Chapter Text
Soft touches was what woke Bumblebee. They gradually raised him up from the endless sleep that had slowly been restoring him. All he could think about was the pain at first, but gradually his processor started to spin.
Something was wrong. At this level of injury, he was supposed to stay in stasis unless…
He jolted awake, battle protocols struggling to come on, alarms blaring in his vidscreen. He transformed, painful twinges from where his nanites were still repairing him. He wasn’t ready for a fight, but by Primus, if he had to go down figh- Huh?
Looking up at him, terror in their optics, was a sparkling. At least, that’s what his sensors were labeling it as. It… didn’t look like a sparkling, but his sparkling protocols were coming online. Ridiculous how they still worked when his battle protocols wouldn’t. The sparkling just stared at him, shock and fear bleeding through their EM field, and all he wanted to do was scoop it up and cover it in his own EM field and drive away any bad feelings.
Fear suddenly filled his spark as fragmented memory files urgently began trying to tell him something, but he couldn’t pull them up. They were too fragmented. Perhaps this was a trick! By whom, he couldn’t remember, but he was sure that he was fighting something. Perhaps they had figured out how to turn his sparkling protocols against him!
He stumbled back, away from whatever that thing was and sat down with his armored legs in front of his spark chamber and his backstruts to the wall.
Please don’t hurt me. He thought. Because no matter what you do to me, I won’t be able to hurt you back.
He felt the change in the sparkling’s EM field. They changed from fear to curiosity in an instant. The sparkling wasn’t made out of cybermaterial and didn’t seem to have the ability to transform based on the scans he had been running on the sparkling without even knowing it. But they still had the potential to be dangerous, and his memory files kept trying to come up. Why couldn’t he remember anything?
He could only stare in confusion when his sparkling care and treatment protocols began to change before his optics.
What is carbon-based energy? Glucose? What is oxygen? An element, yes, but why would a sparkling need all this? What about energon? At that thought, a warning popped up that told him that energon would poison this sparkling. He mentally waved the warning away and focused on the sparkling.
A faint noise in his audials suddenly caught his attention. An action that seemed to have some basis in a memory file that he couldn’t pull up came to his attention. He hoped it worked.
Another sparkling stood in the doorway, though this one was different. His scanners indicated that this one was older, old enough to not need full supervision, but still young enough to be protected by sparkling protocols. The young sparkling and the older sparkling talked. He could feel the annoyance in the older sparkling’s field and the nervousness of the younger sparkling. When the young sparkling turned around, he could feel the surprise they felt. Apparently the “hide in plain sight” action still worked. Curious. The older sparkling left, and the younger one approached him.
They put out their hand gently and touched his hubcap. It fell off at their touch, and he calculated that the magnetic clamps holding his armor on were failing. Scrap. The sparkling put the hubcap back on, then pulled out a weapon. In an instant, he had transformed and was backing away.
Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me kept running through his processor.
The sparkling moved closer, edging towards him, weapon still in their hand.
“Do you speak?” A soft voice asked.
Somehow, his language database knew what they were saying even if it wasn’t cybertronian. He tried to speak, tried to tell them not to hurt him, but his vocalizer wouldn’t work. Warnings and alarms popped up on his vidscreen, blaring the cold truth. He raised a servo to his vocalizer, only to find it missing. Ripped out. His memory files continued to scream. And the sparkling advanced.
Concern flooded the sparkling’s field, making him pause from his panic attack to look at them. The sparkling put away the weapon, and his racing spark slowed just slightly. They held up their servos, in an unmistakable gesture. He felt his spark slow even more, and the alarms started to disappear. Now that the fear was gone, his protocols kicked in fully with a vengeance. He had never had his sparkling protocols activated before, and it was like his senses were both impossibly sharp and frighteningly dazed. His body moved of its own accord, closer to the sparkling, his scanners constantly active. He moved his face plates closer to theirs, and they reached out a tiny servo. He let them touch his face plates, and he could feel their giddy excitement, their fear melting into the background.
“Can you understand me?” The sparkling asked. He nodded.“What are you? Where did you come from?” His memory files still screamed, and he looked away, uncomfortably.
They made comforting sounds, a gesture that made his spark twinge with something he didn’t understand. He wanted to ask a question, and he slowly pointed a digit at them.
At first they didn’t understand, which was frustrating. He shook his helm and tried again, more insistently pointing a digit.
“Oh. Me. Who am I?” The sparkling asked. He nodded vigorously.
“Oh, I’m Charlie. Charlie Watson. I’m eighteen. Today. Actually, it’s my birthday today. What’s your name?”
He shook his helm. For some reason, his memory files didn’t scream as much at him. Like whatever it was it wasn’t important.
“You don’t know, or you don’t have a name?” He just shook his helm and looked away again.“You sound just like a little bumblebee. I’m gonna call you that from now on. Bumblebee. Matches your outfit too.” His audials perked up and his spark felt strangely light. The sparkling wanted to give him a name? Who was he to refuse.
His spark burned warmer than usual, trying to heat the space around him for the sparkling. He wished that he could hold them closer to kept them extra warm, but who knew how the strange sparkling would react to that. So he settled for just staying close to this strange creature who had so much power over him and didn’t seem to know it.