Two
Hey, old friend,
What do you say, old friend?
Make it okay, old friend…
Stephen Sondheim 'Like It Was' (Merrily We Roll Along)
oOo
When Sam wakes up, it's normal. Blessedly, undeniably normal. He knows where he is-for the most part- and who he is. He's still in Bee, and since the seat is reclined farther down than normal cars seats can, they're somewhere far enough away that his pretense of driving wasn't needed.
"Bee?"
The radio clicks on softly as he stretches cramped muscles.
"See the pretty countryside…"
Sam lifts the seat back up looks out the window. The trees are varied hues of red, yellow and orange and for a second Sam thinks they're driving through fire- but no.
He shakes it off and refuses to let it back in his mind no matter how much it wants to. It's the New England countryside in the fall. Not a blazing tunnel of fire.
"Where, exactly, are we?" He has to clear his throat before the words come out, and he remembers one of the very few draw backs to a car that changes into a giant robot: A bottle of water kept anywhere has a fifty/fifty chance of surviving.
He left a Dr. Pepper on the seat last summer; when it's humid Bee still claims the seats are sticky.
"There's no Earthly way of knowing-"
Sam rolls his eyes, but hears his first genuine chuckles escape. It startles him. "You do to know where we are. You're like, the world's best GPS." He lets the sentence trail off as they pass a road sign proudly stating 'Best pies in all of Connecticut, next right.'
His stomach rumbles on cue and Sam remembers the aborted Denny's breakfast with Will was the last time he ate. He only managed a few bites of it before-
He caresses the steering wheel, pushes breakfast away and hopes the smile he's pulling looks and sounds as genuine as the chuckle. He's getting there. Really, he is. "Hey, Bumblebee?"
Bee's only answer is turning right at the break in the fire-trees, they're just trees-that heralds the English cottage-style diner.
Sam grits his teeth and closes his eyes. He likes pie.
He likes pie, has nothing against English cottages and it's trees, not fire and he's not having an episode here and now.
His mind doesn't listen to him anymore; free will is an illusion.
But Sam is nothing if not stubborn. He can smell the fresh baked goodness and he's not about to ruin what is a pleasant, nice outing with his best friend.
A white-trimmed cottage boasting the best pies, in the middle of the beauty of autumn isn't the place to bring death.
The glove box popping open snaps him out of it. He sees a collage of nature's colors as he turns to look next to him.
His wallet and cell sit inside and Sam wonders how long Bee planned to kidnap him. He's got one hand on the steering wheel and is leaning over to grab them when he stops seeing nature's pallet and instead sees gray and black destruction. He doesn't even have time between the two to feel anything about ruining the afternoon.
oOo
'A soldiers duty is to die for his belief, if die he must.'
Sam can't see where the voice is coming from. Usually he just knows. In the back of his mind, he knows what's happened to voices he shouldn't be able to hear, and Cybertronians he can't see.
He's connected to them, somehow.
'A soldiers duty is to die for his belief, if die he must.'
The building he's in is all sharp edges and rubble. There's no smoke, no cannon blasts, no fighting. Just scorch marks telling the tale of battle.
There's nothing to see, nothing to learn- if that's what this condition is for. He takes a step forward and feels the rubble shift under his feet, he knows it doesn't move. He looks down anyway.
There's a piece that doesn't belong by his right foot. Metal in rock.
'A soldiers duty is to die for his belief, if die he must.'
Sam hasn't tried talking since the first few times he went Wherever. It was useless. He can hear them, but they can't hear him. But then again, if it is history he's watching- and he thinks it is-then that makes the most sense of the entire thing.
He can't actually move anything either. The sensations are all there, but interacting is a one-way street and he's going the wrong way.
'A soldiers duty is to die for his belief, if die he must.'
That's whose voice it is, he knows then.
He can't help the being trapped, crushed, skewered and left for dead. He doesn't know if it's Autobot or Decepticon.
It doesn't matter.
Sam sits where he can, close to the finger- he thinks it's a finger; it looks like one of their fingers- and gazes around at the ruins in front of him.
Maybe it was a temple of some kind. He doesn't know what planet this is so it's anyone's guess to whether or not they had need of temples. Maybe it was a school.
Sam sits and tries to block out the silence, which is an odd turn. Usually it's too loud, too chaotic, to aromatic. He looks over at what he can just make out as the dying spark's glow through the cracks in the rubble.
'A soldiers duty is to die for his belief, if die he must.'
He thinks about turning around, toward where he feels a breeze that he shouldn't feel, and looking at the world. But he doesn't. He doesn't want to know what he'll see. It's relatively peaceful right now, the best-case-scenario the Wherever has to offer.
So he sits and waits for the being to die, because they don't have to die alone, even if they really are.
'A soldiers duty is to die for his belief, if die he must.'
oOo
It's the first time he's fast in coming back to himself since the first few trips and Sam thinks it'd be a good thing, if the circumstances were different.
If he weren't sitting in Bee, if he hadn't just watched a spark fade away in another casualty in an on-going civil war that could easily have been Bee or Ironhide or… any of his friends had things gone worse for them.
Now Sam knows all the universes are out to get him.
When it hits him where he is, he flings himself out of Bee and throws up the little water he has in his stomach.
He's still in the diner's parking lot, which means he wasn't gone long. Small favors.
Sam's learned to take them when he can.
When his stomach settles he sits on the gravely cement and stares at his car. His best friend.
His alien robot who's fighting a millennia old civil war, and for what? The AllSpark, the Matrix, the machine. They're gone.
Autobots and Decepticons: They'll keep fighting, because that's probably all they remember doing.
Like a species wide blood-feud without the blood.
Suddenly Sam wants normal. Three years ago normal. Not current normal.
Current normal isn't really normal at all. He's pretty sure his life stopped any real semblance of normal the day his old teacher decided Jesus would give him that last A he needed.
Sam used to say normal is overrated. Sam also used to be able to stay in his body and not take trips as a phantom through another race's history, so really, what's he know?
"I'm alright, Bee," he says, cause he knows Bee is worrying and probably a short minute from contacting Will or something. But it's lie. Another one. Lying doesn't mean as much to him anymore.
He steels himself and gets up, gets his wallet and phone.
"I need pie," he says by way of explanation. He knows it's not right of him to leave Bee like that, pretending he didn't just spend a few minutes in the Wherever.
He knows it. It almost hurts him. But he still walks into the diner.
oOo
He orders lemonade and a slice of coconut cream because the cherry looks like blood and he doesn't want to taint the all-American-apple with his psychosis.
That's all in his head. But then lately, what isn't?
The elderly waitress sets his pie down along with the lemonade and a smile.
Sam manages to give her a distracted type of smile in return as he thumbs through his contacts.
He hovers over Mikaela and wonders if Leo or Will called her already about all this.
He doesn't wonder long though and he doesn't want to talk to her either.
He'll think about why later. He scrolls down one more.
Miles.
His old best friend. Sam feels a guilty ball form in his stomach. He oldest friend, and up until a few years ago, his only friend.
And he left him behind faster than Bee could hit 90mph.
Miles is normalcy because of that. He doesn't know about the aliens, about Mission City.
He probably knows about Sam being wanted by the military and 'terrorists'. Unless he's living under a rock. But Sam has changed all his phone numbers since then, and so have his parents.
He didn't even think of giving anyone but Mikaela, Lennox and Leo the new one.
Some friend he is.
Sam feels oddly nervous as he hits the call button.
"Yo." Miles' voice adds something else to the guilt.
He chokes down some lemonade. "Miles. Hey."
"Who- Sam?"
His old friends' voice sounds equal parts relieved and pissed and all at once, Sam wants nothing more than to tell him everything. Explain things as best he can.
He doesn't of course, can't. He settles for telling what he can, omitting things instead of the reflex of lying. Avoiding what he'd have to lie about when omitting doesn't cut it.
Then he turns the tables and listens to Miles talk about his own life and sighs. Normal. Girl problems, school work, his dog and parents…
The coconut cream pie tastes like paradise and the ball of guilt unravels as he falls back into the steady, easy, conversation with his oldest friend.
Slowly, the dread of getting back into Bee fades, and when his battery is on it's last leg and Sam has to hang up, the trees outside don't look anything like fire.
oOo
"Tell me that you're all right. Yeah everything is alright," greets him when he gets back in Bee.
Sam takes a deep breath to be sure the phone call didn't just lull him into a false sense of sanity. It didn't.
"I'd be better if you hadn't used that song." He tries to joke. He's pretty sure he succeeds. The song keeps playing and Sam rolls his eyes. "Now you're just playing it to be annoying."
It's true, but the banter combined with the phone call has left Sam feeling better than he has in months. He puts Bee into gear, letting the Autobot know he wants to drive.
Bee lets him without comment, so Sam lets him have his Motion City Soundtrack. For a few hours Sam drives and finally, finally, has some peace in his head.
In hindsight, he supposes he really should have known better.
Since when is he allowed any peace?
Will be focusing on holiday stories for a bit now (I've been writing one for 2 years that hasn't seen the light of day yet) and the end of the semester finales.
Reviews are love and help me to know someone is actually reading this lol