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Bumblebee was dancing when Prowl found him. Music eked out the speakers of a transport shuttle, biolights blended and churned together, and several hundred mechs celebrated their continued existence in the universe by pushing their worn-out frames to just the point of breaking. It was a final farewell to the Cybertronian empire, a blending of Eukarian, Devisen, Velocitronian, Camian, Cybertronian sound and life in a way that many had suspected would never come to pass. Under constellations that even those whose species had lived under would have to reacquaint themselves with, dented, scratched, mangled, torn, forgotten bodies danced until overshot joints gave out, weakened armor buckled, frayed wires snapped, and in so doing they made their grief physical and gave it life.
It was the wrong place to seek out new friends. Bumblebee, every eager, ever lively, persevered for as long as he could, until a familiar voice pushed his designation into the space between songs and his optics threatened to flicker out entirely.
“Well, buddy,” he said, putting on his characteristic grin, “it’s been a while.”
Prowl had led him away from the party, up a slope and into the woods surrounding the refugee city. The low hum of thousands of voices carried through the trees, and between the gaps it was still possible to see the lines stretching outside of the Cybertronian aid stations, where volunteers had been working for hours to find solutions for every problem brought forth, from missing limbs to missing friends. Bumblebee had been with them for a couple hours before his human supervisor realized that he’d been one of the mechs directly involved in the battle. He was issued a firm command to take the rest of the night to recuperate, even though he pointed out that the war had prepared him for campaigns much longer and more grueling than this one had been.
Walking away while people still needed help had been one of the most frustrating parts of this long, terrible day, but at least from up here he could see the lines and knew they were moving. Even just a few hours out, progress was being made.
“It has,” Prowl said, glancing back to Bumblebee after letting himself observe the proceedings below. “Is your new body handling well?”
“It’s Wheeljack’s work, what do you think?” He proudly tapped his knuckles against the Autobrand on his chassis. “Getting back into the fight, it was like no time had passed at all. For I could tell, I’d just onlined from a really long recharge cycle.”
“But that wasn’t the case.” Though it wasn’t phrased like a question, the inquiry was there, and both knew Bumblebee was too good at picking up cues to miss it.
“No,” he said, dropping his hand, “I was aware for most of the last few years. Believe me, there were times I would have done anything to drop into defrag for a few hours, but I guess when you’re only kind of alive-ish your processor doesn’t work exactly the same way. I was pretty limited in what I could do.”
An unspoken answer to an unasked question. He’d worked with Prowl for long enough to be sensitive to the subtleties of such a trade of information, though he would always prefer to be forthright.
“How did you find me?” he asked. Even if he didn’t like the game, he knew how to play it, and that sometimes a risky move like a diversion was necessary to get ahead.
“Windblade noticed you while doing a sweep of the area,” Prowl said, accepting Bumblebee’s lead. “She was concerned but felt it would be out of line for her to interfere.”
“And she knew you wouldn’t be bothered by that ‘procedural nonsense.’” Bumblebee regretted the words as his vocalizer was synthesizing them. No matter how he smiled or the cute way his helm tilted to one side, there was no way to turn them into the casual quip he’d intended. Time had not yet healed that old wound, and all he’d done was exposed the damaged protomesh under the plating.
It wasn’t like he was seeking treatment for it, either. Left untended for so long, the frayed circuits and warped edges had become as familiar to him as any other part of his psyche, the way the war had shaped him to the point that he could not remove its influence and still remain Bumblebee of Iacon. He was his failures, and the last thing he wanted was for those who had pointed them out to think he resented them for doing so. Criticism meant people were paying attention. It was a reminder that his leadership had not existed in a vacuum, that there were reasons more than just personal shame to keep trying to be better. His one relief was in knowing that he’d revealed this vulnerability to the mech he knew wouldn’t try to take any of it back. He’d known Prowl to feel regret on only a handful of occasions, and never once bore witness to him expressing it openly.
“We each found the manner in which events played out on Cybertron to be disagreeable, for our own reasons,” Prowl said now, the burn of his optic as steady as his voice. “It might be inappropriate after all that we have done, and all that we allowed to happen, but I do still consider you my best friend. I wanted to check on you myself.”
The declaration surprised Bumblebee. Not being called Prowl’s best friend, which he’d known for some time and been unable to reciprocate for reasons they were both familiar with, but hearing that the sentiment remained even with the intervening years and numerous mistakes stretching out the space between them.
“And what’s the prognosis?” he asked, doing them both the favor of putting off that conversation for another day.
Prowl stared at Bumblebee; his lip twitched.
“Oh, come on, really?” Bumblebee said, waving a hand. “I’m fine—well, I will be. If almost surviving the war taught me anything, it’s that there’s always a way to bounce back. And anyway, right now, I can’t really say that I’m feeling any worse than everybody else. There are some mechs down there who lost way more than I did.”
He stopped himself before he could go too far down that road, realizing that he was starting to quantify lives in the same way that had gotten Prowl is so much trouble towards the end. Their dynamic only worked so long as he was the subjective one, the one who processed individuals instead of numbers, who couldn’t say how many Autobots were stationed at a given base but could tell you half the staff’s favorite energon supplements.
“Here,” he said, brushing away the carpet of needles and pinecones before settling himself onto the dirt. “We worked so hard to save these stars, why not take some time to enjoy them?” Whatever grit got into their joints and seams now would be a negligible addition to the filth caked to their plating. Dust and mud had combined with congealed energon to leave ugly streaks across most Cybertronians’ frames, paint dulled or rubbed off entirely in patterns that probably could have retold the story of the battle if observed carefully enough. Everyone was walking around with a narrative of what they’d been doing when the world nearly ended, and although Bumblebee would be glad to rinse himself of it once the washrack stations were operational, the sense of solidarity provided him with another reminder of why they’d put their bodies through such torment in the first place.
Prowl sat, leaving space enough between them that a third mech could have joined them comfortably. Gaze angled up, to the galaxy that somehow felt just as far away now as his home world, Bumblebee allowed himself to sink back into the feeling he had enveloped himself in at the party: spark spinning in its chamber, fuel pump beating against his lines, gyros calibrating, optics sensing, vents whispering. His body was alive, working, its systems operating in tandem to keep each other functioning. For the first time in years, he could not only see the world, but touch it, grasp it, and the burden of that responsibility was one he accepted with gratitude.
Responsibility under the scrutiny of others was much easier to manage than one taken on with no supervision. Managing Starscream had been a challenge not just for the logistical work involved, but because Bumblebee had never had anyone to assure him that it was the right thing to do, especially given his own track record in leadership. At the same time, there were elements of his self-appointed position that his processor longed to dwell on a little longer, memory files initiating playback without his consent and being halted just as quickly.
Late nights spent pouring over datapads, exhaustive lists of information on—stop.
Unshared cubes of celebratory engex after Starscream’s—stop.
Arguments with Starscream of completely forgettable—stop.
Starscream flying low over the rooftops of New—stop.
Starscream sentencing a mech to—stop.
Starscream standing at the podi—stop.
Starsc—stop.
Stop.
Stop.
Queue for deletion.
Bumblebee’s sparked jumped and he immediately unqueued the file, holding it at the forefront of his processor to watch the playback: Starscream spinning on a heelstrut and pushing off his balcony with his thrusters, transforming midair and blasting off across the city. It was Starscream’s usual routine and Bumblebee likely had identical copies for every morning he’d spent in that self-indulgence of a penthouse, but he played it through several more times before returning it to his archives, processor finally sated.
Memories were all that remained of Starscream now, and that made them precious: impossible, irresponsible to discard.
His spark was spinning too fast. Silence wasn’t working; he needed to think about anything else.
“Are you okay?” he ventured.
Physical evidence of the battle was ubiquitous to the point that Bumblebee had stopped noticing its presence, but he hardly had to search for it once he started paying attention again. Like everyone else, Prowl’s finish was dusty and dull, paint rubbed off and armor dented in varying patterns across his frame. He was also littered in surface-level scratches, each of them glinting with jagged bits of shrapnel, and his shoulder betrayed the efficiency of some Maximal’s claws. It was all surface-level damage, which meant he wouldn’t be seen until the next round of medical exams took place, but it was still an interruption of the body and its normal functioning. The shadow occupying one side of his face was as loud and present as it would remain unmentioned, too like the new spaces between the stars.
And yet, his remaining optic burned like all the stars still clinging to life, refusing to be extinguished by this or any other darkness.
“I realized some things, about myself and my work, that I’d never had an opportunity to give voice to before today,” Prowl said. He let his singular gaze drift back to the masses of Cybertronians making their way through what could, for now, be considered their home. “For the first time since our return to Cybertron, maybe even since the start of the war, I feel like what I need to do and what everyone else needs from me actually align.” His lips quirked. It wasn’t a smile, but Bumblebee was under the impression that it was all Prowl was capable of now. “How I feel about such a revelation doesn’t matter; I’m going to do what’s necessary regardless. But I have to say, it’s pleasant.”
“It’s the first time in your life the choice doesn’t have to be a hard one,” Bumblebee said, “that’s probably why it feels good. It’s a relief.”
Prowl had his specialties, each of debatable merit and value, but this was Bumblebee’s: listening, filling in the gaps, forming the words that the speakers themselves couldn’t say but needed to be heard. People talked to Bumblebee because they knew he listened, and not in the way Prowl did, cataloguing information and storing it for later use, usually to the detriment of the subject. Bumblebee listened to understand. Though he struggled at times with sympathy, he still often found himself caring about those who opened up to him, causing him to wonder at times the motivations for even some of the most despicable acts performed in the war, regardless of faction origins. He’d stagnated some during his disastrous attempts at leadership, both for the Autobots and Cybertron as a whole, but the talent had remained, and in the years since he’d had nothing but time to practice and hone it.
Conveniently, it also made it easy for him to set aside his own, far less optimistic self-realizations.
“I’m happy for you,” he said, and though it was sincere, it was also inadequate. On all the planets Cybertron’s war had brought him to, not one had a word that would be able to encompass everything he was feeling in that moment, on that day.
“Thank you, Bumblebee.”
They grew silent and settled, trading glances between the cold stars above their heads and the living ones milling around the valley’s basin. It struck Bumblebee that his earlier search for company had been misguided in the same way his attempts at leading had been. He had a reputation for getting along with everyone, but experience by now had taught him that it only applied in one-on-one scenarios. On the dancefloor, surrounded by mechs eager to grab a drink and dance with the first bot to reach out to them, the energy had been right, but there’d been nowhere for it to go. Passed from dancer to dancer, he hadn’t worried about anyone looking too closely at him, accidentally peeling away the palatable upper layers and revealing that which he himself wasn’t ready to look at too closely. He was hurting, that much was obvious, but so was everyone else, and he’d thought that if he’d reached out to enough hurting mechs then maybe it would meet that need he had to connect and understand the internal structure of others.
He didn’t know how the night would have ended if Prowl hadn’t found him. Most likely, it wouldn’t have; he would have stayed on until the last dancers wandered off with the rising of the sun, and then returned to the aid stations to demand they let him help. As things stood now, he doubted he was going to be able to recharge with all the thoughts spinning through his processor, but better to spend these unintended waking hours with someone who he knew, to whom this day and its repercussions would mean the same as they did to Bumblebee.
“Without knowing what you do now,” Prowl said, “would you have tried to stop Optimus from annexing the Earth?”
The question was unexpected, the curiosity backing it a facet of Prowl that Bumblebee was not familiar with. He turned to look at his companion but received no responding glance.
“You mean, if we hadn’t known it would be our last salvation?”
“Yes. Obviously, it turned out to be in the benefit of our species in the end, but on principle, would you have stood against Optimus Prime?”
Bumblebee leaned back, letting his optics slide over the dance of the cosmos.
“It’s not like I could never disagree with Optimus, we argued plenty of times,” he said. “Pretty much every opportunity he took to leave the Autobots, I pointed out what a terrible idea it was, and I was right!”
“So, you’re saying the annexation was a similarly poor maneuver.”
Bumblebee wilted. He’d started to think that this conversation might avoid turning into an interrogation.
“No,” he said.
“It was a good decision?”
Bumblebee ran a hand down his faceplate, ignoring the bits of dirt that came with it.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t even here for most of it. Can you—Primus, can you not ask me that question?”
“What should I ask you, then?”
“What?”
Prowl finally twisted to look at him, not just his face, but his whole chassis turning to face Bumblebee, who was inadvertently reminded of how much smaller he was than most of the other Autobots.
“You clearly have something on your mind, Bumblebee,” he said. “What’s the question you want me to be asking?”
It took Bumblebee’s processor a moment to understand what was happening. Like he had done for so many other mechs, Prowl was now trying to reach across that void, to help light that space where the self grew thin and words couldn’t reach, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to do it on his own and asking for help to finish. It was a ridiculous request, and unselfish in a way that Prowl alone could achieve.
“What I told you earlier,” he said, words coming in such a rush they nearly scrambled, “ask me why.” He had no doubt Prowl would know what he was talking about. It was the only thing he’d managed to say that night of any substance, and Prowl’s constantly running battle computer would have picked it out and categorized it as such.
Prowl’s optic flashed.
“Why were you limited?” he asked. “Why didn’t you stop Starscream?”
There it was. The question that had been following Bumblebee for years, the one he could never close despite his spark’s aching need for resolution. His fans clicked on as his struggling processor started to heat his core, digging and calculating for the answer that had always eluded him.
“He’s tricky,” Bumblebee said, tracking the distances between stars with his optics, “and not just in the way he lies constantly, although that doesn’t make talking to him any easier, for sure. It’s more like his processor is constantly at war with itself. He’s scared of everything, but also entirely overconfident in his ability to defend himself. He doesn’t believe in anything, but still sees himself as destined for some greater purpose. Every time you think you’ve started to figure him out, there’s a contradiction, or he just sabotages himself to keep from being too predictable, and you can never be sure which way it’s going to go.” He meant it literally. Prowl’s battle plans had frequently been sidetracked by Starscream doing something unexpected, though there was no need to open those old wounds by pointing it out explicitly. “His processor works in layers, and they go so deep I don’t think even he knows what the core really looks like.”
It felt good to say it all out loud, to know that at least one other person might now understand the psychological labyrinth he’d been working through over the past few years, even if it brought Bumblebee no closer to understanding how Starscream functioned.
Had functioned. He realized belatedly that he’d said his whole piece as though Starscream were somewhere down in the valley, barking orders at the rest of the refugees.
“It’s a decent analysis, but it doesn’t answer the question,” Prowl said. “Anyone could tell you that Starscream is a difficult mech to work with. Why is it that your approach failed to yield results?”
Bumblebee frowned.
“I already said what I wanted to.”
“And I’m sure that was very individually gratifying for you, Bee, but you told me the question to ask and now I expect you to answer it.” Prowl’s expression was stern, and Bumblebee realized he was no longer talking to his old friend Prowl, whom he had accompanied on his first trip to a nightclub and had gotten flustered when a certain rookie grounder so much as entered the room. This was Commander Prowl, leader of the soldiers posted on Ark-19, greatest tactician of the Autobot army, and ruthless pragmatist.
He had half a mind to leave right then. He always knew it was possible for conversations with Prowl to take a turn like this, and normally he would find some way to laugh it off and change the subject, but he’d done that so many times that day he knew his defensive optimism was already spent. His tactile sensors were prickling from the extra energy being processed to match his frustration, and he could feel a familiar scowl starting to settle on his faceplate, one he’d hoped would go away once the main threat had been disposed of. It was only by the weight of loss that he stayed down, the knowledge that his spark wasn’t ready to handle another goodbye, especially one done out of anger. The crease remained between his optic ridges, but he did not move away from his spot on the ground.
“I wasn’t good enough,” he ground out.
“Even if that were true, I would expect you to be more specific.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say!” he spat. His anger was being fuel by a tangible, uncomfortable heat emanating from his overclocked processor, and he had to vent out a few cycles of hot air before he could trust himself to say more than static. “At first, I figured it was all just a game to him, so I tried to use logic. Find the moves that help him win and give Cybertron a better future, seemed simple. Except, he always found something wrong with it. Either this person didn’t trust him, or that idea had too many contingencies. I could never solve all the problems to make him confident in anything I had to say.
“So, I changed tactics. If he was going to push against concrete solutions, then I could just work him through theoretical frameworks, explain why certain things were wrong and let him make the logical steps to make the right choices. I know it sounds ridiculous, but he wanted to stay in power, and even he realized he would have to be a decent ruler in order to make that happen. It seemed like a good plan, and sometimes it even seemed to work. But then something minor would happen, one of the delegates would spook him or a disaster outside anyone’s control would cause some civil unrest, and he would go straight back to his old habits. I could never figure out what he needed from me.”
“You didn’t know what someone needed to hear? That’s hard to believe.”
“Well, like I said, he was a challenging mech to understand.”
“You made the galaxy’s foremost war criminal switch sides after a few minutes alone together, yet your years spent with Starscream offered no insights at all into his inner workings?”
Prowl was right: Bumblebee was making excuses again. He leaned forward and touched his face, remembering the unfeeling sensation of the battlemask, how it had acted as a buffer between him and Megatron right up until that last critical minute. Being around Starscream had always left him feeling exposed. Even if the other mech didn’t dig in the way Bumblebee had, he always knew how to push back, peeling away the layers of Bumblebee’s arguments and finding the hidden agendas Bumblebee hadn’t even realized he’d been hiding. Though he never felt the need to question his own intentions, the incronguity between method and motivation had given him pause on numerous occasions.
“I tried to be a political advisor, and then some sort of morality coach, and I was always doomed to fail on both accounts because Starscream already had mechs who could function in either capacity. What he needed, and what I failed to provide for him, was a friend.”
It had been no mere accident, either. Trapped in infraspace, kept apart from his friends and forced to watch as they scattered themselves across the galaxy without him, he’d been in just as desperate need for connection as Starscream. Aware of that desperation, though, and the effect Starscream had already proven to have over mechs much less easily swayed than Bumblebee himself, he had recognized the inherent danger in opening himself up to Starscream in any way that mattered. Even if infraspace had been his eternity and he’d never had to face the Autobots again, even more reason not to let himself be shaped into someone he could no longer recognize. So, with political rhetoric and claims for the common good and one-sided efforts to learn how Starscream’s processor operated, he had held intimacy at bay.
And still despite that, he had come to care for the other mech. He knew he was not alone in that: numerous others who’d been swept up in Starscream’s political dealings had ended up with some stake in their leader’s wellbeing, to variable degrees, but he knew there to be more to the connection than the keeping of Cybertron’s population. That had been the start, and remained the basis for some time, but the moment Starscream stepped into his cell, Bumblebee knew he could not leave the fallen titan to his fate. Had Shockwave never returned, he would have stayed for the entirety of the life sentence, acting as companion to the one person in the universe who needed one even more than him.
A part of his processor kept carefully encrypted finally released, and he wondered if Starscream would have opened the Talisman if he’d known there was someone who would miss him.
His vocalizer was working before his processor had decided how to communicate the thought.
“But something must have gotten through to him. I don’t know if it was actually anything I did, but he sacrificed himself to bring down Unicron. He died a hero.”
“Hm.” Prowl was staring at him, analyzing and cataloguing, calculating future outcomes. Bumblebee could almost see the process at work behind his optic, and he wondered if he’d picked the wrong mech to share all this with.
“I’m sure you mean that sincerely,” he said, “but I do feel it my obligation to remind you that this is the same Starscream who proposed to have Metroplex space bridge to Earth while more than half the population was still trapped on Cybertron.”
“I know, Prowl.”
“I’m just saying.”
“I know, I know.” Bumblebee drew his fingers through the dry upper layer of the soil, relishing the feeling after spending too long dwelling on the time in his life when he’d had no body to do it with. “Somehow, despite that, he ended up a true hero. I just wanted one other person to know.”
That felt like the closest he’d come to saying something true all night. Sure, he’d meant everything he’d said to Prowl, and in a certain context and for practical purposes it was true. All of it, though, was part of the system of layers of his and Starscream’s own making, and no matter what degree his honesty took, he always felt that there was something buried deeper, a further truth, like crystals buried in the roots of ore deposits. The desire to not be alone with his knowledge, though, that was pure. Even if Prowl didn’t share his view, took Bumblebee’s faith as a judgement on his character and nothing more: better that than to live alone with his belief for the rest of his life.
A streak of light flashed across the sky, its beauty reabsorbed before it could even be appreciated, and with a wrench of his spark Bumblebee realized that this was his final farewell to Starscream. The other departed would get funerals, boisterous reminiscences shared over pints of engex, teary quiet moments of remembrance, but there was no one with whom he could share this grief, no one who would understand what they’d been through, the intense bond that had been somehow formed from a conjunxing of desperation, loneliness, and a shared hope for Cybertron’s future. In the coming days he would lack the time to give adequate thought to the questions he still had, and as the present stretched gradually away from the past, memories would become unreliable, recollections of certain events contested until all that remained was a winged silhouette and a feeling of ever more unachievable ambition. Starscream’s eulogy had been written in words only ever spoken aloud, his legacy unforgettable and yet perpetually unclaimed.
“Establishing Starscream’s role in our history is going to be an essential if divisive task in the years to come,” Prowl said, once more reeling Bumblebee back in. “You will likely not find companions to agree with you in equal measure to those who oppose your viewpoint, but I would advise against rising to their challenges. Your skills would be better served elsewhere.” He made to stand, brushing off dust as he righted himself. “From what I’ve heard, an old colleague of mine has taken an interest in the new protoforms developing within Trypticon. She’s hoping to assist in their education and development, give them an opportunity to live lives free of the choices we were forced to make. It’s something to consider.”
“What, becoming a teacher?” The suggestion so surprised Bumblebee that he didn’t think to stand as well.
“Yes. You’re one of the few mechs I would trust with such a responsibility, Bumblebee.”
Prowl’s sincerity gave weight to the air, and for one brief moment, it was like the last several years hadn’t happened, and they were once more brothers in arms, fighting the oppression of the Decepticons and defending innocent life wherever it needed them. Bumblebee could never miss the war, but the links he had formed with his fellow Autobots were such that could only be sustained through a cocktail of mutual need for survival and crushing belief that the cause they fought for was the right one. Despite every well-meaning promise between veteran comrades to keep in touch after the fighting was over, there were some connections that could never be revived back to what they were when life and death were commodities in a galaxy-spanning trade.
The spinning of Bumblebee’s spark slowed, its chamber aching.
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
“Good.” Prowl crossed his arms in front of his chassis, his weight shifting in the direction of the tree line. The moment was over; there would not be another.
“I’m going underground in the morning,” he said, voice still steady. “I’ve picked up some fragile cargo that will need to be stored in a more secure location.”
“Oh. Are you coming back?”
“Most likely, once I feel security is up to my specifications.”
“Well, I’ll be here,” Bumblebee assured, easing back again. “And hey, if the Lost Light’s back by then, maybe we can grab Hound and Ratchet and go out for a drink. You know, almost like pulling the old Iacon crew back together.”
“We’ll see if the timing actually works out so well,” Prowl allowed. It wasn’t a flat rejection, though he did turn to leave. “I suspect you’ll be busy soon enough.”
“We’ll see,” Bumblebee echoed. He liked the thought of being busy, of having a role to play in this fledgling society, but he wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be yet. For a couple hours, he’d thought that maybe morale boosting could be his duty to the survivors, but this conversation had him thinking differently. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be known as the passive listener anymore, even if the alternative terrified him, memories of looking down on his Autobots plaguing his processor.
It would be different this time, he told himself. He would make it so. And if he was really serious about making changes from his earlier tactics, he knew one obvious place to start.
“I’m sorry for what happened to you on Cybertron,” he said. The words came naturally, like they’d been sitting in his processor for some time, waiting for him to discover them. “I was so wrapped up in everything else going on that I didn’t notice, but I should have, and I’m really sorry.”
Prowl paused, back to Bumblebee, the whir of normal systems working louder than anything else in the night.
“Prowl?”
“I heard you, Bee. I… I heard you. Have a pleasant night.”
It was simple, a clean cut. Prowl’s form disappeared into the darkness and Bumblebee couldn’t say for sure if he would ever see it again. He suspected he would; though Prowl liked to disappear from time to time, he never trusted the rest of them to be completely left to their own devices and would inevitably slip back into the command structure to keep things operational. Though everything was different now, it was comforting to think that some of their bad habits might stay just the same.
He looked up to the night sky, wondering if it would always feel incomplete, and tried to guess if his emotions were those that one was supposed to feel in such a moment.
“Finally. I was starting to think you might’ve already found my replacement.”
Bumblebee whirled around.
The glow was the first thing he noticed, light bleeding off Starscream’s immaculate frame while illuminating nothing around him, neither the branches his armor rippled around as he moved, nor Bumblebee’s own plating as he turned himself fully, optics wide and flickering rapidly. He was smirking, of course, lit red optics piercing through the night like beacons calling a ship home.
“Oh, don’t give me that look,” he chided as he strode forward, grace betraying none of his years spent in military service. “You didn’t really think I was just going to leave you to manage my legacy on your own, did you?”
He was smiling, not smirking, Bumblebee realized, smiling and radiant and gorgeous, and in that moment, he knew he’d been lying to himself every time he said he was afraid of becoming Starscream’s friend. He’d befriended questionable characters before, offered a listening ear to those who had nothing to offer but hateful rhetoric and come away from it stronger in his convictions and his loyalty to the Autobot cause. The wariness that had plagued him in infraspace, that had him turning his newly-built back on Starscream the first moment he could, was forged from the knowledge that his feelings for Starscream had the potential to run much deeper than any of the thousands of friendships he’d formed in his several million years online.
When Starscream came striding through the trees that night, frame glowing like he’d taken the light of Primus with him when he’d slipped out the doors of death, Bumblebee realized, without needing to say it out loud, that to offer his spark to Starscream would mean never getting it back. Starscream could reject him, belittle him, take off into the cosmos and never return to Bumblebee’s side in whatever years they had left, and still Bumblebee would feel the slow-burning jagged wonderful ache, this new desire to be known in a way that had never been of interest to him before. Though he believed (hoped) Starscream was desperate enough for company that he would not betray Bumblebee for this unfortunate truth, the thought of another mech having that much power over him was terrifying, and he was grateful that it seemed they would now have plenty years ahead to let those feelings develop before a time came for critical decisions to be made.
Worries for the future, then. On that day, with the sky twice as dark as it had once been and the shadows of their past lives draped overhead, mechs of all backgrounds were dancing together, celebrating those stars they had managed to save in time with their mourning for those they did not. Bumblebee and Starscream met in the middle, both talking too fast to understand what the other was saying, their shared lights more than enough to illuminate their new world.