None of the other chicks died as nestlings.
They ate ravenously, cried piteously for more, stumbled about their nest on legs that sounded too long and bent for their bodies, stretching their heads high as if they wanted more than anything to reach out to the sky itself and pull it down to them since their wings were too feeble to carry them to it.
Bumblebee knew they had wings, partially because he had heard their clumsy attempts to flap, but mainly because he understood on an instinctive level now the bond between the adult ravens and the young ones. He understood them to be the same creatures, even though it boggled his mind just to think of what unseen machinery must be at work to change those little eggs into these fast-growing but still unseemly young specimens of raven kind.
Unconsciously, he had also learned to see the difference between one bird and another. He knew the ravens and the eagle by sight, and many more birds primarily by their cries, for few dared venture too close to the raven's nest, for fear of being attacked. It was a justified fear, for the ravens attacked almost anything that came too close for their comfort, save for other ravens, whom they allowed to perch surprisingly close by.
These ravens were younger, noisier than their elders but not so noisy as the nestlings themselves, and by all evidence unattached. Bumblebee did not yet know how or why organic creatures paired, but he had recognized the condition not only in the ravens, but in others as well. There was some kind of pair-bond that bound two animals to often seek closely one another's company, and to share in success and failure. Bumblebee did not know why this was so, only that it was, and that was enough.
What he did understand was the concept of young. Cybertronians themselves came online without the need for parents to protect them, for they were fully mentally and physically developed, and came to with some knowledge right from the beginning. But there was still Cybertronian youth, and their seniors often would take it upon themselves either singly or collectively to raise them, to try to instill a sense of acceptable and unacceptable behavior, a comprehension not of language but of history, an acquisition of skills beyond simply walking and talking.
Bumblebee did not realize it, but he had missed much of the formative experiences common to the Cybertronians who had come before him. By the time he had come along, there was no time for the young. When Bumblebee came online, there had only been war left. The only difference between young and old was the number of scars on the armor, and even that difference could be erased after a young bot's first time in combat, depending on how badly things went.
Still, there was within him the memory of a time when things were new, and when things which were now second-nature to him had been difficult. Transformation from one form to another didn't come innately, it required a certain amount of practice, and was initially done in very slow, gradual stages. But at least Bumblebee had begun with that ability. Implanted weaponry came even less naturally, for it was artificially introduced by Autobot medics, a necessity as the war had grown more desperate. What he remembered most clearly was trying to engage his weapons the first time. What a disaster that had been.
In fact, the young raven chicks reminded him a lot of those times as they fought to bridge the gap between nestling and fledgling, trying to get the strength and coordination to get out of their nest, driven by some almost suicidal impulse to escape confinement before they had wings to fly with. Perhaps ignorance was the gift of all young things, for if they knew what lay beyond their tiny, protected corner of the world, they would be too scared to ever face it.
Certainly Bumblebee found himself in the reality of war before he understood what it meant. He had killed before it had occurred to him what killing really was. It was strange to think you could do something without really knowing you were doing it, or understanding what it meant, but you could. Choices were made, and doors slipped shut behind you, and before you knew it... you were among the last of a dying race, fugitive from a dying planet, alone on an foreign world, staring out at an alien sky, with a flock of baby birds sitting on your hood, shouting and demanding their dinner.
What a strange thing existence was.
Finally, one day the strongest of the nestlings managed to clamber all the way up to the top of the nest, and cling to the rim of it. The chick was no longer the ugly, almost featherless thing Bumblebee had first seen it as. Though its body was still downy, it was covered in feathers, most of them black and glossy like those of its parents. The corners of its beak were paler, and its feathers rather unkempt, but it was recognizable as being the same kind of animal as its parents, instead of looking like a little organic scraplet. It wasn't graceful yet, but its legs were strong enough to support it now.
The nestling rasped its demand for food, but the parent birds had been lingering at a distance for longer and longer periods, as if trying to force the chicks to come to them for feeding. One of them was nearby, sitting on a spiny plant of some kind. Mindful of the thorns, the raven adjusted its stance, and called to its offspring, who bobbed its head and looked waveringly in the direction of its parent.
It looked down. It was a long way down, especially for something that had never flown before.
The chick wobbled uncertainly. Perhaps it would have hesitated longer, but its siblings were impatient to climb up and have a look around for themselves, and they pushed the chick right off the edge. The chick squealed as it fell, and for a moment Bumblebee thought he'd witnessed a murder. But then the chick spread its wings, flapped frantically a few times, and floated, clumsy but unhurt, down to the desert floor. The second chick was pushed by the third, who then was forced to follow or else stay in the nest alone.
The three fledglings never returned to the nest, but Bumblebee remained still for a few days, just in case they did. The chicks stayed in the area, not really able to fly yet, mostly just flopping around and jumping from place to place, their parents continuing to feed them during this period.
And then one day they took off, flew away, and didn't come back.
In truth, Bumblebee was relieved. Finally being able to move after his long, self-enforced imprisonment felt heavenly, though at first he had trouble doing it. Cybertronians lived long lives, but generally didn't spend days at a time of those lives sitting motionless. It took a little bit to get the kinks out.
Rather than destroy the nest, however, Bumblebee carefully transformed and laid it on the ground. He knew the ravens weren't coming back, but it still felt like the right thing to do.
After that, Bumblebee moved on, just as the ravens had.
It would not be the last time he found himself being used as a nest, not only by birds, but by small animals such as mice, and he frequently found himself being used as a lookout perch by predator and prey alike. But he would always remember the ravens most, because they had been the first, and because they had given him the opportunity to learn so much, not just about Earth, but himself, in forcing him to just stop, to stop and just exist with them for awhile.
In their strange way, it felt as if they had welcomed him to their planet.
Perhaps they had. In the coming years, humans would begin to hotly debate the intelligence of animals, whether or not they had any and, if so, how much. What did animals perceive that humans did not? And then the questions would narrow down to grouping, then species, then individual. Bumblebee might have saved them a lot of time if ever those scientists had met him.
Long after, there would be, out in the desert, a flock of ravens that would land on him whenever he came into their area, and follow him when he drove through. Even once there were roads with many vehicles, still the ravens remembered. Somehow, they passed down through untold generations something about the yellow and black car.
Bumblebee never wondered if they realized he was alive. He never wondered if they followed him out of puzzlement at this strange nest site of generations before that somehow moved. He never wondered, because it didn't really matter to him. What mattered to him in the future was the reminder that, no matter how many people he fooled with his vehicle disguise, there would always be ravens who knew.
In the time that followed, Bumblebee started to recognize the patterns of the world. The seasons were predicted not only by the changes in the air, but everywhere. Plants and animals responded not just to a coming rain, but a change of season. The fur and feathers animals wore got thicker before the cool of fall arrived to warn of the ice of winter heading down from the north. Some plants bloomed in anticipation of the spring while frost still lay on the ground. Many herbivores had their offspring before the rains, anticipating the coming new grass. All the living things of Earth seemed to be in tune with the seasonal shifts, and Bumblebee learned to be so as well.
His ability to measure time, when he chose to, was all but infallible. He could of course feel temperatures rising and dropping, and the change of air pressure before a storm. Still, he did get struck by lightning at least once before he learned to avoid it. Lightning didn't really do any serious damage to him, but it definitely startled him and upset his internal systems for awhile. Avoid being hit by lightning repeatedly, was the advice in his report, as repeated exposure to the unpredictable and unrestrained electrical current could potentially cause severe system damage.
In fact, there were a lot of dangerous things on Earth. Not the creatures on it, those were harmless and even helpless, though one could wind up in danger from a clumsy attempt to avoid being noticed by them. But the weather... that was an unexpected wrinkle.
The blazing sun could, over years of exposure, begin to degrade the outside of a Cybertronian, not only fading and cracking a paint-job, but also by heating internal systems excessively. Short-term damage was not a concern, but over time even the armor of a Warrior would begin to weaken under the intense glare of the sun if care wasn't taken. And certainly it could be bad for energon, particularly the refined kind that Cybertronians used for powering systems.
Cold in winter was less of a problem than the wet. Cybertronians could survive for a period of time in space if they were properly equipped, but that cold did not come with moisture. It was the snow and ice that slipped in through the chinks in armor that started to do the real damage, especially if the water managed to reach a system that required a certain amount of surrounding warmth in order to run. Once those systems began to be corrupted, a Cybertronian didn't have much time before irreversible damage was done, possibly even a critical system failure that would cause a shutdown. If not removed from the cold shortly thereafter, a Cybertronian in that condition could die.
Wind could cause minimal damage, but more importantly it could carry debris that could dent or scratch, not only causing minor damage and potentially working its way in to more vital areas, but also leaving openings for other types of weather to do more damage than they would otherwise.
The rain was bad because of the water, especially once the sun had done its dastardly work on the paint, allowing the moisture to reach metal and begin to rust it. But far worse was the humidity, specifically when it reached such a fever pitch that there was mist or fog, because then the water didn't just flow down from the sky, it seemed to float everywhere, working its way in anywhere. Prolonged exposure to those conditions would be lethal, and recovering from damage done by rust was no minor matter.
Regardless of how careful Bumblebee was, he had not come equipped for this type of hardship. He had no supplies to repair or replace anything that became damaged, and so each minor scratch made him that much more vulnerable. Eventually, if no supplies were sent from Cybertron, he would simply cease to function, and this before energon depletion got him.
And still there was no word from the Autobots.