Title: Climate Change

Rating: M

Disclaimer: Transformers and all related characters therein do not belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

Summary: The Allspark has changed Sam into a Cybertronian. Sam might be finding the transition easier if Optimus hadn't started avoiding him all of a sudden. Post-RotF.

Pairing: Optimus/Sam

Universe: Bay-verse. Some IDW elements.

Author's Note: This is intended really just as a rather simple Optimus/Sam story with light angst, and it shouldn't be too long. Probably six parts at the longest. Also: a big thank-you to lyricality, who puts up with my nonsense while I'm trying to write and who gamely participates in chats with me, since I seem to come up with my best character dialogue when I'm just goofing off.

888

Part I.

888

"All right, Sam," Ratchet said, blocking out the light has he leaned over the berth. Medical scanners slid down over his optics, rendering them in blurred shades of blue and yellow. "Try again. Carefully."

It was a frustrating request, as Sam had been trying for hours with nothing to show for it. He wanted to snap back at Ratchet and tell him as much, but Sam couldn't do that either. He couldn't move. Couldn't speak. He was completely paralyzed, actually, despite all the constant reassurances that he was in otherwise perfect health.

Ratchet reached out to join their hands, and there was some relief in that. Though still incapacitated, the numbness that had plagued him since his change was fading. At first, there had been nothing. Then had come pain and not-pain. Comfort and discomfort. Now, Sam could distinguish between mere pressure and the smooth metal plates of Ratchet's fingers.

"Squeeze," Ratchet said. He immediately looked away to watch any of the myriad medical screens hooked into Sam—there to monitor vital signs and record any flicker of energy that showed Sam's body was trying to respond.

Squeeze. Right. The same test his doctor gave him when he was seven and broke his arm in two places. His arm felt frozen then, too, the muscles stiff after weeks spent in a sling. But there were no muscles at all, now. Just gears and wires, and Sam didn't have any idea how to work those.

Granted, he didn't really understand how he worked his muscles, either. It used to be if he wanted to move his hand, he would just…do it. Now, it didn't seem to be enough, and Ratchet wasn't directing him in any way that made sense, made worse when Sam couldn't ask for clarification.

He did try to think of how it was in a human body, with muscles and tendons linked to bones and joints, told to move by the brain. Maybe some of the same principles applied here, if he could just imagine the commands moving across circuit boards instead of nerves, like a keystroke command into a computer, so that he could do something as simple as squeeze.

"Ah!" Ratchet's thoughtful hum took on a triumphant note as Sam managed a twitch of his smallest digit. "Good! Excellent work!"

Ratchet disappeared from view, leaving Sam's senses to only the sound of typing and the overhead light. And—if he really concentrated—maybe it also felt a little cold.

Another sound soon joined the mix, and Sam was happy to recognize this one too: the doors of the medbay sliding open, and as long as there was no agonized screaming or enthusiastic swearing to accompany it, then someone was coming to visit.

It was one of the Autobots, judging by the heavy, clanking steps that followed. Most likely Bumblebee, who left his seat beside Sam's berth only when he was absolutely needed elsewhere and who played the radio for him and projected movies onto the ceiling. Lying frozen on a berth for two weeks was boring as hell, and Bumblebee was responsible for his continuing hold on sanity more than anyone else so far.

Or maybe it was Ironhide, Sam amended a moment later. These footsteps sounded heavier than Bumblebee's. Ironhide would stop in briefly but regularly, right before and after his shift. He was probably more there to talk to Ratchet, but he always made a point to speak to both of them.

It could be Sideswipe, who found Sam first after the Big Bang, or Jolt, or—

"Optimus," Ratchet greeted.

Something deep inside Sam's gut twisted, and he instinctively tried to sit up. For a second, his shoulder struts and abdominal pistons strained with effort, but their strength gave out almost immediately. Sam collapsed imperceptibly back onto the berth, mentally snarling at his own impotence.

Optimus. Though every other Autobot kept coming by to check in on him, he had seen Optimus only once. It had been after Sideswipe found Sam collapsed in hangar bay four, Will yelling for help, and after Ironhide had picked him up and carried him to the medbay. Sam couldn't remember much of that first night. He had drifted in and out of consciousness, every part of him burning like he had been set on fire, and so scared and trapped inside his own head and screaming—

And Optimus had bent over him, gently pressing one large hand against his cheek. "Do not be afraid, Sam," he said in low, solemn tones. "You are going to be all right. I promise."

"How is he?"

Optimus stepped up next to Sam's berth, near his hip, and tension that Sam hadn't known his body was strong enough to carry fell away like cracking ice. Even in the glaring fluorescent lights of the medbay, Optimus's optics were bright, his brow ridges drawn together in the beginnings of a frown. He had just started to thread his fingers against Sam's palm when Ratchet spoke.

"He's awake."

Optimus flinched back, though he recovered in the next moment and laid his hand more firmly along the top edge of Sam's wrist. The lines of his facial plates softened, clearing away any darker expressions and replacing them with benign concern.

"Good evening, Sam. Ratchet tells me you are making a swift recovery."

Swift? A twitch of a finger after two weeks in the medbay, and, okay, clearly humans and Cybertronians had different ideas about what constituted a significant accomplishment. Though it was nice of Optimus to try and offer him that little bit of comfort. It was probably all he could offer. Sam doubted that any of them knew what the hell had happened. Apparently, even super advanced alien robots couldn't figure his life out either.

Or how to talk about it, since Optimus wavered in their one-sided conversation, casting one long look down the rest of Sam's body, towards his feet. What he saw, Sam couldn't begin to guess. Ratchet had told him, of course. Told him that while he still didn't know how the Allspark did it, the end result was a transformation of his human body into a Cybertronian protoform—the raw material from which they were made, like the collection of blood and earth for humans. But Ratchet had yet to show him a picture, or even hold up a mirror. Maybe it was intentional, to prevent any sort of shock, but it made it all the more impossible to discern what Optimus was thinking. Worry? Disappointment? Anger? Optimus was as inscrutable as ever, his expression shielded as surely as if he had had his battle mask up.

Something deep inside Sam's stomach knotted uncomfortably, like a prelude to nausea, and Sam was overcome with the need to apologize to him. But without lungs to draw in a breath, or any knowledge how to work his vocalizer, the words were stillborn in his throat.

"I know this must be difficult for you," Optimus continued, turning his head to look Sam in the eye again. "I cannot imagine how you must be feeling, but please know we are all working hard to understand what happened. We are all here to help you. You have my word that we will not let you down."

Hey, Sam wanted to say, the guilt churning in him that he was making yet more problems for the Autobots that Optimus felt the need to fix. But, since he couldn't say anything, he just thought it as hard as he could, and willed for Optimus to understand him. It's okay. I'm okay.

"Sam is doing very well," Ratchet added, stepping into Sam's left field of view. "But he's had a long day, and it's getting late. Sam, I'm going to put you into recharge now. I'll wake you up when it's time to try again and you've had a chance to rest."

No matter how right Ratchet was that he was tired, part of Sam wanted to protest that Optimus had only just got here and Sam needed more time to figure out how to talk to him, but Ratchet slid a hand under his neck to fiddle with a connection at the base of his head, and an empty darkness folded up around him.

888

Cycling air through his vents in a heavy sigh, Ratchet splayed his hands out on the berth near Sam's head, resting his weight. Two weeks of work and he was only marginally closer to helping Sam regain control of his body. He had his guesses on how it could be accomplished, but with the way that Optimus's gaze prickled across his shoulder struts, Optimus wasn't in the mood to consider hypothesis as satisfactory progress. Slag it all, neither was he, but for the life of him, he couldn't figure out how to correct what was still going wrong.

"Sam is getting better," Ratchet said, and he was at least able to put the full force of his medical opinion behind that statement. "His spark pulses have stabilized into a regular pattern, and his biocircuitry status has reached an acceptable level."

"And yet he remains immobile, and mute," Optimus responded.

Ratchet scraped his saws together under the plating of his arms even as he gritted his denta against the things he immediately wanted to say back. There was no direct accusation in Optimus's statement, but Optimus was forgetting that this was a frustration they both shared.

"The physical connections from his brain module and the rest of his body are all there," Ratchet continued. "There's nothing wrong with them. His processor just simply isn't using them. There's a disconnect somewhere in his neural network, but I don't know where it is. It's possible that his brain module doesn't have the capacity for it."

"You suspect that he was left underdeveloped?"

"Yes," Ratchet answered, but then he hesitated, since this is where his diagnosis started to stray into speculation. "For now. I don't believe that his change was instantaneous or as complete as we originally thought. He may still be converting from his human body."

To emphasize his point, Ratchet pulled over one of the screens he had rigged as a spark monitor—the same monitor he had kept one nervous optic on for at least five days there at the beginning, as Sam's new spark fluctuated wildly from energy output that was off the charts down to such a low yield that there were several nights Ratchet feared it would fizzle out and evaporate. Now, Sam's spark seemed to have settled into a particular rhythm, and he waited for Optimus to recognize it too.

Which he did, by the way his optics widened in the next moment. "It's a heartbeat," he said.

"Many of his bodily functions may still be trying to follow biologically human pathways. His sudden transformation was probably such a shock that his brain disconnected itself as a self-defense mechanism. Sam may just need some time to get used to his new circuit connections. I'm going to let him sleep for longer this time around and see if that helps."

Ratchet pushed the monitor aside again and crossed his arms over his chest, taking a step back from the berth to look at Sam from a better vantage point. In stasis, he looked the same as any newly sparked mech, vital signs holding comfortably steady, though it had been long enough since he'd even seen a sparkling that he couldn't quite trust his memory on their physiology. He would be in for another sleepless night, despite the exhaustion tugging at the back of his own processor. Comparisons to the health of native-born sparklings aside, he wasn't quite ready to let Sam go unsupervised for any length of time. If his spark suddenly started to give out, it could easily be all over in minutes.

Ratchet gave a minute shake of his head, and directed his thoughts onto a more optimistic path. The others were on edge as it was. They wouldn't need his worst-case scenario predictions to make it worse. "He's nicely put together," he said. "And correct, though his build isn't quite as modern. I wish I could have seen how he was forged."

It was an idle wish, interrupted by Ironhide pushing open the door and striding in to the room. Across the berth, Optimus quickly removed his hand from Sam's arm.

"It's no good," Ironhide announced. "He can't remember anything."

Ah. That was disappointing news, though not unexpected. Will had been with Sam at the moment of his sudden change, but whatever had transpired in those minutes before the event had been wiped clean from immediate memory, no matter how hard they pressed for information. Outwardly, Ratchet had posited it was due to such close exposure to intense trauma. Inwardly, tiny lines of code, buried deep in the back of his processor, whispered of strange phenomenon resulting from close Allspark exposure, but Ratchet wasn't willing to entertain religious doctrines and superstitions as any more than passing thoughts. If he wasn't careful, he'd find himself believing in the same spiritual nonsense as Drift.

"And the security footage?" Optimus inquired as Ironhide came to a stop at the foot of Sam's berth.

"They restored some of it, but it's not much better," Ironhide replied. His optics flickered as he activated his HUD, and the film sequence they had reviewed a hundred times over appeared in the air between them.

The technicians had done an admirable job cleaning up the picture, removing a great deal of the grain and static, and where before they had just been able to barely make out Sam and Will standing in the near shadows of a secondary storage area, Ratchet could now see Sam talking. Damnably, there was still no sound, but there was enough detail that Sam could be seen rubbing at his eyes and looking back over his shoulder as though he kept hearing something behind him.

"And Major Lennox remembers none of this conversation?" Optimus prodded.

Ironhide shook his head. "No. He says he does remember Sam coming to speak with him, and that Sam was anxious about something, but that's it."

In the footage, Ratchet watched as Sam abruptly stumbled, falling against a stack of rusted barrels and doubling over like he had been kicked in the gut. Will reached out for him, but before he could make contact, the screen went white, then black at the same moment when power all over the base had been knocked offline—though on camera, the effect was less like the detonation of a bomb and more like a supernova. There may have been no sound in the recording, but Ratchet could remember the echoing blast that had accompanied that impossibly bright flash of light. It had been loud. His audials ached just thinking about it. Maybe the real miracle of the event was that Will's eardrums weren't exploded out of his head.

As unfortunate as the lack of information was, it did remind Ratchet of the other half of this unsolved mystery.

"Did you at least find the shard?" he asked. And Sam had to have been holding it—Ratchet couldn't imagine what else could have possibly catalyzed such an event, and Sam was known to be in possession of it. In fact, Sam had shown a remarkable reluctance to part from it, though he could never offer a satisfactory explanation why, and for whatever reasons, Optimus had let him keep it. Even now, none of them knew the full extent of repercussions from that particular decision.

"No," Ironhide growled out, crossing his arms as he shut the HUD visuals down. It was a slightly immature display of temper, but Ratchet could spare him a bit of sympathy. Ironhide didn't take well to one personal failure, let alone two. "I had the others scour every inch of that hangar. It's not there. It probably exploded."

"Or changed," Optimus offered, with a pointed look at Ratchet. But Ratchet hesitated on encouraging that suspicion. He rather thought Ironhide was more likely to be right on this matter. Sam's spark was extraordinary one, but it was still unique—like all Cybertronian sparks, it had its own signature, entirely distinct from the Allspark's hallmark baseline. Wherever the Allspark was, it wasn't inside Sam's spark casing.

"Hopefully, Sam will be able to give us testimony when he recovers," he said instead.

A heavy silence followed—a silence that sat in the space of the timeframe that Ratchet didn't offer. Ratchet had to check a sigh. It seemed that it would once again fall upon him to be the lighthearted one and cheer up the group. "Come," he said. "I want to show you something."

He motioned, and both Ironhide and Optimus joined him on his side of the berth. Once they were standing close enough, and could see what he was doing, Ratchet laid his hands on a seam along Sam's outer thigh. The plates there were still soft, and malleable. They would stay that way until his t-cog was mature and strong enough to support transformation. Once he was capable of scanning and adopting an alt mode, his outer plates would harden into the rigid exoskeletal armor of his adult frame. But now, they shifted easily under his fingers, and Ratchet opened the seam to expose some of the machinery underneath.

Ironhide let out a low, appreciative whistle. Optimus stayed quiet, but a quick thrum from his venting fans betrayed his identical interest. Though neither would have nowhere near the same knowledge of Cybertronian biomechanics, they would certainly be able to recognize magnificent internal construction when they saw it.

"When I first opened him up, I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing," Ratchet said. "He's nearly perfect. And he's going to be fast. If he had been sparked like this under the Functionists, they probably would have raced him."

"Finally! Someone to put Bumblebee in his place," Ironhide laughed. But then a thought occurred to him, and he frowned in the next moment as Ratchet let Sam go. "Tell me he at least has some naturally coded defense."

Leave it to Ironhide to swing the conversation around to a track on which Ratchet would just as soon wait, legitimate concern or not. While no Cybertronian was ever sparked with integrated cannons or any other type of advanced firepower, most did have some form of primitive self-defense weaponry. Spines, blades, electroplaques that delivered stinging shocks on contact like some of the fish on Earth. A minority of mechs were completely unarmed when sparked, and from what Ratchet had seen, Sam was one of them.

"No," Ratchet replied. Then, he amended a moment later: "I don't believe so. At least, nothing other than his potential speed as a means of escape."

"Slag," Ironhide swore. "And I don't have a gun for him, either. Not until the Ark gets here. Then I should be able to issue him a pistol, at the very least, and show him how to use it."

Ratchet bristled before he could stop himself. "You can't possibly be already planning to train him for battle! I don't even know when he'll be able to stand up!"

"When he recovers," Ironhide cut in, emphasizing the borrowed phrasing. "And the 'Cons learn we have him, he's going to be an easy target. He'll need to learn how to protect himself."

"If you think we should send Sam out into the field—" but Ratchet couldn't continue the thought. Towards the beginning of the war, some mechs were sparked specifically for battle—it had been hard enough to watch their made-to-order sparks ignite and then just as quickly get snuffed out, some of them not even staying online long enough to learn how to read. The idea of the same happening to Sam…"Absolutely not. He will stay here."

"Because the base is such a bastion of security," Ironhide snarled back. "Soundwave has spies other than Ravage who are just as nasty. And I didn't say anything about making Sam fight. What I said is that he needs to learn some self-defense if we aren't going to sit on top of him for twenty-four hours a day."

Ratchet opened his mouth to respond, but he was stopped by Optimus laying a heavy hand on his shoulder—mirroring the same action taken against Ironhide.

"That's enough," Optimus said. "Both of you. While Sam remains in this fragile state, he is going to need constant protection. Any one of us will be a capable guardian whenever you need to rest, Ratchet. It is true that Sam will be at considerable risk from the Decepticons, but our response to that can only be determined as his health improves."

Ratchet murmured his assent, as did Ironhide, their argument disarmed for the time being. Though as long as they were on the subject of Sam's immediate future, there was one other concern that would need attention if he didn't soon start showing significant signs of progress. It was another worry that could probably also wait for a month or so, but may as well round out this grim little evening.

"We're running out of energon," Ratchet said plainly. He held up his hands when Optimus turned sharply to look at him. "I know, I know. We're always running out of energon. But Sam's consuming a great deal of it. I've been able to feed him intravenously, and he tolerates it fine, but his metabolism is running abnormally high."

Ironhide spoke immediately. "He can have some of mine. I don't need it right now."

"We're still doing all right with the stores Arcee brought with her. It just may not last until the Ark arrives if this trend continues."

Optimus cut in. "Then for now, we will have to trust in our supplies. And in good fortune."

Ironhide snorted to let them know just what he thought of that idea, but Optimus ignored him, looking down at Sam with an expression that Ratchet had seen only once before—after the battle at Tyger Pax, when Bumblebee was lying similarly on a berth with his throat torn out.

"And if that fails," Optimus continued. "Then we will think of something."

888

The next time Sam woke up, he could move. He came out of recharge much the same way he had for the past couple of weeks, slowly, only this time there was a particular stiffness in his joints and when he tried to stretch them out, he could and then did. It was a sudden rush of sensation: the cool air blowing out of a nearby ceiling vent, the hard material of the berth under his back, and the sense of himself as he rolled over onto his side.

Well, tried to, anyway. He could feel his own limbs, but apparently coordination in newborn Autobots was sold separately. His roll was more of a hapless flail, fingers scrabbling uselessly against the berth as he attempted to push himself upright. Ratchet had to be nearby—he always was—but when Sam called out for him, his vocalizer popped, rendering Ratchet's name as a high, warbling trill.

Ratchet may as well have materialized out of thin air for as quickly as he appeared next to the berth, pulling Sam out of one wild swing and pressing tightly down.

"Easy, Sam, easy!" he was saying.

With several tons of Ratchet suddenly brought down to bear on top of him, it took Sam a moment to register the strange tingling against his frame, like a limb that had fallen asleep, only far more pleasant and coming from the outside.

Or no, it felt like…like nothing that Sam had any comparison for in his references of human experience, though a few confused circuits in his processor tried to understand it as vibrations from a subwoofer, or white noise, or the charge in the air just before a lightning strike. Maybe it wasn't warm, exactly, but it was an added layer of presence that soothed some of his jangling, nervous energy. Vaguely, Sam thought back to some of Simmons' angry ramblings about electrical fields that kept messing with his more delicate instruments, and Sam decided that's what this had to be. Ratchet's EM field, crackling with consistent weight, though Sam found it to be less annoying and more mesmerizing.

Apparently convinced that he wasn't about to flail himself right off the edge of the berth, Ratchet slowly let off of him and returned him to his back. For the first time, Sam was able to blink at him—just a click of the shutters in his optics, but it made Ratchet grin with unmistakable relief.

"Sam," he said with another light pulse of his field. "Can you answer me?"

Sam tried, but his vocalizer was still raw, and all he could manage was a rough, static cough and a bruised mewl. A more embarrassing sound Sam couldn't imagine himself making, but Ratchet didn't seem to notice beyond a light stroke to his throat to ease the cough.

"It's okay," Ratchet assured him. "You can just nod. Do you hurt anywhere?"

That was a good question, and Sam had to think about it for a moment. Stiff, yes. Clumsy, definitely. But aside from any lingering soreness, he wasn't in any real pain, so he shook his head. Ratchet relaxed in one heavy, obvious shudder.

"Want to sit up?"

This time, Sam was able to definitively nod, and Ratchet slid one hand behind his head and helped lift him. Sam wobbled for a moment, the change in position making him dizzy. Ratchet had a hold of him, though, and soon the world settled back to where it should be.

The vertigo gone, Sam's first real look at something other than in ceiling in weeks was his own lap. He had been wearing shorts the last time he had looked at himself, once oppressive summer heat had won out over Will's teasing of his winter-pale skin. But clothes and skin both had given way to a body made of a material Sam couldn't identify, colored so darkly that he was almost as black as Ironhide. Softer, too, than he would have thought, once he pressed his hands into the tops of his legs.

His hands.

Flesh, blood, and bone replaced by more of that strange protoform plating. At his knuckles, tiny gears and cables rotated and clicked against each other when Sam curled his fingers then opened them again.

"Are you all right?" Ratchet asked quietly into Sam's audial.

That was a different question than the one about pain, wasn't it? Sam allowed himself a moment to think about that one too.

Then. He nodded.

Ratchet hummed with a quiet, tonal note that resonated along with his EM field, and patted Sam on the back where his shoulder blades used to be. "Okay," Ratchet said. "Okay. Then answer me this: can you see in color? Nothing you feel is unusual?"

Sam nodded again. 'Nothing unusual' may have been a bit of a stretch, since a faint, pixelated grid was laid over the top of his field of vision even as the rest of it remained exceptionally detailed, as one might imagine looking out on everything through high-definition computer screens. Or maybe it was more having computer screens for eyes, but at this time, Sam was less concerned about semantics.

"Good. Then let's see what we can do about this vocalizer. Tilt your head back, not too far. Maybe we can just reset it." Ratchet said, leaning in close to get a look at his throat. The slight separation of his neck cables as Ratchet spread them apart with his fingers definitely felt strange; even though it didn't hurt, it felt like it should, and Sam couldn't stop himself from flinching when the tip of one of Ratchet's fingers brushed against one of the more tightly-strung wires.

"Whoops, sorry," Ratchet apologized. "Ah, you've got yours really tucked way back in there. Let me see if I can go in through the back of your neck."

Tough new body or not, that sounded deeply unpleasant, made all the worse when the top half of Ratchet's fingers split open and exposed a series of needles. There may have been some other tools there, too, but the needles were what mattered to Sam at the moment. Unfortunately for Ratchet's doctor of doom intentions, Sam had regained enough of his senses that he was able to squirm out from Ratchet's hold.

"Oh, honestly, Sam, it's not going to hurt! I promise!"

How old was Ratchet? A billion? Yet he still didn't know that approaching a patient with hypodermic hands and promising them that 'it won't hurt' didn't mean anything, especially to a former human who had learned that lesson the hard way when he got his school vaccinations.

Sam would have told him so, and that there was no way Ratchet was going to perform surgery on his neck without some sort of robo-anesthetic, but with his vocalizer still malfunctioning, it came out in a series of offended beeps.

"Enough of that. To think I was hoping you were going to be one of my better patients. Now if you're going to act like a sparkling, I'm going to treat you like one."

Done trying to coax Sam into submission, Ratchet swiftly grabbed his throat in one hand, pressing in under his chin where it would have choked him were he still human. It still was a sharp restraint, and Sam struggled against it until Ratchet plunged his other hand in from the back, deftly making use of a gap between neck plates and base of his helm.

That was uncomfortable, and Ratchet was going to regret enabling his vocalizer, because Sam certainly was going to make certain he knew it. As if reading his thoughts, Ratchet tightened his grip and dug in deep, pressing against a structure that made Sam gag. Ratchet abruptly released him and let him gargle around it.

"That's going to finish resetting in a few minutes," Ratchet told him primly. "And once it does, then we should be able to have a discussion about why you feel the need to make everything so difficult for yourself."

Good luck with that, Sam thought sourly at him. My mom's been asking me that same question for twenty years.

"In the meantime, we can check on some range of motion. Lift your arms as high above your head as you can. Try to touch my hands."

Ratchet had begun to reach out and hold his arm out above Sam's head, but a loud crash startled him out of it, the door to the medbay not so much pushed as thrown open. Bumblebee came bounding in, Ironhide following, albeit at a more sedate pace.

"You slagheads!" Ratchet swore at them. "Out! Both of you!"

"What?" Ironhide asked, all innocence as he shrugged away Ratchet's complaint. "You sent a comm out that said Sam was up, and Bumblebee and I happened to be in the neighborhood."

"I also said for you all to wait outside until it was okay to come in. Bumblebee! Careful with him!"

Bumblebee had just launched himself in a near flying leap towards Sam, but he checked himself mid-air and slid on his heels to a perfect stop next to Sam and rested his chin on the berth.

"I just came to say hello!" he greeted through the radio. Sam had always suspected that Bumblebee spent more time studying Earth behaviors from Mojo instead of him, because Bee was all big round optics and excited puppy as Sam waved hello back. Even his EM field was buzzing enough to tickle against Sam's external sensors.

Ratchet may not have been ready to open visiting hours, but it was nice to have his best friend in the room. Having Bumblebee around meant safety, even if their respective size ratios had equalized a bit.

For now, Sam could only chirp at him, but Bumblebee was thrilled nonetheless, and chattered back at him with the beeps and whistles that his own damaged vocalizer could allow.

"He can't understand Basic yet, Bumblebee," Ratchet said as he pulled a handheld scanner from his subspace. There weren't any visible needles, so Sam obediently sat still as Ratchet passed it back and forth in front of his chest. "Perhaps I could download some of those programs for him if I could get some space to work."

Ironhide huffed. "You can't send a message out like you did and not expect us all to come running." He tapped at Sam's foot and offered a casual grin. "How ya doing, scraplet?"

Sam gave him a thumbs-up in return while Ratchet grumbled.

"You all are a bunch of pests," he said, then cast one glance over to the doors. "Where is—"

"He's coming," Ironhide quickly answered. "You caught him right in the middle of a meeting. Should be here in just a minute."

There was no great mystery in whom they were talking about, but where Sam had earlier wanted to talk to Optimus, now the opportunity just filled him with anxiety. He would have to apologize. First thing, before Optimus had a chance to even look at him in disappointment or frustration that every time Sam touched anything it resulted in disaster. Not that Sam hated his new body, but an Autobot who didn't know how to be an Autobot? He'd be more of a liability than when he'd been human, and the memories of what happened the last time he was a liability to Optimus had been the source for a steady supply of nightmares over the past several months.

Why any of them hadn't cast him out on the street by now was baffling enough, and Sam decided he would follow his apologies up with sworn promises that he would find a way to be useful to them.

"There you go," Ironhide said. Snapped out of his internal scripting, Sam looked up and saw Optimus standing frozen in the doorway, hand raised against the frame as though he had intended to knock, and staring hard over the top of his mask at Sam. Sam's prepared apologies died on his tongue, dried out by a sudden blaze of fear, and he tried to recoil back. Ratchet had returned to his side, though, and had braced one hand on his back to help keep him upright. It also prevented a retreat, so Sam was left to violently beg in his mind.

Don't be mad. Please, please don't be mad. Yes, I thought the Allspark was going to do something, but I didn't know it would do this—I didn't mean to—

But then Optimus let go of that tension he had wrapped so tightly around himself, and his battle mask slid back to reveal a small, pleased smile instead of the scowl Sam had been expecting.

"Good morning, Sam," Optimus said.

Something in Sam's throat clicked, and a triumphant symbol flashed in his visual feed. He couldn't read it, but he could guess that his vocalizer had finished resetting, and he could speak at last.

Sam meant to say he was sorry. Meant to offer anything that would show he wasn't going to be a burden to the team. Only the apologies wouldn't come. Instead, the first words Sam spoke as an Autobot were, "Good morning, Optimus."