To Have a Spark
Reasons Why: Bumblebee
"Once you start asking questions, innocence is gone."
-Mary Astor
As Arcee before him, Bumblebee had to wrestle with the confusion brought with the situation now laid out before him. At first, he had come to Raf, sweeping the child up into a protective hold. The scout couldn't imagine losing the little boy in his charge. That little boy who was already beginning to see the years of manhood upon him. Rafael had settled into an uneasy comfort in 'Bee's hands; the two promising each other up and down that neither would give up. That neither would fall to such depths. Yet in all honesty, the pair wondered what could bring someone to that end. In their innocence, they couldn't entirely fathom the grim concepts before them.
Bumblebee had seen the atrocities of war and had borne the scars that come with it. That was his only extent – he knew what death on the battlefield was. Rafael knew death as he had faced it at the end of a Decepticon's gun. He had faced it, nearly danced with it, when dark energon had tainted his body. Yet he had escaped all of that, retaining the innocence of never knowing what it was to wish one's own life ended.
Eventually, Rafael and Bumblebee parted, each to seek his own wisdom on a thing neither wished to understand. Bumblebee trudged down the halls to Optimus' quarters and, like Arcee before him, knocked.
"Come."
The scout found his Prime in much the same way Arcee had. He gave a sequence of buzzing clicks and sat on the floor at his Prime's feet.
"I am...as well as I can be, given the situation. I am sorry, Bumblebee," Prime's voice held a solemnity in its rumbling baritone that the scout didn't like. "I am sorry, to expose you to these things. The war. Now this. I had hoped your innocence could remain intact."
The scout beeped back.
"I cannot be sure I can explain it to you. I know you understand loss and I will not patronise you."
Another sequence of beeps and chirrs. Try.
"We have lost much in the war. Yet we have always had something or someone to hold onto. When there is no such option, what is left? I have always believed that freedom is the right of all sentient beings."
Beep-beep. Is there an end to freedoms?
"I do not know. It is wrong to enslave another being. One might even say it is wrong to end one's own existence. It is often seen as giving up. As casting away a better possibility."
Beep-chirr. Does life truly end? We have Primus...who do the humans have?
"That is the question, Bumblebee. We have proof of Primus, of the All-Spark. If we so chose, we could journey back to Cybertron. I could show you the Well of All Sparks. I could trace the journey to Primus that I had undergone when the Council named me Prime. I could show you all of this."
Bumblebee lowered his head, buzzing softly. The humans don't have that?
"No, Bumblebee. They don't have such definitive proof. They have speculations, paths of thought. Many thousands of tenets exist here and not a shred of proof for any one of them."
The scout stood up then, his brow plates creasing into a determined line. When we fall, who catches us? When we find no belief, who presents us with the paths ahead?
Optimus almost-smiled again. "When the mighty fall, who is there to catch them?"