Sam is standing on a battlefield.

It's Chicago: there's silence in sight and no traffic.

Papers and rubble and a small trickle of water drowns the bitten-gravel around him: he feels the wind lift the back of his shirt as he turns to face the other end of the street. He's standing on the Eisenhower Expressway. The heat of the sun thrills down the back of his neck like fire.

Facing him is none other than the angel coated in bright pink eyes and shades of petal-white.

She's staring at him, feet wide apart, ready to challenge. He isn't sure why.

"Is something going to happen here?" he asks.

"Watch," she replies.

Above them, Cybertron blots the human sky out. Black rains down from the cloudy heavens. From far away, he can hear thunder. He covers his ears, but it's no use.

Earth, Sam realises, will crumble to ash and dust, and Cybertron will-

Sam's eyes flared open and his breaths came and went in short pants. The med bay was as silent as a breeze, and it was dark. The healthy green of the heart monitor sat comfortably by Sam's side, and it beeped a ticking time alongside the frantic mutterings of his heart beat.

A flare of dim headlights blinded Sam's eyes.

Bumblebee.

He let his hand fall, and a small smile graced his lips. "Hey, Bee." The car revved and crawled as close as it could to the bedside, before transforming over Sam. Blue optics shone brighter than any light over his head, and he grinned, shifting his weight on the bed. "Is Carly okay?"

"She gone to bed, chap. She gone to bed." The scout replied, his optics widening and dimming. A second passed.

"Are you okay?" Sam's voice was a bare whisper.

'So tell me now, where was my fault, in loving you with my whole heart?' The radio crooned.

Mumford and Sons. Sam's heart wrenched in two to hear those lyrics. He knew the song well, had danced with Carly to it a few months back.

"I'm sorry, Bee. Really. I'm sorry." His voice felt empty in the darkness.

"Why didn't you wait for me?" the whisper of a young female voice shot through the radio. "I could've helped you- I- I'm so sorry-" Bee's optics closed slowly in the din, and suddenly Sam couldn't see in the dark. He reached out, grappled with the heavy, blinding darkness. Bee was silent enough that he couldn't even see how the scout had reached around the bed with both arms, as if to hug the dense air.

The heart monitor beeped between them.

Sam breathed the silence, blinked, and then remembered pink eyes and a sudden feeling of encompassing dread. He swallowed. "Bee," he murmured quietly. "I think I need to speak to Optimus."

Bee's optics opened, and Sam jumped. He didn't realise how close the scout had come to him. Quickly, before Bee could pull away, Sam reached out for his jaw plate, and pulled him as close as he could. He peered deep into those blue optics, as if he could see the spark, his soul, hovering underneath. "I didn't mean to die, Bee," he whispered softly. "I'm sorry you had to see that, but if I didn't move, then none of us would be here now. I had no choice."

"Ya couldn't a waited for us, could ya?" Bee's facial expression went completely against the twang and laugh of the quote. Sam refused to look away from his eyes.

"If I waited, you would've come, but by then it would've been too late. Maybe not for you Autobots. You'd survive no matter what. But for us-" he stopped, thinking of what could've happened above the earth had he waited a minute or two longer. Cybertron had come into their atmosphere like a moth to light- it wouldn't take a genius to know how close all of them came to their own end. "-it would've been too late, and I didn't want that to happen. Bee, I swear… I'm so sorry." His voice broke at the very end. He was happy Carly wasn't here to see this. She would've understood what he had to do: she would've hated him for leaving her like that, but she would've understood.

Bee wouldn't, though.

Bee had seen his best friend, his brother, lying on the hard gravel ground and thought the world must've ended in those few precious moments between Sam's last breaths and his first ones after.

Sam closed his eyes against the tear that fell against his bruised cheek. He wiped it away, then went to climb out of the bed.

Pain lanced through his back, and he winced, but he kept moving. He refused to look back to see if Bee followed. He didn't want to cry, not here, not when someone else was counting on him.

"You think you're a hero-?"

Stop it, Dylan. Stop it.

He dropped his feet into a pair of scuffed shoes, and gritted his teeth against the shock of pain when he pulled his arms through a jumper. Bandages snaked over every inch of his skin, and he knew the overdose of painkillers he was on was keeping the bite out of the burns on his chest and arms.

Outside the med bay the entire hangar was quiet. Diego Garcia, Sam reminded himself. Diego Garcia, in the middle of nowhere. A balmy heat ran through wide, square open doors of the main hangar, and if he squinted, he could see all the Autobots in recharge spaced out at all corners of the hangar. Optimus, unfortunately, sat all the way off in the distance, next to the open entrance.

It's so quiet.

He stepped out of the entrance of the med bay, and walked as silently as he could toward the end of the hangar. A flare of lights from Rachet told him he was being watched, and Sam rolled his eyes at the paramedic van.

"Nothing gets past you," he muttered. When Rachet flared his lights again, another warning, Sam chose to completely ignore him. If Rachet saw him, then that meant everyone else could too. Wow, Witwicky. Way to be smart. "Okay, look, I'm walking toward Optimus, okay? Seriously, what are you thinking, I'm going to leave the hangar? And okay, I'm not stupid, Skids, I can see that from the corner of my eye."

The green car squeaked from behind him.

The passenger door of Optimus's red and blue truck opened. Sam reached for the handle and winced as he pulled himself up into the seat, thankful the Autobot didn't transform. He didn't want to have to stand.

"You should be recharging, Samuel." It was a command, not a statement.

"Yeah, I should be doing a lot of things, but right now I need to ask you a question," Sam fired back. "What happened while I was out? What happened to Cybertron?"

"When you destroyed the control pillar, Cybertron was destroyed with it. The planet sank back into a black hole and swallowed itself into a cloud of dark shadows. Cybertron is gone, Samuel. It's all gone," Optimus repeated it, as if the words didn't taste right. To Sam, they were horrible to hear.

Cybertron was their home.

He destroyed their home.

"I'm sorry," he said, dropping his line of sight to his feet. "Really, I am. I know it doesn't mean much, and it seems all I can say is sorry, but I am." He rubbed his eyes, trying to fight away the sudden sleepiness and the onslaught of tears.

"Samuel, go back to your sleeping chambers," Optimus repeated. Sam ignored him.

"You want to know what happened with the Matrix. Listen, I'm not sure. But I do know this. Something bad is coming. I can't say what it is, because I don't really know, and I know it seems silly and stupid because I don't know anything, but- but I know. I know something bad is coming."

Optimus remained silent, as if waiting for Sam to further his argument.

"I met someone, I don't know who, in my dreams. She brought me back, she helped me to bring Ironhide and the others back. She told me I had a choice to do something. I don't know what it is Optimus, but something seriously bad is coming," Sam finished, out of breath, tired, and feeling utterly stupid. Seriously. He could feel the danger lurking in his bones, and yet he couldn't explain it properly.

"I gave you the right amount of morphine, Sam," Rachet's voice echoed through Optimus's radio. "You shouldn't be hallucinating-"

"I'm not bloody hallucinating, Rachet- Look, how else are you guys gonna try and explain what happened back in Chicago? I was dead. Technically speaking, I couldn't exactly see what was going on."

"We believe the Matrix acted of it's own accord," Optimus filled in, lamely.

"And the Matrix suddenly brings people back to life too?" Sam fired back.

"We can't explain it, either, Samuel. We do not possess enough knowledge to rule out whatever happened yesterday."

Sam stayed quiet, methodically running ideas through his mind before he sat back in the seat. "Fine, then. Have it your way, Optimus. But if something were to happen-"

"Nothin' will happen, Sammy-boy," Mudflap murmured in the background. "Nothin'".

"And if something does? Would you just put it down to the Matrix playing God and deciding machine and human are both made up of the same-"

"Samuel. Stop." Optimus's door opened, a clear dismissal. To say he was shocked would've been an understatement. Sam simply stared at the open door. Optimus never done that before. Never.

"Fine," he whispered. His heart pounded under his ribcage. It ached too. "Fine, then. But don't say I didn't warn you guys. Don't tell me-" he climbed out of the truck, wincing when his jumped from the high step. "- that in the end I didn't warn you."

His jaw locked of it's own accord and he walked toward the entrance of the hangar. Rachet's lights blinked behind him in the background. "Don't," Sam said. "Don't even think about it. I'm going for a walk and I want to be in bloody peace."

His veins screamed under the surface. Sweat beaded his skin. His head throbbed.

He blinked and through his eyes he saw alien writing. Words he couldn't decipher.

He kept walking, and fell asleep somewhere out on the small island under the blinking stars.

Pink eyes turned dark under the gleam of the sun.

Sam thought they were a bloody shade of vermillion-red. Decepticon red.

"Watch," she said again. Cybertron was falling from the heavens again.

He watched her.

This wasn't right. She wasn't right.

Something wasn't right.

In one hand he held the Matrix.

In the other he held the Allspark.

At five o' clock that morning, Will opened his eyes from the light doze he'd been under. He couldn't sleep, and Annabelle's weight over him was beginning to suffocate him. Sarah slept next to him, her arm curled under his head. He blinked, and the darkness was not a comforting sight.

Quietly, he sat up, and lay Annabelle down on the bed. His muscles screamed for sleep.

He couldn't sleep. He didn't want to.

He saw faces. He saw death. He saw smoke and screams and a world coming down on theirs in his dreams.

He had PTSD. He was a soldier. But this was by far the worst case of it he'd ever had in his life. He sat perched on the edge of the bed waiting for the quiver in his body to dull down to a slight trembling. He waited for the fear in his chest to quell into bare fragments of tiredness.

He got off the bed, walked toward the open window and looked out to the stars. Ironhide sat in the driveway, and as soon as his sensors caught hold of Will's signature, he transformed as silently as he could.

He held out an open palm for Will, and his friend climbed onto it without a word. Ironhide set him down on the ground and transformed back, holding open a door for him. Will didn't move, the memories of his death still playing again and again through his mind. He blinked, and saw the battlefield, saw Sentinel Prime shoot a hole through his chest. He blinked again, and the world was so quiet he could hear his own thoughts screeching through his skull.

"What are you waiting for?" Ironhide said.

Will shook his head.

"I guess I just keep waiting for someone to tell me this isn't real," he breathed back. "Ironhide.. I can't explain it. But there's something wrong with all this. There's…" he stopped, closed his eyes, and felt the explosions in Chicago come a little too quick, a little too fast, a little too loud. His breaths turned short, and he gritted his jaw. The bodies. The blood. The fire. The papers falling like ash to the ground.

God, everything felt too real. Even his memories were too real, too… painful.

He turned his head away. "I think we need to get back to base. I'm worried."

"Will," Ironhide reasoned. "You've only been home a few hours, and your family have missed you-"

"Our family, Ironhide."

"You need time to rest. You haven't slept at all in the last twenty-four hours. You need to sleep."

"I can't, Ironhide," Will returned, stepping back, dizzy with swirling thoughts and a pounding headache. "I can't sleep." He stepped back further, felt himself sway. God, everything hurt.

Ironhide transformed, fast, and grabbed the falling soldier in one hand.

Sarah chose that exact moment to open the front door of the house. "Ironhide? Is Will out there?" she called. "He's not in bed." Her eyes were frantic, her heart elevated. She found Will in his open palm. "Oh, God, is he alright?" She rushed down the porch and onto the front lawn. Ironhide gently lay Will out, measuring his heart rate and scanning for anything life-threatening. Sarah grasped his palm, and felt for a pulse. She sat back further on her feet.

"PTSD," she murmured.

Ironhide remained silent. They both knew that, and it occurred so often that Sarah didn't need to send him into the doctor anymore to diagnose it. Of course, if it were the normal army, both she and her husband knew that Will would've been called off the field many years ago.

But Will was tied to the Autobots and their cause, and no matter how hard he tried, he simply couldn't let them go.

He didn't want to.

"Shall I-"

Sarah shook her head.

"I think Will should go back with you," she murmured. Her hands were shaking, from sadness, from pain, from a loss no wife should have to bear. "If he has something on his mind, he needs to clear it, before he can safely come back to us."

Ironhide respected this woman more than any he'd ever encountered in all the years he lived, lost and fought.

"Bring him home again, Ironhide," she murmured, looking up to him with blue eyes as bright as the sun. "And stay with us next time. Don't go leaving us so soon, okay? Annabelle missed you the last time."

"Annabelle would forget us very easily, Sarah, and you and I both know that," Ironhide murmured, unable to bear with what she was actually saying. Will could never keep anything from his wife. Sarah shook her head.

"Annabelle missed you more than anything in all the world," she replied, "I missed you, too."

Ironhide didn't know what to say. He couldn't: the Autobots were his family, and Will and his were his friends. He'd do anything for them to make sure they were alright, but-

Sarah wanted this to be Will's last. The stress of keeping up was finally taking it's toll. All the years he spent working with them, and each attack he suffered after coming home, seeing dead bodies amount and more suffering than was humanly possible, watching alien life-forms destroy places that once flourished the world map and moments in time destroyed and burned by creatures the human race had never known…

All of it was finally catching up on him in a way that would render him completely insane.

When that time came, Ironhide knew, knew with every fibre of his spark, that he would have to leave Will for good.

And that was what truly killed him.

Sarah helped him carry Will into the back of the Hummer, and when she packed enough clothes to last him a few days and put the bag in the back, she watched as Ironhide left with Will in it with tear-streaked cheeks and a farewell wave.

Above her, the stars turned to ashen light as the sun began to rise.

She wasn't sure what the day would bring.