TransformersFanatic

What they had to say, it didn’t matter. Fell on deaf ears as she rode home. 

But today—today. Today something has drawn her back. Called through the water to the dreams that plagued her, a siren at sea in a storm of nightmares. Fear controls her on this ledge. Grief reminds her that her Dad won’t be there cheering when she reaches the bottom. 

And yet—Charlie jumps. 

It comes back to her in free fall, the diver she once was, posture honed—even out of practice, where air meets water she once again thrives. The ocean embraces her plunge, and suddenly blue is all around her, blue and—

She floats, suspended in the syrup of saltwater, staring with a mix of confusion and wonderment at a yellow metal cylinder, far larger and heavier than anything she could haul up to the surface. 

And inside, visible through a thick layer of what looks like glass—

She has to stop herself from gasping. Inside, unmoving, slumbers a humanoid shape, giant and metal, far more advanced looking than anything she’s seen from human technology. Almost out of this world. 

Charlie does not know what compels her to place a hand to the glass, reaching out towards this being, or what compelled her to return to this cliff, but when the pod hisses into activation, lights flickering on, and a pair of robot’s eyes open, wide and blue, it’s as if it’s meant to be. 

They climb up onto the shore and Charlie introduces herself. This Bee is less scared and more curious and excited if anything to meet her. 

Charlie ends up taking him in and naming him after learning about his amnesia. Which at first poses a challenge because where does one hide a robot? They find out then that he can transform into a car—and though Charlie thinks it would be sick to ride around in his super sci-fi altmode, it doesn’t seem like good camouflage. They find out Bee can scan Earth’s vehicles. He gets a random one from the road but he later finds one he likes in Hank’s scrapyard. 

With no decepticons on their trail yet, the pair end up being able to spend years together (with Memo barging in at some point and suddenly being in on the secret). Charlie helps fix him up, with Bee a little injured from the stasis pod crashing into Earth like that, and doing him more harm than good with its faulty systems. They have a scare when Bee runs low on energon—without knowing what it is—but do find some on Earth thanks to the in-built scanners he doesn’t know he has. Eventually they end up travelling, looking for signs of others like Bee, any sign of where he came from. But they never find anything there, nothing more than rumour, old, old tales documented from the Wild West that could never be proven as more than campfire talk. 

(Well. Nothing that wants to be found, anyway. Always ten steps behind, Cheetor watches, waits.)

Though they do find love. 

Though strange, though unconventional, though Charlie has no idea how to go about explaining this to her mother who won’t stop badgering her about her love life, Charlie wouldn’t have them any other way. 

Charlie ends up opening a garage. Time passes. People start asking her what her skincare routine is, even though it’s mostly motor oil from working in a garage and accidentally smearing it there. Maybe genetics are good to her.

Her and Bee are out for a drive (in his camero alt mode he’s had for a while by now) in the canyons when Windblade locates them (a giant floating hologram that may or may not make Charlie jump out of her skin at first). And isn’t this amazing!!! After all these years, finally, some answers from someone who seemingly knows Bee (Charlie’s a little confused how she knows Bee’s nickname. But it turns out it’s a nickname for B-127. Apparently he’d never chosen a name for himself. Not until Charlie).

Windblade is a little confused why Bee wants to bring Charlie along, but she can see they are attached. So. She allows it. They try and get Bee’s memories back, and Charlie is disappointed she cannot enter. Even more so when she realises he can speak in there. 

Things carry out similarly, just with Charlie added into the mix. She’s happy Bee is gaining his memories again (which he recounts to her between times when Windblade leaves them alone on the ship), but after learning about how long lived his species are and how close he and Windblade are, she has to wonder how much his time with her really means. If he’ll still want her when he realises what he’s missing, especially after wondering if he and Windblade were a thing upon hearing how they met (they were not).

But his actions are quick to assure her he’s still very smitten with her. Charlie feels bad about doubting this and letting jealousy and doubt worry her for a while like that. She gets on pretty well with Windblade following after. 

And then they find the arc, fight on Earth for years (maybe we see characters like Raf and Sari and Spike), get Bee’s voice back (he says Charlie’s name so many times, absolutely delighted he can say it), and then comes the time they have to leave for Cybertron. 

Charlie has to make a choice. Bee says he’d return, and she knows he’ll try and keep that promise, but he could be gone for eons without meaning to, out in deep space, trying to find peace on a planet that has known centuries of war. And maybe she can live that long—one look at her face shows that time is certainly on her side, and now she realises there’s only one culprit for that, unintentional as it was. But to be parted from him this long? Does she stay or go? 

She wants to go, Bee wants her to go, but ultimately they both know that Cybertron is no place for her. Everything she needs for survival—nutrients, fresh, breathable air—it’s all here. On Earth. 

When he bids her goodbye on the Golden Gate Bridge, they both have to hope it’s not forever. 

Though Bee’s voicebox was repaired years ago thanks to Rachet, he speaks to her mostly through song. Maybe it’s the nostalgia, maybe it’s that goodbye is so difficult to say. 

They watch the sunset. It’s her last. 

Some may wonder whose bright yellow car that is at Charlie’s funeral. And who left its radio on to play a non-stop loop of Smiths songs. 

♫⋆｡♪ ₊To die by your side

Is such a heavenly way to die 𝄞𝄢♪

But Otis knows. So does Kris. They talk for a while when the crowd disperses.  

Though Bee was stationed with a team on Earth after the end of the war, he eventually decides to return to Cybertron, offering Strongarm his position there if she chooses to stay. He loves Earth, a second home, but Charlie had made it so. Everything that had made Earth so wonderful, its music, its television, its life, everything, it just makes him ache. 

Many, many untold vorns later, he crosses paths with a medbot by the name of C-989. Her voice makes his spark freeze. 

Surely not—

He shakes the line of code off. Or tries to, because he keeps re-processing the interaction. 

Meanwhile C-989 swears Bumblebee is familiar to her somehow, despite this being their first interaction. She hopes to see him again. 

She gets teased by some bot she knows over her liking him and wanting to conjunx.

Another goes “Oh? I would forget about it if I were you. Mech’s too hung up on his dead one. That’s what happens when you get entangled with a fleshie.”

Over time, especially around Bee, C-989 starts to get flashes she can’t quite explain. Memory files? But they’re not hers. And yet, they’re not not hers. They feel nostalgic somehow, though she can’t explain.

And yet. Somehow she finds herself using terminology she doesn’t understand. What’s a heart? Shouldn’t she have said cross her spark? 

C-989 misses things she can’t name. Feelings she can’t explain. Tastes that energon—though with delicious flavourings—cannot replicate. 

One day Bee tells her about the origin of his name. Who gave to him. Charlie.

She repeats it out loud. Then over again in her processor. It just sounds. Right. 

And it’s like things fall into place.

She spends a moment wondering how he would take it if she asked to take the designation. But then the memories start to filter in, cohesive, her attachment with them. 

She manages to finish off one of Bee’s stories for him. He stares at her in wonder.

“…Charlie?” he asks, tentative, unsure.

“Yes Bee,” she says, vocoder chocked up on so many emotions. “It’s me, I’m back.”

“You’re really… But how?”