Disclaimer: don't own Transformers; don't own HDM (The Golden Compass), from which the concept of daemons came.

Summary: G1 S2 somewhat ep. 1-centric/Golden Compass semi-crossover. Humans have daemons and Autobots have sparks. Their species have more in common than Bumblebee first thought, but they still have many differences. Some of them just aren't meant to be breached.

Author note: Inspired by Epona Harper's lovely "Brother." Fic written with her permission. Thanks Epona!

Of Sparks and Daemons

On a quiet sunny afternoon, a teenager and his friend were at a lake. The teen's fishing pole lay a few feet from the water, and the teen himself, seeking relief from the mid afternoon sun, was in the shade of a nearby large oak tree, with his cheetah-shaped daemon curling up at his left. His friend, a yellow VW Beetle, also surrendered to the increasingly intense sunlight and sat down at his right.

"Spike," Bumblebee said absently, "What are daemons for?" Though the Autobots had been on Earth for quite a while, humans still had great mysteries surrounding them. The human-daemon bond was one of the most prominent of these mysteries. Bumblebee didn't know what prompted him to ask this question.

Any human would have been able to tell him.

"I don't know, Bumblebee," Spike said after a pause, looking out into the waters. Samira shifted slightly, looking out in the same direction. "What are sparks for?" He said it quietly, almost as an afterthought. Spike knew very well what sparks were for, what sparks were—the Autobots had gladly and proudly told him. However, he and Bumblebee were talking about sparks and daemons in a slightly different context.

"Our sparks are us. Whatever makes up an Autobot, that's what the spark is."

"Our daemons are us too. So maybe our daemons are our sparks." His hand came up to stroke his daemon, who leaned in to his touch. She looked at Bumblebee kindly.

"But our sparks are everything. So if daemons are sparks, then what are humans?"

"I don't know, Bumblebee," Spike said, leaning back into the tree and closing his eyes. He sounded content. He was content not knowing, because just knowing that his daemon was there and was real was enough for him. "Maybe humans and daemons are like Autobot twins, do you think?"

"Yeah, I suppose," Bumblebee said. That was really the only explanation that they could come up with. The only comparison that the Autobots could make was that the human-daemon bond was akin to the bond that existed between twins or gestalt members.

"Is it hard? Not having a daemon?" Spike asked suddenly, slurring his words just a bit and keeping his eyes closed. "Do you get lonely?"

Bumblebee shrugged. "I don't know. Sometimes, I guess. We value each other's company, but we were made as solitary beings, with the only exception being twins and gestalt members. Autobots have sparks; we don't have daemons."

Samira scoffed, and Spike shook his head, smiling. "You have a daemon too, Bumblebee. She's just inside you, hidden, is all."

Though Bumblebee disagreed, he knew that there was no convincing Spike otherwise, and they soon lapsed into a companionable silence. It was only when Spike leaned against Bumblebee's shoulder did the yellow Autobot notice that his friend had fallen asleep.

As Bumblebee looked bemusedly upon the sleeping, slightly snoring human, he had a sudden recollection, quite suddenly and for no apparent reason, of their first meeting, in water and in rubble.

Bumblebee remembered that day clearly. He hadn't thought much about the seagull, later known to them as Verona, flying above Sparkplug and Spike, calling out to the approaching rescuers with gull-cries. He also hadn't thought much about the dolphin, later known to them as Samira, that Spike was clinging to in order to keep his head out of the water. He had been shocked, and Prowl had keeled over, when the dolphin joined Spike on land, turning into a squirrel to gawk at them inquisitively.

"Don't you ever wonder where all the mass goes when your daemons change shape?"

"Personally, I think that it goes where Optimus' trailer goes when he transforms."

To think that the seagull and the dolphin were actually daemons, as dear to humans as sparks were to Autobots! So strange, it was, to be thrust into this world where spark-splitting was not the norm, but the rule!

Bumblebee's optics went to the boy's daemon, sleeping on Spike's other side with his arm around her. She was exploring the world of dreams with her human. They were never apart, not even in sleep.

Bumblebee realized that Samira had been a cheetah for quite some time now. When was the last time she had changed? Was a few days ago, when he was helping his father and Wheeljack? Was it the week before, as he and Sparkplug helped to foil another Decepticon plot? Or was it even a few days before that, when Bumblebee and Spike went out for a drive, with Samira happily running beside the yellow Autobot as Spike laughed, sensing her pleasure and her freedom?

Somehow, amongst the Autobots, Samira had settled. Somehow, amongst the Autobots, Spike had figured out who he was.

Bumblebee smiled at the sleeping duo, but the smile was bittersweet. Spike was his comrade-in-arms, his best friend...his dear brother. He was human, and everyone knew how long human life spans were. Everyone knew how short they were, not even a butterfly's season in comparison to Autobots.

Even if they found a way to successfully separate a mind from the body without turning the person insane, there would never be a human-turned-Autobot, because it was common Autobot thought that Autobots did not have daemons, and daemons were so much of what humans were. Samira was so much of what Spike was.

Samira was Spike, and Spike was Samira. One did not exist without the other. The boy would never stand being separated from his daemon. Even if Spike was right and Autobots did have daemons, though hidden, he would never agree to any such procedure, since he would never stand having Samira hidden away and without her own form. None of the Autobots stand such a thing either, that much Bumblebee knew.

He remembered that painfully learned lesson. They had thought that simply transferring the human mind was enough to transfer the human-daemon bond to another body. They were very wrong, with near-fatal results.

Even the human doctors had agreed that if they kept all three parts of the human person in close proximity to one another, the procedure should work. But there was an amazing interplay, beyond even Autobot ken, between the human body, the human mind, and the human soul, and it was too bad neither they nor the humans had realized that sooner.

Things went downhill immediately after the mind transfer. Samira, as a mouse, gave a shrill shriek of pain as Verona held her down. The Autobots heard soft static, which Sparkplug translated for them that Samira said that it hurt, but not unbearably. Spike, in the body of Autobot X, was having a harder time containing himself than his daemon did. To keep him calm, they tried distracting him by opening the television.

It didn't calm him; it enraged him. The doctors had almost finished mending his body when he broke loose. The Autobots couldn't—wouldn't—damage his already fragile mind, and he managed to make his way outside of the Autobot base.

The Autobots followed him to stop him and return him back to the base as the doctors worked frantically to keep his body going. The procedure had done what it was supposed to: Spike's mind was removed long enough for the doctors to do what they needed to do. However, now the medicine became the poison. They needed to get Spike back before the bond snapped.

Bumblebee was sent with Sparkplug to retrieve Samira, who had, upon Spike-in-Autobot X breaking free of the restraints, wrenched herself from Verona and had taken refuge in the vents. Samira was caught, her body in the Autobot hospital, her mind in Autobot X, raging outside. The sheer agony of the strain on the bond was enough to drive her insane, and she shrieked and raged and eluded capture as Spike did in a body that he was forced into.

Bumblebee didn't remember a lot of what Sparkplug said to him—he was focused on finding the daemon, but he did remember at least one thing. Sparkplug had told him: "There's a saying that, when you and your daemon pull like this, you don't break the bond, the bond breaks you."

Spike needed Samira back. They needed Samira back.

They finally cornered her in a section of the Ark, and Verona flew from Sparkplug's shoulder to the wayward daemon. But Samira would not be still. She was a cobra, then a leopard, then a wolf…flashing through so many forms so quickly that even Bumblebee's optics and processors couldn't keep up with the changes. She was taking so many forms that she had never took before.

She changed into a vulture, and slammed Verona down to the metal floor with sharp talons. Verona shrieked, and Sparkplug cried out, falling on his knees as he felt her pain sharply in his own flesh.

Bumblebee watched this with increasing desperation. He would have to do something unspeakable. He only hoped that Spike and Samira would forgive him.

He pulled Samira from the struggling Verona and held her in his hands.

All her screams from before were nothing compared to the shriek that now tore from her body. She struggled, huge wings beating and claws scrambling and scratching, digging into the metal of Bumblebee's hands, but he grimly held on. Then, finally succumbing, she went limp, changing into a form that Bumblebee couldn't identify but looked like the very epitome of misery and pain. She was as pale as smoke and looked about as substantial. Bumblebee couldn't remember the last time he had felt so horrified or so desperate.

Bumblebee would learn later that Megatron had attempted to persuade Spike-in-Autobot X to work for the Decepticons, but without his daemon and with the bond being stretched beyond all imagination, Spike really wasn't in any state to understand or to give heed. He had fired at them instead. The Autobots managed to get to his location before the Decepticons offlined him.

He would also find out that the moment he touched Samira, Spike's momentary body and prison swayed, as though unexplainably dizzy. The optics faded, the knees buckled, and then the body tipped over into Optimus' surprised arms. Bumblebee knew that that wasn't a coincidence, and he knew that there was some significance to that event, but he hadn't had a clue as to what it was.

Any human would have been able to tell him.

After Spike's mind had been returned to his body and after Samira had been returned to Spike, they slept. They slept for so long that the Autobots wondered if all the pain they all had unintentionally put the boy and his daemon through had been for not. But finally, they awoke.

The first being that Spike looked for was, naturally, his daemon. He held her closely to himself, cuddling her, repeating her name over and over again. Then he noticed his father in the room, right beside his bed, sitting in the same place that not even Optimus could persuade him to leave to at least eat.

"Dad," Spike said hoarsely. Bumblebee had never seen a person so pale. "Dad I'm so sor—"

The rest of the apology was dissolved into muffled sobs and tears as Sparkplug pulled his son into an embrace. Samira changed into a mouse, moving towards Verona tentatively, fully remembering what she had done, but the seagull immediately scooped up the smaller, paler daemon into her wings and nuzzled her with her beak as both people in the room made shaky, chocking sounds of relief.

Bumblebee was outside the hallway when that happened. He didn't dare go in…it seemed so private. But eventually his name was called.

"Hey, Bumblebee," Spike said, smiling at the Autobot. Both humans and their daemons were looking at him with a sort of gratitude. And then Bumblebee knew that both boy and daemon had forgiven him—had, perhaps, even thanked him—for holding Samira.

They were lucky. By all calculations, the bond between daemon and human had been pulled and stretched enough to have essentially snapped. How Spike survived with his sanity intact was simply a miracle. It went unsaid that they would never to do such an experiment again, even at the cost of the lives of the human companions. Death was preferable over separation.

Bumblebee looked into the water, somewhat troubled, but then brightened again. So what if Spike was human? Bumblebee loved him—loved Spike and Samira both—and that's what counted. And didn't both Autobots and humans and daemons agree that love was the most powerful thing in the universe? Something in his spark echoed the sentiment, comforting him, and seemed to envelope his processors, his body—every atom of his being—with warmth.

Bumblebee, looking out at the spectacular play of sunlight on the water, absently wondered what that something was.

Any human would have been able to tell him that it was his daemon.

Bumblebee settled into a more comfortable position, moving slowly so as to not dislodge Spike, and hoped that the human and his daemon would wake up before Optimus prematurely sent out a search and rescue team for them again.

Author note: Samira's final form of a cheetah is a reference to Cheetor of Beast Wars and Beast Machines.