Author's Note: Thank you all for reading (and reviewing), I hope you liked it, and I hope you enjoy the epilogue. Thank you and goodnight everybody.

The world was not as it had been before.

The locations were there, but the land had been reshaped, restructured and -in some areas- restrained. The empty desert he had known was part of a town now.

The hill with its tree near the road, where he had often driven with Rafael so they could just be, it was not gone; yet it was changed and unrecognizable. There was a swimming pool to one side of it, a through street with a gas station on the other and, at the top, a chain drive-in. The tree was gone, the hill smoothed, flattened and buried, the ferocity of the desert itself suppressed by progress.

The world spun on, oblivious to all that had gone before and which could never be again.

But the voices of the past were not silent. They spoke across the boundaries of time and space, their echoes could be heard across the land, their presence felt in every drop of rain or kiss of sunshine. The past was gone, the future could not be predicted, but the present was real and alive and here.

Bumblebee had learned to be okay with that.

He sat in the parking lot of the drive-in, not quite asleep and yet still dreaming. But not only of the good that had been. He saw the evil too, as if it still lived and breathed beside him.

An ancient enemy in the form of a bitingly bright green sports car with black trim. He could almost hear the purr of the dark engine; the hiss of the voice that had spoken to him as a ghost might, speaking as though it were somehow part of him. Bumblebee knew the voice was not real, merely an echo of a memory and he did not fear it, nor the horror it had once represented.

{Do you remember, Scout?}

I remember, Viper.

In the end, it was the memory of Pit Viper that had saved him. All of the fear, all of the pain, all of the darkness, and it was an ancient enemy who had brought him back from the brink, who had allowed him to be restored to his former self. Without that dark stain on his life, he might have been lost forever. The Serpents might have actually succeeded.

Lachesis and Bothrop had been agreeable to being placed in stasis, as he had known they would be. Fixit had asked if he really intended to ever set them free. Bumblebee had said nothing, because he couldn't bear to lie, but also dared not speak the truth.

If they stayed locked up forever, it was all the same to him.

Even with his memory restored to its proper order, the burning rage still had to be dealt with. It was a monster that, once set free, was difficult to get back under control. He was working on it. Someday, if he was extremely fortunate, he might actually be able to forgive Lachesis and Bothrop for what they'd done. But today was not that day, nor was here the place for it.

"Fixit told me I'd find you here."

Bumblebee was not entirely surprised to see Strongarm pulling into the empty parking lot. It was early in the morning, nothing was open, and no people were around. Strongarm pulled into the spot next to him and cut her engine. She said nothing for a time, and appeared to be taking in the tamed desert.

He wondered vaguely what had drawn her out here. She could have just radioed if there was an emergency, could have called him. But she'd asked Fixit to using the tracking equipment at his disposal to pinpoint Bumblebee's location. She had gone to a lot of trouble to find him, and equally large amounts of it to avoid alarming him or making him think there was problem he needed to deal with.

Bumblebee wasn't sure what to make of that. So he decided not to make anything of it.

Strongarm had come to speak with him, and she would talk when she was ready. He could wait.

White clouds rolled by overhead, without even a hint of last week's torrential downpour. Or maybe it hadn't rained here at all. Probably not. This was the desert, if it had started raining it would be raining yet, and the familiar red sand would be nowhere in sight, buried beneath the lush desert vegetation. Bumblebee had only seen deserts come to life a few times, but he had not forgotten their splendor.

It was a constant source of amazement that a land so flat and dry and obviously dead could not just come, but actively burst, into life at the first touch of rain. Some plants responded to the mere promise of rain. Overnight, the landscape could be transformed. Even in this place, life did not merely survive, did not merely pass through on its way to somewhere else, but actually thrived.

It had seemed so utterly impossible to a young Autobot, a refugee from a dying world, that something like the desert could exist. He'd never talked about it with anyone, but he knew that the other Autobots saw the same thing he did. If life could thrive here of all places, there was hope yet for Cybertron. It had been a thin hope, at the back of their minds, buried underneath the daily struggles of surviving and fighting Decepticons and trying to prevent Earth from going the way of Cybertron.

But it was hope, as real and alive as the desert flora after a rain.

Sometimes, when he was out patrolling, it seemed like the only thing he had. When they thought they'd defeated Megatron that first time, and the Decepticons were scattered across the Earth, it had seemed like the Autobots would emerge from the conflict victorious... but at a great cost. Cybertron, their home, was a dead husk. There was nothing for them to go back to, and no way forward.

At the time, it seemed as though they had won the war, and lost everything that mattered in the process.

"I understand now," Strongarm said, breaking through the thought process, "Why you were so afraid, I mean," Bumblebee didn't interrupt, so she went on, "You were trying to tell me what you needed me to do. I thought I understood. But I... I nearly got us all killed."

Bumblebee said nothing for awhile. He let the warm sun and the gentle wind ease the tension in Strongarm's lines, allowed the span of seconds to begin loosening the vise of fear gripping her.

"Are we dead?" he asked finally.

Strongarm seemed taken aback by the question, as he knew she would be. It was not the response she had expected. Or the one she wanted. She thought she deserved to be berated for her ignorance, but she wanted to be forgiven for her naivety. Bumblebee had neither condemned nor exonerated her. He couldn't. Not if he was being honest. Not if the truth was to become clear to her.

"Well, no, we're not," she looked like she wanted to add that Sideswipe was a little worse for wear, but Fixit said he was recovering nicely so soon it wouldn't matter how badly he'd been hurt at the time as no lasting physical damage had been done, "But we could have been."

"And did the Serpents, having killed us, expand their destructive tendencies to include all Earth?"

"Of course not," Strongarm said indignantly, "I just said we weren't dead."

Sideswipe would have made a sarcastic remark, or picked up on the humor Bumblebee was using. It blew right past Strongarm so fast she didn't even stop to question whether Bumblebee's brain was full of cobwebs. She assumed the problem was on her end. And she was absolutely right, though not for the reason she thought. And the reason had a lot to do with it. She would learn that too, given time.

"Has Fixit been eaten as a snack? The scrapyard burned to ash? Denny and Russell used as toothpicks and then swallowed by a hungry snake? Have I tried to kill you lately?"

"No," Strongarm said shortly, sounding vaguely annoyed by this game.

"And is Cybertron dead? Has Earth perished at the fangs of the Serpents or the hands of the Decepticons? Has all life abruptly ceased, been wiped out of existence by a careless evil?"

"No, but that has that got to-"

"Then today is a good day," Bumblebee said, "You did well, Cadet Strongarm."

"But-" he cut her off mildly, repeating himself as he did so.

"You did well."

When it came right down to it, there was a whole world of things Bumblebee didn't know. Every time he felt like he got his feet on the ground and head up, the universe seemed to throw him a curve ball and then promptly turn on its head. He always felt vaguely out of control, and completely in the dark about how to get through the challenges that perpetually lay ahead of him.

But right here, right now, this he did know.

Whatever came his way, he would face it. Whatever changes came that he couldn't control, he would accept them. Whatever happened that he didn't expect, he would meet with all of the wisdom, courage and serenity he had learned over the course of his life. He would lean into the trouble that came his way, jump the obstacles to success and run his race without any fear for the next turn, the next length, the next stride, the next fraction of an inch.

The world had changed, and it would never be the same.

But even in the midst of chaos, there were still constants. Even in a galaxy torn by war there were guiding stars. And even in the most barren desert, there was still life. No one -not time, not Serpents, not Decepticons, not any evil with or without name- could change that.

And that was okay.

{You too were forged in that flame,} the vision of Pit Viper reminded him, sitting on the opposite side of him from Strongarm. She neither saw nor heard him because he was dead, and his ghost did not haunt her, {What does that make you?}

I told you long ago, Viper. It is the same now as it was then: I am a soldier, an Autobot. It can be no other way.

{You do remember.}

The Viper smiled, and faded away.