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i.
“Have you ever wondered why the Lieutenant doesn’t have a file?”
“Literally no one except for you has ever ‘wondered’ that.”
Strongarm shoves Sideswipe with her shoulder.
Hard.
“I’m being serious, Sideswipe.” She insists. “There’s files on all of us, on you and Grim and I. Fix-it even has a file. But Lieutenant Bumblebee doesn’t. Isn’t that weird?”
Sideswipe makes a face, and shoves her shoulder back.
“Have you been looking for one?” He asks, squinting his optics at her. “That’s what’s weird here, Strongarm.”
She purses her lips and looks away, already feeling the heat rise to her face plates.
“I just– wanted to check something.” She blusters out, and stifles down the whir as her fans try to kick in and cool her down. She’s not embarrassed. She’s not. She pulls her field even closer just in case anyway. “The Lieutenant– he was limping. I just wanted to see if he might’ve had an old war wound, or something. Something he wouldn’t mention because he doesn’t want to bother us and then– would later impede the mission. I’m being proactive. You should try it some time.”
Sideswipe blinks at her, helm resting on a closed fist.
She hates it when he looks at her like that.
“Are you done?” He asks dully. “That was like– the longest excuse I’ve ever heard, and trust me, I’m really good at excuses. Sunny did the planning, I did the talk around, long story short, you’re speaking to an expert here and that was like– a mess. You could’ve just asked him, you know.”
Strongarm files Sunny away for later and frowns.
She could’ve asked.
But this is the Lieutenant they’re talking about.
He doesn’t talk to them about that stuff.
At least not to Strongarm.
She’s pretty sure he would rather– die, or something.
“I don’t see you taking an interest in the Lieutenant’s health.” She snips back, crossing her arms and trying to brush away the lingering hurt that doesn’t make any sense. “If one of us doesn’t make him say something’s wrong, he’d just walk around with critical spark failure or something, and then when he’s dying, he’ll just brush it off like, ‘oh, don’t worry team, it’s just a flesh wound!’ nevermind that we don’t have flesh and–”
“Okay, so like, first things first:” Sideswipe interrupts, both hands raised, holding up a single digit. “Your Bee impression? Weirdly good, but you need more shoulder bobbing, and he speaks without an accent. Second: you are way too stressed about this. Have you considered yoga?”
“Sideswipe.”
“Yeah yeah, I see your point, let me finish.” He waves a hand at her, and Strongarm waits impatiently.
She resists the urge to tap her pede.
Just barely.
“Okay so like– we all know Bee is– Bee and he has his whole thing about appearing– I dunno, infallible or whatever.” Sideswipe rattles off dismissively, leaning back on his pile of sheet metal. “Maybe he does have a file, and you just– can’t access it? Ask Fix-it, he’s like– team medic, even though we don’t have a medic. And he’s in charge of all the other files. If anyone would have it, it would be him.”
“I know field medicine.” Strongarm mutters defensively, but doesn’t brush off the idea.
If anyone has the Lieutenant's file, it would be Fix-it.
She hadn’t thought of that.
Sideswipe can be really smart when he’s not being… Sideswipe.
She’d been on one of the colonies, in stasis, for almost the whole war.
She sort of wonders where Sideswipe had been.
She wonders who Sunny was.
“I’ll go ask him.” Strongarm decides, and Sideswipe groans, flopping the rest of the way over his sheet metal pile and throwing an arm over his faceplates.
“Uuuugggghhhhh, I hate when you do this.” He mumbles into his own arm, and Strongarm frowns. “Just leave it alone, dude. Bee won’t want to talk about it.”
“He’s got to eventually.” She inhales with a huff, an imitation of a human sniff, when did she start doing that? “He can’t go on forever just– not telling us stuff like that. It’s not practical.”
And it’s not.
It isn’t.
She’s learned that the hard way.
No hiding injuries.
It only makes things worse later.
“Strongarm.”
“Sideswipe.” She says, not looking at him.
He doesn’t get it.
He doesn’t understand why this is something she has to do.
It’s– frustrating.
Everything with him always is.
“We all have our secrets.” Sideswipe says to the right of her, just out of her field of vision, voice heavy like it always is when he wants to remind her that he knows how to fight and use a sword for a reason. “Bee’s probably got like a million of them, and if he hasn’t told us yet, he’s probably not going to. That’s just how it works, Strongarm.”
“But we’re his team,” she hisses out, finally turning around to face him. “He should talk to us!”
Sideswipe frowns, and Strongarm feels like she’s missing some vital piece of contextual data.
Half of their talks are like that.
They just don’t– get each other.
Talking to Sideswipe when he’s not doing his best to be a nuisance is so– irritating, Primus.
“We’re his new team,” he tells her slowly, crossing a pede over his bent knee joint, leaning his weight forward and on his elbows like some– some human psychiatrist. “Not his old team. We’re like– human babies to him, Strong. Civilians. Well– not Grim. Or Fix-it. But he doesn’t really talk to them either.”
“That’s– that’s not fair, Sideswipe.” She says weakly, crossing her arms tighter.
He shrugs.
“It’s kind of hard to measure up to Optimus Prime. No one’s expecting us to.” He responds, optics dim as he looks at something that isn’t there. “Dude was like– two Bee’s stacked on top of each other. Huge guy. Big shoulders. You could fit like, four Fix-it’s total clear across ‘em.”
Strongarm doesn’t say anything, for a moment.
Just–
Rolls that around in her processor.
“Did you– ever see him? Optimus Prime?” She asks quietly, and Sideswipe’s optics focus back on her.
He’s quiet, for a long time, and they just– stand there, in the little corner of the scrapyard that they both keep going back to in spite of the other.
“Once.” He finally says, and looks away. “I saw him once. In Kaon. With Megatron. After he’d– you know, become Prime. They–… they’d looked happy.”
Strongarm hugs herself tighter.
She can’t imagine–
A Lord High Protector turning on his Prime–
She doesn’t like it.
It makes her feel ill.
It was so– wrong.
“That’s probably why he doesn’t talk about it, you know. Or have a file either, actually.”
Strongarm focuses back on Sideswipe.
“What?”
“The war was like– the whole Decepticon thing, ‘you are being deceived’?” Sideswipe recites with air quotes, looking back at her expectantly. “Their whole thing was deception and stuff. Bee’s this big hot-shot war vet, right? He probably had to fight his old friends, or something. Like– he’s probably super paranoid, Strong. That’s why he doesn’t– y’know, talk about it or have a file, blah blah blah.”
Strongarm rolls that around in her processor too.
Sideswipe is… weirdly perceptive sometimes.
“I’ve met paranoid.” She finally says. “One of my old teachers in the Academy– the Lieutenant doesn’t act anything like that.”
“Again– big hot-shot war vet or whatever. He was fighting like, the entire time we were in stasis.” Sideswipe says dismissively. “Paranoid probably looks different on a guy like that.”
And Strongarm–
Can’t dismiss that.
Not the possibility.
But she still–
She would’ve seen, right?
“Like what?” She asks. “What would it look like?”
And Sideswipe– seems to actually consider the question.
To really think about it.
She’s kind of glad he’s at least taking this a little bit seriously even though Serious Sideswipe is always a little unnerving, because it’s so different from his usual bravado.
And then Sideswipe says, “Have you ever actually seen Bee drink his energon? Or recharge? Or do– anything even a little bit vulnerable?”
And Strongarm opens her mouth to say ‘Of course I have,’ but it gets stuck in her vocalizer.
Because–
She hasn’t.
She’s never seen the Lieutenant take a cube, or even drink one.
He’s always already awake whenever she sees him.
She doesn’t–
She doesn’t think she’s ever even seen his plating scratch.
Not like hers or Sideswipes.
Strongarm’s never seen him damaged.
She’s never seen him asleep.
She’s never even seen him drink.
He’s just–
Always ready.
Always prepared.
Always gearing to pick up and run.
“Oh,” she says, because it’s all she can.
“Yeah,” Sideswipe echoes quietly. “Oh.”
ii.
“Hey Grim? You ever notice how Bee only spars with you?”
Sideswipe has.
Sideswipe’s noticed because he wants to spar with Bee but the guy always weasels his way out of the conversation like a damn turbo-fox whenever he asks.
“Sure!” Grimlock says with a big grin, all pointy and fanged denta. “Why d’you ask?”
Sideswipe swings a leg from his perch and sighs.
“I keep trying to ask him to spar with me, but he always dodges the question or shoves me at Strongarm.” He complains. “It’s like how he keeps– I dunno, barrel rolling away from Fix-it whenever he tries to check him for injuries.”
Grimlock makes a thoughtful sound, and taps his claws together.
“He probably thinks I’m less uh… breakable?” He says after a moment. “I got denser plating, you know, bein’ a dynobot and all. And I have natural weapons, like he does.”
What.
“Bee doesn’t have claws, Grim.” Sideswipe says, leaning forward and shoving that breakable comment into the back of his processor. “Or fangs.”
Grimlock looks at him like he’s crazy.
Which–
What?
“Of course he has claws.” Grimlock tells him like Sideswipe is a particularly cute but dumb Earth dog. “He’s a warframe, ain’t he?”
And–
That’s–
What?
Grimlock blinks at him, optics shuttering a few times as Sideswipe tries to make sense of– of that.
Thinking was always Sunny’s job.
Sideswipe’s was the people and the execution.
Then he shoves that thought away.
He doesn’t need to be distracted right now.
“Bee’s not a warframe.” He finally says, trying to grind every inch of Fact and Truth into his words, but Grimlock just blinks at him some more. “I’ve seen warframes. They don’t look like that.”
Warframes were so much more… unsettling.
A reminder of a darker, messier time, with dull plates and quiet engines and dozens of fine transformation seams to turn hands that hold into guns that kill.
Armor meant to hold up against blaster fire, optics shaped every so slightly wrong for aiming, pedefalls silent silent silent.
Sideswipe knew what warframes looked like.
He had to if he wanted to avoid them and keep himself from getting slagged by the wrong mech.
And Bee wasn’t anything like that.
His paint was bright and his optics were normal and his engine was as loud as the rest of them.
He always used a standard blaster and his plates always looked solid and you could hear him singing through the scrapeyard at all hours, not even close to the picture of quiet.
Bee wasn’t a warframe.
But he fought in the war.
And isn’t war what a warframe is built for–
No.
No, no, no.
Plenty of mechs in the war had been civilians, or laborers, or– or even nobles.
They weren’t all warframes.
Bee was probably one of those.
An ordinary mech that got dragged into fighting by his own conscience anyway.
“He has claw caps.”
Sideswipe zeros back in on Grimlock.
“I’m sorry?”
“He has claw caps.” Grimlock repeats, waggling his own fingers for emphises. “I used to wear them before I got my adult frame, see? Before it would be too much shanix for custom ones. I regonize ‘em. And the seams on his hands don’t match up with the lines they make, either.”
“Why would– how did you notice that?” He squints, tilting his head.
Grimlock grins.
“I spar with him, don’ I?” He says easily, before shrugging his huge, huge shoulders. “I’ve held his hands before too, helpin’ him get over ledges an’ stuff. So’ve you. How did you not notice?”
Sideswipe looks away and purses his lips.
Now that he thinks about it Bee did have a lot of seams–
No.
Nope, no, nonono.
Bee wasn’t–
Bee wasn’t a warframe.
He was paranoid, and weird, and he’d been really jumpy around Grim those first few weeks, but–
But that didn’t mean anything .
Bee was always smiling about something, or listening and singing along to Earth music, or complaining about how in the years he’d been gone his favorite show had ended and the ending wasn’t even good.
He was bad at rally cries, and he didn’t know how to lead sometimes, and he laughed at them when they complained about long drives because back when he lived on Earth he’d done recon missions lasting days in a desert full of sand and dust.
Bee wouldn’t–
Bee wasn’t–
Sideswipe wasn’t afraid that Bee was going to shoot him for being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong frame, and he knew that wasn’t fair, he knew that, the mechs that fought in the war couldn’t help it the same way he couldn’t help what he looked like, but it was still–
It was still something he had to be afraid of, once burned, twice shy and all that, and he wasn’t–
He wasn’t afraid of Bee.
Sideswipe trusted him.
He couldn’t be a warframe.
He didn’t set off any alarm bells.
He didn’t wave any red flags.
And Sideswipe wasn’t scared of him.
It didn’t–
It didn’t make sense.
Because he’d watched the way Bee had knocked loose all of the ideas Strongarm had about him because he was– he was a drag racer, a small time criminal, someone with a frame that looked almost Kaonite, and everyone knew what side of the war Kaon had been on–
If anyone, any mech at all, would have a bias about that kind of thing, it would be warframes.
But Bee never had.
He’d just been… nice.
He was only ever hostile to those with a purple badge and even then it was– sort of resigned.
Tired.
Like he’d rather be anywhere else.
He didn’t enjoy fighting.
So he– he couldn’t be a warframe.
“Did I break you?” He hears Grimlock ask curiously. “‘m sorry Sides, I really didn’t mean to. I thought you knew.”
Is–
Is it that obvious he’s having a crisis?
Sideswipe turns his focus sort of inward and checks his HUD–
And.
Oh.
Wow.
Yeah, he’s starting to feel the strain now of all his fans at full blast holy slag.
Sideswipe vents out all of the hot air in a heavy exhale across all his seams, and he can feel the air get warmer even as his internals start to cool down.
Grimlock winces.
“Sorry.” He mutters again, before popping up like an excited turbo-hound. “You want me to go get you some coolant? Or one of those big wind machines Denny just got? Cause I can do that if you wa–”
“No I’m good,” Sideswipe wheezes out. “Just give me a second.”
Grimlock frowns, but waits as he winds down his fans to silent one by one.
It kind of hurts.
He hasn’t been that wound up about something in… a while.
He thinks it was… maybe when he and Sunny fought and then–
Slag.
Sideswipe buries his faceplates in his hands.
Stupid.
He’d gone to blow off steam and then left the entire fragging planet without a word to anyone.
Frag frag frag.
Primus, and worst of all he'd left Sunny.
What kind of a brother was he?
The kind that– that runs off with Elite Guard cadets and– and whatever Bee is, on stupid impossible missions given to them by ghosts, apparently.
Stupid.
“Sideswipe?”
He looks up.
Grimlock is just– frowning, eye ridges furrowed, claws tapping together.
“Are you okay?” He asks softly, and Sideswipe buries his faceplates in his hands again and sighs, drawing his sudden downer of an EM field back in close.
“I’m okay, Grim. You didn’t do anything, big guy.” He manages after a second.
“Is–” Grimlock starts to speak, cuts himself off, and then hesitates. “Did you… is Bee bein’ a warframe really that bad?”
Sideswipe purses his lips and just– shuts off his optics because he can’t bear to look at Grimlock’s sad face.
“No,” he says quietly, moving his hands to link behind his neck, elbows on his knee joints. “It’s not. Just– some bad memories, y’know?”
“Oh,” Grimlock responds, a soft exhale of air. “Yeah, I get it. Bee is okay. I know him, and he’s nice. The other Autobots that show up– that’s different, ‘cause I’m a dynobot, and most’a us were ‘Cons when the war started, so they might try t’arrest me or somethin’. Feels better when they leave. S’not very fair, and stasis wasn’t too bad, but it is what it is.”
Sideswipe onlines his optics again.
“… that’s kinda sad, Grim.”
“Maybe. Lots of us– the dynobots– just joined because it was the thing to do, or we liked wreckin’ stuff. Didn’t wanna hurt anyone though. And at least in stasis we couldn’t’a been told to hurt anyone.” Grimlock says with a shrug. “Me and my squad had it pretty good, actually. We just got sentenced and stuck in separate ships instead of slagged. Our old Carer probably had something to do with it. He was an Autobot medic.”
Sideswipe stares at him for a long moment.
He doesn’t–
He doesn’t want to think about Bee being– a warframe.
Bee and warframe just– they don’t mix.
They don’t.
And he’d rather think about literally anything else.
Like– like Grimlock apparently being raised by an Autobot medic.
That is–
So out of left field that he never would’ve guessed.
“Yeah?” Sideswipe croaks out with a grin. “An Autobot medic? How’d you end up a ‘Con then?”
Grimlock smiles, all bright teeth, optics far away.
“See, our initial lines were done by this engineer, bunch’a experimental stuff, and then we were given to our Carer, who had a bunch’a specializations– best surgeon on Cybertron– so he could keep an optic on us…”
iii.
“Hey Drift? I got a question for you.”
“Hmm?”
Grimlock rests his chin on his hand, and waits for Drift to set aside the one sword he never uses.
“Did you know Bee in the war?” He asks curiously, and watches the way Drift’s plating starts to clamp down tight.
He frowns.
He didn’t mean to do that.
“Why are you asking?” Drift says wearily, claw-capped fingers tap tap tapping on his thigh.
“I’m worried about him.” Grimlock says honestly. “He’s been gettin’ quieter every day this month and I was wonderin’ if you knew somethin’.”
Drift relaxes at that.
“You could ask him, you know.” He points out, but he hasn’t clammed up yet, so Grimlock’s counting it as a victory.
“I could,” he nods once, “but he doesn’t like to talk about stuff, and he’s already pretty upset, and I didn’t wanna make it worse–”
“So you figured you’d ask me.” Drift finishes with a dip of his head, still unreadable.
Grimlock tries for a smile.
“Yeah.”
Drift hums a little, shuttering his optics and tilting ever so slightly to the side.
It’s his thinking face.
Grimlock knows it pretty well by now, even though they don’t talk much.
Drift doesn’t really talk much to anyone, actually.
Mostly only to Jetstorm and Slipstream.
But sometimes he has long talks with Bee, where they sit up on top of the cliff face the ship is buried into, out of audial range, and just… don’t come down for hours.
Bee doesn’t like to talk about the war, but getting Drift to even think about it is like pulling denta and wires.
“I can’t think of anything,” Drift finally says, unshuttering one optic to look at him. “No anniversaries or battles or deaths. At least, not ones I knew about. I joined the Autobots late. You ever think it might be something about Earth?”
Grimlock sighs a heavy vent.
He’d been afraid of that.
“He doesn’t like talking about what he did here even more.” He mutters. “I just wanna… make him stop lookin’ so sad.”
“Well maybe he needs to talk about it.” Drift says blandly, resting his cheek on a closed fist. “It’d probably do him some good.”
Grimlock eyes him for a second, and then carefully, so carefully, he says, “Like talkin’ about stuff would do you some good?”
And Drift’s plating finally does that unhappy clamp close and tight to his protoform, face dropping as he looks away.
Grimlock waits for a while, to see what he’ll do.
He’s tried to get Drift to talk before, but they’re not… they’re not the same kind of ex-Con.
Grimlock hadn’t really been involved in the war, not beyond a little bit of property damage, before he’d been sentenced and sent away.
He hadn’t even really minded it.
He was still online, wasn’t he?
And he didn’t have to hurt anyone.
Him and his squad were going to prison ships, but they were safe.
That had been all that mattered.
Drift… wasn’t like that.
Grimlock could see the claw caps on his hands, the covers on his fangs, the hidden notch on the back of his neck that modified his voice.
He could see how in the dark Drift’s optics almost started to look indigo because he had blue lenses over red.
He could see the way Drift was so careful to never ever use a gun, like he was afraid they’d burn him if he even looked.
Drift wasn’t like Grimlock.
He’d been dead in the middle of the war, and his plating wasn’t as old as he was for a reason.
Grimlock wasn’t stupid.
There were tells for a remodeling.
Angry white scars on his protoform that Grimlock had seen the one time Drift had ever let Fix-it take a look at an injury, lines that bit into the metal and tapered, thin, angry things that had to’ve slipped in between his plates.
They didn’t match up with the way his plates laid now.
That was the most obvious one.
“I only ever met him when we were on opposite sides,” Drift suddenly says, voice quiet and strained and gravel in his vocalizer. “And we were different squadrons after I defected.”
Grimlock stares at him for a long moment, not quite believing what he’s hearing.
But–
No, Drift–
Drift is opening up oh Primus.
Grimlock does his best not to gasp and clap his hands together like one of those dramatic human ladies on the shows that Russel hates watching and says are “absolute garbage” because “there isn’t even any fighting”.
“I was– I regret a lot of the things I did.” Drift continues, optics far, far away, hands falling back to the sword he never uses and picking it back up to rest it across his crossed legs. “If I had to guess– Bumblebee does too. There’s basically no way he could’ve done all of the terrible things I did but– it was a war. They’re paved in regrets. He had a reputation for a reason.”
Grimlock straightens out at that, and then leans forward, unable to help the curiosity bubbling up in his spark.
Bee?
With a reputation?
That’s–
Grimlock is curious now.
What did Bee do?
“Well, he was Prime’s chosen scout,” Drift starts, and Grimlock realizes he said that outloud whoops. “And that on it’s own was enough to make some of us think twice. Then he survived Megatron, which– that didn’t help his reputation at all. I remember– Primus, I think it was Tur– no, he didn’t gossip. Couldn’t’ve been him. Silicate? Whatever. Someone. They told me this rumor, that when Megatron had ripped out his vocalizer it’d taken all of his sound with it, because after that, he was like a ghost.”
Holy.
Slag.
This is–
The most he’s ever heard Drift talk in one sitting.
He feels?
Kind of honored?
“Really?” Grimlock whispered. “He’s so loud, now.”
Drift waves a dismissive hand, and it’s like all the life is flowing back into him.
“If you’d been mute for millennia, wouldn’t you be as loud as possible all the time?” He asks rhetorically, leaning forward to meeting Grimlock in the middle, the blue of his optics standing out stark against the red paint streaked down his faceplates. “He was near silent, though, from what I remember. One of the best scouts, even before Megatron seemed to take all the sound out of him. They called him Prime’s Golden Dagger.”
“No,” Grimlock whispers, because Primus, that’s– woah. “For real?”
Drift nods solemnly.
“If you saw him on the field, you turned around, not just because he was there but because the Prime was sure to follow.” He pauses for one long second, and then purses his lips like he’s tasted soured energon. “Autobots used to do the same thing with me, but again– I was– I was worse. It wasn’t really that Bumblebee had killed a lot of mechs– it was that you wouldn’t know he was there until his target was already dead. And he didn’t do stuff like that often, but lots of Decepticon plans got ruined because no one had seen the scout listening in the corner or the rafters.”
“That’s crazy,” Grimlock breathes out, because what else is he supposed to say? “He really did all that?”
It’s… kind of sad when he really thinks about it, actually.
Bee had been good at war.
But mechs were scared of him.
Was that why–
Was that why some of the Decepticons they caught went so quietly?
Because Bee was Prime’s Golden Dagger?
What was– what was it like to have your designation reduced to being a blade?
To being–
Something to be afraid of on sight?
Except–
Grimlock kind of knew that one.
He was a dynobot.
He was big, and pointy, and he could cause a lot of damage without really trying.
He had fangs and claws and when he was in his alt mode, he had huge jaws and a huge tail and he could destroy easily and without thought.
There was a reason so many dynobots had ended up ‘Cons.
No one else would have them.
Even ones raised by Autobot medics.
“That’s awful.” Grimlock decides. “He’s so nice and– and he cares so much about everything.”
“Well yeah,” Drift says easily. “We know that because we’ve met him, and worked with him, and– live with him, I guess. But none of the Decepticons knew that. They just saw a mute mech that would kill on the Prime’s orders. That’s just how it was.”
Grimlock frowns, something sour curling around his spark.
“Were there any Decepticons like that?” He asks before he can think about it too hard. “Mechs that the Autobots were scared of but– but weren’t like that to their own?”
And Drift looks–
Surprised.
Optics wide, for a long, long moment.
And then he–
Sort of starts to smile.
“Did you know that Soundwave used to make compilations of Starscream tripping around the Nemesis?” He offers like a crystal branch, a peace offering, carefully bared denta and squinting optics.
Grimlock gasps.
Holy slag.
He.
Did.
Not.
“No, tell me more.”
And Drift barks out a startled laugh.
iv.
“Fix-it, do you know where Bumblebee is?”
“Oh! Drift! I believe he is on stroll– parol– patrol!” Fix-it stutters out brightly. “He should be back around noon! Did you need something?”
Drift tilts his head to the side.
“No.” He decides. “I wanted to compare notes on something. Do you know where he’s patrolling?”
“Nevada!”
Drift considers that for a moment, and does a quick dip into a search engine.
“That is– ten hours away from here. I don’t remember the ground bridge opening.” He frowns. “Has he been patrolling all night?”
“The Lieutenant was tick–squick– quick! To inform me that he would be taking some energon with him!” Fix-it responds, tapping at the Alchemor’s display to pull up the ID ping of Bumblebee on a map, moving, comparatively, at high speeds. “And that a twenty hour drive was rather short in comparison to his old recon runs with Optimus Prime.”
Drift blinks.
That sounds– about right.
Bumblebee was built for long drives, if you bothered to look past the paint and really squinted at his tires and suspension.
He had the same sort of frame as Drift, made for long sustained speed.
Not like Strongarm who was definitely built for high stress pursuit, or Sideswipe who could do bursts of high speed with high maneuverability, or Grimlock who for some reason resembled an Earth dinosaur and had the stamina for long and drawn out tailing, but high speeds for extended periods of time.
They tended to pair up on drives for a reason.
Besides old familiarity of someone who’d been in the war and got it.
“Huh.” He mumbles, and starts to turn away. “It can wait. Let me know when he gets back.”
Jetstorm and Slipstream are– somewhere, probably with Russel.
They liked his video games, and it helped with their coordination, so he’d decided not to be too bothered by it.
And it made them happy.
There was that.
… Hot Rod would probably like video games too, now that he thought about it.
Drift grimaced.
They could never meet, regardless of the fact that he had no idea where Hot Rod even was.
Slipstream would take to him immediately, because of course she would, and then Jetstorm would follow, because of course he would, and then he would never know peace again.
“Actually, I had a question for you, Drift!” Fix-it calls out, and he pauses in his stride, shuttling that nightmare scenario off into never thinking about that again land.
He turns to look back at Fix-it, who rolls down the ramp to catch up with him.
“Hmm?”
“Could you get the Lieutenant to take care of his weapons pistons– wisdoms– systems!” Fix-it does a loop around Drift’s pedes, and he holds carefully still. “His weapons systems! They’re in a very bad state of disrepair, you know.”
Drift thinks about that for a second, doesn’t think about his own weapons systems, or the guns he still keeps in his subspace like a burning crutch, or how his first instinct is still good that’ll make him easier to take down just in case, and shrugs.
“I can always ask him.” He says blandly. “But I can’t say for sure if he’ll actually listen to me.”
“That’s all I can ask!” Fix-it says brightly. “Tank– clank– thank! You! Thank you, Drift!”
He shrugs again.
“Sure. What makes you think it’ll be any different from when you ask him, though?” He asks curiously, sending out a lazy ping for Slipstream and Jetstorm’s location.
Where one is, the other follows, and he gets a quick response placing them in Russel’s area of the scrapyard.
He turns away from it with purpose, and Fix-it follows.
“Well– I have read your file.” Fix-it starts, and Drift tries not to follow through with the reflex flinch. “It’s not open to Strongarm or Sideswipe or Grimlock! Just me and the Lieutenant. Mostly for wealth– stealth– heath! Reasons. Mostly for health reasons. And I figured if anyone could convince him to stop letting his systems rust, it would be somebody that understood why he was letting them rust. Does that make sense?”
And Drift– does his best to make his plating relax, keeping his EM field close and under his armor.
They’re all so– careful, with their EM fields here.
It’s nothing like the Wreckers.
And he thinks it’s nothing like how Bumblebee’s old team was, because he can catch brief brushes and glimpses every once in a while that get immediately drawn back in, like they weren’t on purpose.
But Strongarm doesn’t seem like the kind of femme to broadcast her emotions like that, and Sideswipe is too tense to.
He’s only ever caught edges of their fields when their emotions ran too high.
Grimlock is only marginally better than the lot of them, but he still mostly wears his emotions on his sleeve and keeps his field close for just about everyone except for Bee and now–
Kind of Drift.
They talk, now.
It’s… kind of nice.
Grimlock is very… open and honest and genuine.
That’s also nice.
Fix-it is a minicon, and more social like Slipstream and Jetstorm because of it, but he mostly keeps his field close in too.
It’s kind of strange.
He wonders if Bee does it because he knows humans can’t read EM fields, and wants to be fair, and then if everyone else just followed his example because he was the resident Earth expert.
That would be kind of funny, actually.
“Yeah,” he says after remembering that Fix-it had asked him a question. “Yeah that makes sense. Our reasons are very different, though. I stopped using mine long before the war ended.”
And Fix-it– gasps, hands coming up to press against his chest plating.
“They must be so– so– so neglected!” He cries, doing restless loops around Drift’s pedes all over again. “Drift! You need to quake– make– take! Care! Of yourself!”
“I don’t exactly like remembering what I did during the war, Fix-it.” He reminds as gently as he can, because he’s calm right now, and Fix-it is only ever eager and well-meaning. “I use swords for a reason.”
Fix-it does a little frown, all tightly-drawn eye ridges that remind him almost painfully of Magnus and Springer, and then looks back up at him.
“I know that.” He says seriously. “But you’re different now, and letting yourself rust as punishment doesn’t help anyone.”
Drift shoves all of that very carefully into the back of his processor to never be looked at again, tries for a smile, and says, “You should try that one on Bumblebee. He might even listen.”
“Drift.”
“Fix-it.” He responds amicably.
And it’s not like he doesn’t know leaving his bioweapons and corresponding systems to go without maintenance doesn’t help him, it’s not like he isn’t aware of the logic tree that says if Bumblebee letting himself rust makes him a better target, then that means you are too, it’s not like he doesn’t know he should take better care of himself, Wing would want him to–
But the thought of letting his hands shift and change, the thought of finally pulling his guns out of his subspace after centuries, millennia, it all makes him want to scrape out his internals and leave himself to bleed out where no strange, kind mechs will ever find him and take him back to paradise.
He wonders if Wing is waiting for him in the Well.
He wonders if he regrets it.
“This is about Bumblebee anyway,” Drift says before Fix-it can start trying to– to mother hen him. “Not me. I’ll do my best, but if he wants to let himself decay it’s not like I can stop him. You’d probably have to get an actual medic down here to get him to do anything about it. And the only one he’d listen to is probably his old one.”
Fix-it holds onto that little frown with his draw-tight eye ridges for another moment longer, before looking away, faceplates changing from upset to considering.
“That would be– Ratchet.” He says, optics a little hazy, probably as he looks at some sort of internal display. “His old medic was Ratchet. I am unsure of his current probation– vocation– location.”
And it feels– sort of like he’s been punched straight through the chest and dunked in ice water.
“Did you say Ratchet?”
Fix-it looks back up at him with clearer optics, and they come to a finished loop back at the ramp to the control hub of the Alchemor.
“I did.” Fix-it says with a nod, and then tilts his head like he remembers Laserbeak doing. “Do you know him?”
“Yeah,” Drift breathes out with the memory of a mech in the Dead End with orange and white plates, kind and careful hands, and the worst bedside manner he’d ever seen. “You could say that.”
v.
“Strongarm? You wanted to squawk– walk– talk ? To me?”
“I– yeah. Yeah Fix-it, I did.”
Fix-it hums, does one last loop around the control module, double checking that everything is still in working order, and starts down the ramp.
“What was it you needed?”
Strongarm does an antsy sort of fidgeting motion, door wings doing an anxious flutter.
He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her do that before!
They’re usually so still.
How curious!
“Is something wrong, Strongarm?”
She does another little anxious fidget, and then starts walking with quick strides towards the east side of the scrapyard, only slowing once he catches up.
Fix-it waits patiently for her to start talking, since asking questions so far hasn’t been very successful.
He’ll give it another few minutes, and if she still hasn’t spoken, he’ll try mindless chatter.
Statistically that has a higher chance of getting her to speak if only to make him stop, and then they can get to the root of the problem!
Yes, that’s what he’ll do.
It’s a good plan, a solid plan.
And then Strongarm says, “It’s about Bee,” and he gently scraps the plan before shuttling it off into the back of his processor, no longer needed.
Fix-it gives her an encouraging hum, and sets a timer to say something if she doesn’t speak again in ten seconds.
Strongarm doesn’t usually use the Lieutenant’s name.
He’s very curious now.
“I’m– Did you know he knows sign?” Strongarm stutters out, looking down at him almost expectantly.
He is a solid 78% sure that is not what she actually wants to discuss.
Oh well.
Maybe they’ll get there eventually.
He’s just happy to chat.
“I did!” He answers brightly. “The Lieutenant knows a slumber– lumber– number of languages. Why do you ask?”
Strongarm looks away from him again, watching her own pedes instead as they carefully walk through the organized-disorganized stacks of the scrapyard.
Well.
She walks.
He rolls.
“We were doing a practice recon run,” she starts, and absently grabs something off of the shelves to roll in her hands. He makes a note, sets down a location ping, and jots down a reminder to bring it back. “The ones where we do the really long drives. And we ran through this town that Bee’s old team used to use as a safe recharge location, or for supply pick up.”
“How interesting!” He chimes in, tapping his fingers together. “Did you run into anyone the Lieutenant knew?”
And Strongarm looks at him sharply at that, optics anxious gold, before pursing her lips and focusing on her hands instead.
How curious!
How very, very curious.
Curiouser and curiouser, even.
Fix-it pins a reminder to thank Denny Clay for his recommendations in Earth books.
He always forgets to actually say thank you.
Maybe he should try alarms.
“We did,” Strongarm says then, the fidgeting motion coming back into her door wings. “A human. He recognized Bee’s alt mode, and he said– a name, a human name. Ben Hive. And I thought he was talking to someone else, you know, because it couldn’t have been us but then– Bee said something over the comms and then there was– was a human tripping out of his cab and it wasn’t Denny and it wasn’t Russel and we were so confused–”
“The Lieutenant’s holoform!” Fix-it interrupts happily before Strongarm can work herself into an anxious heap of whirring fans. An explanation is the mostly likely thing to get her to calm down, he thinks, so he starts first with that. “I had wondered if it was still in working hoarder– border– order! Working order! I’m so pleased it is. I was beginning to think he’d forgotten about it!”
“Holo...form.” Strongarm says, incomprehension staining her words, something less like upset entering her faceplates and more like that hunger she has to learn more.
Success!
Crisis averted!
Oh, he wouldn’t have had any idea what to do if Strongarm had managed to get really upset.
Possibly gotten Grimlock.
He was good at that kind of thing.
“Holoform!” Fix-it affirms with a nod. “They were made before the snore– poor– war so that diplomatic or traveling Cybertronians would stop scaring local populations. I believe all of the Lieutenant’s original team had them!”
“I– really?” Strongarm asks curiously, the whir of her fans finally silenting back to base line, and he smiles.
“I’m fairly positive, yes!” He does a quick loop around her pedes, careful to not be stepped on. “What did he look like?”
And she hesitates, for a long moment, long enough that he considers setting another timer for how long to wait before speaking, before she shakes her head decisively.
“He was– I think around Denny’s height? It was hard to tell.” Strongarm says with a tilt of her head, optics edging onto fuzzy as she presumably reviews a memory file. “His skin was kind of dark– tanned– and his hair was– blonde. It was blonde. He had some writing on his left shoulder and– and his throat was covered in human scar tissue. And he only spoke with his hands. I didn’t hear his voice. Do you– know why he did that?”
Ah.
Fix-it understands now!
It had been the not knowing that had upset her.
That was understandable, since Strongarm liked having all the variables.
Maybe she had also been hurt that the Lieutenant hadn’t told her about his holoform?
Regardless, Fix-it saying that he’d forgotten about it seems to have helped.
Another win for him!
“The sign language?” He asks, because he wants to be sure he knows what she’s asking.
Strongarm nods, maybe a little impatient, but he smiles anyway.
“The Lieutenant was mute for the majority of the war. He couldn’t speak.” Fix-it explains, carefully watching her faceplates for her reaction. “I believe he could only communicate in wine– pine– sign and binary.”
Ah.
He’s fairly sure that’s horror.
“His vocalizer had been ripped out in the Battle of Tyger Pax.” He continues, tapping his fingers together as he maneuvers around a stack of– wooden ducks? Wooden ducks. “By Megatron himself, I believe? The Lieutenant did end up killing him though, so I do think he got the last third– bird– word.”
Oh.
Even more horror.
Hmm.
Maybe he should stop?
“As you can see, though, he’s quite alright now.”
Strongarm doesn’t say anything, and instead stares intensely at whatever it is she has in her hands.
He squints a little–
Ah!
A metal fruit.
Probably from some sort of modern art?
Or sculpture?
… why does Denny Clay have that?
Fix-it then determinedly shoves that thread into the background of his processor.
He has since learned that trying to understand why Denny Clay collects what he does is impossible.
Instead, you just have to partake and enjoy the enthusiasm he has for it!
That works much better, he’s found.
“He looked happy.” Strongarm says suddenly, not looking at him.
“Pardon?”
Strongarm stops walking, and instead stands absolutely still, staring at her hands.
He absently wonders what the metal fruit has done to wrong her.
“He looked happy.” She repeats more clearly this time, voice edging into something that Fix-it can’t read. “Talking to that human, he looked happy. Like he did when Jazz visited, or when we can get him talking about Optimus Prime. He looked… happy.”
Oh.
He does know what that is.
Maybe.
He could be wrong, but he’s fairly sure that it must be envy.
Envy and a lack of understanding.
Strongarm looks up to the Lieutenant a great amount.
Has put him on a pedestal, almost.
He thinks it must sting, to see a random human do what you couldn’t.
“Is that bad?” Fix-it says warmly, and watches the way Strongarm’s door wings finally lean forward to press flat against her own shoulders in defeat.
“No,” she sighs sadly. “It’s not. I just wish… he was happy like that with us. We’re his team, Fix-it. He’s supposed to be happy with us too.”
Fix-it rolls over to put a sympathetic hand on her leg, because that’s about as far as he can reach.
“He is happy.” He says as gently as he can. “It’s not like he doesn’t bear– tear– care about us. You know that, right?”
Strongarm purses her lips unhappily.
“I do.” She mutters eventually. “I do. I just… don’t understand why he likes it here so much, sometimes. All the time. It’s no Cybertron.”
And that–
That is something he knows how to deal with.
“He did live here for a long time, Strongarm.” Fix-it says warmly. “He considers this his home, you go– woah– know. The Lieutenant loves Earth more than anything. Probably more than any of us love Cybertron. It’s why he isn’t worried about getting snack– tack– back! Getting back. He doesn’t miss it, Strongarm.
“He missed Earth.”
+ vi.
He’s not sure how it all goes so wrong so fast.
He blames the sky.
Red morning, sailors warning, blah blah blah.
Should’ve known better.
They always had red mornings in Jasper, and something was always going wrong.
They were linked, he’s fragging sure.
Bumblebee thinks maybe he’d– subconsciously remembered that.
It’s probably why he’d been on edge all day.
Subconscious for once for the win.
No other times.
It sucked all the other times, but this one was okay.
It got a pass.
Hopefully the trend would continue, Primus willing or whatever.
Honestly.
He should’ve expected this, really.
Had it too good for too long, he thinks ruefully, and then stops to mourn whatever semblance of calm he’d managed to gather in the last month because it is absolutely gonna be shot to shit for the next six weeks.
Uuuuuggghhh.
But still.
Did it really have to be fragging Lockdown?
Like, out of all the mechs the universe could’ve chosen, it picked Lockdown?
And, you know, Bumblebee had known that he– and by extension his team– had a bounty on them, because Drift had told him, but really?
Lockdown????
Lockdown who was known universe wide because he was such a good bounty hunter?
One that always caught his prey?
One that stole his fragging team to use as bait?
Bumblebee wants to hit something.
The only good thing about this situation is that Denny had to go and pick up something for the scrapyard that was hours away, and he’d taken Russel with him for– he thinks it was character building, or something, which meant that when the team was taken they weren’t.
Lockdown didn’t have them.
For now.
He’d probably get to them soon if Bumblebee didn’t waltz right into his net.
Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly.
But see, he couldn’t do that either, because he had some shred of self-preservation, and he also didn’t want to be forcibly cut off from his home all fragging over again.
And he didn’t know what would happen to his team if he did.
Lockdown had universal renown.
It wasn’t for being honorable.
It was for being ruthless.
So really, Bee had two options.
He could walk into Lockdown’s ship, let himself be taken quietly, and let whatever happened, happen, or…
Or he could sneak on board, sabotage the whole thing, and then–
And then…
Well…
Lockdown only stopped hunting his targets if they were dead.
And Bumblebee wasn’t leaving Earth if he could help it.
So he had to disarm and contain Lockdown, somehow get him to a stasis pod, and then hide it where it could never, ever be opened or found.
Or kill him.
He could also kill him.
But he didn’t really want to think about that, and switches to stealth mode instead of doing the whole thinking about that thing, watching as his nanites ripple in a wave of familiar black all across his arms.
He hasn’t inverted his colors in… a while.
He’s not sure if he missed it or not.
It’s definitely, if nothing else, very nostalgic.
A reminder of better and worse times.
Times when Optimus was still around, times when Ratchet was there to patch them up, times when he would take Raf to and from school and try to dodge Pallas and her many, many attempts at flirting with his holoform.
Times when they killed Vehicons by the hundreds, times when Megatron and Optimus fought like it would fix everything, times when he had all the words in his throat and no way to say any of them.
Better and worse.
Better and worse.
Lockdown’s ship is relatively easy to sneak into, in comparison to the Nemesis.
He snaps down the rest of his battle mask, not just the mouth guard, and picks out cameras and blindspots with an old familiarity that makes him both kind of ill and kind of relieved.
He’s still got it.
He’s still good at this.
He’s still the best damn scout this side of the universe.
And the battle mask, the dark paint, the sneaking into a ship, it feels like settling back into an old, worn groove, comfortable and familiar, like he’d never even left.
Bumblebee’s a good scout.
He’s never doubted that, not like how he second guesses himself as team leader with every breath he doesn’t need to take but does almost out of habit now, a mimic of all the humans he grew up around.
It feels kind of nice to be a scout again, for however briefly.
It feels good.
It feels like coming home.
Bumblebee steps silently through the corridors of Lockdown’s ship, edging around the stupid amount of cameras he has, and makes his way to where logic and old memory says the control hub should be.
Bumblebee had said he would meet Lockdown at the scrapyard in what’s now almost fifteen minutes.
If Lockdown had even a bit of a brain, he’ll know he was lying, but go to the scrapyard anyway just to make sure.
And if he was smart, he’d have where he’s keeping Bumblebee’s team rigged, just in case, and cloaked in surveillance.
So he has to disable that first.
Piece of cake.
And it is.
Lockdown isn’t there, waiting in the dark like a Bond villain with a cybercat curled up in his lap as he swivels around dramatically from the captain’s chair.
It’s just empty, and there are no cameras.
Only screens.
Hijacking those is easier than he remembers it being, and he shores up his firewalls just in case, sticking all the cameras on a loop and downloading the path to his team in less than a minute.
It’s familiar.
Old hat.
Nothing goes wrong and he’s just waiting to get shot in the back.
His team looks okay, though.
That’s what really matters.
Well.
Except for Drift.
He looks a little rough.
And mutinous.
And almost Deadlock levels of pissed.
That’s probably not good.
He stays out of sight of the cameras on the way down to them, too, mostly because he doesn’t want to chance anything.
It’s pretty likely that his looping will get disabled by some sort of secret backup program, a good 50/50, because Lockdown was like that, but he’d needed the path to the team anyway, otherwise he would’ve been wandering around wasting time for longer than he could afford, so he decides it wasn’t a complete waste regardless of the fate of the cameras.
And then he arrives at a locked door.
Which is a bit of a problem.
Because when Lockdown had nabbed his team, he’d also nabbed their weapons.
Bastard.
He frowns behind his battle mask.
Bumblebee once again has two options.
No gun means no blasting the door, so he can either hack it, which would take time, or…
Or…
He flexes his hands, slowly, and tries not to be sick.
He could engage his arm cannons.
And shoot the door
He doesn’t want to.
He doesn’t want to engage his arm cannons.
He stopped using them for a reason.
They made people scared.
He didn’t want to scare anyone.
He didn’t want to hurt anyone, it’s why he was so careful to never use them.
But this is…
His timer is down to six.
It’s a big ship.
He’ll only have so long before Lockdown comes back and deals with him personally.
And he’d rather have his team out where Lockdown can’t get to them.
So.
Hack the lock, and lose his advantage…
Or shoot the door, and hate himself every second of it.
Well.
If it comes down to personal promises, or his team…
Bumblebee will always pick his team.
Always.
Always.
And the thing about warframes, is that their weapons systems can fall into dust and age, but they can’t rust.
Fix-it was wrong about that.
Self repair fixes it too quickly.
They’re not modifications.
They’re part of his functioning.
And when his transformation seams split apart and whirl and bloom, his arm cannon is just as gleaming as the last time he used it, safely tucked away in pieces waiting to be used.
He flexes his other hand as a reminder.
And then he shoots the door.
It crumples under the force, metal bubbling like it's been hacked at with a magnesium flare.
Bee’d almost forgotten the particular taste of bioweapon ozone.
Almost like Megatron’s ion cannon.
He shakes the thought away, pushes the slagged metal into shape with hands meant to hold up under intense heat, and makes himself a needle’s eye to pass through.
His team is staring at him with wide optics, and he hates the feel of it.
Drift is the only one not staring, but that’s probably because he’s too mad too.
“I’m going to kill him if you don’t,” is the first thing Drift says to him, scuffed plates and an angry EM field he can feel from the door.
It’s almost comforting.
Habit almost has him spitting out binary, but he catches it at the last second, and settles for an unimpressed tilt of his head.
It feels weird to think about speaking with his battle mask completely engaged, his plates black, all his stealth mods powered on and running him on silent, so he ends up signing “no murder” with half a thought.
“He killed Wing,” Drift snarls out with barred fangs, and Sideswipe leans away from him without ever looking away from Bee.
Hmm.
“A little murder,” he signs, because if nothing else, he knows how much Wing meant to Drift, even if he doesn’t know who Wing was.
And he’s no stranger to revenge.
“Fantastic,” Drift hisses, all caustic, bubbling rage, so very far away from his careful, careful calm. “Thank you, oh fearless leader. Now break my bonds so I can go rip his throat out.”
“He’s not here,” Bee signs with another unimpressed tilt, but he moves to do as Drift asked anyway, flicking his arm out to engage another weapons protocol, the sharp edge of a stinger replacing his hand.
It’s not a proper knife.
But it’ll cut into stasis cuffs all the same.
Drift is a seething, hissing mess, and Bee reaches out with his own field on instinct, wrapping around it and smothering him in calm the frag down.
And he does, sort of, at least long enough for him to carefully rip open the stasis cuffs and not accidentally stab either of them.
Huzzah.
Before Drift can go gallivanting off on his murder quest though, Bee grabs him by the armor around his neck and shoves him at the others.
He doesn’t bother signing break their cuffs, and moves over to Grimlock, who seems the least likely to flinch if Bee so much as breathes on them.
Weirdly enough he looks kind of… happy? To see him?
“Sorry we got caught.” Grimlock apologizes, all chagrin whispers, a tiny smile, a warm field close to his plates.
Bee could never be mad at him.
At any of them.
He shrugs, and pops the stasis cuffs, patting Grim once on the shoulder with his free hand and a brush of his field, all dismissive-it’s fine-glad you’re safe.
Grim smiles a little brighter.
Bee moves onto Fix-it, kneeling this time, careful to keep steady.
Fix-it could take the most damage out of all of them and he would hate himself if he ever hurt him with his weapons.
But Fix-it is smiling too.
“Oh, I’m so glad you found us!” He says brightly, staying unusually still as Bee works. “And using your bioweapons! I’m so shroud– cloud– proud! Of you Lieutenant! I was worried you would let them rust forever.”
Bee raises an eye ridge that he knows Fix-it can’t see, and pokes at his field with curiosity since his hands are busy.
“They’re a part of you.” Fix-it insists loftily, swiveling around the second his cuffs break. “And you should take care of chem– stem– them. You deserve it.”
Bee looks out the corner of his optics, and Strongarm and Sideswipe have already been cut free, Drift a fuming, impatient cloud a few feet away, Jetstorm and Slipstream silent on his arms, and he allows his stinger to fold back into a hand.
He shakes it out for good measure, flexing all the servos to remind himself that it’s a hand and not a gun.
Then he signs, “Had that one planned for a while, didn’t you?”
Fix-it groans, and then loops around in an angry circle before pointing at Drift.
“He’s just as plaid– mad– bad as you.” He accuses, but all Drift does is glower, the corner of his mouth lifting in a baring of teeth.
Bee absently wonders where his fang caps went.
And– his claw caps too, it looks like.
He’s got talons wrapped around the hilts of his swords.
At least Lockdown had had the sense to not try and take them.
He’d just trussed Drift up like a turkey and left him to be furious.
Then he looks down at his own hand, and frowns.
His claw caps are gone.
He frowns, and then sighs with all his plates, venting the hot air and subspacing the caps left on his other hand.
His claws aren’t long or anything, or super obvious.
They’re just… another thing that makes people uncomfortable when noticed, which is generally something he tries to avoid, like how he’s avoiding looking at Strongarm and Sideswipe right now because he’s kind of scared of what he’ll see.
So he’d capped them.
His claws.
And now they’re… not capped anymore.
And it’s kind of weird.
Like they aren’t his hands he’s looking at.
Then the alert for three minutes left goes off across his HUD in flashing red, and he snaps back to attention, making a quick “follow” gesture with his hand, drilled into him by Ironhide so long ago, and heading towards the door with it’s slagged-to-Hell needle’s eye of an opening.
Bee stares at it for a long second, because it’s big enough for him but maybe not Grimlock, and then shoves Drift forward with a simple “wreck that”.
Drift wrecks it.
With extreme prejudice.
Good for him.
Bee steps through first, another flicking of his wrist disassembling his hand and reassembling his arm cannon.
He kind of hates how easy it is.
Like he never actually stopped.
The corridor is as clear and empty as when he walked through it the first time, and all the subsequent corridors as he retraces his steps are too.
He doesn’t like it.
It’s too easy.
Lockdown is smarter than that, to just trust him at his word and leave no traps, or backup plans, or contingencies.
And he’s right about that too, because when he steps out onto the boarding ramp, Lockdown is waiting.
With three squads of Vehicons.
And they all look like they’re starving.
Primus, he’d thought they’d gotten all the stragglers, brought them back to Cybertron, gotten them names and paint and faces.
It looks like they hadn’t, though.
It looks like they’d missed some.
Stupid.
Stupid.
The worst part though, the worst part is how when he and Drift step forward, black paint nanites and angry bared teeth, the Vehicons all step back, stumbling into one another, wiry shadows melting into one mass as they try to get as far away as they can.
Slag.
Slag, he’s so fucking sorry.
And that’s when he–
That’s when he disengages his color invert, his stealth mods, his battle mask, arm cannon, the silence protocol he’d subconsciously put on his vocalizer.
He disengages all of it.
“The war is over,” he calls out tiredly, static etching his voice. “I’m not going to fight you. We can figure out a way to get you home, if you want. We have energon if you don’t.”
“How generous,” Lockdown drawls then, like nails on a chalkboard. “I think I’ll pass.”
“Good,” Bee snips back. “It wasn’t for you.”
“So angry,” Lockdown demurs, swinging his stupid hook hand. “Where ever has the bubbly little scout gone off to?”
“He died at Tyger Pax,” he grits out, and in the corner of his optic, Strongarm flinches.
“I can see that,” Lockdown says, giving their whole group an appraising look that makes his plating itch like there’s sand in all his seams. “Joining up with Deadlock? Now that’s a new low.”
And at that it’s Strongarm, Sideswipe and Drift who flinch, though Drift’s is more of tightly contained fury snapping out of control for a split second like a solar flare.
“Are you just going to insult my team,” he says with as much venom as he can muster, “or are we going to actually get somewhere? Preferably with you six feet under.”
Lockdown looks puzzled at that, for just a moment, before his expression clears.
“Ah,” he mutters. “Earth terms. Feeling homicidal, Prime’s Golden Dagger?”
“Not really,” Bee lies brightly. “But my buddy here is about ready to rip your throat out with his denta.”
Lockout only hums at that, tacking on a quiet, “He always was a good attack dog. That’s why Megatron liked him.”
“Megatron liked a lot of people.” Bee says before Drift can finally lose all semblance of control. “He liked Optimus Prime. He liked Jack. He liked me. Doesn’t mean slag. Are you done posturing?”
And for a moment–
There is stillness.
Nothing moves.
Nothing breathes.
And then–
Lockdown is right there, hook baring down–
And Drift is right there, broadsword swinging off his back in an angry arc of blue fire–
And Bee is right there, instinctively moving around the sword to come up from behind, a scout in every inch–
And Lockdown is pushing Drift away, hook swinging wide, and his team is right there and–
There is a memory, for a brief second.
Of a pile of stones and a single horn.
They never had found his body, or the monster that Cliffjumper had been made into.
Then the memory is gone, like sunlight in water.
And Bee–
–fires.
It’s easy.
A straight shot through the spark.
There is no guilt.
Not when it was Lockdown or his team.
His arm cannon folds away.
And there is silence as everyone stares at the graying corpse.
His energon stains the ground neon blue.
It’s a familiar sight.
Then Bee leans down, down to his knee joints, and starts drawing up a causality report because–
It’s all he can think to do.
“What are you going to do to us, Prime’s Golden Dagger?”
And he looks over his shoulder, to the lines of Vehicons that are starving and shaking and terrified.
“What I said,” he tells them, and in the dark, with them all huddled together, he can’t tell who spoke. “Get you some energon. A place to rest. And if you want, find a way to send you home.”
Bee thinks he hears one of them let out a muffled, static sob.
It makes his chest hurt.
Then he looks back to his team.
His team.
Strongarm who looks pale in her dark faceplates, Sideswipe who has a hand over his mouth, Fix-it who looks remorseful, Grimlock who looks neutral, and Drift who looks like everything good in the world has just come to him at once.
“We’ll talk later.” Bee breathes out, and dredges up the coordinates buried in his memory for the smelter Fowler had commissioned for them years ago, even as he levers up Lockdown’s graying frame. “I need to take care of this.”
And it’s silent for another moment, before Sideswipe spits out a static laced, “But Bee–”, that has him more surprised than anything.
He didn’t think Sideswipe would want to speak to him.
“Go home, guys.” He says tiredly. “Just… go home.”
Grimlock huffs, then, a heavy vent, hands moving to his hips.
“Ain’t home without you, Bee.” Then he takes a step forward, reaching to take the dead body from him. “Lockdown’s a big mech.”
“Grim–” He protests loudly, but then Lockdown is out of his arms and energon is starting to coat Grimlock’s hands.
He feels frozen.
“I’ll carry him. You lead.” Grimlock looks over his shoulder. “Drift?”
And Drift– scoffs.
“I’m done with that slagger. Done for-fragging-ever.” He snarls, waving an angry clawed hand before inhaling deep and smoothing his faceplates. “Send me a postcard. I want evidence that he’s molten.”
“I can do that.” Grimlock says amicably, and Bee thaws enough to protest.
“Grim.”
“You’re my friend. Friends stick together. I’m helping you do this, and then we’re going home, alright?” Grimlock says softly, so softly, like he isn’t holding Bee’s murder victim in his arms. “And Sideswipe and Strongarm will help the Vehicons, and Fix-it will hold down the fort, and Drift will do whatever it is he does, and when we get back, we’ll all watch one of your cheesy Halloween movies.”
He feels like he’s choking.
Like he’s dying.
He wheezes out, “You better not be talking about Hocus Pocus.”
Grimlock smiles at him.
“And if I am?”
“Hocus Pocus is art.” Bee manages weakly, already drawing up a ping to see if Denny is back at the scrapyard yet and can make them a ground bridge.
“I still don’t get it.” Grimlock says warmly, still smiling smiling smiling . Like he hasn’t seen Bee do something awful, and isn’t holding the evidence in his hands. “But, you can explain it to me again when we get home and watch it, and maybe this time I’ll get it. Okay?”
And Bee thinks…
Maybe Grimlock just doesn’t care.
He looks up wearily, and he sees Sideswipe and he–
Gives him a shaky sort of thumbs up.
“Take out the trash, boss bot. We’ve got it handled from here.” He says, and his voice is shaking, but he doesn’t look away.
“He’s right, Lieutenant. We’ve got this. You do what you need to.” Strongarm chimes in, voice steady even as her door wings flutter.
“Denny Clay says that he has returned and is ready to prepare a pound– mound– ground bridge.” Fix-it chimes in, because of course he’d already asked. “It will be fine Lieutenant. You better hurry, if you want to be sun– fun– done quickly! I am looking forward to Hocus Pocus!”
Drift just, bares his teeth in a grin, and comes close enough to slug him in the shoulder.
He looks tired.
Tired but happy.
“You did me a huge favour, you know.” Drift says, voice closer to it’s normal octave when he’s not a raging pile of living metal. “Wing’ll finally know peace now, and all the other ‘bots and folks that Lockdown hurt. You did the universe a huge favor. Don’t beat yourself up.”
And Bee–
Can’t… argue, with any of that.
He can’t.
Not when they’re all smiling at him.
“He was kind of scary anyway.” One of the Vehicons mutters then, and Bee barks a startled, hoarse laugh.
Primus.
Primus.
It takes him maybe too long to wind down from it, almost hysterical, but when he does, there’s a ground bridge waiting for them.
“… yeah, Grim.” He croaks out, and turns to face the rippling green light, all ozone that reminds him of deserts and silos and home.
“Okay.”