Fic: The Next Level 2/?
TITLE: The Next Level, part 2
Imperfection Deviation
SERIES: Imperfection
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: R for violent images
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned by people with a lot more money
Author’s Voice of Warning (aka Author’s Note):
English is not my first language; it’s German. This is the best I can do. Any mistakes you find in here, collect them and you might win a prize The spell-checker said everything's okay, but you know how trustworthy those thingies are....
FEEDBACK: Loved
Sam screamed.
All the warmth and beauty was viciously destroyed, evaporated in face of this much violence.
Terror, pain, horror, fear and revulsion made it out in this one scream and he lashed out. It tore into the darkness, the cruelty and the inflicted pain. He wanted to destroy it as badly as Barricade had killed so many in his wake.
Something tried to catch him, tear him away, but he wouldn’t let himself get captured. He felt his mind… ripple. Like something was about to break out, and he heard the tortured cry of the very one he had just witnessed killing an Autobot.
Still, Barricade wouldn’t go down. He was retreating, protecting something more valuable than his own life, and Sam stopped as trickles of the spark bond touched him. It was a trembling caress, like a request to stop the madness, to calm down.
Memories.
Different ones. Of loss. Of a different pain…
The evening was peaceful and quiet, Crickets chirped and assorted small night animals awakened to go hunting or feeding. Into the peace and quiet came an intruder, a loud noise, an angry sound of a strained and tortured engine... strained beyond its normal capability by the owner
A car raced like mad along the deserted street, taking bends recklessly and skidding along the narrow line between solid ground and an endless seeming valley. To anyone watching it was just a mad streak of black and white color, trailing a large cloud of dust. A Saleen Mustang, a police car, the lights flashing, no, pulsing. It rarely used its brakes, sometimes losing traction, but always able to keep from getting out control, though the maneuvers got more and more suicidal.
Barricade was furious. His fuel pump raced, barely able to supply him with the energy he requested, though he felt like he had the world to burn. He felt like burning everything he had just to go faster, to leave everything behind.
Another narrow bend threw him off the track and he transformed in mid-fall, landing in a crouch. His audio system was ringing with the sound of the racing fuel pump and his hands clenched and unclenched, digging into the soft ground. Rage and anger burned through him like a fire, consuming everything. Rational thought was far away and he reacted to his temper outburst like everyone who had been pushed too far by the events around him. And he hadn't just been pushed a few inches over the line... it felt like lightyears!
He climbed back to the street and transformed, his tires burning rubber as he sped away again. Everything hurt. And in a way he had been wounded. He was missing a part that couldn't be replaced with spare parts or melded together. There wasn't a physical wound to be treated at all. There was emptiness because he was missing something that could not be replaced.
He was missing Jazz.
A silent scream echoed through him and he spun out of control, finally colliding with a boulder. Barricade sat there for just a second, his engine steaming, smoke curling into the darkening sky. Then he transformed. His eyes glowed in a bright red as he surveyed his surroundings, the peacefulness around him. Inside, he still felt the rage and the emptiness.
Sam shivered as the echoes of the despair washed over him. He had seen memories. Terrible, terrible memories of someone who was…
A soldier. A murderer. A cold-blooded hunter and killer.
Sam stumbled back, trying to shake off the vile taste of it. Not all had been bad. He had looked into the mind of a… shock trooper… and he had seen something else there, too. Memories from before the war. Jazz. The first time touching the other spark.
Those memories he had felt. Soft and warm and filled with emotions that were beyond what his human mind could put into words. He knew them already, smiled each time he remembered them. He had shared something with Barricade that wasn’t really meant for him, but something that gave him such strength and warmth, and was still so very much alien.
The technopath drew a steadying breath, shaking so hard he had to be sending out tremors that registered on a Richter scale. He faced the steel ball that was Barricade’s core, wrapped tightly around the very center of his being. He knew he was being watched from wary eyes. He knew that despite the way it looked now, Barricade could harm him quite badly.
Sam took a few steps away from that most private of areas, faltering, feeling himself weaken.
His head was starting to hurt.
He had to sever the uplink.
This’ll be bad, was his last thought before he slipped out, dazed and confused.
He found himself standing in the small side hangar of the abandoned Airforce base, the one he and Barricade had started to use for the next level of training.
He wasn’t alone.
Sam’s eyes fell on the still form of his ‘instructor’. Barricade’s optics were dark, his body in full stasis lock. Sam’s technopathic mind automatically scanned over him, found no damage, just a lot of stressed-out circuits and the need to fully recharge.
What shocked him more were the two other mechanoids.
“B-bee?” he stuttered.
Bumblebee was equally knocked out, optics dark, and while he didn’t appear to be in such a run-down state as Barricade, he showed circuit stress. Just like the largest of the three unconscious Cybertronians: Ironhide.
What had he done?!
* * *
He was aware.
He existed.
He knew he existed. He just wasn't sure where he was, what exactly had happened. Memories leaked into his confusion. His proessor fired up and events just before he ahd been forcefully off-lined came back.
Bumblebee’s sudden alarm. Following the other mech. Entering the hangar designated as Sam’s training area.
Nothingness.
“Ow, my head,” Ironhide moaned as his optics came online.
Above him hovered a misgiving expression.
“Hey, Ratchet.”
“Don’t give me ‘hey’, you stupid slag head!” the medic growled. “It’s a miracle you survived all the millennia until today!”
Pissed off Ratchet. What a way to wake up, Ironhide mused.
He sat up gingerly. All his servos were working and his damage report detected nothing extra-ordinary. His processor was a little stressed and he found he had been in stasis lock for three hours, but aside from that there had been no major injuries.
“I can understand Bumblebee racing off after he feels the uplink from Sam! I don’t understand you waltzing into a potentially dangerous situation!” Ratchet snapped at him.
Ironhide frowned. “Now wait a minute…”
“No, I won’t! Barricade told us, and that includes you, quite clearly that with each new level Sam’s abilities will grow. He told us that what he expects, he can handle. He also said any intrusion into the training would result in potential injury of third parties!”
Ironhide looked into the dangerously narrowed optics. “You trust in the word of a Con?” he challenged.
“In matters concerning technopathy training, yes!”
“I don’t.”
Ratchet groaned in annoyance and shook his head. “I think you have a faulty circuit throwing you into those loops!”
“I don’t trust Cons. Bumblebee said Sam was being afraid. You think I’d ignore that when the boy is, in that precise moment, in the company of a Con?”
“You charged into that room, guns out! Of course Sam would react to you as enemies!”
Ironhide slid off the table. “And he kicks quite a punch.” He grinned.
Ratchet slapped a hand in front of his face and turned around. “Hopeless!” he muttered. “Utterly hopeless. Prime wants to have a word with you, too. And in case Sam tries to apologize, and you know he will, you better get there first. You owe him one!”
“Next you tell me I owe one to the Deceptiscum!”
“Actually, you do. Now get out of here before I find something big and nasty to stick up your exhaust!”
Ironhide beat a hast retreat, aware that Ratchet’s warnings were to be taken seriously. He flexed his shoulder joints, working out some stiffness.
He had reacted on instinct when Bumblebee had bolted from the base and raced over to the smaller hangar where Sam and Barricade held their training sessions. The smaller mech had only said something about Sam being afraid, actually terrified, and Ironhide had followed immediately.
Next thing he knew he woke up in the med area with Ratchet tearing him a new one.
Ironhide shook his head and walked into the main area where Optimus was talking to Major Lennox. As the weapons specialist drew nearer, the Autobot leader rose from his kneeling position. Lennox shot Ironhide a knowing grin and gave him a sloppy salute, then withdrew.
Coward, the Autobot grumbled to himself.
“Optimus,” he said out loud.
“Ironhide.”
“Ratchet said you wanted to talk to me?”
The expression in the other’s blue optics was unreadable. Then Optimus smiled wryly. “I think he said it all already, am I correct?”
“If you mean that he ripped my head off over getting knocked out by Sam, yeah.”
“Good. Then nothing else needs to be said.”
Ironhide rumbled softly, then walked out of the base, feeling more sour than before. He discovered Lennox, sitting on the hood of an Army jeep. He was smiling.
“Want some friendly company?” the Major asked.
“You got anyone in mind?”
Lennox spread his arms. “Me?”
“I thought you said friendly, not sarcastic.”
The human grinned. “Compared to you, Mr. Grumpy, everyone’s the nicest, friendliest person on the planet. So how about it?”
Ironhide hesitated a second longer, then transformed and opened the door. Lennox jumped off the hood and climbed inside.
* * *
Sam thankfully took the mug of hot tea from Epps and curled his fingers around it. He felt terrible. His head was pounding, his shoulders were tightly knotted, his stomach was a cold pit, and he was freezing. All of him hurt. Deeply. His very mind and soul felt raw, like someone had raked claws over it. He was vulnerable and open and, much to his again rising distress, almost fragile.
But Samuel James Witwicky wasn't a fragile doll! He was a man. He could handle this. Still, even the slightest spike from any machine had him on the edge and he was fighting the urge to run and puke.
Shit. Shitshitshit.
"Sam?"
There was a careful question in the sergeant’s eyes. Since Will was taking care of Ironhide, Robert Epps had decided to keep an eye on their resident technopath. None of the others were here. ‘Here’ was a storage area at the far side of the base, away from the others, from electronics and other stuff, and only Epps was here with him. Because everything hurt.
Like he had hurt his friends.
It took all Sam had not to want to bury himself in some deep, dark hole.
"Sorry," he whispered.
"You have nothing to apologize for. From what I heard, Ironhide had no place being where he was. Neither had Bumblebee."
Sam sighed, rubbing his forehead. He was so hellishly perceptive, it frightened him. He felt… weak. Depleted. Empty. Painful. All of him was so open and sore, and for the first time since he had realized his powers, he knew what it meant to attack.
“I must have called for him.”
“Bumblebee?”
Sam nodded. “It was an accident. And he thought I was in danger.”
He had probably been so terrified, even for a second, that he had reached for the only anchor he knew. Bumblebee had misinterpreted that momentary lapse of control and come to his rescue.
“Everyone knew you and Barricade were training, and we know the results can be quite… strong sometimes.” Epps grinned. “You knocked him out before.”
Sam sighed, wishing he could catch a clearer thought. “I never called for help.”
“Must have been a whammy then. How are you?" Epps asked quietly.
While he had had a little trouble wrapping his mind around Sam’s ‘mutation’, he had been nothing but a really good friend. Like most of the unit under Major Lennox. Those who knew Sam from the Mission City fight respected him. He knew them all, hung out with them to play video games - and sometimes beat their asses - and he trusted them. The newer additions, those transferred under Lennox’s command after the Autobots had set up base, were still getting to know Sam. For them he was a civilian
"Sore," Sam now answered.
And he wanted to reach out and touch Bumblebee, his anchor, his best friend. He wanted contact so badly. He needed some support, but right now Epps was the only one there, and he couldn’t help at all.
There was a sound. Sam knew it, had come to associate it with the movement of giant alien robots, and his eyes snapped up in rising panic.
“Sam…” Epps cautioned him.
“Bumblebee?!” he blurted as he recognized the individual signature of his friend.
The yellow robot stepped into view, blue optics on Sam. “Hello, Sam.”
Sam wanted him to leave, wanted him away from his hurting mind, but another part was so glad to see the familiar form, he felt like crying. He yearned to touch Bumblebee.
::I’m fine:: he heard the mechanoid say.
And he hadn’t even been aware of allowing the uplink. Then again, it was something he did automatically each day and Bumblebee had never refused it.
::I’m sorry, Bee. For hurting you:: Sam tried to apologize.
::It was backwash. I was careless::
::W-what?::
::Barricade said not to interrupt when you two are training, but something… I heard you calling, Sam:: Bumblebee tried to explain, sounding a little distressed himself. ::You were terrified of something and you reached for me and I just… acted. And Ironhide came along. We both got caught when you lashed out. It was out mistake::
Sam stared at him, speechless. He caught fragments of Optimus Prime’s misgiving about the situation from the upper layers of Bumblebee’s mind. Mainly because Ironhide had decided to barge in after Bumblebee as well, thinking Barricade was hurting Sam. The former Decepticon had made it crystal clear that training the next level would be intense and dangerous. Bumblebee and Ironhide had ignored the warning.
::Jazz almost read us the riot act as well:: was the Camaro’s sheepish addition.
Sam clung to the uplink, letting his anchor soothe his aching mind. ::I saw… memories. Some not so… nice.::
Bumblebee didn’t pry, didn’t ask any questions. He just let Sam hold on to him.
::I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I just… it was…::
::We’re fine. Barricade, too. He actually got out of the stasis a lot faster than us. Seems to be used to it:: The last was said with a sliver of humor and Sam smiled wryly.
::It’s not like I knock him out on a regular basis:: he muttered, almost defensive.
::No?:: Bumblebee teased.
Sam shot him a dark look. The Camaro had by now sat down beside him and Sam was aware of gentle fingers brushing over his back in a calming manner. His head still ached, but the touch was welcome and familiar, and it did calm him down somewhat.
Of Epps there was no trace.
::He left:: Bumblebee informed him.
::Oh. He didn’t have to sit with me::
::He’s your friend::
Simple as that.
“I should talk to Optimus,” Sam said out loud.
“Why?”
“To explain. And apologize to Ironhide. I didn’t mean all that, Bee.”
“We know that. No one’s holding it against you. Barricade’s instructions were clear. I forgot and Ironhide chose to ignore it.”
Sam leaned into the palm of his friend and sighed. He closed his eyes, wishing the headache was gone.
He needed a clear head to go back to college on Monday. He had to study, cram a lot of theoretical stuff into his already aching head, and he had several exams by the end of the month. Due to his outstanding understanding of the practical subjects, as his advisor had lauded, Sam had been on an advanced study course for the past months. By the end of the year his advisor hoped that he would have his finals in energy conversion, fluid mechanics and dynamics, hydraulics and pneumatics, and drafting. Sam’s head was spinning with it, but he was determined and talking to Ratchet helped a lot when it came to understanding certain things.
“I need an aspirin,” he muttered and tried to get up, failing miserably.
“You need rest,” Bumblebee said. “What happened left a huge impact on your brain, Sam. Give it time to reset.”
Sam chuckled at the word ‘reset’. He wished it was that easy. Barricade had told him the next level would be harder and it had been. On all of them.
tbc...
Imperfection Deviation
SERIES: Imperfection
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: R for violent images
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned by people with a lot more money
Author’s Voice of Warning (aka Author’s Note):
English is not my first language; it’s German. This is the best I can do. Any mistakes you find in here, collect them and you might win a prize The spell-checker said everything's okay, but you know how trustworthy those thingies are....
FEEDBACK: Loved
Sam screamed.
All the warmth and beauty was viciously destroyed, evaporated in face of this much violence.
Terror, pain, horror, fear and revulsion made it out in this one scream and he lashed out. It tore into the darkness, the cruelty and the inflicted pain. He wanted to destroy it as badly as Barricade had killed so many in his wake.
Something tried to catch him, tear him away, but he wouldn’t let himself get captured. He felt his mind… ripple. Like something was about to break out, and he heard the tortured cry of the very one he had just witnessed killing an Autobot.
Still, Barricade wouldn’t go down. He was retreating, protecting something more valuable than his own life, and Sam stopped as trickles of the spark bond touched him. It was a trembling caress, like a request to stop the madness, to calm down.
Memories.
Different ones. Of loss. Of a different pain…
The evening was peaceful and quiet, Crickets chirped and assorted small night animals awakened to go hunting or feeding. Into the peace and quiet came an intruder, a loud noise, an angry sound of a strained and tortured engine... strained beyond its normal capability by the owner
A car raced like mad along the deserted street, taking bends recklessly and skidding along the narrow line between solid ground and an endless seeming valley. To anyone watching it was just a mad streak of black and white color, trailing a large cloud of dust. A Saleen Mustang, a police car, the lights flashing, no, pulsing. It rarely used its brakes, sometimes losing traction, but always able to keep from getting out control, though the maneuvers got more and more suicidal.
Barricade was furious. His fuel pump raced, barely able to supply him with the energy he requested, though he felt like he had the world to burn. He felt like burning everything he had just to go faster, to leave everything behind.
Another narrow bend threw him off the track and he transformed in mid-fall, landing in a crouch. His audio system was ringing with the sound of the racing fuel pump and his hands clenched and unclenched, digging into the soft ground. Rage and anger burned through him like a fire, consuming everything. Rational thought was far away and he reacted to his temper outburst like everyone who had been pushed too far by the events around him. And he hadn't just been pushed a few inches over the line... it felt like lightyears!
He climbed back to the street and transformed, his tires burning rubber as he sped away again. Everything hurt. And in a way he had been wounded. He was missing a part that couldn't be replaced with spare parts or melded together. There wasn't a physical wound to be treated at all. There was emptiness because he was missing something that could not be replaced.
He was missing Jazz.
A silent scream echoed through him and he spun out of control, finally colliding with a boulder. Barricade sat there for just a second, his engine steaming, smoke curling into the darkening sky. Then he transformed. His eyes glowed in a bright red as he surveyed his surroundings, the peacefulness around him. Inside, he still felt the rage and the emptiness.
Sam shivered as the echoes of the despair washed over him. He had seen memories. Terrible, terrible memories of someone who was…
A soldier. A murderer. A cold-blooded hunter and killer.
Sam stumbled back, trying to shake off the vile taste of it. Not all had been bad. He had looked into the mind of a… shock trooper… and he had seen something else there, too. Memories from before the war. Jazz. The first time touching the other spark.
Those memories he had felt. Soft and warm and filled with emotions that were beyond what his human mind could put into words. He knew them already, smiled each time he remembered them. He had shared something with Barricade that wasn’t really meant for him, but something that gave him such strength and warmth, and was still so very much alien.
The technopath drew a steadying breath, shaking so hard he had to be sending out tremors that registered on a Richter scale. He faced the steel ball that was Barricade’s core, wrapped tightly around the very center of his being. He knew he was being watched from wary eyes. He knew that despite the way it looked now, Barricade could harm him quite badly.
Sam took a few steps away from that most private of areas, faltering, feeling himself weaken.
His head was starting to hurt.
He had to sever the uplink.
This’ll be bad, was his last thought before he slipped out, dazed and confused.
He found himself standing in the small side hangar of the abandoned Airforce base, the one he and Barricade had started to use for the next level of training.
He wasn’t alone.
Sam’s eyes fell on the still form of his ‘instructor’. Barricade’s optics were dark, his body in full stasis lock. Sam’s technopathic mind automatically scanned over him, found no damage, just a lot of stressed-out circuits and the need to fully recharge.
What shocked him more were the two other mechanoids.
“B-bee?” he stuttered.
Bumblebee was equally knocked out, optics dark, and while he didn’t appear to be in such a run-down state as Barricade, he showed circuit stress. Just like the largest of the three unconscious Cybertronians: Ironhide.
What had he done?!
* * *
He was aware.
He existed.
He knew he existed. He just wasn't sure where he was, what exactly had happened. Memories leaked into his confusion. His proessor fired up and events just before he ahd been forcefully off-lined came back.
Bumblebee’s sudden alarm. Following the other mech. Entering the hangar designated as Sam’s training area.
Nothingness.
“Ow, my head,” Ironhide moaned as his optics came online.
Above him hovered a misgiving expression.
“Hey, Ratchet.”
“Don’t give me ‘hey’, you stupid slag head!” the medic growled. “It’s a miracle you survived all the millennia until today!”
Pissed off Ratchet. What a way to wake up, Ironhide mused.
He sat up gingerly. All his servos were working and his damage report detected nothing extra-ordinary. His processor was a little stressed and he found he had been in stasis lock for three hours, but aside from that there had been no major injuries.
“I can understand Bumblebee racing off after he feels the uplink from Sam! I don’t understand you waltzing into a potentially dangerous situation!” Ratchet snapped at him.
Ironhide frowned. “Now wait a minute…”
“No, I won’t! Barricade told us, and that includes you, quite clearly that with each new level Sam’s abilities will grow. He told us that what he expects, he can handle. He also said any intrusion into the training would result in potential injury of third parties!”
Ironhide looked into the dangerously narrowed optics. “You trust in the word of a Con?” he challenged.
“In matters concerning technopathy training, yes!”
“I don’t.”
Ratchet groaned in annoyance and shook his head. “I think you have a faulty circuit throwing you into those loops!”
“I don’t trust Cons. Bumblebee said Sam was being afraid. You think I’d ignore that when the boy is, in that precise moment, in the company of a Con?”
“You charged into that room, guns out! Of course Sam would react to you as enemies!”
Ironhide slid off the table. “And he kicks quite a punch.” He grinned.
Ratchet slapped a hand in front of his face and turned around. “Hopeless!” he muttered. “Utterly hopeless. Prime wants to have a word with you, too. And in case Sam tries to apologize, and you know he will, you better get there first. You owe him one!”
“Next you tell me I owe one to the Deceptiscum!”
“Actually, you do. Now get out of here before I find something big and nasty to stick up your exhaust!”
Ironhide beat a hast retreat, aware that Ratchet’s warnings were to be taken seriously. He flexed his shoulder joints, working out some stiffness.
He had reacted on instinct when Bumblebee had bolted from the base and raced over to the smaller hangar where Sam and Barricade held their training sessions. The smaller mech had only said something about Sam being afraid, actually terrified, and Ironhide had followed immediately.
Next thing he knew he woke up in the med area with Ratchet tearing him a new one.
Ironhide shook his head and walked into the main area where Optimus was talking to Major Lennox. As the weapons specialist drew nearer, the Autobot leader rose from his kneeling position. Lennox shot Ironhide a knowing grin and gave him a sloppy salute, then withdrew.
Coward, the Autobot grumbled to himself.
“Optimus,” he said out loud.
“Ironhide.”
“Ratchet said you wanted to talk to me?”
The expression in the other’s blue optics was unreadable. Then Optimus smiled wryly. “I think he said it all already, am I correct?”
“If you mean that he ripped my head off over getting knocked out by Sam, yeah.”
“Good. Then nothing else needs to be said.”
Ironhide rumbled softly, then walked out of the base, feeling more sour than before. He discovered Lennox, sitting on the hood of an Army jeep. He was smiling.
“Want some friendly company?” the Major asked.
“You got anyone in mind?”
Lennox spread his arms. “Me?”
“I thought you said friendly, not sarcastic.”
The human grinned. “Compared to you, Mr. Grumpy, everyone’s the nicest, friendliest person on the planet. So how about it?”
Ironhide hesitated a second longer, then transformed and opened the door. Lennox jumped off the hood and climbed inside.
* * *
Sam thankfully took the mug of hot tea from Epps and curled his fingers around it. He felt terrible. His head was pounding, his shoulders were tightly knotted, his stomach was a cold pit, and he was freezing. All of him hurt. Deeply. His very mind and soul felt raw, like someone had raked claws over it. He was vulnerable and open and, much to his again rising distress, almost fragile.
But Samuel James Witwicky wasn't a fragile doll! He was a man. He could handle this. Still, even the slightest spike from any machine had him on the edge and he was fighting the urge to run and puke.
Shit. Shitshitshit.
"Sam?"
There was a careful question in the sergeant’s eyes. Since Will was taking care of Ironhide, Robert Epps had decided to keep an eye on their resident technopath. None of the others were here. ‘Here’ was a storage area at the far side of the base, away from the others, from electronics and other stuff, and only Epps was here with him. Because everything hurt.
Like he had hurt his friends.
It took all Sam had not to want to bury himself in some deep, dark hole.
"Sorry," he whispered.
"You have nothing to apologize for. From what I heard, Ironhide had no place being where he was. Neither had Bumblebee."
Sam sighed, rubbing his forehead. He was so hellishly perceptive, it frightened him. He felt… weak. Depleted. Empty. Painful. All of him was so open and sore, and for the first time since he had realized his powers, he knew what it meant to attack.
“I must have called for him.”
“Bumblebee?”
Sam nodded. “It was an accident. And he thought I was in danger.”
He had probably been so terrified, even for a second, that he had reached for the only anchor he knew. Bumblebee had misinterpreted that momentary lapse of control and come to his rescue.
“Everyone knew you and Barricade were training, and we know the results can be quite… strong sometimes.” Epps grinned. “You knocked him out before.”
Sam sighed, wishing he could catch a clearer thought. “I never called for help.”
“Must have been a whammy then. How are you?" Epps asked quietly.
While he had had a little trouble wrapping his mind around Sam’s ‘mutation’, he had been nothing but a really good friend. Like most of the unit under Major Lennox. Those who knew Sam from the Mission City fight respected him. He knew them all, hung out with them to play video games - and sometimes beat their asses - and he trusted them. The newer additions, those transferred under Lennox’s command after the Autobots had set up base, were still getting to know Sam. For them he was a civilian
"Sore," Sam now answered.
And he wanted to reach out and touch Bumblebee, his anchor, his best friend. He wanted contact so badly. He needed some support, but right now Epps was the only one there, and he couldn’t help at all.
There was a sound. Sam knew it, had come to associate it with the movement of giant alien robots, and his eyes snapped up in rising panic.
“Sam…” Epps cautioned him.
“Bumblebee?!” he blurted as he recognized the individual signature of his friend.
The yellow robot stepped into view, blue optics on Sam. “Hello, Sam.”
Sam wanted him to leave, wanted him away from his hurting mind, but another part was so glad to see the familiar form, he felt like crying. He yearned to touch Bumblebee.
::I’m fine:: he heard the mechanoid say.
And he hadn’t even been aware of allowing the uplink. Then again, it was something he did automatically each day and Bumblebee had never refused it.
::I’m sorry, Bee. For hurting you:: Sam tried to apologize.
::It was backwash. I was careless::
::W-what?::
::Barricade said not to interrupt when you two are training, but something… I heard you calling, Sam:: Bumblebee tried to explain, sounding a little distressed himself. ::You were terrified of something and you reached for me and I just… acted. And Ironhide came along. We both got caught when you lashed out. It was out mistake::
Sam stared at him, speechless. He caught fragments of Optimus Prime’s misgiving about the situation from the upper layers of Bumblebee’s mind. Mainly because Ironhide had decided to barge in after Bumblebee as well, thinking Barricade was hurting Sam. The former Decepticon had made it crystal clear that training the next level would be intense and dangerous. Bumblebee and Ironhide had ignored the warning.
::Jazz almost read us the riot act as well:: was the Camaro’s sheepish addition.
Sam clung to the uplink, letting his anchor soothe his aching mind. ::I saw… memories. Some not so… nice.::
Bumblebee didn’t pry, didn’t ask any questions. He just let Sam hold on to him.
::I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I just… it was…::
::We’re fine. Barricade, too. He actually got out of the stasis a lot faster than us. Seems to be used to it:: The last was said with a sliver of humor and Sam smiled wryly.
::It’s not like I knock him out on a regular basis:: he muttered, almost defensive.
::No?:: Bumblebee teased.
Sam shot him a dark look. The Camaro had by now sat down beside him and Sam was aware of gentle fingers brushing over his back in a calming manner. His head still ached, but the touch was welcome and familiar, and it did calm him down somewhat.
Of Epps there was no trace.
::He left:: Bumblebee informed him.
::Oh. He didn’t have to sit with me::
::He’s your friend::
Simple as that.
“I should talk to Optimus,” Sam said out loud.
“Why?”
“To explain. And apologize to Ironhide. I didn’t mean all that, Bee.”
“We know that. No one’s holding it against you. Barricade’s instructions were clear. I forgot and Ironhide chose to ignore it.”
Sam leaned into the palm of his friend and sighed. He closed his eyes, wishing the headache was gone.
He needed a clear head to go back to college on Monday. He had to study, cram a lot of theoretical stuff into his already aching head, and he had several exams by the end of the month. Due to his outstanding understanding of the practical subjects, as his advisor had lauded, Sam had been on an advanced study course for the past months. By the end of the year his advisor hoped that he would have his finals in energy conversion, fluid mechanics and dynamics, hydraulics and pneumatics, and drafting. Sam’s head was spinning with it, but he was determined and talking to Ratchet helped a lot when it came to understanding certain things.
“I need an aspirin,” he muttered and tried to get up, failing miserably.
“You need rest,” Bumblebee said. “What happened left a huge impact on your brain, Sam. Give it time to reset.”
Sam chuckled at the word ‘reset’. He wished it was that easy. Barricade had told him the next level would be harder and it had been. On all of them.
tbc...