Just a Kid

by Jideni3

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. It was the start of something. Series of drabbles focusing on TFP Bee.

5. Kid

Drabble 5 - Just a Kid

---

They thought he was a child, and in many ways, they were right. He was by far the youngest on the team, the newest, the freshest. In his old room, he'd had posters lined up over his recharge slab, bright splashes of color that clashed horribly with his green walls, and old datapads filled with bedtime stories from back when he was too young to even read basic standard-Iaconian. He still had some of those datapads, and he'd pull them out occasionally and show them to Bulkhead. Sometimes, early on the weekends when the morning sun had yet to heat up the endless expanses of iron and rust, he'd shirk off his monitor-sitting and sneak in some off-planet cartoon-vids. (Ratchet made sure to give him a thirty-minute time window, before 'catching' him and redirecting him to his screens). Bulkhead told him jokes, clapped him on the shoulder, celebrated his successes on the field. Ratchet yanked and griped and smacked him upside the head, but more gently, more softly than he did anybody else. On more than one occasion, he'd seen Optimus send him a small smile. It's because you're young, they told him. You're just a kid.

(His quarters at the base were tiny and cramped and so, so empty, lined with gray steel walls and lit by a dim lamp that sputtered and whined and made a humming noise that, sometimes, at night, changed into a little chant. Kill yourself. Kill yourself-.)

---

But you're just as crazy as the rest of them. Just as twisted, just as damaged, just as corrupt and dirty and evil as the Decepticon troops are. How many lives have you taken? How many heads have you ripped off? How many times have you blasted soldiers in the spark? You're no Autobot.

---

He hid, he lied, he maimed, he murdered, and he did so with growing skill, and each Decepticon mook was rendered a mere notch on his gun. Several times, he wondered if he had gone insane, had completely lost it - particularly on the nights after a gruesome battle, when energon stains were still drying on his forelimbs, and bits of the enemy were embedded in his joints. He wondered if the war would ever end, if he would die and the war would still persist. He wondered if the Autobots were fighting for a lost cause. He wondered if he would be able to last until the end, and if the war were to ever end, if he'd be able to adjust to a life without dodging laserfire or staunching a gushing wound.

He'd shutter his optics and see the cooling faces of his neighbors, the energon gushing out of his creator's mouth, the blasters pointed at his face. Then he'd open his eyes and stare out into the sky.

No, he supposed. It would never end.

(If he was a kid, then maybe the AllSpark would accept him, even with all those sins ruining his spark.)