It had been six months since Mikaela Banes had broken up with Sam Witwicky. Six awful, harrowing months of tears and pain and...betrayal. Six months of Mikaela, recluse, curled up alone in her workshop while Sam packed and finished college.

She was alone, now. Bumblebee called every now and then, and they chatted. Well, she chatted and the sweet little robot chirped. Despite Mikaela's wishes to get away from everything - the robots, the war, the battles - her bond with Bumblebee was so deep that she couldn't help but call to check up on him, hear his voice...

Mikaela didn't ask about Sam anymore.

Six months until the pain began to reside, and she went back to work. Not being attacked. Not having friends brutalized. Safe. The Decepticon's were never interested in her, she remembered. It was always Sam - would always be Sam. She was just his faithful sidekick.

But she, like Sam, could be proven wrong.

And she was.

Mikaela, after a year of Sam being off the grid, went out drinking. Just a few and her friends - few meaning the only few, for most of Mikaela's High School friends had been whisked away to college. It was a small bar on the west side of town, past the garage where she and Sam had been attacked by the Decepticon Barricade so many years ago.

It was loud, bass pumping, neon reflecting off stone walls and glass windows. Alcohol flowed and the room became tight, packed.

After the two battles, Mikaela's had become much more sensitive to enclosed environments. It was a survival instinct, she realized. Just as she'd been checking almost every car parked outside the club for Decepticon signals, she was glancing around now, pinpointing every female in the room and attempting to guess whether or not they were a pretender.

She felt lightheaded. A friend handed her a drink and she declined.

"I need some fresh air," she murmured. The noise was so loud that she doubted her friend could hear her, so she just waved a hand and began pushing through the crowd, inching slowly along in he green heels.

Mikaela burst outside. She wasn't heavily drunk, but she could feel the alcohol, the beer and the champagne, the mixed drinks, taking effect. She'd ridden with a group, didn't have the keys, so leaving was definitely not an option.

She sighed and leaned against the walls of the club, glancing to her left and, several meters away, obscured by the shadows, spotted a couple practically inhaling each other out of some precious need - Mikaela couldn't recognize the individuals, and she didn't really want to, lest it was someone she knew. Like Trent, or Haley.

Or Sam. Fat chance of that, though. She didn't spot a yellow camaro and she doubted he'd fly all the way back home just to win Mikaela back through some petty jealousy ploy.

It was just her, thinking. Creating a false scenario, for Mikaela was already beginning to see the depths of her anxiety.

She didn't want to be alone. Mikaela Banes, after all the life-changing events she'd seen, all the fights she'd endured, all the friends she'd made...

Mikaela didn't want Sam, but she didn't want loneliness. And without Sam, there was loneliness.

"Need a ride?"

Mikaela rolled her head to the side and saw that it was not a boy that had spoken to her, but a girl who looked as if she'd been carved from a solid black stone. Angular face, long, straight nose, lips prominent, eyes the color of deep, rich chocolate. Her hair was long, but barely reached her shoulders. She looked to be around Mikaela's age, maybe older.

Mikaela gaped, slid up the wall, and stared. Her lips struggled to form a coherent sentence, "I'm good, thank you," absently, she glanced towards the lip-locked couple to her left. The girls eyes followed.

"You seem lonely. I'm Rya," the girl held out her hand, and Mikaela weakly grasped it. "I, um, I think we went to the same school. Nice dress, by the way."

"Thank you."

"You're dating Sam Witwicky, right? Is he inside?"

"No," Mikaela shrugged. "He's...gone off to college. We broke up. I, um, don't have a boyfriend."

Rya's eyes softened and she nodded. "Me neither. My friends ditched me - that's why I'm out here," she gestured towards her car. "I'm sorry about you and Sam. It's cold out here - why don't you come sit inside my car?"

Mikaela was half-drunk, upset, and her decision was influenced by those factors. Getting into a car with a random stranger? Hah. She'd done that once before and it had landed her in the middle of an alien conspiracy.

That hadn't been the mistake. The mistakes had come much, much later.

Mikaela slid into the passengers seat of the car - it was a nice model, certainly not anything an Autobot or a Decepticon would scan. The seats were comfortable and didn't move on their own accord - something Mikaela had become used to since riding inside Bumblebee - and the belts didn't slide across her chest to buckle.

Rya switched on some music, yet even that did not change the atmosphere. Mikaela was still on high alert.

"You look nervous. C'mon, its me," Rya said softly. "Mr. Durhams class, junior year. We took Algebra together, and Computer Sciences."

"I never noticed you," Mikaela mused aloud.

"I noticed you. Everyone did. You were gorgeous," Rya murmured. "Still are."

Mikaela tilted her head, reached out, and grasped Rya's hand. The pace of the music increased and the tempo changed, thought that could have just been Mikaela's own drunken mind.

"Sam was a jerk," Mikaela gurgled. "He didn't give a shit about his friends," she caught herself. "His friends, or anything like that. He was selfish."

"I know a lot of people like that. But Sam is just one boy, right? He can't dictate the course of your life."

Mikaela raised pencil thin eyebrows and gazed across the seat. The lights from the club reflected off Rya's eyes, turning them from orange to white to pink.

She squeezed Rya's hand harder. "I know."

"Then why are you out here drinking the night away?"

"Why are you?"

"To hook up. There aren't a lot of cute girls in my part of the town," Rya shrugged. "My friends get dates so I thought...you know, its time to try. Maybe someone will look at me the way Sam used to look at you or...I dunno."

What Mikaela did next was either stupid, or smart, or a combination of both.

She practically lunged over the passengers seat to capture Rya's lips with her own. The kiss was sloppy, feral, messy and fueled by drunken stupor.

Rya was too shocked to return it at first, but her lips fell into a brief, but steady rhythm.

Mikaela's stomach was on fire.

Maybe it was the vodka, maybe it was Rya's red-painted lips. Both tasted like cherry, both tasted good.

She tried to imagine that Rya's lips were Sam's lips but she couldn't, so she pulled away as quickly as possible, falling back into the seat.

Mikaela inhaled. Exhaled. Tried to swallow down the rise of bile in her throat, a mixture of shame, confusion, anxiety and pure, problem-solving alcohol.

"I need to," Mikaela stammered. She glanced over - Rya's mouth was pressed into a thin line. Mikaela repeated, "I need..."

"What?"

"I don't know. I don't know what I need anymore," Mikaela whispered. Her fingers slipped from the handle of the car door, and she sat back. Tried to relax, tried to focus her unfocused eyes on the scantily clad men and women entering and exiting the club.

"Did you have fun in there? With your friends?" Rya asked.

"No."

"Do you want to go someplace else?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do. Someplace fun. I don't care where," Mikaela beamed and tilted her head back. "Fuck it. Fuck it all. I don't care."

Rya nodded, started the car, jerked it into reverse and pulled from the parking lot.

They drove, and Mikaela didn't look back.

She awoke on her stomach, laying stark naked on a mattress somewhere.

The air was warm. Something heavy rested against her shoulder, a head, Mikaela could tell. They were breathing against her flesh.

A hand was wrapped around and curled against Mikaela's, and it was not the rough, chipped hand of a male but one of a female - still rough, but slender and feminine.

Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

What had she done?

Maybe it was the alcohol. She and...what was her name...Rya, yeah, Rya, they had been drinking at someone house - Rya's house. Much, much more than either had drank at the club, for they enjoyed the company of each other.

That was all Mikaela particularly remembered, but there had been kissing. And touching. And everything Mikaela was used to, yet somehow not used to...

Whatever. This was a story for Mikaela Banes's personal history book. A stain on something that wouldn't be known by anyone but Mikaela and Rya.

She neglected it, then. Just basked in the comfort Rya provided, tried not to lose her cool. She dared not move, for Rya's was still sound asleep.

Pretend it's Sam, she told herself. Or Trent. A guy.

The thing was, she couldn't. And as she lay there longer, she found that she really didn't want to.

Mikaela staggered home after that. Her father was away, doing his own thing, cheating his own way. Recluse. Mikaela didn't really care.

She spent the next two days working on bikes, elbow deep in grease, hair pulled back from her angular face. Her cell phone lay on the workbench, though it wasn't as if anyone would call her.

Anyway, if it rank, the sound of the welder would drown it out and force whomever it was to leave a voicemail. Then, Mikaela would have the joy of listening instead of speaking through a conversation.

For once, she was not thinking of Rya. She'd gone a day without it, a feat that had been excruciatingly difficult. She'd given up on searching whatever fragments of memory she had left from that night - she'd awoken with sore legs, a sore backside, and sore shoulders. And a girl lying atop her. Then she'd had to search for her clothes.

Rya was probably out telling the whole neighborhood. Mikaela Banes, what was she? A dyke, a slut, what? High School was over, so Mikaela didn't have a representation to ruin anymore. Her failed relationship with Sam had already done that for her. And her relationship with the Autobot's, sentient alien lifeforms from another planet, had basically been the pinnacle of whatever extraordinary things she would experience or accomplish throughout her lifetime, she was sure.

And her "relationship" with Rya. But that was another thing Mikaela tried not to think about.

Tried not to think about it, and then the girl showed up.

"You forgot your jacket."

Mikaela almost banged her head against the underside of the bike. The voice was rough, laced with hidden undertones not even Mikaela could comprehend.

She pulled her head out from under the bike, flipped up her goggles, and sighed. Rya stood at the mouth of the garage, dressed in simple sweatpants and a sweatshirt, holding a flimsy, too-tight blue jacket between her fingers. Her hair was unkempt.

Mikaela gulped and nodded, tried to quell her growing fascination. This was the wrong time to get butterflies in her stomach!

"Thank you."

"I'm sorry about a few nights ago," Rya scratched at her throat, brown eyes full of sincerity. "I didn't know if you were...um, like me. You know. Shared my interest."

"It's alright. I came onto you," Mikaela shrugged, then narrowed her eyes. "I did, didn't I?"

"You did in the car. At home, it was me, I'm pretty sure. I barely remember, either."

Mikaela gnawed on her bottom lip and turned away. What she did remember, had been nice.

But she didn't dare say that to Rya.

"I don't share your interest, if that's what your here to know. I'm straight as a board," Mikaela lied. "Straight, as in, males. But whatever you're into is fine."

Rya raised her eyebrows. Nodded once, twice, before spreading her arms wide. "Alright. I just wanted to drop your jacket by," she backed away from the garage. "Nice bike, by the way. Ducati? My dad used to have one of those."

Mikaela sucked in a breath and nodded. "You like cars?"

"A little. My cousin actually races for Nascar...fun, huh? Anyway, he was really into them growing up so...I kind of hitched along."

"I'm about to make lunch, if you wanted to stay? My dad is away, so, it would just be the two of us," Mikaela rolled her shoulders. "I mean, not to make things even more awkward. I just assumed, since you're here..."

Rya smiled. "I'd love too."

Despite Rya's rough outward appearance, Mikaela was surprised to find that the girl had a softer, gentler side. While still keeping her usual stiff composure, she answered Mikaela's question, was friendly. She even helped Mikaela clean the table after lunch.

"You'll have to show me your painting, sometime," Mikaela said, grinning. She'd switched from her oil stained, greasy work clothes into something more comfortable - shorts, boots and an embroidered tank top. She and Rya had both moved outside and were sitting on law chairs beneath the awning that lead onto the front porch of Mikaela's rugged home. Mikaela's glass of lemonade was full while Rya's was empty.

"It's just a hobby, I mean...I'm not a modern-day Michelangelo or anything."

Mikaela brought her glass of lemonade to her lips, sipping lightly. She was relaxing in Rya's presence, she realized. Becoming comfortable, and trying to view the girl before her as a friend, and not something else.

It was difficult, Mikaela found. A part of her wished she could remember...

No. No, no.

The longer she looked at Rya, the prettier Mikaela found her to be. It wasn't conventional beauty - her physical appearance could draw anyone, though her figure was tough and imposing upon sight, and her eyes looked as if they'd seen too much for someone her age. She reminded Mikaela a little of Ironhide, the way her stare seemed to pierce through even the simplest of creatures.

Mikaela hadn't cared about all that two nights ago, during their drunken stupor. It had just been...desperate sex. An attempt to rid herself of Sam and the baggage, the memories that he'd left behind.

"It's good that you have a hobby. So, what's your situation?" Mikaela asked timidly.

"My parents are divorced. I'm trying to find a job, so I still live with my mom..." Rya nodded as she spoke, almost as if trying to convince herself as well as Mikaela. Quickly, she took a sip of her lemonade. "I was nine. I don't remember it all that well."

"Hm," Mikaela glanced at the ground. "We didn't see each other a lot during school."

"Nah. You were way higher up than me, way more popular. I sat at the 'weird' table with all the 'weird' people. You didn't have a reason to acknowledge me."

"I should have," Mikaela murmured. "I should have. When did you find out that you were...ya know..."

"I'm bisexual. There's a difference," Rya shrugged. "It's not like a got a card in the mail or anything. You just kind of...figure it out. It hits you, like an epiphany. I like girls, and sometimes boys...I can't do anything about that."

"Neither can I."

Rya raised her eyebrows. "I thought you weren't interested?"

"I'm not, I...I don't know, alright? I just went through a really tough break-up, and I was desperate. You were there, I was drunk, so I just...you know, went for it. What else could I have done?"

"You could have walked away when it got serious."

"I didn't want to. I was drunk, Rya, how could I have?"

"You're a smart girl. You tell me."

Mikaela squeezed her glass of lemonade so hard that she feared it would shatter. "'Smart' girl You're the first person to ever call me that," she gazed wistfully at Rya. "Dating dumb jocks...people like Trent, it doesn't get you very far. I barely have any friends."

"Those girls at the club- "

"'Friends.'" Mikaela huffed. "I call them that, but do a really spend time with them? No. I don't. After everything..." Mikaela caught herself, and then searched Rya's face. The other girl hadn't noticed Mikaela's slip up.

What did it matter?

The Autobots, Mikaela assumed, were common knowledge. She'd heard people talking, and though no one, save for Sam, Mikaela, Lennox, everyone who had been in the alien inner circle knew any extensive details. Some people doubted that the aliens even existed, dismissed it as some national prank or government conspiracy. Some weren't paying attention.

Some didn't even really give a shit.

Which one was Rya? Hell, for all Mikaela knew, the girl sitting before her, the girl Mikaela had spent an intimate night with, could have been a Decepticon in disguise. It wasn't like the Decepticons to leave evidence behind, and despite Mikaela's background role in the alien civil war, she was still, and would continue to be, evidence.

Mikaela searched Rya's face. The pretender, Alice, she'd looked normal, for the brief moment Mikaela had seen her. Rya's skin was smooth, like Alice's, features even, but not perfect. She was handsome, in a sense.

She was strong, no doubt. She could overpower Mikaela with just pure strength.

Mikaela suddenly felt uneasy.

"Are you alright?" Rya asked, staring quizzically.

"I'm fine."

"You look a little pale."

"No, I'm just thinking," Mikaela tapped her fingers against the lemonade glass, a steady rhythm. "I have a lot on my mind."

Rya nodded. And that was the end of that.

They talked a little more, chatted. The conversation was still awkward. Flashes, memories of two nights ago kept coming back to Mikaela. Each time, she hoped that they hadn't been hers. Each time, she was proven wrong.

Rya left. Mikaela was alone in her home, waiting, watching for when her father returned home. She tried to call him, but it went straight to voicemail.

Mikaela was...alone. Sam was...gone.

Alone. Defeated. For the first time, Mikaela felt defeated.

And it hadn't even been because of a damn Decepticon.

At ten o'clock that night, she dialed up Rya's number. She answered after the third ring.

"Hey," the voice on the other end was drowsy, yet when Mikaela spoke, it became alert.

"I don't want to be alone anymore."

Mikaela heard Rya gulp, heard the rustling of sheets. She leaned back on her bed, gnawing on her lower lip as she waited for Rya to respond.

"I'll be right over."