear that the Autobots had lost, been destroyed, and that he was to be left on this alien world alone. Forever. At those times the fear struck so deep at the spark of him that he couldn't rest, and so he would travel as fast as the terrain allowed until he was too exhausted to be afraid anymore. Then he'd find some secluded spot where he wouldn't be easily spotted by anything more menacing than one of the furry wild things that roamed through the forests and plains, and there he would just stop. It wasn't even really a stasis nap. It was just stopping for awhile. Time and space seemed to go away and he didn't even dream, just stopped.
Then at some point he'd become aware of a sound. He'd stir from his daze, and take in his surroundings. He'd notice a shift in the time of day or night. He'd note any changes in the air, of temperature or humidity or wind or anything like that. He'd listen and watch for awhile, making sure all the sounds and sights were in order. And then he'd set out again.
There would come a time when his limit was reached. He knew that. His energon would run out, or the rust would get him. Either way, he couldn't continue indefinitely. Sooner or later, he would need help. It was hard to trust in what he couldn't see. But Bumblebee had laid his loyalty at the feet of the Prime called Optimus, and there too was placed his faith. And so he did his job, avoided thinking about tomorrow, tried not to think about yesterday, and kept moving forward, ever deeper into the unknown.
In some ways, it seemed that was all he'd ever done. Almost from the moment he'd come online, Bumblebee's life had been one plunge into the unknown after another. He'd chosen to join the Autobots before he truly understood the difference between the one side and the other, acting on pure instinct. His first sight of a Prime had sent a current of what felt like electricity through him, and he'd just known. He'd had to pick a side, and choose fast or get dead. There was something in the nature of Primes that called to him, and he followed without needing to understand why.
He was just a rookie when the procedure for implanting personal weapons was rolled out. He didn't have the experience to know what it meant, but he reflexively went for it anyway. It was painful in those days, and it took time to learn how to use implanted weapons, but he'd done it anyway. And when he'd been given the option for extra changes to aid him in his duties as a Scout, he'd pounced on them long before any of them became mandatory. It wasn't because he wasn't scared. It wasn't because he really understood what he was getting into. It was because it had felt right. In fact, Bumblebee had made a career of seeming to think on his feet when it was really just reacting, just trusting his instincts, and following the rules laid down for him by his superiors.
Bumblebee didn't know where he was going, but there was one thing he knew above all others: To the last beat of his spark, he would choose to serve not just the Autobots, but the Primes. He didn't know there was now only one remaining, but it didn't matter. Even if there had been none, he still would've done his best to do what he believed they would want of him. Even if that meant driving around on this unbelievably primitive and alien dust-ball until he fell apart. He didn't think of it as being particularly remarkable. It was just a simple fact to him, like any other, one he took a bit for granted actually.
Half lost in thought, barely paying attention on that hot, bright afternoon, lulled into a rather relaxed state by the increasing sense of familiarity, Bumblebee realized he'd driven several miles without having to wrestle any trees and somehow he hadn't really noticed. It startled him that he could be so lax in his attention, but even more he was surprised by the landscape which surrounded him.
Though the landscape had of course changed gradually, Bumblebee had been traveling fast, and in a straighter line than usual. He'd left behind the forests for mixed-woodlands, which had gradually thinned into true plains, but now he'd hit something new under the tires: sand.
Ahead there rolled desert dunes with thin plant life scattered across and hugging close to the ground. There was something inexplicably different about the tree-like plants, that made Bumblebee classify them without thinking as something Other. He'd come up with a label later. The sand felt different from the dirt or rock he'd grown used to (and was decidedly unlike grass or moss), shifting beneath his tires strangely. Even the wind sounded different.
More shocking than any of this however was the fact that Bumblebee had grown accustomed enough to Earth to view this as strange in comparison to what he'd already seen. Without even picking up on it, Bumblebee had become used to the way this alien world felt and looked, enough that this new spot made him realize anew the Earth's strangeness. Different parts of Cybertron were not so notably dissimilar. Everywhere the mark of the Cybertronians had been made deep, with roads, with structures, with tech. Decepticon or Autobot, the buildings and bridges pretty much looked the same, and you could always predict what sort of structures lay ahead by looking at the power conduits where you were or something. There wasn't much about the climate that could be remarked on about Cybertron. Even if there had been, Cybertronians were largely indifferent to changes in temperature unless the shift was a drop or rise of about a hundred degrees. It not only didn't affect them, they didn't even notice.
Bumblebee noted it was hot here, cold where he'd started, because of the vast difference in temperature between here and there, but at first it didn't really impress upon him that the changes in the environment had anything to do with that. He'd begun to make the association between greenery and rainfall, and suspected that meant this new landscape didn't see much of either.
At first, the sand threw Bumblebee off. He slid in new ways when he tried to turn, got bogged down when he didn't expect it, and hitting the brakes threw up a truly enormous and utterly blinding cloud of dust. But after a bit of practice, he found he loved it. It was fun to kick up sand, and sliding turns had never felt more exciting. It was new turf to him, but he felt like he'd been built for it.
Though he had a vehicle mode, Bumblebee did not yet have the form of an Earth vehicle, largely because he hadn't seen one yet. In fact, he hadn't even seen any humans, or signs of human habitation. Right now, he wasn't worried about that. He was having a blast racing the wind across the sand, pursuing dust devils across the dunes, and using the cacti as a kind of obstacle course to dodge in and out of as practice for his fast precision turns. For a time, there was nothing in his thoughts but the feel of the sand speeding beneath him, the wind blowing across him, and the sun streaming down.
For the first time in a long time, Bumblebee was having fun. He hadn't done that in so long he'd almost forgotten what it felt like. Once he'd started, he didn't want to stop. Fortunately, time was something he suddenly had a lot of, and he could race in circles and figure eights and ovals until he was exhausted. Nobody was trying to kill him, and nobody was there to tell him no.
Bumblebee had been a soldier in the Autobot army for so long, he'd all but forgotten what it was to be free to do what he wanted to do, to go where he wanted to go, to be who he wanted to be. Perhaps this was actually a wholly new experience. He didn't remember much of what life had been like before, partially because there hadn't been very much of a before. Not for him.
His wheels churned up sand as he braked to turn tight circles, then accelerated to race his own shadow across the desert. So often in his line of work, things were slow, confined, enclosed, and in his spark he'd been built for speed. After having been so long cautious and limited in his movement, he was all-but drunk with the sensation as the wind blew across his sleek vehicular form. He felt the sand pinging off him as it was kicked up, but that only added to the experience.
A distant part of him began to wonder if he'd gone mad, while another part suspected he'd been mad all along and simply never noticed, but a more important portion of his consciousness knew that both suppositions were false. In fact, he was the most sane he'd been in a long time.
Coming to a hard stop, a dust cloud enveloping him, Bumblebee knew that something inside him that hadn't been right in so long he'd almost forgotten what it was had suddenly shifted and he felt alive again, alive as he had not been since long before he lost his voice. When he had been sent to Earth, Bumblebee had been mechanically and medically as sound as he would ever be, yet he knew now that there had been a sickness in him, not measurable by scientific means, but there just the same.
It wasn't that a drive through the desert empty of thought about duty and responsibility had healed him, but it was the signal of the start, the beginning of a long, probably painful journey to recovery. He would never be as he was before, he knew that. But he also knew that he could be better than he was now, and that was something to look forward to at last.