I own nothing. Takes place during New Moon, not the usual E x B or J x B pairings.
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Bella remembered going home, explaining to Charlie how her car had died, so she had spent the night at the Cullens', under the watch of Dr. Cullen, how Edward had chosen the moment Charlie asked more about her car to tell Bella to open his gift. Bella shot him a glare to rival his own as she figured out what he had gotten her.
Edward chuckled as she discovered the keys to a red 1977 Lamborghini Countach that was parked innocently across the street, looking as if it had just rolled off the assembly line.
After yelling at him at a volume Edward was fairly certain was impossible for a human voice for bordering on three minutes, Bella threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek.
When Charlie coughed to break them up, she murmured in a voice so low she momentarily wondered if Edward even heard her, "Thank you, my stupid, shiny, beautiful Edward."
Edward's brilliant, crooked smile assured he that he had definitely heard her.
The next day he left.
It really was as simple as that. He took every picture she had of him, every video they made, every memory save the car, and that was probably only because she did need it.
He left, totally and completely and utterly gone.
He dumped her, and then he and his family left.
She couldn't find the tears to cry – had he taken those, too? – so she just sat there, staring out the window, waiting for him to drift through to tell her they just had to leave to hunt for a while. They only left her to hunt, but they would come back.
Any day, some time soon, they'd be back.
After nearly a month, Bella finally accepted that Edward was gone, or, at least, agreed to go to school again and re-entered her life cycle for Charlie's sake.
That first morning, when she got into the car, the Lamborghini, the only piece of Edward she had left, she realized it must have been a new car. It smelled like new car.
That morning, the tears had finally come, sitting in the cab of that Lamborghini.
That morning, she had almost felt the seat move to cradle her, the seatbelt not cutting into her, the cab being the perfect temperature, upper eighties, without being stuffy, almost as if it were trying to console her.
That evening, however, was the first time she saw him.
As she sat, doing her homework, staring longingly out the window, she noted the emptiness of the street below her. She glanced down to finish the biology problem she was on, and when she looked up, there he was.
On the sidewalk, right beside her car, was a boy – eighteen at least, twenty-one at oldest – with the most brilliant red hair she had ever seen. His skin was neither tan nor pale, but a comfortable middle, and she could barely make out the contours of his muscles through the tight, red shirt he wore, a perfect match of his red hair. He was tall, 6'3" at least, and slight, but not lanky. Almost streamline, almost, she nearly laughed at the thought, almost like a Lamborghini.
He offered her a soft, sad smile; his teeth white enough to nearly – nearly, as no one would be as beautiful as him – leave her dazzled.
She blinked, and he was gone.
This went on for three weeks, well into January. She would take the Lamborghini to school, it offering its silent condolences in the form of a warm cab and a comfortable seat, perfect traction and easy brakes, and every night she would see him.
There were nights when she would decide to go up to him, to talk to him, but every time she made up her mind to go see him, she would stand up, begin to walk toward the door, and suddenly find herself so immensely, inexplicably, insanely tired she would turn to the bed, figuring she could go see him the next day.
Then, one morning in late January, everything changed.
When she got into the cab, it was cold – frigid, even – and the seat was far too stiff for her spoiled back. The engine roared to life almost angrily. The stops and starts were sudden, jerking, rough, like the car was livid at something. 'It's mad at me,' she thought to herself worriedly.
'It's mad at me and I don't know why!' she mentally shrieked. 'What did I do to offend it? How could I have managed to – to – to –'
"What do you want from me?" she shouted at the steering wheel as she stopped at a traffic light on her way home from school.
The engine died, the car sitting, rooted to the spot. Bella gasped, worried she had offended it. Some small, sane part of her mind reminded her that cars do not have feelings, ergo they cannot be offended.
'And they most definitely do not give you the silent treatment!' she thought, mentally prepping her for the ranting of Charlie that was sure to follow her telling him she had managed to kill a Lamborghini.
And then it roared.
The powerful engine of the 1977 Lamborghini Countach roared to life, startling Bella's hands off the wheel and foot off the break. It screamed down the street at a speed unheard of and pulled off into the forest, racing toward a place Bella had not been since he left.
As it sped into the clearing, Bella's seatbelt unbuckled, her door popping open as the Lamborghini pulled a 180-degree turn, flinging her onto the soft grass and mud.
She went to stand up only to watch something so utterly impossible she felt it had to be real.
'You're not the creative, Bella,' came a reminder in her mind.
Her car – her beautiful red Lamborghini – stood up.
Gears whirred and metal shifted, snapping out and into place, wires being exposed for only a moment before disappearing under red plating. She looked up at its ('His? Hers? Do robots have genders?') face, a perfect, flawless white of straight lines and simplistic shapes that melded together to form an expression of something more than she could grasp. Two eyes, at least, that was what she would call them, were glass behind which blue orbs, wires, computers, and a hundred other, unnamable things lay protected from the outside air. On its head were two wing-like protrusions that seemed to gleam just barely more than the rest of its body, which shone like a diamond, almost like –.
'No,' she pointedly thought. 'I won't think about him, not here. Not now.'
And then it spoke.
"Listen up, squishy, 'cause I'm only saying this once," it said in a voice like ice, harsh and threatening and terrifying and real. It was a voice befitting a killer, befitting… him.
"I don't like your planet. I don't like your people. I think you are a selfish bunch of slaggers who really need an ego deflation, but I'm loyal to my commander and my brother, if I'm nothing else. As such, seeing as he was assigned to be your guardian, and since he is not able to fulfill that directive at this moment, I will do everything in my power to protect you. As you may or may not know, we have been on your planet for the past four million years in a forced stasis – that's like a 'coma', incase you didn't know – and when we woke up, we found our enemies, the Decepticons, to be searching this planet for energy sources. You follow me so far?" it asked, Bella gazing dumbly at the tall figure.
She shook her head.
"Primus," it sighed, clearly exasperated. "Where to start?"
"Well," began Bella uncertainly, in a sort of trance. "you already know my name is Bella, what's yours?"
The look she received could only be described as the 'you really are insane, aren't you' look.
It spoke.
"What is your species' obsession with names?"
Bella was taken aback by this question, but answered as best as she could, her voice not nearly as strong as she wanted it to be, "What are you talking about?"
It glared at her, growling, "Names! Everything must be named! And one name is not enough – oh, no – humans and their pets have multiple names! Do you realize there are over a dozen names for fragging snow in one of your earthen languages? And the sayings to do with names go on and on! I claim this! I christen you! I call it! I shall be known as! My nickname is! Name this, name that, Primus! I'm amazed your species has been able to make the advances it has!"
Bella knew she should be afraid, but instead simply retorted, "Don't blow a gasket, Sparkles. I just figured it would be better to call you your name that to continuing to call you an 'it'."
At that point, she knew she had made a mistake. Its face hardened further, if it were possible, and a pistol the size of Charlie was suddenly pointed at her.
"My name is Sunstreaker, squishy. Not 'Sparkles'. You would be wise to remember that," it hissed, never moving more than its mouth.
Bella nodded dumbly and sighed with relief as the pistol disappeared to –
"Hey, where'd your gun go?" she asked brightly.
Sunstreaker gave her a look as if to say, 'you are a freaking idiot'.