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Bee was surrounded. Fire and brimstone encompassing him on every side.
The sky was dark with smoke, dripping with the reds and oranges of the setting sun.
A wall of fire encircled him, with the only exit being blocked by a gunmetal gray figure.
Megatron.
Panic engulfed Bee’s processor, screaming at him to run and activating what must have been every evasive protocol in his database.
Yet he did not move.
He stood there, frozen, looking up at the looming form of Megatron, as red optics burned into his own.
An energon mace replaced Megatron’s servo and clattered to the ground, leaving a crater in the earth below it.
“It’s all your fault,” The warlord growled.
‘What?’ Bumblebee had wanted to ask, but the words got caught in his vocoder, forcing him into silence.
Megatron raised his mace, and the scout instinctually shied away, preparing for a killing blow. But just as the warlord was about to bring the weapon down on Bee’s helm, the figure fell away, taking the fire with him.
Suddenly, instead of a blazing battle, Bee was surrounded by an empty field.
Well, almost empty.
In front of him, on the dusty earth, laid the bodies of his mentor and friends. His family. Their sparks having long been extinguished, and the colorful Sentio Metallico replaced with dull gray frames.
Bee fell to his knees, unable to hold himself up when such a devastating sight laid before him.
The dulled optics of Optimus stared up at him. But when Bumblebee tried to avert his gaze, he was met with the empty stares of his comrades.
They all looked up at him from their final resting place with accusatory gapes, their vacant optics burrowing into Bee.
From behind him, Bumblebee heard the distinct sound of metal meeting earth. A heavy pede thumped against the ground.
Bee turned his head, not sure what to expect.
The sight that met him was Megatron, furious as ever, advancing towards him one step at a time.
Despite his slow pace, the gladiator was within grabbing distance in a nanoklik, looming over the yellow scout with an impossibly intimidating stature.
“It’s all your fault,” he repeated.
Without warning, Megatron lunged, clutching at Bumblebee’s intake pipes, practically raising the scout off the ground.
The servo around Bee’s throat tightened, and he could virtually feel the plating start to dent.
Terror struck Bumblebee, his processor pleading for him to fight back, to resist, to do something. But he couldn’t.
He just couldn’t. Instead he was forced to stare down the gladiator, powerless to stop the ever-tightening grip on his throat.
“Wake up,” the warlord demanded, in a voice not his own.
Again, Bee wanted to say something, anything, but his vocoder did not allow it.
“Wake up,” he heard again, although he did not see Megatron’s mouth move with the words.
“Bee, wake up-!”
Something jostled Bumblebee’s frame, a shake against his shoulder plating.
A cacophony of voices rang out across the field, getting louder with each call. All pleading with him to wake up.
Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup
The landscape around him began to fall away, taking the fallen Autobots with it. The pressure on his throat disappeared, and the warlord standing in front of him seemed to practically melt into nothingness, leaving behind an inky black void.
Bumblebee awoke with a start, flinging himself forward from a sleeping position, nearly colliding with a small flying frame in front of him.
The rest of the figures surrounding him jumped back with various startled shouts.
“Bee!” The smallest one, Twitch, shouted, throwing herself at his chassis and encompassing him in the best hug her frame would allow.
But Bumblebee couldn’t bring himself to hug her back, his processor still swimming with the horrific imagery of what he now recognized as a nightmare.
As he took in the dugout’s interior around him, his vents shuttered, rapidly intaking air as Bee tried, unsuccessfully, to shut down his panicked protocols.
Twitch seemed to notice his unresponsive behavior, backing off and looking up at him quizzically.
“Bee?” Robbie spoke up from somewhere off to the Autobot’s left, “you okay?”
Bumblebee glanced the boy’s way, where he saw the rest of the Terrans staring at him, worry blatant on their faceplates.
He cleared his voice box. “Yeah, I uh…” Bee looked away, glancing down at his shaking servos, “I’m alright,” he finished.
“What happened?” Jawbreaker piped up, “you were quietly recharging, when all of a sudden you started shaking and mumbling something.”
“Just a nightmare,” Bumblebee brushed off the others’ concern.
“You guys get nightmares?” Robbie asked.
“I’ve never gotten one,” Thrash said from where he sat atop the ramp.
“It’s not a common thing,” Bee admitted, “not every bot gets them. But…” he hesitated, “war can have…unpredicted effects.”
He really didn’t want to give the kids a detailed description of what was essentially robot PTSD, that was more of a Dot-and-Alex responsibility.
The Maltos contemplated what he said for a while, until Twitch spoke up.
“So,” she started, landing and joining her siblings by the ramp, “what was yours about?”
Bee thought about what to say. How do you describe such horrors to those untouched by them? The Megatron they knew wasn’t like that . And Bumblebee didn’t want him to be. Not to them, atleast.
So it was best kept to himself.
“Eh,” he said, “nothing crazy.” He brushed off their prying questions and changed the subject, “Well, would you look at that, training time!”
Without further delay, Bumblebee stood up and sauntered out of the dugout. Behind him, the Maltos glanced among themselves, concern etched into every inch of their faces. But, eventually, they picked themselves up and followed after their teacher.