Hi! Back in 2009, I wrote The Meaning in Silence, and now that it's coming up on its 10-year anniversary, I wanted to re-write it, to thank all the people who read it the first time and were so encouraging that I went on to keep writing for another ten years, even though the first fic had its flaws.
(Reading the original is not necessary, just re-writing it so it's better and a remix!)

xxxxxxx

The hospital loomed behind Sam, somehow no further away every time he looked over his shoulder. It took an entire two city blocks before Sam felt the lights recede from his back, before the darkness surrounding him felt complete, and like no one in the hospital could see him anymore.

He wasn't entirely alone, at least not continuously; every now and then, headlights washed over the sidewalk, flashing out of the darkness before delving back into it. Already, one of his friends had driven by and spotted him, stopping to ask if Sam wanted a ride someplace, but Sam had declined. No, he had a ride coming along soon. He didn't mention that he was planning to either lecture it to death or ignore it completely.

Sam's leaden guilt kept him company, in the meantime; as angry as he was, as much blame as there was to put on shoulders that weren't his, still – still, it came back to him. Sam was the origin, the keystone that brought together things that never would have intersected on their own. He was the one who brought Mikaela into his life, and he didn't keep her safe from it.

It was minor, this time. This time that might have been the beginning, or maybe just the most recent escalation, maybe it wasn't the beginning he wanted it to be. Maybe he'd had his eyes closed to it this year, not wanting to see the violent clash of different sections of his life. This year had been rife with near misses and close calls, of almost-explained-away and could-have-been-accidental. This time wasn't a nearly, wasn't an almost; this time, Mikaela had spent her evening in the hospital, face wan under the lights, telling Sam she was sure it was an accident, not to worry, and her eyes had asked him not why he wasn't protecting her, because she thought he was, because she thought this was the best he could do when really he should have been doing so much more, but asking him to please just shield her a little more.

The quiet rev on an engine soon invaded the silence, humming along just behind Sam. He could see the wink of yellow out of the corner of his eye; he clenched his jaw and refused to look.

"I do not understand why you have such a problem with her!" Sam snapped, unable to keep hold of his silence any longer. Bumblebee gave a small rev of his engine, still slinking along after Sam. "Don't even give me that 'our last day together' shit, because you're only going for a month, and you've been doing this for a year!"

Sam strode along faster, although it was probably pointless to try and lose a car. He had feverishly angry visions of diving into the bushes, tearing through the park, probably just running into Bee parked on the next side street patiently. Sam just kept storming along for another few blocks until he arrived at the foot of his driveway. Bumblebee whined again, engine moaning pitifully. Sam recognized the sound.

"No, Bee, I'm not okay. If you don't cut this shit out, who knows how long she'll stick around?" Bumblebee gave a guttural little sound. "That had better not be what you're trying to do!" Sam spun around, finally facing Bumblebee, wishing he had somewhere specific to glare at. His gaze darted between the headlights and the windshield uselessly. "I don't know what's gotten into you, if you're mad or bored or jealous or what, but God, Bee, she's lucky it's only her ankle that's broken!"

Bumblebee crept forward, nosed Sam with his bumper, extremely gently.

"Maybe we're better off without you, before Mikaela breaks her neck!" Headlights blinked on and off, and Bumblebee receded a few feet, cowed.

The front door of the house opened behind Sam, lights pooling on either side of him. "Son, fighting with your car isn't a normal thing to do," his father called over from the porch. Sam sighed, sent a last withering look at Bumblebee, and stalked across the yard. "Sam-" he heard, and Sam heaved another sigh, sidestepping so his foot landed on the path instead of the grass.

"None of this is normal," Sam grumbled as he walked into the house, barely a foot into the entry before he had to step around boxes. "Isn't it a little early to be packing?"

"There's only a month until you have to leave, Sam, and I want to start repainting." His father, blunt as usual, settled back onto the couch beside Sam's mother. "Why are you back so late?"

"Hospital." Sam heard a loud rev of whiny protest from the driveway, and spun to face the window. "Quit it, Bee!" he yelled at the closed window.

"The hospital?" His mother's hand flew to her throat. "Sam?!"

"It's fine, Mom. It was for Mikaela, and she's fine. She… fell. Broke her ankle. She's totally fine now, she's at home." He turned for the stairs, facing another maze of boxes. "I'm gonna go call her, though."

"Tell her we hope she feels better soon!" his mother called after him, "and I have a great German Chamomile for injury pain, if she wants some-" He heard her getting up, already starting to hunt for an essential oil. No doubt Mikaela would have a package on her doorstep within a day, with a diffuser and more essential oils than she'd know what to do with. His mother wasn't into pyramid schemes so much as she was into stealing their ideas, buying similar products online, and giving them away more than selling them.

Sam continued upstairs, ignoring the flashes of headlights that appeared on the walls like spotlights. He heard Bumblebee spinning his wheels on the driveway outside in frustration. He'd tried that on the grass, once, and Sam's dad had all-but had an aneurysm.

Sam's bedroom was on the far side of the house of the driveway, and the walls remained dark even as the yard outside lit up with headlights. Mikaela picked up his call on the third ring, sounding weary.

"Feeling any better?" Sam asked, sitting on the side of his bed and picking at a loose threat in the bedspread. The guilt he'd been floating in had abruptly become too much for him to keep afloat in, dunking his head under and holding it there like a forceful wave. Sam had done this. Sam had brought her and Bee into his life at the same time and united them there under their desire to be near him, and the consequences were all because of him.

"Yeah, a lot." She was lying, not even to preserve his feelings, just because she was too tired to come up with anything other than the simplest answer. Sam couldn't blame her. "Don't worry about me, Sam."

"I'm sorry. I'm just, I'm really sorry. My car is trying to kill my girlfriend-"

"It could have been an accident, Sam." Her placating tone was strained taut. "I mean, maybe the door locks are broken, the seat anchors loose-"

"And you just happened to get thrown out? Kaela, no. He did it on purpose. I'm really, really sorry. I'm not going to let it happen again." He didn't miss the quick flash of yellow outside his window, and groaned. Bumblebee was doing a poor job of eavesdropping, as usual. "He's going out to the Autobot's city tomorrow to help them out for a month, so we'll have some peace." A little harsh, but he couldn't reign it in.

"He'll probably miss you," Mikaela said, vaguely curious. Sam scowled, in no mood to find the feelings of an alien car robot amusing.

"Assuming I'll let him anywhere around us afterwards," he huffed. The silence was abruptly apparent; Sam realized he was more accustomed to hearing the soft whir of mechanics than the absence of it. He only noticed it when it left him, this time because Bumblebee had presumably just taken off to sulk in the garage.

"It's weird, he's usually so sweet." To Sam alone, Mikaela didn't add. Bumblebee was so strongly devoted to Sam, it was nothing short of infuriatingly baffling to see him go after Sam's girlfriend like this. If he really cared about Sam, how could he?

"I'll sort it out, I promise."

"Are you going to tell the others? I mean, it could be a like…" she fumbled for a word, probably waffling between the vocabulary for humans and machines.

"Wiring thing? No, it's all Bee. The only one I need to talk to is him." Sam looked out the dark window. He couldn't see the garage from here.

After he'd said goodnight to Mikaela, Sam lay on his bed, staring out the window without a view of the garage. While driving down the road that wound along the lake, Bumblebee had abruptly jerked, jolting Mikaela all the way out of the car. It had sent Sam scrambling, panicked, for a moment blaming himself and then suddenly being afraid of Bee – for a moment, everything about him that was Bee had fled Sam's mind, and he was just – just scared.

When the soft hum of mechanics returned, Sam was tempted to close his eyes, feign sleep.

"You didn't just scare her, you know," he said aloud, knew Bee could hear him. "You made me scared of you."

Was he still? He turned his back on Bee's whirring mechanics outside the window, closed his eyes. He wasn't afraid of Bee; he was angry, betrayed, wasn't understanding something, but that was it, wasn't it: he knew there was something there to understand.

xxxxxx

Even the hospital had more lenient visiting hours than Mikaela's stepmom allowed, Sam thought grudgingly after he hung up the phone. Sure, it made sense that Amy wanted Mikaela to rest, but really, a time slot? He was going to have to book it to get over there, too, because she lived four blocks away, and he was giving his car the silent treatment.

Not that it was doing much good. When Sam looked out the kitchen window, Bumblebee was waiting for him in the driveway, revving his engine impatiently. A glance at the oven clock told Sam that Bee should have left forty minutes ago, but had spent that time lingering in the driveway instead, trying to call Sam's attention to himself. Sam hadn't planned on saying goodbye.

"Fine," he yelled at the window over the sink. It was closed; Bee could probably hear him though, and anyways, Sam lately had an impulse to shout at walls just out of frustration. "Just stop before you wake up my mom!"

Nearly twenty and still living at home wasn't something Sam loved, exactly, but in a month he'd in the Autobot Watch Lockdown Program – Ratchet called it Autobot Protection, or for short, "Having good sense, Sam," but Sam wasn't buying that, not for a minute – and until then, he just had to contend with the fact that his mom was cranky if she woke up before nine on a Sunday. She had a schedule to keep, she would come downstairs complaining, conveniently not mentioning that the schedule was to stay up late on Saturdays watching movies and drinking margaritas in whatever flavors she could convince his dad to try, and sleeping in on Sundays until it was time for her yoga-brunch-gossip trifecta morning to begin.

Sam grabbed his phone and ignored his car keys, headed outside. He paused when his phone rang, bringing it to his ear.

"Hi, Mrs. Banes," he said, listened for a moment, "yes, I'll be on time for the eight-forty-five. Of course." He reserved his sigh until after he'd hung up. Maybe he was already on some sort of lockdown, and just didn't' know it.

Bumblebee revved again to regain Sam's attention. "Okay, what. What is it?" The door swung open, stopping just short of hitting him. "No, I don't want a ride. I'm going to visit Mikaela, and I don't wanting you committing homicide because you just can't help yourself." Another rev, softer this time. He'd never known how many different sounds a car engine could make, how nuanced it could be. "You're already like, an hour late, anyways."

There was a static sound. "Miss you," Bee said. The low, broken-up voice came from somewhere in the hood, the sound like he was ripping apart cables to force the words out. Sam swung the door shut forcefully.

"You're not supposed to talk! Do you want Ratchet to rip out all the cables you have left in there?" Sam heaved a sign, gaze heavenward. The hard part was that it had still felt like Bumblebee, after the fact. Bumblebee could lose his temper in childish ways, cowed by the consequences he himself had brought about; this was still his Bee, acting in a way that, while more extreme than anything he'd done before, could be easily extrapolated from previous behavior. It was still Bee, though, and he was sorry.

"I'll miss you, Bee. You know I will."

Maybe Bee hadn't, though. Sam looked at him for a long moment, a jumbled mess of emotions roiling inside him; Sam felt a whole host of intense things, when Bee was around, feelings that lashed around like they were looking for an escape, and maybe it was just anger, but Sam didn't want to admit to harboring rage towards his best friend. He didn't know what it was, but it was born of confusion, of not knowing, and Sam had no words to express it.

The yellow Camaro sped out of sight over the hill, and Sam felt the rush of intensity fade away.

xxxxxxx

Half the reason the repairs to Bumblebee's voice mod were taking so long was because they'd lost their sense of dire necessity. Ratchet didn't seem to be in any big hurry, putting out bigger wildfires first and working his way back around to Bumblebee's quiet, contained burning. Wifi let Bumblebee speak directly to his companions, hardly felt the absence of an audible voice around them. It was Sam, who Bee desperately wanted to speak to. He spent more time with Sam than anyone else, and as Bee had once put it, as fun as charades was, there was a reason language had been created. The fact that many of the things he wanted to say to Sam, he didn't have words for, was irrelevant.

"I'll be able to do it later, once I'm all set up," Ratchet assured, after instructing Bee to sit and not move so the cables could be checked. The warehouse they were currently using as a makeshift home base wasn't equipped to be a medical center, as Ratchet often complained, and his complaints were justified. There was nowhere to keep all his tools except on the floor – he'd briefly tried shelves, but their small size made them more of a hindrance than anything else, and Ikea probably wondered why so many returned shelving units had been oddly bent, like a massive hand had tried to grab something and just bent everything around it instead – the ceiling was too low for anyone's comfort, and the furnishings were Spartan at best, with a cement block for an examination table and little else.

"The setup I'll have in the city will be much better," Ratchet was continuing. "The size, for starters-" Bee fidgeted, mentally rehearsing his question again. He was an open book, though, and Ratchet gave him a questioning look. "Oh, what is it?" he sighed.

[Do you really need me here a lot this month?] he finally projected up at Ratchet. Ratchet frowned.

"Where else are you planning on being?"

[Thought I'd go back and visit Sam, maybe.] Bee tried to shrug it off, but Ratchet was frowning at him more deeply.

"Is that such a good idea? Last I heard you were being – what was it? Oh, a dangerous nuisance." At the wince this elicited from Bee, Ratchet rolled his eyes, a human trait he'd apparently added to his inventory liberally. "So it is true. I thought she was exaggerating."

[Mikaela told you.] It wasn't a question. Bumblebee had known she would. The moment he'd done it – so stupid, it had been so stupid – he'd immediately felt the weight of everything that was about to come next, wanted to snatch the action back, snatch Mikaela back into the car and un-lose his patience.

"She was worried there was something wrong, but I assured her that no, nothing was physically wrong." Ratchet's implication was strong, and he stood still so he could stare Bumblebee down, unwavering.

[Nothing is wrong, not emotionally or otherwise.] Speaking in silence had a way of robbing Bumblebee of expression. He wanted to be growling, and all he had was hard silence.

Ratchet didn't dignify this with a response, turning to select a small laser he used for his diagnostic work from the row along the wall. Stored on the floor though they were, he was still impeccably organized. "Shall I warn Sam that the main danger to his girlfriend's life is returning to him?"

[Actually…] Bumblebee looked up to expose his throat in response to Ratchet's gesturing. [Don't. Tell him, I mean. Please.] This earned him a questioning look. Bumblebee gave an inward sigh, and reluctantly explained what he wanted to do.

When he'd finished, Ratchet was silent for a few moments. "Not a good idea," Ratchet shook his head. Bumblebee could only hope the disdain wouldn't cause a laser to slip and slice off anything important. "And when he finds out?"

"He won't!" Bumblebee managed to choke out, a struggle between the lasers Ratchet was using to repair the minute cables and the whine of metal grinding from his voice mod.

"I swear, Bumblebee, talk any more and I'll confiscate the remaining cables, understand?" Bee could only nod meekly. "Well, I'm not sure what you hope to gain from this."

[I just feel like – maybe if we could start over.]

"There is no such thing as a completely new start," Ratchet said, but his voice was far away, "wherever you go, Bee, there you are. You are the only thing you can never leave behind."

Couldn't he, though, Bee wondered, because sometimes he felt so unable to be himself that it was like he'd forgotten how.