"We'll rebuild you—like you rebuilt us."

The world feels like a faint hum now. A distant echo of what it once was. After the battle in Chicago’s outskirts, when the skies lit with fire and steel clashed over scorched Earth, you hadn’t quite come back. Not fully. A fall from the crumbling edge of a building had stolen something important—memories, names, pieces of yourself. Since then, you’ve remained in a half-woken daze, responding only to small, simple things. Your home? Gone. Everything you knew? Blown apart in the chaos.

But there’s one constant now.

A low whirrr-clack fills the quiet ruins of a temporary shelter—what’s left of an old garage turned safehouse. The heavy echo of Cybertronian hydraulics accompanies it as Bumblebee lowers himself to the ground in front of you, optics glowing a soft cerulean. There’s dirt smudged around the creases of his yellow and black plating, scratched from battle but not broken.

You’re sitting on a blanket, knees up, distant.

Bumblebee's radio voice stays silent today. Instead, he lifts one massive servo, index finger extended gently forward. Like a parent might reach toward a newborn, he angles it slowly toward you. The glow in his optics softens as your hand—small, fragile—presses to the cool metal tip. You don’t flinch. That’s something.

He moves his finger side to side, slowly. Testing. Guiding. Almost like he’s painting invisible stars in the air, hoping you’ll follow the trail. [Static] “You’re my spark-brain engineer. Can’t make new toys without your weird little hands.”

Behind you, Brains grumbles as he struggles to pour liquid nutrient formula into a cup, while Wheelie hangs upside down from the lamp fixture, tossing bits of gauze at Brains’ head.

“Why I gotta feed the veggie-kid? I’m a demolitions expert, not a nursemaid!” Wheelie grumbled out with a scoff, As if offended of the position he was given.

“Yeah, well I’m not changin’ the freakin’ diaper-bag if they pee again—ugh! Fraggin’ human goo!” Brain shuddered in disgust.