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With digits tracing the keys to Teletraan-1 in idle, purposeless strokes, Optimus avoided looking Bumblebee in the optics as he prattled off a report of yet another unsuccessful scouting mission. He frowned down at the terminal, barely listening to his words. The moment he heard that they hadn't found Megatron, his attention lagged—dragging away from the situation at hand and onto the data set he had scanned over far too many times.
"I'm sure after some rest I'll be able to do better next time," Bumblebee proclaimed, a smile cutting across his facial sculpt as reflected in the glass in front of him. Optimus stared at the gentle upturn of his lips.
He stared and stared, silent all the while until it fell off of Bumblebee's face entirely.
Shuffling slightly, Bumblebee's optics darted to the side. His arms were crossed behind his back, posture straight and stiff. Optimus hadn't seen his scout so… impersonal with him in a very long time.
There was no longer Bumblebee and Optimus, old friends—merely… A commander and his dutifully obedient cavalry scout.
But, to Bumblebee, this was how it had always been. Their friendship was practically nonexistent, the years spent fighting side by side scrubbed away as though they had never happened. Because, to Bumblebee, they hadn't.
Looming over his helm, breathing down his neck cabling, the pure loathing in Megatron's voice as he backed away from him flooded back through his audial receptors. His hatred for Optimus dragged its way down his back strut, it filled his field of vision with static until all that remained was the numbing waves pulsing from the Matrix back into his systems.
There wasn't Optimus Prime and Megatron, allies and friends anymore either. All because he hadn't been good enough, hadn't been able to avenge his fellow fallen Primes, hadn't…
"Sooo… I guess that's about it. Sir," Bee tacked on quickly. His lips quirked up again, smile far more apologetic and awkward than the prior one. As if he had any reason to seek out forgiveness when it was Optimus' failures that had led to the death of his prior self.
Clear as day, Bumblebee was waiting for a dismissal. He respected Optimus Prime's authority to the point where he couldn't fathom dropping off his intel and going about his own business as he once had before. And Optimus didn't have the spark to let him leave.
He let Megatron run off and now they couldn't find him. All of them searched, only to consistently return without even a hint of a sighting. Worse yet, every day Bumblebee grew more distant and further apart from him—not that Optimus had done much to prevent the rust spreading across their relationship. Locating Megatron consumed his every waking moment and when he could afford himself time to consider his scout he found himself paralyzed with doubt.
Would he run off too? Bumblebee didn't recognize his peers, finding strangers in their place and he especially didn't know how to navigate the Maltos and the Terrans both.
What was keeping Bumblebee amongst them? Fear to disobey? Fealty to his Prime?
Nothing at all?
It never failed to consume him in an instant, nearly as fast as the hate plague contagion he'd found. The very thought that Bumblebee would leave him just as Megatron had seized Optimus by the throat and threatened to snuff him where he stood. So he checked in on the scout, he fed him scraps of attention, he assigned him meaningless tasks and chores so that he could see him putter around the base—always within sight, never allowed to leave the bounds of it unless Optimus knew where he was going and why.
And yet–
How… wrong would it have been for Optimus to state that the sight of Bumblebee—unblemished from the end of the war, unknowing to the trials they endured for peace—repulsed him on some level? It felt almost as intense of a betrayal as chasing after Megatron did, as though he were betraying his two most precious people by clinging onto versions of them who hadn't seen him at his lowest, at his bravest, and at his worst.
Every day since their return from Cybertron, Optimus languished in his own eternal rot. There would be no solace for him. Not anymore, not until he fixed everything.
"Am I… free to go now, sir?"
Against his best interests, conflicted and loaded with strife as they were, he asked, "Can you stay? For a moment? We have not talked in some time, I'd like to check in on you."
Bumblebee brightened, delight flashing across his features. "Sure! I mean, I guess I can spare you a few moments. It's not like I'm doing anything interesting after this after all, haha… hah… Hm."
Turning to face him, Optimus looked at Bumblebee top to bottom. His scout had changed since last he saw him, but didn't look like who he had once become. Already the streams of time were diverting their course as Bumblebee toted around a new alt mode, his frame curving in ways that Optimus had never seen before. Whilst in hiding, his scout had always informed him whenever he swapped alts. This had never been one of them.
"I see that Breakdown has finally convinced you to swap to a sporty retrofit," he stated, each word forced from his vocoder. His voice sounded as tired as he felt, let alone how he likely looked from the restless nights spent in nightmarish recharge.
"Oh!" Bumblebee looked down at his frame, his arms coming out as he twisted around to see the components on his back. He lacked wings. Optimus mourned that he may never have them again. "Yeah! Although, I wouldn't really say that it was Breakdown who did all the convincing—Mirage stopped by briefly to check up on the kids and wouldn't quit nagging me until I tried out a Porsche 911. It's…" his facial sculpt twisted, attempting to find anything nice to say. "Alright."
"You are not satisfied with it?" Were he a lesser mechanism, Optimus might have attempted to draw his attention to the last alt mode he saw his scout in. The Matrix dissuaded him, reminding him that it wouldn't have been any more right or wrong for Optimus to tip the scales. Freedom for all, even if it meant freedom away from him. Away from what had been good.
"I don't see why I have to change at all." Bumblebee admitted. Quietly, he added, "I liked the buggy."
"Then why not return back to it? You still have the scans in your internal repository, correct?" Prior to the cleaving of Megatron in the desperate bid to save Optimus, the former warlord had purged all other vehicle schematics from his own banks.
Admirable at the time, proof of his commitment towards the Autobots and Optimus, but what did it amount to in the end? It provided a false hope that his fatal wound had prevented the Blades of Time from razing across his memory files as it had done to Bumblebee. But it had. It took everything from them and unlike Bumblebee, Megatron burnt the foundation of their hard earned peace with the same face that established it.
"I do, yeah, but… Nobody wants it." Nobody wants me, went unsaid but understood by both. "And I figured why bother putting up a fuss when I could just… give it a shot. Maybe I'll find another alt mode that fits. Who knows."
"I see." He didn't. Optimus really, truly didn't. "And Breakdown. How has your friendship been progressing?"
"Permission to speak freely?"
"That has always been granted to you, old friend."
"I don't like him," quick with it, Bumblebee spat out the statement. "He parades around like he knows me so well but he never actually means me."
Brilliant shining yellow bled into baleful grey. The shadows contorted behind him, stretching and filling out against the wall as the silhouette of the hulking tyrant entered the room.
"Well," he stammered, unable to shake away the ghost of Megatron. "He does know you, Bumblebee. Perhaps not from the point of time that you originate from, but he became quite close to your future self. Although I have never approved of the bond in the past, you both were good friends. Perhaps you could show him a little grace? Or understand where he's coming from?"
"Why?" Frustration lined his segmented facial sculpt. The complexity of the design suited this conversation as Optimus wasn't sure he could have looked him in the face of his naïveté and not felt the urge to scream. "He's not my friend. And even if he was, I'm pretty sure friends don't ask friends to change themselves for them."
Unless they knew better. Unless they held intimate knowledge of what they could amount to if they would just place their trust back into their servos.
"But what about–"
Bumblebee snapped, Optimus unknowingly prodding a secret building of bitter resentment simply waiting to burst, "I don't care about his feelings! What about my feelings? Me! As in the person standing right in front of you! This is exactly what I was trying to get across, all of you—none of you!—could possibly understand what it's like when every single person around wants you gone for somebody else who doesn't exist anymore!"
His scout panted, optics wild. Bumblebee looked shocked by his candor, slapping a servo to his mouth in instant regret. Yet Optimus hardly saw him, only seeing Megatron in his place. His words twisted, octave lowering and filtering through as though the warlord himself were striking the Prime down with every lancing sentiment—getting across, in no uncertain terms, that everything they built meant nothing.
"I– I'm sorry, I can't," Bumblebee went flush from horror at berating his commanding officer, his Prime no less.
He turned and promptly fled from the room, covering his face with both servos. Optimus could not tell whether or not he shed sparks and found that he didn't really care. Without a word, his servos returned to Teletraan-1, swapping over to the CCTV feed in the base.
Optimus allowed Bumblebee to leave yet followed him all the same. Penance ingrained in his spark, forcing him to commit the same mistakes over again.
Eventually, he'd learn. Eventually the sobs of the Matrix would reach his computer and make any sort of difference.
Until then he'd hold on tighter until one of two things happened: Bumblebee bent, molding himself back into shape or… he broke.