Note: I knew the new movie would make me want to write something - something to combat how completely underwhelmed I was by it. Everyone has their opinion. Anyway. This story is now AU, taking place after the first movie. Chapters will still be spotty as I work out plot (or rather, the multiple plotholes within), but I won't let it end here. Also, I like the idea of Ratchet having 'raised' Bumblebee, or whatever the equivalent of it is, like a foster parent so...assume that happened, as well. Thanks for reading! :D

Lessons in Exile

Chapter 3

Bumblebee was trained to, as the humans say, 'keep his cool' in all situations, including the most dire of battles. He was well aware of how to stall the leakage of his energon pumps should one be damaged, how to program his unconscious processors into sending out a distress call and tracking beacon, how best to care for a comrade who was missing his vital parts. He had absolutely no training, however, in caring for a fragile human, bleeding his life out onto Bumblebee's own seats. He'd already sent out a panicked distress call to the other Autobots, but had barely registered that Ratchet had replied and said they were on their way and would bring along one of the human doctors from the new base. He kept turning things over as he whipped across dusty roads out into the desert, trying desperately to think of something in his training that might help.

"Sam…" he said miserably, not knowing what else to do. "Oh, Sam…"

Sam, for his part, lay quietly on his back and only moaned occasionally in a half-conscious delirium.

Bumblebee's radio picked up static, then: "Bumblebee! We're nearing your position, be prepared to stop."

The sound of Ratchet's voice was like the Cybertronian equivalent of a godsend. If he could have, Bumblebee would be leaking very human tears of relief. "Affirmative," he managed in a strained and quiet voice.

When Ratchet came into sight, Bumblebee slowed down and pulled off the road into the sand where Ratchet met him. From his driver's seat came two men in blue shirts and khaki pants, already running over to Bumblebee with a stretcher. Bumblebee obligingly opened his door and allowed one of the men to pull his charge out tenderly with the aid of the other man and one woman who had also appeared from Ratchet's interior.

"This is Dr. Sheffield, Bumblebee, and his assistants Tyler and Carrie. They live on base with us to aid the other humans. Sam will be in excellent hands," Ratchet said gently as he pulled alongside his distressed comrade. Bumblebee could think of nothing to say, so he flashed his lights in understanding. He was focused on the puddle of Sam's blood pooling on his seat, and no longer beating through Sam.

His probability calculators were on overdrive. Death, permanent injury, two seconds later and he would have…

They shut down without Bee doing anything, obviously an override from another Autobot with high clearance. "Bumblebee. Drive," Ratchet commanded, firmly but not without understanding. Numb to anything else, that was all Bumblebee could do. So he drove.

---

Mikaela had pushed herself against the passenger side door as far as she physically could without breaking something, trying desperately to avoid the empty driver's seat. It took her a breathless half-second before she found her voice.

"Let me out," she said, trying to sound tough but nothing masked the edge of fear. "Let me out of the goddamned car!"

Barricade's deep, throaty voice came from everywhere around her, sounding dry. "I am 'the goddamned car'."

"I don't care!" she cried nonsensically, and began to tug at the door handle to see if it would give. "Let me go or I'll slash open your seats and rip out your wires, swear to God!"

There was a resigned sigh and then a man was sitting in the driver's seat - just like that – no sparks, no Star-Trek shimmering, nothing. Just an average-looking middle aged man in sunglasses, one hand casually on the wheel. Mikaela's heart clogged her throat as the man's other hand removed his glasses to level a look at her.

"Alright, human. If it will calm you down to speak to a human face, we can play that game. I will not harm you, and believe me when I tell you that you cannot harm me, so keep that abhorrent hole in your disgustingly biological face shut while I explain."

Seeing that she really had no other options, Mikaela obediently went quiet, half from fear and half from curiosity. She watched the man in the seat, trying to discern where the hologram was coming from and could not.

"Megatron is dead. Starscream is a pathetic excuse for a leader and the new arrivals are mindless drones who follow his orders for lack of computational ability to form any logical series of actions for themselves. With Starscream in command, the war could already be considered over. Though more casualties may occur, it is clear who, in your human vernacular, 'has the upper hand' now." He paused to see if she was following, and because she did not interrupt or appear lost, he took it for granted that she was. "The Autobots will win and the Decepticons will be systematically hunted down and destroyed. I can foresee no other future than that."

Mikaela took a moment to process this. "But…you're a Decepticon. Don't you have to like, fight them to the death? Never surrender? That sort of thing?" She couldn't believe she was having this conversation with the big, bad, robotic police-car-from-space that had tried to murder her boyfriend and who, by the way, had tried to murder her too, AND half of Nevada thank you very much but so long as she was trapped in that police car, she could try to find out as much as she could.

Barricade – the man she assumed was a hologram created by Barricade – sneered. " Insignias only. One is not given spark as Decepticon or Autobot. It is a choice, one that can be easily reversed."

That took her by surprise. "So…are you saying that you want to become an Autobot?"

The disdain was clear in Barricade's voice. "Hardly. I am neither Decepticon nor Autobot. My loyalty lies with whichever faction seems to be most stable."

"So you're a coward." Mikaela was unable to keep that jab to herself.

"No," Barricade said simply, and the man disappeared. "I am a survivor. And I am taking you to see your human friend…should he still be alive."

The thought sobered her enough to shut her up, and they passed through the desert in silence.

---

The complex that Ratchet led them to was less a military base and more a minor city from the look of it. It was situated in the middle of nowhere, two or three miles off of the main road in a dusty basin that even lizards and sand snakes hesitated to frequent. Bumblebee had never been there before, but he was certainly not inclined to study the scenery too heavily at the moment. He pulled in behind Ratchet, skidding to a halt that sent up a cloud of dust. He had transformed in half the time it usually took, gears and wheels still shifting in to place as he knelt to watch the humans open the door and pull Sam out. They were not doing so gently enough for his liking, and he lifted his hands to help before they fell uselessly to his sides.

A distinctly human gesture, Ratchet noticed.

When they finally did wheel him out, he hit a bump and moaned. Bumblebee let out a burst of electronic noise before he realized that no one but Ratchet could understand him and he switched to Human English. "Sam! Sam!"

Sam lolled his head to the side and croaked weakly. "Heya, Bee. You okay?" The effort, with as much bloodloss as he had sustained, cost him his consciousness. He went limp.

A low, grinding moan came from somewhere within Bumblebee's body and he made to follow the humans wheeling his charge away, but a large metal hand on his shoulder stopped him. He looked up at Ratchet.

"Ratchet, let me-"

"No, Bumblebee. They will take care of Sam as best they can. You have other work to do to help him."

The thought that Sam might die in that room with only strangers and dripping machines to witness it was one that Bumblebee could not handle. "No. He needs…I have to…"

"Soldier!" Ratchet snapped gruffly and over one thousand years of training brought Bumblebee immediately to attention. "You will stay back and do the duty that is required of you. Report to the communications room for debriefing. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Sir," Bumblebee murmured, defeated. He transformed and drove off. Ratchet slumped a little, sighing. He remembered, instantly, years upon years of chasing after an increasingly reckless, headstrong yellow bot that had nearly driven his circuits to overload countless times – a bot that had grown up considerably since he joined the war effort with Ratchet's permission. Bumblebee was a fine soldier and had learned to follow orders well. For the most part, Ratchet was pleased.

There were those rare times, however, when he missed the defiance in those brighter-than-others blue optics and wondered if all that training had done him a disservice after all.

---

Optimus Prime showed up, covered in orange dust, a little under an hour later. It was rare to see him at this supply and construction base, primarily because he was needed so often at their new headquarters in Autobot City. These were special circumstances, however. Sam was a friend.

He found Ratchet seated behind a plate of double-thick glass, watching the surgery with a grim look on his face.

"How is he?" He asked gently by way of hello. A horizontal green beam of light went up and down Sam's body, sending information back to Ratchet as it passed. The human doctors inside, used to this and often relying on it, paid it no mind and continued their work.

"Sam is stabilized and the bullet has been removed. However, he has lost a great deal of blood."

Optimus nodded – another gesture Ratchet had not remembered seeing in their kind before. "Bumblebee sounded…distressed, when he called."

Ratchet made a garbled-sounding noise, the human equivalent of a snort. "He has been alternating between his driving need to impress his superiors with his professional dedication to his duty, and his half-hysterical need to break down the door and offer his own parts to patch up Sam."

The fondness in Optimus' voice was unmistakable. "You have kept him in that room for an hour. Surely that is long enough. He is very attached to the boy."

Ratchet swung around and met Optimus' gaze, one which he noticed was not covered by protective face plates and so looked even more compassionate. "I know he is, Prime. That is what worries me."

They sat in silence for a moment, both turning this over in their processors in their own fashion. "Do you think Sam will live?" Optimus asked in his I'm-The-Commander, Don't-Lie-to-Me tone that he rarely had to use on his soldiers.

Ratchet considered this, considered the doctors diligently threading blood back into starving veins, considered their supplies and the wound itself. He calculated every conceivable outcome, tallied them, produced percentages. Finally he said, "Yes."

Optimus relaxed, just a bit. "Perhaps you should go tell Bumblebee that."

Ratchet frowned. "I was thinking that you might be better suited to that job."

"You've spent the last," and here he inserted a word in Cybertronian, a measurement of time that humans could not easily grasp, "caring for that bot, and a quarter of that time giving him orders as a superior. Giving him good news would not be unwelcome."

The sound of gears churning and hydraulics accompanied Ratchet's rise to his feet. "Is that an order, commander?" he asked sarcastically.

Optimus chuckled. "It was a suggestion. Tell him to come see me when he is ready and we will discuss our options." His tone took on a sterner edge. "I want to know who did this, and why. This was no Decepticon weapon."

Ratchet nodded. "Agreed." He stood at attention. "Sir."

"Dismissed," Optimus said gently, then turned his gaze to the still form of Sam in the other room as Ratchet took his leave.

"Sam," he murmured. "What have we brought upon you?"

---

"Well that went horribly wrong," Max said almost cheerfully around a mouthful of cheeseburger. Gerard shook his head.

"If you speak again I will kill you. No hesitation, I swear it." He eyed his steak as he thought. "Didier," he said to the man on his left. "You were closest to it. Could you see anything? Weapons? Special sensing technology?"

The quiet bald man with the bandage on his shoulder shook his head. "No. It was an ordinary car. A nice one, but ordinary. Outwardly, anyway."

"Yeah, but it was pretty pissed that you shot the boy," Max supplied helpfully. "That was probably dumb on our part."

Didier rubbed his strained neck, sore from being slammed into a wall by an angry car. "Probably."

"Well, while you two discuss the 'what-ifs' of our operation, I need to get busy figuring out what we're doing to do next," Gerard snapped, taking a bite of his steak to buy himself a moment to think. "We don't even know where it went."

Maxine grinned at him crookedly. He frowned. "What?"

"Oh, nothing. Just that the bullets in Deeds' gun were special ones from Duquesne." She leaned back in her seat.

Gerard peered at her. "Define 'special'."

"Like, 'Track anything it gets lodged in' special."

There was a long pause of silence, then Gerard raised his glass. "A toast, then, to our sneaky French bastard."

They clinked glasses appreciatively.

---

"So…" Mikaela finally broke the silence that had pervaded the last hour of the drive. "I get that you don't want to be a Decepticon anymore. You did have a pretty raw deal there and all, but look – if you don't want to be accepted by the Autobots, why are you heading straight into their stronghold? Won't they just attack you on sight?"

Barricade, apparently perturbed at this conversational turn of events, answered brusquely. "That is why you are still alive."

She blanched just a little. "Come again?"

"They will not fire if there is a chance you will be hurt. I can use you long enough to present my offer."

Mikaela decided to let the question of what happened to her after he was done rest for a minute. "Offer?"

"Why must humans always repeat what has already been stated?" He asked irritably. "Yes. Your upstart Autobot friend is in a bit of trouble, it would seem. I can help that, in exchange for exemption from termination."

"Which of my friends are we talking about here?" Any of the Autobots might be "upstarts" to Barricade.

"Designation: Bumblebee."

"Bee?" Mikaela blinked. "You mean Bee is the one they were after?"

"Your human male is of no more interest to the Decepticons," Barricade informed her. "Unless the new arrivals seek ill-guided revenge. Starscream may be interested in him," he added, almost to himself.

"But they shot him! They shot Sam!"

"You will notice," he added dryly, "that humans shot your human companion and that I helped you escape, as well as the fact that they were shooting at Bumblebee first. You were caught in the crossfire – casualties of war."

The offhand, nonchalant way he said that sent a chill through Mikaela. "The guy…the one who shot Sam…he looked at Bee when they did it. They were trying to get his attention, weren't they?"

Barricade sounded deadpan. "You should hardly need me to confirm that as you were standing right beside him at the time. Now, are there any more questions or shall we continue this trip with an absence of organic foolishness?"

Mikaela took the hint and shut up, but the uneasy feeling in her gut remained.

---

Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Ratchet were all standing in one of the empty hangars where supply boxes were piled in a corner. Bumblebee stared at them, fascinated by the way they didn't do anything because he needed something to focus on. Though he now knew Sam would live, that didn't stop him from feeling adrift. Ratchet was the first to speak.

"Now that Sam is stabilized, I think it's time we discussed what our next course of action will be." He nodded at Optimus. "Prime?"

Bumblebee, bemused by the way that his superior called his superior by a nickname, looked to his commanding officer for any suggestions.

"I think," Optimus began, "That our only action now should be getting Sam to safety. We cannot send him back to Tranquility. We must contact his parents, and take him to New Tyger Pax where he will receive medical care, our protection and the protection of the recent arrivals." He looked to Bumblebee for his input, but the smaller bot was decidedly silent. "Bumblebee?" he prompted gently.

Bumblebee looked up. "He was hit because of me, Optimus," he said quietly.

"We don't know anything just yet. We will discuss this further when everyone arrives at the city safely." That was met with a reluctant nod. "Now," He put a hand on Bumblebee's shoulder. "Why don't you go watch him while arrangements are made?"

With a grateful salute, Bumblebee was off. Ratchet looked up at his commander. "See? You handle these things better than I do."

Optimus smiled down at his medical officer. "You have the credit of raising him to be what he is. I think you must handle 'these things' just fine. I'll send Red Alert to replace you here. I think it best that you accompany us to New Tyger Pax."

Ratchet winced. "I agree with you on the latter, but I hesitate to put Red Alert in charge of anything. I would like to see this base intact, if you please. It has been very useful so far."

Folding in on himself while talking, Optimus transformed and Ratchet soon followed suit. "It has been some time since we have seen Red Alert. Perhaps he has calmed down. Anyway, he is the only one with similar knowledge to yours who isn't needed elsewhere right now."

"And why not? That ought to tell you something, I should think," Ratchet mumbled grumpily. Laughing, Optimus conceded the point as they drove out of the hangar.

---

Sam woke up around midnight, though "woke up" was hardly the term. He opened his eyes and peered up into intense white light, unable to distinguish what anything was and in too much of a drug-induced fog to care. He heard dripping and systematic beeps. His shoulder hurt – that he knew, but it was removed and far away, like being underwater and looking up at the sky.

Someone should call his parents, he thought numbly. He was going to be out past curfew.

A face came into his field of vision, silhouetted against the harsh light. It was a boy, about his age, little loose pieces of butter-blonde hair forming a halo around his head. The rest of his face was dark, but his eyes shone unnaturally bright – blue. They glowed, like cat's in the dark, with thin little circles making up the iris like ripples and no discernible pupil. It probably wasn't human. Maybe it was an angel. Maybe, Sam thought, I'm dead.

Sam smiled drowsily. "Hello."

A hand came down to touch his forehead – cool, soothing. Then a voice. "I'm sorry, Sam."

He leaned into that palm, softer than it should be, and happily fell back to sleep.