As a kid, Sam had always been very excited at the prospect of breaking a bone. Broken bones meant getting out of school to eat ice cream and watch TV all day—not to mention the nifty orange casts he could get signed by his fifty closest friends.

But at 18, having lived through two cataclysmic battles involving aliens from beyond the stars, he realized that having something that required going to the hospital (or the military equivalent thereof) was Not Fun.

The smell was always a problem, for one thing; it burned in his nose and soured his stomach even when he didn't have anything wrong with him. The infirmary aboard the aircraft carrier was no different. Then there were all the tests and the x-rays and needles—oh god, the needles, enough to turn him into a pin cushion—and to put a rancid little cherry on top of his misery sundae, he was in too much pain to really enjoy the fact that the doctor coating his arm in plaster was really hot. Not that Mikaela wasn't hotter by about a thousand degrees, but hey, he was a guy, and pretty much all guys had fantasies about making out with a sexy nurse.

At the moment, however, all thoughts of making out with the doctor took a firm backseat to trying not to throw up all over her.

His face must have turned an alarming shade of green, because the doctor suddenly paused in her work and said, "Hey, come on now, stay with me. No passing out allowed."

Sam didn't nod, afraid that the motion would trigger a Technicolor up-chuck. And though there were a myriad clever responses waiting on his tongue—some flirty, some sardonic—in the end he only mumbled, "'kay." His voice sounded small and lost, like a child's.

('—the search continues for the elusive Samuel James Witwicky—')

('The boy's situation cannot remain as it is.')

Oooh yeah, there was the bacon he'd had for breakfast. Sam swallowed discreetly, forcing down the bile, and tried not to hyperventilate. He focused instead on watching the shimmering highlights slide through the doctor's hair, thinking that the mousy brown locks looked very soft. Like Mikaela's.

The thought of his girlfriend made him grimace again, for an entirely different reason. She hadn't been too happy with him when he'd torn out of the lounge with Leo's cell phone like his pants were on fire. He wondered if she'd be less likely to kick his ass if he told her that Optimus and Thatcher were planning something major to do with him that just might involve throwing him to the wolves or cajoling him into saving the world again…and that he really needed a hug.

"All done!" The doctor announced brightly, moving to wash her hands in the metal sink. Just sit there for a few minutes and let the cast harden up while I go get your x-rays and happy pills."

He almost smiled at her attempt to cheer him up. Almost.

('I cannot delay telling Sam any longer.')

The ominous phrase tied his stomach up in knots. What did it mean?

As the doctor turned from him and strode towards her office, he pulled his blackberry from his pocket. It had somehow survived being sizzled by the blast from Bee's cannon, which was astonishing given how finicky it could sometimes be even when there were no molten blasts whizzing by. His finger hovered over Mikaela's speed dial—he really needed to call her and tell her what had happened, and ask her if he could have that hug.

But instead, he went to the list of recorded calls and selected Bee's string of gibberish from among the standard earthly numbers. For a moment he hesitated, longing to hear his friend's voice but fearing it would emerge as shattered and fearful as it had been in the cargo bay, back when he had lain in the alien's arms and Bee had keened in a way that tore at his own heart. ('Sam...please, I-')

So instead, he sent out a text message. More impersonal. Distanced.

SamuelW: B, u there?

Surprisingly, the text actually went through—he hadn't thought his phone would register Bee's line of glitch code as a legitimate number.

Feeling strangely relieved at having moved to break the awkward wall between them, he waited. When it seemed that his friend wouldn't respond (almost expected, really), he typed out another message and sent it along after the first.

SamuelW: seriously, b. we need 2 talk.

Again he waited. And waited.

SamuelW: b?

Finally, after an achingly long pause, Bumblebee sent a reply.

BuzzingBee: im here.

Sam sighed shakily, tension sliding from his shoulders. The whole day had started off crappy and gone spiraling downward from there, so he decided it would be worth a shot to try to start the whole thing over again, beginning with their disastrous conversation at the crack of dawn.

SamuelW: whats up?

He knew Bee remembered his lack-luster greeting—the robot had the memory capacity of 6000 super computers. He remembered everything. But apparently, the yellow scout was not in the mood to play along with the whole 'starting things over' game.

BuzzingBee: call ur parents and mikaela.

And a little message popped up saying that BuzzingBee was blocking his calls.

Ouch. If that was not the most obvious snub he had ever received, he didn't know what was. He tried not to feel too hurt about that. It didn't help that his bacon had apparently decided to plot a reappearance, forcing him to swallow again to avoid embarrassing himself. Ugh. He really needed those drugs.

Just as he started plotting ways to get around Bee's block (and considering moving to a spot closer to the bathroom), the doctor strode out of her office with a clip board in hand and came to stand before him.

"Congratulations, Sam," she announced brightly, flipping through his chart, "It's a boy."

Sam stared at her, his eyes going perfectly round. It took him a minute to realize she was joking with him, at which point he scowled in irritation. Sure, take advantage of the guy with a broken arm (broken future).

"Don't worry. I'm just playing with you," she eased, smiling prettily. Sam put a hand over his heart dramatically. (Play along, just keep playing along, keep running through the lake of fire and you'll eventually find the edge)

"How long do I have to live, doctor?"

She pretended to consult the chart once more.

"Well, if you keep eating your veggies and exercising regularly you'll make it to at least 90. But these will probably help in the short run."

And merciful god in heaven, she handed him a small prescription bottle full of happy pills. He immediately popped the top with the thumb of his good hand and swallowed two without water.

"Only take two every six hours," she warned, eyeing him disapprovingly as he finagled the top back on. Sam shrugged, not particularly worried about turning into a junky (he had always avoided taking medicine unless he absolutely had to, anyway) and changed the subject.

"So, no real problems with my arm? Aside from the fact that it's broken."

The doctor handed him a large folder containing his x-rays. "Nope, no problems. You were lucky—it was a very clean break. If something had been jarred out of alignment, I would have had to put you under to reset the bone," her friendly gaze turned quizzical, and almost suspicious. "How did you break your arm, again?"

"I fell," he blurted, then racked his brains for the rest of his story. It had seemed like a work of genius just a few minutes ago. "Down two flights of stairs."

"Two flights of stairs."

Definitely suspicious now. Sam really, really didn't want to deal with a suspicious doctor who wouldn't understand or react well to 'my friend thought I was a Decepticon and tired to turn me into Spam with his cannon'. In only one day (had it really only been less than a full day?) he had frightened Bee, found out he couldn't go back to college, beaten up a politician with a breakfast tray, freaked out in a janitor's closet, sat through many torturous hours in a debriefing, learned his friend wouldn't be coming home with him, viewed the carnage of several dead bodies, realized that he was the most wanted person on the face of the planet, thrown a sandwich into a wall, spied on Optimus scheming about him (heard Optimus called a jackass to his face), been blasted from an air vent, slammed into a wall, and threatened with an ion cannon wielded by his best friend. Now his arm was broken and he had so many people he needed to talk to, lie to, comfort and confront he just wanted to scream, pack it all up in a cardboard box and shove it over the side of a cliff. End of story, now Sam gets to go stuff his face with pizza, sleep till noon, and play videogames with Miles in his NORMAL life. (Well, maybe not the pizza part- he still felt like he might need a bucket.)

"Yep. Two flights of stairs," at her disbelieving look, he elaborated, "I tripped. And fell. Down, you know, two flights of stairs. Oh, and I broke my arm."

She didn't look like she didn't believe a word of his story (or maybe that was the drugs beginning to make him a little loopy?), but she obviously decided to just let it go. "Well, try to be more coordinated in the future. The injuries you came out of the desert with are still healing- any more 'falling down two flights of stairs' might undo all the good a few days of rest have done."

"I'll make sure he has a mattress or two to land on," Mikaela spoke up from the doorway.

The sound of his girl friend's voice startled Sam into a whole-body flinch. Not a good thing, in retrospect, as the motion jarred his broken arm and reminded him of how extraordinarily painful broken limbs could be.

"Mikaela!" he squeaked guiltily as she strode casually through the door. He cleared his throat, then practiced his skills at stating the obvious. "You're here."

She came to the side of his bed and hoisted herself up beside him, swinging her dangling feet. He tried not to stare at her tanned legs.

"Ratchet called me in full-blown mother hen mode to come check on you. He would have come himself, except that he wouldn't fit through the door."

Sam darted a glance at the doctor as she moved a respectful distance away to check some equipment. She didn't seem surprised at the mention of the alien passenger, so he relaxed marginally. Accidentally spilling the beans to a civilian would have just been one more thing he really didn't need.

"I'm fine. My arm's just busted- it's not like I'm dead or anything."

The familiar creeping, crawling, itching feeling shivered in his spine and worked its way down to his finger tips, making them tremble with the need to get a message to Bumblebee. He needed, for his own sanity, to bring his friend out of his funk. Hell, HE was the one who had almost been blown to pieces. If anyone had a right to be huffy, it was him. Suddenly stumbling over an idea, he called up an internet browser on the WiFi connection.

Mikaela leaned against him (on his good side, luckily) and rested her chin on his shoulder to see what he was doing.

"Well that's good. Otherwise I'd have to drag you back so I could kill you for putting me through your death, again. And then I'd have to drag you back again after I killed you so I could kiss you senseless."

"Sounds like fun," he answered, distracted, as he typed out an e-mail to Bumblebee's address, "The kissing part, I mean. The rest not so much."

Mikaela heaved a theatrical sigh. "Ratchet would have a cow if I did, though. And then Bee would kick my butt."

He sent the first e-mail and started working on another one.

"I certainly hope not. I like your butt. -Hey!" He cried out as she got him in a head lock from the side and gave him a vigorous noogy. Though he blushed to his ears at the second grade antics, the childish contact warmed him from the inside out. "You're messing up my hair!" he whined, grinning so much it hurt. For once, the expression felt real.

"Baby. Your hair's not short enough to mess up." His tormenter released his head and gave him a playful shove.

"But you've got to admit, it's certainly stylish." Sam waggled his eyebrows and passed a hand over his hair. The ploy worked- Mikaela threw back her head and laughed.

Pressing send on the second e-mail, Sam opened a new page and started working on a third. There was no way he was going to let them end on bad terms. So yeah, okay, he could see why Bumblebee would be mad at him. Furious, even. He'd spied on their leader, then gone and almost gotten himself killed. Heck, he'd be mad at himself in Bumblebee's place. But if he had to say goodbye, the last thing he wanted was to leave with his best friend still pissed at him. So he was going to fix this. Somehow.

Craning her neck to look over his shoulder when he returned his attention to the blackberry in his hands, Mikaela asked warily, "Sam, what are you doing?"

"Spamming Bumblebee."

She processed that for a moment, then repeated, "You're spamming Bumblebee. With e-mails."

"Yep. He blocked my texts."

Suddenly tense, she straightened away from him.

"You mean he hasn't come talk to you yet?"

That made him look up from composing his fourth message.

"No. He's been avoiding me. Why?"

"Because Optimus ordered him to come talk to you."

Sam froze, blinking, like a deer in the headlights.

"You've been to see Optimus?"

"Yeah. When you disappeared from the lounge, I figured you'd eventually end up going to see the Autobots." Unexpectedly, she shivered. "It was scary, Sam. I've never seen him so angry. Never. Not even when fighting Megatron or the Fallen. It was like being in the middle of a lightning storm- I thought he was going to start shooting at any minute."

"...at Bee?"

"No, at Mudflap and Skids."

Sam cringed, ducking his head with a sigh. "So you know, then," he muttered, stealthily sending out another nagging e-mail.

Mikaela grimaced. "Yeah. But don't worry, I don't blame Bee. It was just a misunderstanding. I blame you."

"Me? But I'm the invalid, here! See?" he held up his broken arm, "Have pity on a man in a cast!" But then his train of thought carried him to the next logical conclusion, and his let his cast-swaddled arm drop back to his side, mood sinking like a rock. "I guess my parents know too, then."

Just what he wanted to deal with. He had hoped to ply them with the same story he had used on the doctor, counting on their natural inclination to believe the more innocent version of events to keep him from a painful argument about his choice in friends. Painful, because on some level he knew that, if it came down to it, he would choose his guardian angel over his parents. That wasn't a choice he wanted to have to make.

But Mikaela surprised him. "No, they don't. Not yet. I was supposed to tell them—since, in Optimus' words, they'd probably be more responsive to another human being-but I thought you should be the one to do it."

"Yeah," he answered hollowly, mood roller-coastering up and down, "Thanks."

Planting her hands on the bed, Mikaela leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. It was such a sweet, sisterly, and somehow sexy thing to do. It reminded him that he did have an anchor after all- his girl friend.

"Don't worry," She breathed against his neck, making his heart race, "At least you have something to do to give you time to think up a good excuse."

Spamming Bee with a single-letter e-mail, Sam tilted his face down towards her and touched his lips to the tip of her nose.

"Yeah? Like what?" He murmured, hoping she was thinking about getting into a much-needed make out session.

"Like talking to Optimus."

Damn. Not only was she good at making a freezer start to steam, she was also adept at sudden turn offs. Feeling suddenly sulky, Sam pulled back and hunched over his blackberry, forgoing the typing out of actual messages in favor of sending various letters, numbers, and punctuation marks, all designed to fill up Bee's inbox. The scout couldn't give him the silent treatment forever. Already Sam must have pushed 'send' at least 27 times.

"Yeah, well, he's been keeping me in the dark, so maybe it's time he got a taste of his own medicine- turnabout is fair play, and all that."

Mikaela pulled back and pinned him with a flat look. "So you're going bitch about him not telling you anything, and then go and not let him tell you anything."

Childishly he refused to meet her eyes, pretending to be absorbed by e-mail number 34. She threw up her hands in exasperation and slid off the bed.

"Well, when you decide to grow up and behave like an adult give me a call. I have to go tell Leo what's going on- he's convinced the Twins stuffed you in a meat locker with dead bodies or something."

Sam jerked his head up as she snapped off a little wave and turned to leave, pleading, "Don't tell him what actually happened, ok? I've had enough of people wigging out on me for one day."

She lifted an eyebrow. "Are you counting yourself? Nevermind," she added when he opened his mouth to object, "What's the story we're going to use?"

Deciding that he really didn't want to hang around in the antiseptic-scented infirmary anymore, Sam mirrored her and slid from the bed with considerably less grace than his girl friend.

"You already heard it, remember?"

"'I fell down two flights of stairs'?" A wry snort. "Please. No one would believe you're that clumsy."

"No really," he insisted, sliding a glance to the doctor working half way across the room and knowing she was listening in, "I DID fall down two flights of stairs." And he jerked an indicative thumb at their inconspicuous watcher.

Mikaela only laughed, tossing her hair over her shoulder and sauntering away.

"Whatever you say, Sam. Whatever you say."

Trying not to appear clingy, he waited until she vanished out of sight down the hallway to follow her through the door. To his intense mortification, he could have sworn he heard muffled laugher from behind him as the door swung shut on his heels.

….

When under the influence of drugs, various body parts had a habit of disobeying him. His stomach, for one, would not stop informing him that he needed to remain in close proximity to a bathroom. His arm, too, ignored his mentally shouted commands to Stop Hurting Damnit! And his feet, in direct defiance of his conscious mind, lead him away from the hanger and up towards the flight deck.

Despite all of his vehement rants and embarrassing outbursts, now that the time had come he feared hearing the truth. Not that he objected to truth in general, but in his experience the most outrageous, terrifying, and potentially lethal things that had come from the Autobots' vocalizers turned out to be true. World-endingly true. ('We must find those glasses', 'He's going to use it to destroy the sun!') And his world had already ended enough for one day, thank-you-very-much. The part of him fed on adrenaline roared that it was his life and that he deserved to know what was going on, and wanted to watch Optimus squirm for plotting behind his back. But another, slightly larger part of him hoped that if he ignored whatever it was it would go away. Fade out. Become nothing more than a dream (don't think about the nightmares, thinking about them keeps them with you).

So he stumped down a few hallways and climbed a few flights of stairs, seeking out the calming brilliance of the stars. Light, but not too much of it. Silent beauty that remained unchanged no matter how the ground beneath his feet heaved. As he walked he continued to pummel Bee's address with e-mails (65). Away from Mikaela's calming influence, his fears and doubts began to ooze from the cracks in his mind again. Maybe he should give his friend the space he obviously wanted- maybe Bee was so angry with him he wanted Sam to stew for a while in his own funk. Grudgingly he had to admit that it would serve him right. The yellow scout was his friend, but he had overstepped his bounds. No matter how strong his own curiosity, he had no right to spy on them. Even if he had uncovered the conspiracy surrounding him, he still felt lower than dirt. Perhaps not enough to choose a different path if he could go back and do everything over again, but enough to ensure that whenever he finally collapsed into bed it would not be to sleep.

At last he twisted the rotating axel to open the ground-level door onto the flight deck (awkward to do with only one arm) and stepped out into the cool evening air. A playful breeze tugged at his clothes and tousled his hair as he pushed the door closed behind him and drew in a deep, cleansing breath. The rows of planes, crouched before him in the near dark like so many giant birds come down to roost, gleamed silver in the moonlight. Save for the hissing churn of waves as the carrier plowed forward through the ocean, all was quiet. Peaceful.

Shivering slightly from the night chill, he tucked his fists beneath his arms and wandered farther out onto the deck. At last he could think and breathe without something or someone reminding him at every turn of how very screwed he was. This place, these things, would continue on with or without him, never knowing or stopping to realize that standing among them was Samuel James Witwicky, the most wanted person in the world. God, sometimes he hated having his name.

Unwrapping his arms to zip up his jacket (which, luckily, fit over newer, slimmer version of the iconic cast now fitted to his arm), he tilted his head back to look at the stars. He could only spot a few of the familiar constellations, and even those were upside down. Thinking back to the time Bumblebee had pointed out Cybertron (my friend, my guardian angel- come back...), he tried to find the pin-prick of light from which alien visitors had descended to earth. But the sky wavered and danced before his eyes in a way that did nothing to assuage his nausea, refusing to hold still for long enough to allow him to search out the oft-observed star.

Whatever. He hugged himself beneath his jacket for warmth, quickly coming to the realization that the light ocean spray wetting his exposed skin was not very pleasant when combined with the chilly air. Though he did not particularly wish to return inside and seek out either Optimus or his parents, neither did he want to get sick and have to add a cold to his swiftly growing list of things amiss in the Sam universe. With one last glance out at the undulating ocean, he turned to go back inside.

-And stopped cold, heart leaping up into his throat, at the sight of Optimus Prime crouched on the second level deck of the observation tower, watching him. Directly beneath the silent monolith of living metal, one floor down, stood the door through which he had passed. Awed shivers trailed their icy fingers up and down his spine; the Autobot leader had been there, watching him, waiting for him, ever since he had first stepped out onto the deck.

Though he knew Optimus would not harm him, he didn't dare take a step forward. Awash in starlight, the robot's body seemed to change, becoming more dangerous, more alien. The patriotic red and blue faded out into the gray of night; every metal plate, every angle, caught the wane light with a knife-edge gleam. The two optics riveted to his wooden form glowed an intense, unwavering blue that pierced through the gloom like the watching eyes of some repentant demon.

As the alien leader slowly, sinuously, unfolded himself from his crouch and dropped without a whisper of sound to the deck below, Sam felt his palms grow slick with sweat. His heart boomed between his ears, each pulse shaking his whole body. Instantly he felt annoyed with himself. This was Optimus- the world-saving, ass-kicking, sorta-friend that had given his life to save him from the wrath of Megatron. In defiance of animal instincts that screamed 'predator' he took a few shaky steps forward to meet the approaching Autobot half way.

"Hey, Optimus," he greeted, working for nonchalance and failing spectacularly. He sounded like a young boy going to meet his girl friend's ex-con father for the first time- and when he had done that he hadn't sounded nearly this frightened. Maybe because Mikaela's father wasn't thirty feet tall. And made of metal. And totting giant guns and swords. "Nice weather tonight, huh? Can't usually see this many stars at home- it's pretty sweet. The cold sucks, though. Do Cybertronians even get cold? I mean of course Megadork was, they kept him frozen after all, but does chilly weather bother you guys?"

Optimus let him talk himself into a hole uninterrupted, only moving to stand right beside him and looking down at the smaller human. In the dark, the only thing he could see of the robot was a looming shadow from which gleamed two impossibly bright eyes.

"I had thought, after your outburst earlier, that you would demand to speak with me at the first opportunity," Optimus commented quietly, not even bothering to answer Sam's rambling questions. They both knew that whether or not Cybertronians felt the cold was not the issue on the forefront of his mind.

"Yeah, well, you know how it is," Sam evaded, dreading the way the entire lop-sided conversation seemed to be leading up to the very discussion he now wanted to avoid at all costs, "Pain and happy pills are good at taking the wind out of your sails." Then wondering if Optimus understood the expression, added, "I mean, good at calming you down from a hurricane of fury to something the consistency of fudge. Not a lot of fight left."

"It heartens me considerably to see that you are, indeed, calmer. Or at least not ready to physcially attack me."

Sam had to snort at that, attempting to edge his way around one large foot. The door was only twenty feet away. "Optimus, even majorly pissed off, I'm not suicidal enough to try to attack you. The fight would be over as soon as you stepped on me."

Ever watchful, the alien caught his surreptitious sneaking and moved his foot to properly block his route of escape.

"I should hope you would think better of me than to worry about my 'stepping on you'."

Completely missing the strained note to the robotic voice, Sam continued his edging, trying to think of a way to stall him for long enough to make a break for it.

"Figure of speech."

Sam knew Optimus wasn't fooled by his careful sidestepping of the question. The robot turned to track his movements as he slowly backed his way towards the door, good hand shoved into his pocket in an effort to seem unperturbed.

"Sam," Optimus said softly, "We need to talk."

Heart fluttering like a caged bird inside his chest, he continued to back away, even as the other took a minute step forward to maintain the distance between them. "Talk! Talk is good. What do you want to talk about? There's the weather, but we kinda already covered that. Or we could swap manly stories and laugh till we puke- well, I'd puke, maybe without even needing a story to get me going."

"I know that you are frightened, Sam. But now that you have discovered that I have been conferring with General Thatcher about you, it is time you heard the whole truth. You certainly seemed to want it an hour ago."

Ten feet. He could make it. He could stop this train wreck before it started (-ignore them and they'll go away-). "That was an hour ago," he shot back, "And now I've decided I really don't want to have to listen to you lying to me anymore. So no, I don't want to talk about this-" he gestured with a furious hand to the not-so-large space between them, "-whatever this is. Whatever you and Thatcher were planning, you can both stuff it," Five feet. So close. "Stuff it under your hat, stuff it in a sock, just get rid of it, because I don't want any part of it. I have a life, and I'm very eager to get back to it." He paused in his tirade to refill his lungs with the sweet night air, turning away from Optimus. "I have to go tell my parents that I'll be in plaster for the next six weeks before the go Mt. Vesuvious on me," he paused awkwardly, finally tearing his eyes away from the metal giant. "So bye."

His hand brushed the door, but he never had the chance to open it.

Optimus effortlessly plucked him up by the back of his jacket and pulled him away from the portal to freedom.

"Hey!"

The alien brought him close to his chest, trapping him between his hands as he curled his body around the human- and began to transform.

Sam had seen Bumblebee transform several times up close, but never this close. Every part of the metal body exploded outwards, splitting apart along millions of invisible seams, shifting, rearranging, sliding, reforming according a pattern too complex to follow. It was like watching a giant robot-shaped Rubick's cube rearrange itself, albeit one with pieces smaller than the nail of his pinky.

Another difference between this transformation and Bumblebee's was the fact that he was not watching it occur from the outside- it was happening around him. Living pieces of metal cascaded over his head, cutting off his vision. He was lifted up, buffeted, curled into a tiny ball and pushed this way and that with the same gentleness that marked all the Autobots' interactions with humans- though jostled and terrified out of his mind, he was not harmed.

In a matter of seconds that seemed to Sam to have spanned several hours, he found himself dropping heavily onto the seat in Optimus' cab. The curve of the steering wheel snapped together and locked into place, clear liquid flowed up from the doors and dashboard to form the windows and windshield, numbers and letters appeared on the instrument panel like oil separating from water.

Breath heaving in his chest at a rate near hyperventilation, Sam looked around wildly, stunned to find himself sitting in the interior of the very ordinary looking truck.

Then, he did something that only seemed very natural to any human used to non-thinking vehicles- he slid across the seat and pulled on the door handle. Not only was the door locked, the handle reacted as though carved from stone, refusing to budge even an inch at his insistent tugging.

"This is BULLSHIT!" he exploded, still jiggling the handle frantically. And though he knew the result would prove to be the same, he slid all the way across the bench seat and tried the other door. Yep, still shut tight. Might as well not have been a door at all. "You cheated!" It really, really, really didn't seem fair.

"We need to talk," Optimus repeated calmly, sounding as though he were sitting beside him rather than forming the truck around him, "Though you may not wish to hear what I have to say, you will simply have to, as humans say, 'suck it up and deal with it'."

"No. No! No! NO! NO!" Sam cried hysterically, "I'm sick of this! I'm sick of you and how you always come and wreck my life! What part of 'I'm a teenager and don't know how to handle this shit' don't you understand!"

Releasing the handle with a snap, he reared back and smashed one curled fist into the window with all his strength. The material, perfectly solid until the moment his flesh connected, bowed outward to accommodate the blow—a good thing, or else he would have probably broken his hand.

"First you show up and tell me I need to find a pair of dinky old glasses to keep Megatron from taking over the world, and that was okay, because what did I care about the stupid things? But then somehow that morphed into, 'You have to destroy the allspark, Sam' and I ended up getting blown off a fucking BUILDING! Then, just when government stooges stop dropping by every week and my life FINALLY starts getting back to normal, YOU pull me away from college after ONE DAY and tell me that I need to do even MORE world-saving shit, because once just obviously wasn't enough!"

He sucked in gasp after gasp through rattling teeth, trembling as though he might shake to pieces. Directionless anger grew and fed on itself in its chest, breaking loose of his carefully maintained moorings and flaring into a firestorm that consumed all else. Every scrap of frustration, of terror, of righteous indignation, of the sense that none of it was any fair came roaring up inside of him all at once. He needed something, anything, to lash out at and rid himself of fire so hot that it threatened to roast him alive if he didn't break something. But there was nothing breakable within reach. So he settled for taking everything out on Optimus' cab.

The alien leader uttered not a word, gave not even so much as a twitch, as he repeatedly pummeled his one good fist into the window. He tore at the seats with his fingernails, kicked the steering wheel with all his might, rained blows down upon the dash. He growled like a wild, savage thing, screaming, "LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT!".

But Optimus did not let him out. And little by little the storm raged itself out, calmed, and passed. When the last drop of fury had been expended, he lay down on the seat and curled his knees to his chest, trembling, eyes hot and tight as though he had been crying for hours.

"Okay," he whispered at last, voice rasping. "I think I'm done now."

"Are you sure? I think there are a few places you haven't managed to bruise," Optimus commented wryly, but without heat.

"I'm sure. I think I just had that on my chest of a while," he murmured, feeling even more miserable at the word 'bruise'. "This will probably sound stupid and really inappropriate right now, but I 'm sorry if I hurt you. I just needed to...I don't know. Thrash all that out, or something."

"I know. And that is why I allowed you to continue unhindered. Despite what you may think of how much my soldiers respect me, you are certainly not the first to take out your anger by physically attacking me."

Seeing the extended opening to a less painful subject, Sam pushed himself upright. Regardless of Optimus' words, he could not imagine any of the other Autobots attacking the great leader.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Oh." He cast around for another topic, trying the handle more calmly this time and beating back his rising ire as he still found it locked tight. Since it was, of course, his body, Optimus felt the attempt and turned the conversation back to a more serious, and feared, topic.

"Sam, you are obviously under a misapprehension which I need to correct. When I say that we need to talk about your future, I am not referring to an attempt to, ah, cajole you into 'saving the world' again."

Despite the assurance, fear twinged in a corner of his mind the way a fly would disturb a spider web. There were other ways to ruin his life.

(-'Deliver to me this boy!'-)

"That doesn't make me feel much better, Optimus," He chuckled humorlessly.

Outside the cab, the weather had started to change; wisps of fog began to trail lazily across the windshield, obscuring the stars. He prayed that the gloomy shift was not an omen of some sort, but the way his life seemed to go it probably was.

For a long moment Optimus held his silence, giving Sam the impression that he was taking his time to get his thoughts in order. For beings that could calculate thousands of possible reaction scenarios in the middle of a battle in under a second, that was saying something.

Then at last he said, "You should probably know first that I am thrice indebted to you, Sam."

Whatever Sam might have feared to be the robot's opening words, those certainly were certainly the last he expected.

"Okay, I'm confused. I can see the whole bringing you back to life thing as counting as one, but what about the other two?"

"The second, as you say, comes from your brave actions against Megatron in Mission City."

Feeling inexplicably embarrassed and humbled, he ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck.

"That doesn't really count, though, because you were planning on sacrificing yourself anyway. I just made it so that you didn't have to."

"And in doing so you destroyed Megatron, something I have never been able to achieve," Optimus refuted quietly, the same hint of steely determination in his voice, "If I had indeed sacrificed myself to destroy the Allspark, Megatron would have surely wreaked unholy vengeance on the rest of my soldiers and on the human race as a whole. Your actions not only spared my life, they prevented the deaths of countless others."

Sam shook his head, suddenly exhausted, and leaned against the window.

"I guess for right now we'll just have to agree to disagree, since I still don't think that counts as saving your life. And what's the third item on this list of yours?"

But Optimus had gone silent again. Sam's heart beat picked up in response.

"I do not think you realize," the alien said slowly, wonderingly, "How very much you mean to Bumblebee."

"Bumblebee?" Sam blinked, thrown for a loop. "What does Bumblebee have to do with this?"

"Everything. For you see, even though we do not have mothers and fathers as does your race- since we do not reproduce- we do have something caller 'Creators', those who help to design and construct the new shells into which a spark from the AllSpark would be transferred. I was one of Bumblebee's creators. In human terms, you could think of me as his adoptive father."

Sam leaned back against the soft leather (leather-yet-not, alien as the rest of him) and slowly shook his head from side to side, puzzled and cautiously hopeful that the entire conversation wouldn't lead up to him getting thrown to the wolves. The first thought that occurred to him was rather inane- Bumblebee must have gotten his looks from his mother, because red and blue mixed together so did not make a golden yellow. But then that thought burst into nothingness under the weight of another, more serious one.

"Wait, you let your SON be one of your soldiers?" He blurted in stunned outrage, unable to wrap his mind around the concept. "But you send them out to fight Decepticons! As in, maybe to die!"

Only after the fact did he realize what an awful thing that was to say. Way to go, Sam; open mouth, insert foot.

There was no meaningful pause this time, but Optimus' voice was now laden with an abyss of sorrow. "And if I had designed him without any weapons, sheltered him away from the fighting as best I could, he would have been killed. Bumblebee came online during a time when our entire planet was near destruction, no part untouched by war. Though I longed for him not to have to see and experience the horrors to which I had been an intimate witness, I knew that the best way for him to have a chance to ever know a life beyond war was to have the ability to survive it."

"So you- designed- him to be a scout?" Sam couldn't hide the appalled timbre coloring his tone. He didn't care if it was a culturally insensitive statement to make. This was Bumblebee—he needed to know.

(I couldn't save you. I'm so sorry.)

But once more, Optimus surprised him. "No. As I have said, I was not Bumblebee's sole creator- the others working on his spark-less body wanted to build the perfect shock trooper, a warrior that could survive on the front lines and keep fighting even with injuries that would normally prove incapacitating."

Sam leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the steering wheel, heart twisting into knots at the thought of sweet, sensitive, gentle Bee being sent to fend for his life against wave after crashing wave of advancing Decepticons. Feeling abruptly ill, he would have traded an arm (preferably the broken one) for a sick bag so he wouldn't foul Optimus' interior with hurl whiff.

"But he's not," he whispered hoarsely, stumbling over the contradiction in the story, "He's not a shock trooper. He's a scout."

"Yes. And that is partially my doing, though mostly his. You see, I could not persuade the others to leave Bumblebee a functionless protoform- that is, one without a pre-designed purpose hard wired into their shells before being given a spark. So I returned in secret after they had gone and erased all traces of shock trooper programming. I left Bumblebee, in essence, a blank slate. Though I could not in good conscience leave him weaponless, I wanted to give him the chance to develop according to the urgings of his spark and his spark alone."

A whirling noise that could have been a sigh came from the truck. "To my mingled relief and chagrin, Bumblebee proved not only to be an exceptional warrior, but a talented scout as well, perhaps the best our planet has seen since the Golden Age. But I held him back, never sending on any of the most dangerous missions and never sending him out alone. Like any human teenager-" his voice took on a pointed humor, making Sam flush again, "-he was eager to prove himself. After a while, the war began to turn in our favor and I felt confident enough to send him alone on his first mission to scout an asteroid mine in a relatively low-risk area. I thought he would be perfectly safe." A long, regretful pause during which the very air thickened with years of nurtured sorrow. His voice grew softer, becoming almost too low to hear. "I was wrong."

Together they sat in silence for an unmeasured eternity of time, watching the vaporous fog thicken and begin to creep across the deck like the formless essence of restless souls, of painful memories.

Horrified that he thought he knew where this story was going, Sam didn't want to hear the rest. Hearing it would make it real, and he couldn't stand the thought of anything awful happening to his best friend- especially something he could neither prevent nor fix. And yet gnawing curiosity began to eat away at his insides, consuming him with an itch he could not scratch.

Finally, he worked up enough courage to clear his throat and ask with a hoarse voice, "What happened?"

Again Optimus emitted a whirring noise that somehow conveyed oceans of despair and remorse- tears from a being that could not cry. "...There was an ambush waiting at the mine. The Decepticons had hoped the I would come in person, and when they captured Bumblebee instead they decided to take out their disappointment on him. ...Those were the longest three weeks of my life."

Sam's fingers gripped the steering wheel so hard he thought it might snap in his grip. Helpless anger set his teeth on edge, giving him the furious strength to ignore the painful protests of his broken arm. A fractured bone was nothing, nothing compared to what he could only imagine Bumblebee had gone through ('...I have endured torture far worse than anything S7 could ever hope to do...'). Oh, Bee...

"When we found him," Optimus continued, "his voice box had been mangled beyond repair. One of the Decepticons we interrogated revealed that his captors could not force Bumblebee to reveal any information, not even after two weeks of torture that had broken Autobots older, stronger, and wiser than he... So they ripped out his throat so they would not have to listen to him scream."

Forget puking. All of Sam's insides abruptly vanished, creating a vacuum so strong that the agony of it threatened to crush him into a little speck. He couldn't breathe. (What kind of evil would chain down an angel down and tear out its wings?)

"You mean he- he didn't crack? They did all that and he still didn't betray you?" He gasped out with the last little bit of air in his lungs.

"No." The word held a note of almost spiritual wonder. "Bumblebee was, and is, the most loyal being I have ever encountered in the universe. You cannot imagine how much it pains him to know he hurt you."

"But it was an accident!" Sam insisted, "He thought I was a Decepticon or something-"

"Yet no matter how well intentioned his actions were, he still hurt you," Optimus cut across him, "More than that, he feels that he has shattered your trust in him. He is dedicated to you as he is to no one else, not even me. And he feels that, as your guardian, he has failed you."

Sam thought of mentioning the way his 'guardian' had blocked his texts and stubbornly refused to let him apologize, but decided against it. Though he still didn't want to find out what Optimus had been planning behind his back, anything was better than the major league Bumblebee-inspired guilt trip he was currently on. Mentioning the scout's refusal to talk to him would only further the conversation in the same painful vein.

"So what does all this have to do with the 'thrice indebted' thing?"

"When Bumblebee was finally rescued," Optimus went on, seeming to ignore him, "He was not the same Autobot I had sent off on his first solo mission. In some indefinable way, the part of him that was Bumblebee had died. He functioned as flawlessly as ever, never missing a step in battle, never losing a target he tracked. But his shell had become as hollow as before being granted a spark. I believe the human term to describe it would be 'souless'."

"He's fine now, though! What does this have to do with-"

"Bumblebee is now 'fine', Samuel James Witwicky, for the sole reason that he has found someone to live for again. He has found you."

Caught breathless in a stunned, limp haze, Sam's mind flashed back to his breakdown in the janitor's closet when Bee had told him that, no matter Sam's residual guilt about the matter, the human had saved him in a way far more important than freeing him from Simmons' clutches. At the time he had gone along with it to pacify Bee, though his mind had continued to assault his heart with poison-tipped arrows of guilt and endless snapshots from the night where he had failed the most important task ever given to him (ice, so much ice, struggles weakening against the cold, and still the voiceless angel screamed-). He had never considered that Bee was sharing a carefully guarded slice of his heart, bearing it to his scrutiny, leaving himself open for a brutal attack. He had not really believed that the alien's words might be true. Kind, yes. Pacifying, definitely. But true?

Sam couldn't speak, not even one tiny little word (no words existed for this- something too powerful to be expressed with things as mundane as sounds or letters).

"Bumblebee is very dear to me, Sam," Optimus continued. "Dearer than my own spark. I owe you my life for a third time because in saving him, you saved me."

Breathe in, hold it, breathe out. Lean forward, elbows to knees, and cover prickling eyes with a shaking hand. He was only Sam. Just Sam. He wasn't stronger, faster, smarter, kinder, or better than anyone else. There was no reason for Bumblebee to have chosen to befriend him.

That thought abruptly spiraled out of control, tainting his moment of awe with the bitter tang of reality. Despite what Optimus said, Bee was probably only his friend out of convenience—most likely, the alien had simply latched onto the first source of kindness and acceptance he had encountered. Not that Sam would go back in time and trade places with someone else to test that theory; he was worshipfully grateful he had been chosen, whether by luck or cosmic design. Forcing down the snide little voice whispering that he was not worthy, Sam slowly straightened up.

"Alright. Three times, then. You say you're in my debt three times over. That means...what, exactly?"

Once again, though Optimus gave no outwardly signal that could be perceived by the five senses, Sam felt a shift in the Peterbilt's mood, this time from one of solemn reflection to tense resolution. The tense part he could understand given his previous outburst, but the curious flavor of stony resolve mystified him. And terrified him. (And he must have been slipping a gear, because he had no way of sensing either from a truck).

"It means that my life belongs to you now, and it is incumbent upon my honor that I take whatever steps necessary- no matter how radical- to ensure your protection."

"Wait." The fingers of his good hand curled tightly around the edge of the seat. "Sorry, but you're not making any sense. Why separate me from Bumblebee if you're trying to protect me? I only have, I don't know-" he unclenched his hand and began to count off on his fingers, "-about, oh say, several dozen alien robots trying to turn me into decorative wall art!"

Ever serene, Optimus did not react to his shout. "Which is why you will not be separated from Bumblebee-"

YEEEESSS! He shoots, he scores! Sam could have almost kissed the Peterbilt right on the gear shift for having the balls to stand up to the snot-nosed, brief-case totting politicians, give them the Optimus version of a triumphant middle finger, and do whatever he felt like anyway. Which, in this case, seemed to include keeping the dynamic duo (not real, never real, clinging from need not love) together.

"-rather, you will be accompanying us back to NEST headquarters after we dock in India."

And his storm of thunderous mental applause ground to an abrupt halt. It took several tries to process the statement, running it backwards and forwards under an internal microscope. Even once he pieced together the literal meaning of the words, the implications behind it remained elusive. Unthinkable.

"...What?"

"I don't know if you realize this, Sam," Optimus imparted hesitantly, "But no one beyond ourselves and select key officials within the US government know that the Fallen's power has been eradicated. The rest of the world is still looking for you."

"Yeah, I know," he waved it off, wishing the alien would get to the point, "I saw the story running on every news station in the world before the twins- before I ended up in the hanger. So yeah, it sucks, but I know. I'm hoping they'll put out a statement or something that will get everyone off my back. But what did you mean by that thing you said before? The NEST thing?"

"Regardless of my personal feelings on the matter, we cannot inform the rest of the world of what occurred in Egypt. To do so would be to give vital information to the Decepticons in the process of 'getting everyone off your back'," He tone shifted, becoming almost sympathetic, "In the interest of protecting you from your fellow humans, you will be coming with us back to NEST where your location will be unknown and where we can better protect you."

The taste of sour bile filled Sam's mouth, causing him to grimace.

"I may not like it, but I guess that makes sense. I was kinda flipped out about that, before—it's not exactly pleasant finding out that you have, 'Wanted, dead or alive,' tattooed across your forehead." He crushed the maggots of panic that began to wriggle in his gut as he spoke, concentrating on breathing around the stone in his chest. I am so screwed. "How long do you think I will have to stay?"

No answer. The truck around him seemed, for a moment, to be nothing more than a dark, silent hunk of metal. The fog had become a restless white wall, devouring the fight deck around them and setting them adrift in nothingness. "Optimus?" His voice began to waver without his permission, "I'll only have to stay with you guys for a few months, right? Just until this whole thing blows over?"

"There are more than your fellow humans to consider, Sam."

Something very, very cold began to creep up his spine. "...No..."

"Even if, eventually, all the world's governments cease hunting you- and even if, in a perfect world, every last psychopathic individual ceases to hunt for you-"

"No."

"-The Decepticons will never rest until they have obliterated you."

"No!"

"And while you are around them," he added softly, "your family is in danger as well. Mikaela is in danger."

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!"

Optimus was right, of course. Arrogant robot always had to be right. The Decepticons had already lost everything- Cybertron, the Fallen, even the Allspark. And the most dangerous enemy was always the one with nothing left to lose.

Though every fiber of his being longed to scream in denial—though he longed to rebel against a universe apparently determined to take everything he held dear away from him- there was no part of the robot's reasoning he could refute. If he had taken the time to think about it, he would have probably figured all of those things out on his own, though he would never have come to the conclusion that it was in his best interest to uproot him from his home. He would have found a way to make it work. Optimus just didn't want to give him a chance.

Shoving the angry, foaming-at-the-mouth part of him into a deep hole in his mind, he consciously relaxed his shoulder muscles, uncurled his fists (ignored the throbbing of his arm beneath the cast) and lounged back against the seat, palms open on his knees. Calm. Reasonable.

"I'm going home, and you can't stop me." Okay, so maybe more infantile than reasonable, but at least his voice remained steady and at a normal decibel level. "And if you try to, remember that there are at least 380 million people who object to kidnapping. Especially kidnapping a fellow American."

One human was no match for an Autobot, but he doubted even Optimus was deluded enough to try his luck at over a million to one odds. But when the peterbilt spoke again, he didn't seem to be backing down.

"Galloway called me while you were being fitted with a cast."

With a start, Sam remembered that slimy git had been brow beaten into assisting Thatcher and Optimus with their plan. Wow, that guy worked fast.

"As of approximately 45 minutes ago," the Autobot continued, "You are no longer a citizen of the United States."

The words hit him like ten thousand volts, momentarily stopping his heart.

American citizenship- two words coveted by millions of people all over the world. The topic of dreams, books, and life-changing voyages to a land unknown. Never one to be particularly patriotic, Sam had nevertheless come to realize how thankful he was to have been born in the USA after seeing the state of the slums in Egypt. He had rights, liberties, voting privileges and those sorts of things; he could make fun of a senator's big nose all he wanted without fearing retribution. America- and, by extension, California- may not have been perfect (far from it, in fact) but it was his home. He'd never even been to so much as Canada before being teleported to the Egyptian desert. America was quirky, multi-lingual and multi-racial, bullying and protecting, irritating and endearing. He didn't know how to be anything else but American.

Yet somehow, without his knowledge, it had all been taken away from him. No more driver's license, no more passport, no more constitutional rights. Just as happened in all those cheesy sci fi movies, he'd been erased. Sam didn't trust himself to speak. More than that, he didn't know what, if anything, to say.

Optimus seemed to be waiting for him to react. Well, he wasn't going to do him the courtesy of either erupting in vengeful rage or pretending that what he had done was okay. So he simply sat there, staring at the fog with unblinking eyes, concentrating on nothing beyond existing.

After a few moments, the Autobot offered, "It was contingent upon our signing the treaty with your government that they relinquish their claim to you as a US citizen. I assure you that it was not easy to persuade them to let you go."

"Is that what you did to piss them off?" he whispered from between unmoving lips, his momentarily stunned mind coughing back to life and beginning to sort through everything that had been said, looking for a loop hole, a way out.

"My manner of persuasion was, I believe, the true cause of the uproar," If Sam had been inclined to care, he would have laughed at the fact that Optimus actually sounded embarrassed. "According to Cybertronian custom, it is my right to assert my claim to you, resorting to combat if necessary. When they first balked at the idea of revoking your citizenship, I demanded to know who, ultimately, held the loyalty of all citizens," his tone dipped, growing sly, "I was informed that, in theory, the person through whom all citizenship is confirmed is the President."

The revelation jostled Sam from his funk. Optimus had actually gone all the way up to the President to screw him over? That took some serious dedication. But then he mind caught up with the implications of the rest of the admission, and he choked on his own spit.

"'Combat'?" He repeated, incredulous, "You would have fought the President for me? Like, with your bodies and not with words or an exchange of lawsuits or something?"

"Most likely it would not have come to that."

"Oh. Well good." Then, "Only 'most likely'? As in, there's a .01% chance you might have?"

Optimus rumbled a laugh. "Their reaction was very similar to yours. Although I issued no threat, my popularity in Washington has declined somewhat in these past few days."

A rush of hate pounded through him for a moment at the fact that Optimus seemed to find the whole thing to be slightly amusing. There was nothing funny about any part of the situation. Nothing at all.

"It doesn't matter," he spat bitterly, then, replaying his own turn of phrase in his head, repeated with some measure of hope, "It doesn't matter. See, I may not be a citizen anymore, but that won't stop me from going back there. -Unless of course you 'persuaded' them not to let me over the border."

"No, I did not." All the humor abruptly faded from Optimus' voice, "Whatever you may be inclined to think of me at the moment, I did not request that the United States revoke your citizenship in order to force you to comply with my wishes. Rather, you could not simultaneously be under the jurisdiction of the Autobots and the United States at the same time."

The perplexing revelation washed over him like a bucket of ice water to the face, instantly cooling his boiling anger. He shied away from the implications in his mind, not wanting to look at them or accept them.

"Okay, now you lost me."

"Having you reside at NEST will provide some measure of protection against the Decepticons. Changing your political status from private citizen to human ambassador to the Autobots will provide you with the necessary diplomatic immunity to protect you against others of your kind."

His jaw fell slack and dropped to his knees. "'Ambassador'?" he parroted breathlessly.

"On paper, in any case. Putting you under our protection as an honorary Cybertronian is a necessary step to keeping you from the hands of people who would turn you over to the Decepticons without a second thought. This way, no one on earth can attempt to hold you against your will without serious intergalactic complications." Optimus hesitated, then sighed through the vents (another act, all an act, pretending to be less alien). "I apologize if I have caused you any undue distress by not revealing my plans until now. I had hoped to allow you a week more of a relatively normal existence without having to worry about the coming changes in your future."

Logic whistled and cheered, tactlessly informing him that he should be thrilled to have a safety net of protection in place for when he re-entered a world turned against him. And on some levels he was. Not only would he get to get to be with Bumblebee again (my friend, my-, my- what?), he wouldn't have to pace his room at three am, restlessly moving to stare out at the sky from every window in the house, looking for the alien jet from his nightmares riding steadily closer on the air. And what kid didn't squeal and jump up and down at the thought of being practically adopted by uber-cool alien robots?

But he wasn't a kid anymore. And his inner child had been shot to death in all the days leading up to Mission city as he learned that not all monsters were big and ugly (how could they keep hurting him? How could they sneer and spit at the gentle alien writhing under their guns? How could they keep cutting him with those knives as he squealed in agony, strapped to a concrete slab?). He was 18. He didn't want to play make believe anymore- he wanted to grow up, go to college, get a degree, get a good job, marry Mikaela and end up with six dozen kids, a house in the suburbs and a dog.

But now, none of it would come to pass. His own country had given him away; he was owned by a group of aliens with powers that verged on godly. He couldn't go back to college, because the Decepticons might find him and kill him. He couldn't go back to his own house, because the Decepticons might find him and kill him. He couldn't go hide under an overpass, because a random stranger might find him, knock him over the head with a rock, and give him to the Decepticons, who would kill him.

And he couldn't go crash on Mikaela's couch, because the Decepticons might find him and hurt girlfriend to get to him.

"So. NEST, huh? Do they have cable? Or air conditioning?"

By that time the medicine had mostly worn off, but as he pulled his knees to his chest he started to giggle a little anyway. (can't go home can't go home)

Optimus gave a bewildered little click, but replied, "Yes. On both counts."

"Do they have a couch or something I could sleep on? I'm not too sure I want to bunk with a bunch of Marines- I've never been a gluten for punishment."

Tiny, spasmodic shakes like the scrawling lines of a seismograph worked their way across his shoulders and down his back, crawling along his arms and legs, wedging themselves into his hands and feet. (no more dumpy room, no more mojo, no more seeing Dad working on his grass)

"A couch would not be sufficient in the long term. You will find that a room as been prepared for your arrival, one that you do not have to share with any of the soldiers living part time on base."

"Wow. You really do like to plan ahead, don't you?"

His clothes may have still been slightly damp, but the warm air drifting from the vents should have ensured that he would not be the slightest bit cold. And yet his skin felt like ice. (no more Miles, no more visits to the lake, no more annoying Trent, no more of mom's disastrous cooking)

Instead of answering his rhetorical question, Optimus asked, "Sam, are you alright?", as if such a thing as 'alright' was even remotely possible under the circumstances.

"No, I'm not alright!" he snapped, fisting his good hand so he wouldn't have to watch his fingers tremble (no more of Dad's stupid pranks, no more Saturday morning waffles, no more shakes at the Wendy's down the street). He gulped down a few swallows of air, trying to get himself under control. He felt like a ball kicked way up into the clouds- he had no idea where he would land, or even if he would land safely. "Will I at least get visiting privileges?" He asked sarcastically.

"Unfortunately, that will not be possible," Optimus refused him, though not unkindly. "The risk of the Decepticons discovering our whereabouts would be significantly higher if passenger craft were seen going frequently to and from NEST headquarters."

(no more Mikaela, no more Mom, no more Dad, no more Mojo, no more Miles- no more home, no more home, no more home, no more home, no more home-)

"It's always always always the Decepticons!" he shouted, voice emerging slightly strangled. "I can't sleep at night because of them! My best friend seems dead half the time because of them! I can't go to college because of them! And NOW you tell me I'll never see my family or my girlfriend because of the Decepticons- I'll never, ever get to see them again, because if I get within a hundred miles of them they might get MURDERED by a Decepticon!"

His face screwed up so tightly in pain that the muscles began to scream; he sunk his head into his hands. "For all the time I'll get to see them before I die, I might as well already be DEAD!"

Optimus had not moved once during their discussion. But at his strangled shout, the engine turned over, the head lights came on, and the Peterbilt abruptly lurched into motion. Jarred upright by the unexpected movement, Sam peered through the windshield, seeing nothing but a dense wall of mist illuminated from the twin beams of powerful light coming from Optimus. Shapes rose and fell beyond the shimmering curtain as Optimus drove forward- a jet, a fuel hose, another jet- making it difficult to discern where they were heading. He had the feeling, however, that Optimus was driving down the length of the ship.

"What's going on?"

Optimus didn't answer.

He leaned forward for a better view out the front window, watching the metal decking roll away beneath them- and suddenly the edge of the ship loomed into view, beyond which lay a hundred foot cliff into the ocean. His heart started to beat faster.

"Optimus, what are you doing?"

The edge of the ship rolled swiftly closer, and the Peterbilt showed no signed of turning.

"Optimus, you're heading for the side!"

Still no answer, but the seat belt took on a life of its own and slithered down over his shoulder, clicking into place.

Five feet. The truck wasn't slowing down.

"Optimus!"

Three feet. One.

-and the front axle of the truck lurched out into open space. Sam screamed as the cab tipped precariously, nose tilting down to give him an intimate view of the roaring waters so far below. He clutched at the seat belt, pressing his body tightly back against the seat as though he could somehow melt through it. His feet scrabbled at the floorboard, finding no purchase.

His heart tried to beat itself out of his chest as the whole truck creaked, shuddered, and finally settled, leaving them balanced precariously on the edge of the ship, gazing down into the churning black ocean. The yellow head lights cut a shining swath through the night air, reminding him of that scene from Jurassic Park where the trailer, lights still ablaze, had dangled from a tree just before falling and crashing into the forest floor a thousand feet below.

For several extraordinarily tense minutes, he continued to cringe away from the windshield, expecting at any moment to die as the truck slipped the rest of the way and sent them hurtling into the water. But when his mind caught up with his instincts, he realized that he was not inside of a truck- he was inside of a transformer. If Optimus did not want to go for a swim, his Peterbilt disguise would not fall. The whole thing was merely a demonstration.

"Judging from your reaction," the Autobot began in a clipped tone, "I would have to conclude that you do not, in fact, want to die."

"Of course I don't want to die!" Sam wailed hysterically, wondering what fruity alien thought processes would have led him to believe that he did.

"Maybe not right now, at this moment, when faced with the actual fact, but merely suggesting that 'I might as well be dead!'-" Sam flinched, hearing his own wild voice wail through the speakers. Had he really sounded that desperate, that lost? "-implies that you have given it at least a minimum of thought."

"So what?" He came back defiantly, now confident enough that Optimus wasn't really trying to off him to challenge the Autobot, despite the fact that he was still plastered to the back of the seat. "It's my life! Or are you going to tell me that it isn't any more?"

Optimus clicked quietly to himself for a while, then said, much more calmly, "I have observed you to be a very warm-hearted, caring, and generous being. But to try to take your own life, or to recklessly throw it away, would be extraordinarily selfish."

"How? It would only affect me!"

Instead of answering, a holographic screen opened up and covered the windshield, blocking out the lonely night. Familiar faces, familiar events, began to flash brightly over the intangible surface: Mikaela kissing him after Mission City, Bumblebee requesting to be his guardian, his parents hugging him with tearful faces on the desert floor, and so many other moments he had forgotten but that warmed him to the core. And from the speakers began to drift a jumble of voices, weaving around him as if in a dream: 'I'm glad I got in that car with you', 'I will go where ever you go, Sam', 'I'm not leaving you! I'm not leaving you!', 'Don't you dare die on me, Sam!'- his family, his girl friend, his guardian, and even Rachet and Ironhide, all talking to or about him, all saying in some small, indefinable way, 'We love you.'

Listening to the affirmations of affection, watching the continuous stream of his friends and family holding him, calling for him, fighting for him, with a loyalty that made his heart feel like it would burst, he realized that Optimus was right. If he ended up killing himself or getting himself killed, he would not be the only one to suffer. He couldn't quite believe that they wouldn't be able to go on with their lives without him, but Optimus' message was clear- if you die, they will die too.

Unable to bear seeing emotion so painfully pure any longer, Sam closed his eyes and bowed his head. Immediately, the recordings went silent and the holo screen darkened away. When he opened his eyes, he came face to face with the foreboding darkness once more. The ocean hissed and roared. Like Megatron.

"I guess I see your point," he chuckled weakly. But once more his heart was drawn to Mikaela and the chuckle died. "I love her, Optimus." He refused to believe the statement sounded like a plea. "She's...well, she's my girlfriend. The girl friend/ boy friend thing doesn't work out too well over long distances, especially without the possibility of parole." He worried his bottom lip. "If I somehow became selfish enough to ask her to leave her life behind, could she come stay with me? You know, permanently."

"Though you probably no longer believe me at this point, I am sorry, Sam. As our ward you have full clearance to live on base. Mikaela does not," Optimus paused, as though debating whether or not to continue. Apparently he decided against it, because the next moment the truck shifted into reverse and pulled its front axle back onto the deck with a jaw-rattling bump. Backing far enough away from the edge to turn around, Optimus drove back the way they had come.

The truck pulled up beside the observation tower only a few seconds later, causing Sam to blink in surprise. It had seemed like a much longer drive on the way out, but he supposed that on the return trip he was sufficiently distracted by his own thoughts not to accurately mark the passage of time. The door popped open, creating a straight line of freedom from the interior of the cab to the door back into the ship. But the seatbelt had not retracted, and Sam could sense Optimus hesitating again, having an internal fight with himself.

Feeling like an ass for how he had treated Optimus when the guy was only trying to help him, Sam reached out and lightly set a hand on the dash.

"You can tell me. I promise I won't go spreading rumors," he tried to joke. It was obviously the wrong tactic to use, because the Autobot leader immediately sealed up like a clam.

"Get some rest, Sam," he advised wearily, unlatching the seat belt and sucking it back into the wall. For a moment the Autobot paused, the constant, sub-aural whirring of his internal mechanisms deepening in tone the way Bumblebee's did when scanning. "And give Bumblebee the chance to talk to you."

"I did!" He defended himself, hopping down from the cab. "I sent him almost a hundred e-mails, but he's been blocking me."

"Ah." Whirl. "Then I should probably tell you that he's been following you ever since you left the hanger."

Sam's steps faltered to a halt. He swung around to face the disguised transformer.

"He's been following me? How? Some of those corridors around the infirmary are really tiny, and the twins had trouble just fitting into a stair well!"

"Yes, the infamous antics of the twins," Optimus said, his normally level voice coming as close to a growl as Sam had ever heard it, tone midnight black. He shivered, suddenly understanding what Mikaela had been talking about and praying that he never encountered a truly pissed Optimus. "You forget that the twins are merely battlefield soldiers while Bumblebee is a skilled and highly trained scout. If he does not want you to know that he is following you, you will never know."

The night had only grown cooler as the fog rolled in- Sam wrapped his arms around himself, grimacing as he realized that his jacket was soaked though. It was like swimming, but with air.

"Did he try to follow me out here?"

"He did follow you out here. He was very upset when I began to drive towards the edge of the ship. At that point, I had to order him back inside."

Thinking of the way Optimus had been able to stealthily watch him from the observation tower, he shivered with awe at the thought that Bee was about a hundred times sneakier. He hadn't even realized the yellow bot was there. It was a very good thing, he reflected, that the Autobots were on their side.

"Oh." Realizing that he was just standing there awkwardly, he turned to go back inside. "Well, 'night."

"Good night."

And that was that, he supposed. Though just before the metal door fell closed in his wake, he peeked back out at Optimus, who had not moved. Strange how a truck could seem so sad. Somehow he knew that it had nothing to do with their painful encounter, but something even more painful, something the Autobot had twice come so close to telling him. But then the metal door clanged back into place, harsh fluorescent light blotting out the memory of night. And Optimus was left alone in the dark.

….

9 o'clock. Far too early for any self-respecting teenager to be thinking about sleep. Yet after a horribly twisted day, Sam wanted to do nothing more than to climb into bed, pull the covers up over his head, and tell himself that monsters didn't really exist until he believed it enough to get to sleep. No question about it- informing his parents that they would never get to see their baby boy again could wait until the next day.

Updating them on the fact that he had broken his arm couldn't wait, however. If he put it off, it would only raise searching questions about where he had been and what he had been doing. He might be able to stretch the time he spent in the infirmary and make it three hours while still sounding believable. Twelve hours, however, would be a different story.

...But maybe he could put it off just a little longer. Four hours, the perfect length of time if one of the broken bones had stabbed through his flesh and needed to be set back in place with surgery. Plenty of time to flush Bumblebee out of the wood work and bring him out of his funk.

Turning a corner where one hallway t-boned into another, Sam paced about fifteen feet down the corridor, pulled off one shoe, and cried out, "Oh no! My shoe!" Sounded totally fake, but hopefully it would get the job done. He tossed his shoe towards the intersection, watching it ricochet of the wall and bounce out of sight.

Then he waited, damp, cold, and shoeless, hoping that his shameless emotional ploy would work.

Just when it seemed like he might have to resort to something more drastic, the shoe came flying silently back into view, tumbling to a stop only a few feet away from him.

Grinning in triumph, Sam picked up the returned shoe and slid it back onto his foot.

"Alright, Bee. I know you're there. So come on out with your hands up!"

The scout neither answered nor deigned to slink into view, though he surely must have known Sam was waiting for him. Sam crushed the thought that his yellow friend had fled back the way he had come after chucking the shoe. If he had, Sam would hunt him down. He l- cared about him too much to let whatever was going on continue for much longer.

But at long last, Bumblebee gave up on his empty space impression and crept around the corner. The hallway was hardly large enough to fit three men abreast, yet somehow the scout's lithe, flowing stride allowed him to pass unhindered—though his mechanical body filled the space, it did not seem the slightest bit crowded.

"Sam." The robot greeted, turning towards him with his arms held behind his back. Sam wondered about that- was it to help him slip through small spaces, or was he carrying something with him he didn't want the human to see?

"That was too easy," he accused gently, "You knew I wanted to talk to you and let me find you out."

"Yes," Bee admitted, crouching down to be on eye level with him, though he remained a careful distance away, out of arms reach. "I overheard the last portion of your conversation with Optimus."

"But not the rest of it?"

"He had sealed his cab against sensor intrusion. He knew I was watching."

The suspicion that perhaps Bumblebee didn't know Optimus's plan tickled the back of his mind. "Do you already know what Optimus has arranged? About me, I mean. Me and what's going to happen in the next few days."

"I do. As does Ratchet. But we were both sworn to secrecy."

A revelation dawned on him, and Sam snapped his fingers. "Oh duh! That's what they were arguing about during the video conference shtick, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Bumblebee shifted, leaning forward slightly, then yanking himself away. As if he were afraid. As if he were restraining himself. "Ratchet has grown fearful about the impact your state of mind has been having on your body. He was of the opinion that Optimus should tell you sooner rather than later. Optimus disagreed."

Sam found himself becoming lost in Bumblebee's shining blue optics, leaning closer and closer as if to peer through their depths and into his soul. And then he shook himself, remembering Optimus' chilling tale of what had occurred to the scout. Suddenly he didn't want to see what ghosts lingered behind Bumblebee's eyes. To distract himself, he turned his face away, hugging himself through his wet clothes, and asked, "What about you? What side of the table were you on?"

Bumblebee didn't answer him. His gaze followed Sam's arms, lingered on his cast, and sharpened to a diamond-edged alertness as a tiny shiver passed through his frame. He shifted forward again with the same tightly leashed and vaguely frightening intensity, then stopped whatever he had planned to do, changed his mind, and brought his arms out from behind his back- drawing with them a fuzzy yellow blanket.

Sam's face cracked into a smile and he laughed, delighted, at the sight of the faded yellow fabric worn impossibly soft with age.

"Awe, Bee! Come on, I'm not that cold!"

"But you are wet," the scout pointed out, "Which will exacerbate the problem."

Sam held himself forcibly still as Bumblebee did a little hop-step forward and brought the blanket towards him. His earlier terror, though mostly erased, had not entirely dissipated. Despite his ferocious mental commands, his body acted against his orders and bent away from the approaching hands and the length of yellow softness draped between them (...tortured him for three weeks...tore out his vocalizer- a feral claw pinning him with metallic strength, cannon charging up for an annihilating blast, the friendly Bee consumed by the cruel Hornet that cared for nothing but survival-).

Picking up on the motion, Bumblebee froze, then unwillingly began to retreat, emitting wave after wave of cloying sorrow and shame. Sam wasn't going to stand for that.

"Nu-uh. No way. We are not going to do this staying away from each other thing, because it's only been a few hours and I'm already sick of it." He stepped forward, hardening his muscles- don't flinch, damnit!- and demanded, "I want my blanket. You were right, I am cold. And I don't think I'm supposed to get this cast wet-" Bumblebee's optics once more slipped to his plastered arm, "-so thank you. Thank you for being the most thoughtful guardian ever and bringing me a blanket so I wouldn't have to be cold."

The impossibly blue optics snapped back to his face, glassy and unreadable.

"You scare me when you won't talk to me," Sam admitted, "People who start giving me the silent treatment for so long are usually pissed enough at me to try to push me out in front of a bus."

Bumblebee emitted a faint hissing noise that seemed almost pained. "I was not angry with you, Sam," he replied softly, lowering his face even closer to the human, "If anything I was angry with myself. -And I would crush any bus before it had the chance to hit you."

Not giving his human a chance to react to this weirdly intense declaration, Bumblebee reached out and lightly settled the blanket around his shoulders like a cape, tugging the ends closed in the front. His giant fingers lingered there for an instant, touching the place over his heart as though to assure himself of its steady rhythm. When he moved to pull back, Sam set his good hand on top of Bee's and awkwardly patted the metal finger (don't cringe don't cringe, it's only a hand not a cannon).

"Then why did you snub me when I tried to text you? For that matter, why didn't you bother to e-mail me back? Your inbox must be filled to bursting by now."

Bumblebee carefully extracted his hand from Sam's grip, taking two large steps away from him. Sam instantly felt colder. It seemed almost as if the scout were putting space between them- not to set the human at ease, but to prevent himself from doing...something. As with Optimus, he got the feeling that Bumblebee was holding something back, holding it back by only a fragile thread frayed to the breaking point.

Instead of directly answering his question, Bee replied, "I was watching you while you were in the infirmary, Sam. But you should know that when the doctor drew your blood and set your arm, I had to retreat some distance away. So when you called me the first time, I was not in the best frame of mind.

Cuddling down a little in the blanket (don't sniff it, don't look like you're crazy enough to miss Bee's scent), he hazarded a guess at the reason behind his friend's strange behavior.

"What, are you afraid of blood?"

"No," he paused, weighing his words, then stared at him intently as he said, "I was afraid I might lose control and hurt the doctor."

Ice slid down his spine. "But why?" he gasped a little, not willing to admit how much that terrified him.

"Because she hurt you."

Bumblebee slunk further down the corridor. Just before he disappeared out of sight, he ducked his head back around the corner, shut down one of his optics in an imitation of a reassuring wink, and commented, "You might want to check your voice mail. Mikaela's called you fourteen times in the last ten minutes."

And then the scout was gone, vanishing into the air until he again wanted to be seen.

Sam pulled out his phone and checked it. It was still on. He had fourteen missed calls.

And though the little device had not been set to vibrate, never once had it begun to ring.