Chapter Text
Charlie knows weird.
After all, she’s been stuck all these years with a younger brother, which should speak for itself. And okay, sure, there’s the whole thing with her best friend being an alien robot from outer space who can transform into any earth-based vehicle on a whim, but have you tried having a younger brother? They may as well be from out there in the cosmos.
So yeah, she knows weird.
But there’s weird, and then there’s Saturday-morning-cartoon type weird, which merits a whole other category entirely for its sheer insanity on the spectrum of weirdness. Because seriously? Charlie didn’t think something this wacky could happen outside of tv storyboarded nonsense.
But it can and it did.
And now they’re just going to have to roll with it.
Correction, she will have to roll with it. Bee—well.
That may be more difficult for him than usual.
𝙱𝙴𝙵𝙾𝚁𝙴
So, here’s the thing about welcoming an injured Bumblebee into your home. Release them into the wild, and they can never stay away for long.
Not that Charlie would have wanted him to—god no. Saying goodbye seven years ago had been devastating to her. She’d thought that was it. That she had made the tough to decision for him to reunite with his own, to fight a war where she could not follow.
They had separate lives to live.
But that didn’t stop Bee from making them overlap, and so those few unforgettable summer days became more than just those few.
He came back.
All it took was a radio on blast, and a honk of a horn, and there Bumblebee was, waiting outside of Charlie’s window for her to race towards, laughing all the way as she tripped over her own feet to see him. She’d ushered him into her garage, and seeing him transform, all whirring pistons and folding metal, seeing him—
It was almost like he’d never left.
But Bee had, and she hugged him all the tighter for it, scooped up in his embrace. Not that that would have made much difference. He’s made of sturdy stuff. Sturdy, but gentle. As Bee nuzzled into her, chirping out static-laced echoes of delight, he held Charlie like something precious, important. She glowed.
Again and again he returned, on the down low from sector 7. When he was to lie low, when his team was to disperse and patrol, Bee, without fail, would always come back.
Never did a goodbye feel as permanent as the first.
>(Maybe it should have. Bumblebee wasn’t meant to stay long—that had never been the plan. Him and the others like him had fallen back, planned to regroup—the stay on Earth should have been short, swift.
But they were marooned. And it became easy, too easy, to accept Bee into her life like he wasn’t destined to leave it.)
So they found routine like that. Him and her, her and him. Charlie would take Bee out for a drive—raced him once in her newly repaired Corvette. And oh, how delightful that had been, wind in her hair, a thrill in her veins. She’d lost, but she had won in so many ways.
Sometimes they’d roll up to her local drive-in if something good was showing (who do you think was paying for those tickets?), and if it was really good, she’d hear all its lines repeated back to her by the end of the week. He likes quippy one-liners the most, she was soon to learn, like a cheesy action hero, always equipped with the right comeback.
But the lines were borrowed, pulled from a stash.
Charlie wondered if he was full of his own that he just couldn’t say.
(And how often has that played on her mind? The sound of his voice—his real voice, the one that had been hacked and slashed from his neck in a battle she only vaguely knows the specifics of.
One of the others like him—an autobot Bee had relayed—the one that had spoken to her only indirectly, through a holographic message never meant for her, he’d sounded so human, not at all how E.T had depicted an alien race. Like Shatter and Dropkick, Optimus spoke so similarly to their kind, and yet, grounded to them as it was, every emotion human, speech patterns impossible to distinguish, there was an odd tenor, a slight distortion as if spoken through a phone line, something mechanical, something alien, with a grand volume that spoke of importance, sheer scale, giants among ants.
He’d had that once.
So she wondered about what had once belonged to Bee, what identity had been stolen from him.
What the sound of her name would be like coming from him.)
But the Bee she knew spoke with more than a voice—loud in all the ways to make up for his silence. His eyes—or whatever he called them, optics?—spoke volumes, and his actions spoke greater.
And there was something, something that fizzled in her heart at that. Something that was always nestled there, warm, present, as the years passed. When college came and went, when she got an apartment from the funds saved up from working at Uncle Hank’s. When she got a new job at a garage.
Far away as Charlie was from where she grew up, it felt like home.
(She wondered if Bee could feel that here. He’d told her stories, borrowed snippets from other cybertronians for words the radio alone could not cover, shown her holograms of buildings scaled down for their vastness. With its dazzling lights and exotic, coiling shapes, it had been otherworldly, a sight to behold, all metal structures stretching to heights no architect on Earth could possibly dream of.
That had been Cybertron. A Cybertron before the war.
And yet there Bumblebee was, stuck in the cramped space of her rented-out garage, complete with that one leak she can never seem to fix. It can’t have been comfortable for him, not like some renovated open plan warehouse home which would have been well out of her modest budget, but would have had the space, the scale that wouldn’t keep him cooped up, knocking things over, and Charlie camping out in a garage at night when she had a perfectly good apartment up above.
Name a greater downgrade.
But he never complained. Not once. He’d just give her that look and—
Maybe this wasn’t his home. Maybe this wasn’t where he belonged. But it’s where the universe brought him, to her, and maybe they could both find comfort in that.)
So, here’s the other thing about welcoming an injured Bumblebee into your home, another injured one may come right back.
Charlie saw the dents, the scrapes, saw them the moment she got a good look at that paint job, yellow diced in vicious slashes of mottled silver, and the phantoms of that fight still screeched with the hideous draw of metal to her ears, acicular talons on his plating, through the cosmetics, through to what made him tick.
And maybe on a lesser bot, a car, the engine would never start. But Bee had driven all the way to her apartment. It had been a clash he’d lived through, a clash he’d survived. But in that moment, Charlie’s heart still stopped.
This was more than a stray decepticon.
Bumblebee had fought pede to pede with death and wrangled it around a few times.
And when she was done fixing him up, improving on the patch job that had been done on Bee, she was getting a story out of him.
A story he was shifty about giving, and she soon found why—“You died again?!?!”—but it left her wondering.
“You have a human on the team now?”
She’d been made aware about Optimus Prime’s stance on humans, despite Bumblebee’s attempts to defend them, defend her—and that was sweet, really, and a small part of Charlie was curious as to what Bumblebee had told them about her—but because of that it had made Bee cautious about her meeting him, along with the whole wanting to keep her safe thing, which really, she’d argue she was safer around bots who knew a thing or two about saving the planet.
Not that she blamed Optimus for how he felt. Charlie knew humans, knew a good chunk would get them in a lab for dissection if given the chance.
But—
Huh.
Perhaps things had changed. If Noah was allowed in on the previously cybertronian-exclusive action, then perhaps Charlie could be there too, helping in whatever way she could. Like doing this, putting her degree in mechanics to good use, helping Bee, helping his friends like some sort of…
Medic. An autobot medic.
Because lord did Bumblebee need one.
(And yes, there had been a time when she hadn’t wanted a part in this. But that had been then, when she was eighteen and still finding herself through the smog of grief, still getting her life back on track when she’d done so much to pull away.
And this was now.)
𝙽𝙾𝚆
“Okay, so, don’t freak out,” isn’t exactly something one wants to hear upon waking up, especially in their own voice.
It’s hardly incentive to follow through on the request.
But Charlie does, at least, for a moment as she gets her bearings, processes, opens her eyes except, well. She doesn’t. There’s nothing to open.
They just. Turn on. And suddenly she’s seeing everything, and by everything, Charlie means everything wrong with this situation.
Like, for starters, the words floating in the corner of her vision. Words that she somehow knows are words despite looking nothing like any sort of character she’s used to. And yet, they make sense to her, just like that. Her systems are online, audio input optimal and—
And then there’s this hexagon that starts zeroing in on the—well. The not-her her, hands held up placatingly in surrender. And why does she appear so small, standing there on the gravelly floor of the cave—wait, when did she enter a cave again?
Charlie blinks—except she doesn’t, because she tries to and it’s simply impossible, muscle memory not responding—and holds up what should be her hands. Should be, but the feeling, it’s strange, they feel heavy and clanky, a weight and balance she’s not yet adjusted to. And what she sees, it’s yellow. Pure yellow. Bee’s yellow. And it responds to her every movement.
That’s when she freaks out, taking several steps back, almost toppling over from this new, strange height.
Maybe she’d scream, or maybe she tries, but she doesn’t, or can’t, because all that happens is a staticy buzz and a wave of pain coming from her neck. Except it’s pain unlike she’s ever felt—it doesn’t tingle, doesn’t sear, not in the way she’s used to. She has no flesh, and yet she feels it. The hurt. The ache of something no longer there.
And that’s when she gets it.
Charlie—or who should be Charlie, because she knows very certainly she’s Charlie, even if her appearance now suggests otherwise—tentatively looks back to the woman at her feet, the woman who isn’t really a woman right now, is he?
‘Bee, is that you?’ she tries to say but doesn’t and feels like a fool. Right, of course. Can’t exactly talk right now.
All that comes out is a painful static they both wince at.
It seems like Bumblebee can fill in the blanks though, because he nods—well she nods, maybe to the outside eye, but technically it’s Bee doing the nodding—and says, says, “Yeah, it’s me.”
And right.
Isn’t that something.
There’s so much going on right now, and what’s throwing her the most is Bumblebee talking without the aid of a radio. Sure, it’s her, but, it’s him.
How bizarre indeed.
“Oh mech, wow, this sure is a first! I’ve never swapped frames before, yet alone with someone organic like you, Charlie,” he spews in a quick succession of words, barely giving her body time to breathe. Charlie almost feels winded for herself. Then he seems to freeze on the last word, his eyes widening before he bursts out this sappy sort of grin—which, huh, looks incredibly odd on her, and yet strangely fitting for him, despite his usual lack of mouth—and goes, “Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!! Holy Primus—heh, sorry, I’ve been wanting to say that for a while. Even if it’s technically you saying that.”
The action is just about as uncanny as it is endearing.
Charlie wonders, briefly, if the Bee she’s known has always been such a chatterbox, or if he’s making up for a lack of words all these years.
(Is this the side of Bumblee she’s missing out on?)
Bee goes on, “Oh! Do I really look this tall to you?” A pause. “Wait, no. Don’t answer that. Not with my busted vocoder, anyway. Try the radio.”
’Easier said than done,’ Charlie thinks. It’s not like there’s an instruction manual for dealing with suddenly becoming cybertronian. She hesitates a moment, long enough for Bee for realise the problem.
“Oh,” he says, wincing with her face. Because, again, her body. “Right. How to explain this… You sort of have to will it to happen. Like moving an arm, or a limb. Your HUD is a part of you. Just process… musical thoughts?”
’Helpful,’ Charlie thinks dryly, before giving it a reluctant go. As predicted, she gets nothing, and lets out a quiet huff in frustration.
Then, there’s a tingle on her hand—servo?—and she looks down to see Bee, small and her-shaped, giving one of her newly acquired metal fingers an encouraging squeeze.
“Hey,” he says, soft, gentle. “You helped give me a voice. Twice now, actually, if you count this—and believe me, it’s as weird for you as it is for me. But I promise you, we’ll find a way to get you speaking. Or, better yet, get us back to normal.”
Ah.
Briefly that feeling stirs again from somewhere within her. Which is totally weird because, well, this is her. She’s looking at herself and should not be feeling these types of things at all.
“Speaking of, I think this is the reason for our swap.” Bumblebee pulls away—oh—and goes to inspect a strange looking white cylinder, too large for a human to pick up, but easy enough for a cybertronian, with markings that bear similarity with—oh! The text in the corners of her vision. That’s where she’s seen it before. And the cylinder—she vaguely remembers it from when she was—
From when—
Charlie pulls up the memory file, and suddenly there it is, up in her face, a beat for beat replay on how she came across the thing. She—normal, her in her own skin her—and Bumblebee—also as himself—had been on the way to NYC for her to meet the team, finally, when two deceptions had picked up on their trail, and, in an effort to get Charlie away from them, Bee had accidentally landed them both on an unstable patch of ground, just off the beaten track, where they’d—oh—fallen through the earth.
Hence the cave they’re currently in.
She sees herself tumbling, Bee shielding her, and the cylinder reacting to their touch where she’d knocked into it, releasing this mysterious mist upon contact.
And then.
Nothing.
“It doesn’t seem to want to react to us anymore,” Bumblebee says, bringing her back to the present. “I think, whatever was inside of it, has been used up for this… transformation.”
Charlie finds herself making this worried sort of whirr.
“Agreed. Not great. But maybe, because it’s from Cybertron, Optimus will know what it’s doing here. And what it exactly does. And how to reverse it. I’ll just transform and carry it in my back seat—oh.” Bumblebee shrinks in on himself—the Charlie-shaped himself. “You’re Going to have to transform and do that.”
Charlie stares blankly at him.
Bee tries to give her an encouraging smile. It does not work.
“I know it’s a lot to ask, but please? Right now, you’re our only way out of this, and I’ll—I’ll guide you through. Every step of the way. You—“ Bumblebee hesitates, then, after a second, he pitches Charlie’s voice up slightly, like he’s trying to be tuneful and goes, “You got the touch, you got the power. When all hell's breaking loose, you’ll be riding—“
::[Bzzzztt]—the eye of the storm::
They both startle at that, Bee’s-ex-radio bursting into song on queue. Sure, she has saved herself from having to hear her own voice sing off-key, though it is interesting to note that Bee doesn’t just save these types of audio clips to whatever hard drives he has. He memorises them.
Now, if only she can get a handle on turning the radio off.
:: ₊˚♬ ﾟYou got the heart, you got the motion, you know that when things get too tough, you got ｡♪ ₊˚—[bzzzt]—get one free for half the price! Don’t miss—[zzzzz]—♬⋆.˚the touch ♫⋆｡♪—::
“Charlie?”
::[zzzzzzzttt]—DING DING DING we have a win—𝙷𝙰𝙷𝙰𝙷𝙰𝙷𝙰𝙷𝙰—::
“Er, stay calm. Just focus on twisting the dial.”
:: Yippee ki-yay ♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚𝘛𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘦 𝘣𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘢 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘦₊˚♬—Charlie Watson.::
Okay, so that’s that clip of her voice she’s heard from him before. Wait, how many does Bumblebee have—
::The only person you can show yourself around is me—matches your outfit too—Bee, we’re not watching the Breakfast Club another time this week::
And silence.
Phew.
Bee sure made that seem easier than it was, but Charlie thinks she has the hang of turning it on and off.
Maybe.
… She may need more practice. But it’s enough for Bumblebee at least, who’s looking at her, pleased as punch at her efforts.
“You did it! Sweet! We’ll be getting you transforming before you know it!”
‘That’s awfully optimistic,’ Charlie thinks, but, remembering his earlier words, it’s not like they have any other choice.
Not unless they fancy spending the rest of their days here.