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Humans grieved in weird ways. They trespassed into places and made little shrines of photographs and drawings and bundles of plants that withered without care, all left in the wake of their loved ones passing. And when their offerings turned brown or tore at the sides they replaced them anew, holding onto the hurt and memories for months at a time.
Years too, if the loss went deep enough.
Until the end of their short unfulfilled lives, if that's what it took.
Cybertronians didn't grieve the same, but along the way Bumblebee must have become more human than Transformer without realizing it.
Because here he stood at the bed of Prowl's stupid tree, staring at the memorial some random human must have started ages ago. He thinks that if it were Optimus here, he'd frown at the clear and obvious security breach—nobody should have known the location of their base to build this tribute after all. But Bumblebee didn't see the point in complaining, not when they didn't live there anymore. Sure, it had been their home once, but with the space bridge established at Sumdac's tower they all spent most of their time back on Cybertron anyhow.
Why, then, would Bumblebee fault the luck of the Urbexer who stumbled upon the former base of operations of the local robotic heroes. Or menaces, depending on which news outlet you asked.
At least the humans who came after they left took proper care of the place instead of trashing it… okay, they mostly did. He spotted some new tags on the outside of the building that weren't there the last time Bee saw the place. Bulkhead should come back and make his own, too.
He corralled his computer back on track. The tree. The memorial. His thoughts on both.
A collection of newspapers detailing Prowl's heroics from inconsequential cat rescues to the last act he would ever take on this world and the next peppered the base of the memorial. Drawings too, of all different skill levels. Bee suspected children had mostly contributed those, but a well-defined sketch of Prowl drawn from afar—set at the park they took Sari too when she was still little—made him wonder…
Were there humans still out there that stared at them in wonder instead of fear or hate? By the time of that final battle, the Autobots had barely been tolerated by the loudest voices in Detroit. Their homecoming to Cybertron celebrated them, knowing intimately that the Decepticons laid at fault for any destruction caused, but to the humans all the giant robots stomping through the streets caused damage all the same. Even if they fixed it up after, unlike the Decepti-creeps, it didn't erase the harm caused.
But there must have been those who understood they were doing their best, otherwise nobody would have bothered to decorate Prowl's tree. Right? What point would this memorial serve if not for that? His frame wasn't even there to grieve over. Only memories and good deeds that lived on by word of mouth.
Bundles of flowers laid at the roots, petals browning and rubbery soft. Bumblebee couldn't tell whether Prowl would've been bothered that his love for this planet had been misunderstood even in death or if he would… get that the sentiment behind the scissors cutting the stems short meant more than the action itself.
Bumblebee looked down at his all-black servos. He clenched his digits, before releasing them.
With more grace than he usually afforded, he lowered himself to the ground. He sat away from the tree, not wanting to accidentally trample any of the offerings. Hunched over, his helm ducked down as low as his neck cabling would allow. Should he have brought his own? Something to place at the base of the tree or… He didn't know what Prowl would have wanted from him other than patience and silence. And he wasn't going to engage in the latter, not when he had so much to get off of his chassis.
Mumbling, Bee rocked forward, "Hey, Prowl. It's me, Bee. You… probably already know that but I figured I'd say it just in case you, uh, couldn't recognize me." He frowned. "You said once that you'd always recognize my grating voice but… You don't exactly keep your promises."
That was mean. Who said something like that? He stumbled over himself to apologize, "Sorry, that was kind of uncalled for. I swear I didn't come here to bother you for no reason," even though Prowl wasn't physically here. His frame had been buried in the dojo, Bee oversaw the whole ceremony. "I actually don't know why I'm here at all."
Bumblebee left Cybertron without telling anyone where he was heading. Sure, he figured that if Boss-bot called, Sumdac would snitch on him in a nano-klik. It wasn't exactly as though he told the professor to keep his arrival a secret. But an itching in his lines urged him to leave, to run as far as his pedes could carry him. Bee needed to get away from everyone.
"I bet if you were here, you'd have something to say about my new paint job, right?" Bee asked. Staring down at his cabin, his false hood jutted proudly. "Sari helped me out with some of her dad's auto-painting robots. I thought that I should look the part of an Elite Guardsmech if I'm gonna be one—and your color scheme was up for grabs. Not like you're going to say dibs from beyond the grave, y'know?"
He waited. Giving Prowl the opportunity to do so if still lingered. Human spirits did that sometimes, according to one of the networks on their TV and Sari. It used to freak out Bumblebee more than he cared to admit, but he'd take a hit to his pride for a ghastly visage of Prowl to scare the spark right out of him at that moment.
Nothingness greeted him back.
"I happen to think that gold and black look wayyy better on me than it ever did on you," he boasted, feeling the coils in his neck tighten. He continued with his self-flattery, "And riot shield-doors are so much cooler than your jump-jets or that weird armor you sported before you–"
Bee couldn't do it. He couldn't finish that sentence.
"It was supposed to be me," Bee blurted out. His servos flexed, a compulsive need to swap them out for his exposed stingers. The coils hummed out in the open, the bright blue of their metal attracting the attention of more than a few scientists in Sumdac's tower. Or maybe it had been their fascination at seeing an essential organ on display without anything to guard it. "Not you."
The urge to slam his fist against the flooring of Prowl's dusty, abandoned room overcame all rationality. So he gave in, hitting the floorboards and cracking the wood. "I mean, come on! I'm the one with one pede in the Well, my spark holster can barely support itself if it wasn't for Ratchet pulling me back in every battle! So why did you have to go and do a stupid thing like sacrificing yourself?"
With a keen, Bee pressed forward, his false hood hitting his crossed over directionals.
"Was it because of what I said?" Shuttering his optics tightly, Bumblebee's facial sculpt twisted in pain. "Did it insult you that much?"
When Bee had first shown Sari his ideal color-scheme for his upgrade, she had stared at him with a mix of emotions on her face before sighing and agreeing. At the time, he figured it had to do with the fact that their friendship would never really recover from his brief betrayal against Optimus for an Elite Guard badge. Perhaps his continued dream of becoming a member of the Elite Guard—not under Sentinel's leadership, of course—reminded her of that shame of a trial. Of him testifying on stand for Sentinel, before pivoting and defending Optimus in court.
But a part of him buried deep inside wondered and worried that she saw right through him instead. Sari had always been unusually perceptive, it wasn't out of the picture. And he didn't know what he would say to her if she did, unlike him, she came from a real protoform.
Yet, she didn't press him for an explanation. It helped that he made for a pitiful sight regardless, a convenient half-excuse. What with Ratchet replacing most of his protoform with new plating made from an Earthen alloy blend—excising the brittle rot that had settled into his frame from the first moment he walked off the South Iacon factory floor. Walking around like that, he didn't have much of choice but to repaint.
"I didn't mean it," he lied at a dead mech's grave, "I swear I was only joking."
For as often as he fumbled, Bumblebee wasn't nearly as dense as everyone thought he was. When Prowl had sprung away from the couch after he admitted how badly he wished that the metal used to create his pathetic excuse for a recycled protoform came from the ninja-bot instead, Bee held himself back from running after him.
But he wanted to so badly. He wanted to fall over himself to explain that it was a compliment, he swore. To finally allow his private admiration boil over and spill out of his intake, letting Prowl know that for all that he bothered and poked fun at him, Bee looked up to him—he really did, so why did that disturb the bot so much? Did he simply not want to associate with Bumblebee at all? Repulsed at the idea of his parts going to waste on a bumbler?
With Prowl gone, he'd never get an answer— An explanation.
"Why'd you have to go and die on me? On all of us?" He shook his helm fast and hard, in disbelief still. It felt like the world stopped making sense when Jazz approached with that lifeless frame cradled in his arms. "Talking all that scrap about the sanctity of life, did it mean anything to you? Did we mean anything?"
This wasn't fair. None of it was fair, but especially not arguing with a mech that couldn't argue back.
"I need you to tell me it's okay, please?" Bee tried to collect himself. He more than failed. "That… That I want to measure up to even half of you."
Prowl didn't answer him. The tree swayed in the breeze that snuck inside the old manufacturing plant. A photo slipped out of place, burying his friend's face beneath decayed flowers.
"Please."