Author's Note: This fic is a collection of Bee-centric vignettes that I wrote while watching TFP. I adore that series, but I also regret the lack of development for certain characters. Optimus, Bee, Breakdown, Raf - they didn't have the depth, the history, or the personality that the others had, and there were moments in the series that suffered for it. These drabbles are my half-assed attempt at addressing one of the more ignored characters.
Bumblebee had watched everybody die around him. He had watched the war slowly chip away at Optimus, watched as Arcee became bitter and Bulkhead weary, watched as Ratchet withdrew more and more, fixated on his screen, fiddling with buttons. Had watched Optimus match him in silence.
He'd watched as his friends were dismembered in front of him, screaming until their vocalizers fritzed and gave out, watched as their optics were cracked open slowly and then shoved down their bleeding throats. He'd watched as his caretaker swallowed a scraplet willingly, preferring to be eaten from the inside out than devoured from the atrocities of the war. He'd watched acid rain down from enemy ships onto what were once his neighbors, now twisted lumps of greying, cooling metal, the corrosives burning jagged rivulets through armor, joints fusing together and faces melding into unrecognizable husks. He'd watched as lovers searched fruitlessly for their partners, wailing and keening in despair when they found the pieces of their beloved scattered across the city. Bodies piling higher and higher and higher, the cloying smell of energon as it gathered in pools around broken walkways, and the weakening of his own body as fuel became scarce – he saw it all.
He'd joined the Autobot army out of sheer desperation, convinced that if he was going to watch his world collapse, he might as well watch with a gun in his hand. He blithely lied about his age, and nobody glanced twice at him after that, too preoccupied with not dying to check his creation day records. They fitted him with standard-issue blasters and hastily upgraded his armor to something a bit less prone to denting, before sending him out on various intel missions.
It was the start of something.