Chapter Text
Bumblebee groaned, his optics starting back up as his audio receptors picked up the raging battle that was slowly dwindling to a stop. He blinked a couple of times, the world around him clearing. He was laying on the ground, rubble blown all around him. There was someone standing in front of him, someone who looked very familiar.
Megatron was standing with his back turned to Bumblebee, looking out over the horizon. The internal revving of his systems were quiet, almost too quiet to be normal.
That was when Bumblebee remembered.
Bumblebee and Cliffjumper were sent on a mission to distract the decepticons by the Well of Allsparks to aid the Wreckers and to allow Optimus Prime time to launch the Allspark off planet. Bumblebee realized that the mission must’ve been a success and that Optimus must’ve sent the Allspark off planet to some unknown galaxy, far away from their dying home. He was also quick to realize that he must’ve been injured during battle and that Megatron must’ve somehow missed the bright yellow autobot, most likely due to all the rubble around him.
That’s when Bumblebee started to giggle uncontrollably, holding his right hand over his mouth plate as laughter racked his body. His near-miniscule actions had completely ruined any and all of Megatron’s plans to control the Allspark, to control their species’ future. His mission in this battle seemed so miniscule to the point that Megatron overlooked it and now the unbeatable warlord would have to pay the price.
And Bumblebee found that fact to be absolutely hilarious.
He didn’t stop laughing, even as Megatron turned to look at him, a mix of dark emotion crossing over his face as he finally realized that simple fact. Bumblebee couldn’t stop laughing even as Megatron stalked over to him. He didn’t even stop laughing when the Decepticon leader picked his injured body up with one hand on his shoulder, his mouth drawn back into a sneer.
Bumblebee finally stopped, but his shit-eating grin was still plastered on his face as he looked down on the Decepticon leader. Both of them knew what Bumblebee had just done. Not only had he basically destroyed the Decepticon leader’s future plans, but he had the nerve to insult Megatron to his face .
And you cannot get away with that unscathed.
Megatron’s hand flew up to Bumblebee’s throat panel and ripped through the metal with unnerving ease. Bumblebee screamed (or, at the very least, he tried to), the unbearable pain making the world around him flash different colors. He could feel the energon build up in his throat as Megatron did unknown damage to it, pulling something out. But Bumblebee couldn’t see; he couldn’t feel anything other than excruciating pain as his systems shut down and he went offline.
Megatron dropped the yellow scrap, throwing his voice box far away. He started to walk away from the yellow body, rage still simmering through his systems.
However, before he got more than ten pedesteps away from the fallen pest, the Decepticon leader froze. He turned to look back at the yellow body of the Autobot scout, contemplating the idea that just worked its way into his processor.
It would be such a waste to leave Bumblebee here. To leave him for scrap or, worse, for the autobots to find him; Megatron knew that they had one of the best medics in the galaxy that might be able to save their ‘poor scout’. The Decepticon warlord was no fool. He was far too intimately aware of what this single scout was capable of when properly… motivated. If he could just motivate the scout, well…
Optimus wasn’t the only leader for a reason.
With the right words, the right actions, Megatron knew he could turn the Autobot leader’s tool against him. Megatron wasn’t weaksparked like his so-called brother- he knew when to use a situation to his advantage. The warlord was the best gladiator in Kaon for a reason and he knew how to make use of any resources he would happen upon.
And right in this moment, the perfect tool had fallen right into his lap without Megatron even trying. He could end this war and he would use Optimus's own precious scout to do it.
After all, the Autobots would never hurt their innocent scout, even if he had ‘changed’ to be a part of his faction. That’s one of the Autobots’ downfalls; they were too empathetic, too trusting, too attached. And he had been made aware that Optimus and the medic, Ratchet, had raised the scout since he was a tiny sparkling long ago, but never before had he received such a perfect opportunity to use that particular piece of information...
It would be the perfect revenge.
Megatron walked back to the yellow scout, picking up Bumblebee’s body with his right hand by his neck, claws digging into the energon dripping wound. His other hand went up to his comms unit and pushed it.
“Soundwave,” he said. “Bring the warship to my coordinates,” he watched distastefully as the energon wastefully dripped to the ruined ground, “Quickly.”
———
With the seemingly eternal war, Bumblebee had become used to the cold that would seep throughout his metallic body. The world beneath their pedes was dying, no one could deny this, as what little atmosphere existed in their world faded with the life force of their home. All of the warmth of the fading core dissipated with every nano-cycle, a ticking countdown to what they all continued to live in denial of.
Yet, Bumblebee remained still where he laid, sensory panels picking up no movement in the room around him.
That was what clued him into something being wrong long before he began to fidget, only for his limbs to run into restraints. Never had Bumblebee risen from recharge without another Cybertronian nearby, whether they were Decepticon or Autobot, not since his early days, when Bumblebee had been all he had. There was always some movement, some sound, whether it was chatter or gunfire, a world reduced to constant destruction.
Silence and chains were never a good sign.
Bumblebee hated silence. The scout did not want to test how long he could withstand this special kind of torture. He rifled throughout his emptied subspaces and turned his sensors to his armor’s seams, scanning for any of his tools hidden away. Most of them were gone and Bumblebee fought the urge to shudder at the thought of someone unknown searching him.
There .
The scout smirked behind his mask, wincing at the way his faceplates ached as his arm split apart to reveal an old compact blowtorch Ratchet had insisted he always keep on him since he was small. To an outside observer, the little device was simply a loose scrap of metal a small youngling stole from the surface of the wartorn planet, but Bumblebee had spent many vorns with Ratchet, learning how to conceal tools of all shapes and sizes on his own person.
He smirked as the blowtorch melted the wrist restraint apart and sat up, working on the other restraints. The melted metal dripped onto his arm guards, uncomfortably warm, stinging against the metal. Bumblebee ignored it, after all, he was no stranger to pain.
It took far too long of Bumblebee listening to his vents as he melted each restraint off, before the scout was free. He knew that any moment now someone could walk into this room and it would be over, yet, to his surprise, no one walked into the room. This wasn’t Bumblebee’s first capture- he could see the cameras blinking away, supposedly hidden in the corners of the room. He wasn’t one of the Autobots’ greatest scouts for no reason.
Bumblebee got to his pedes, rubbing at his neckplates, only causing more pain to spike through him. He winced and approached the sealed door that predictably didn’t open. No seams, no gaps, no wires on his side of the door. Of course nothing was that easy.
He looked to the right, seeing a computer nailed to the wall. Bumblebee walked over to it, carefully turning it on as his spark beat anxiously with the fear of being caught. It booted up (too slowly, if you asked the wary Bumblebee), different Decepticon logos being scattered across the screen like a TV with no DVD, with the ‘DVD’ signal bouncing around the screen playfully.
Once the computer had finally, finally booted up, his servos went to work. He was almost frantically searching for a way to open the door; a button, a command, anything! Primus, why won't anything appear-
Bumblebee skimmed through countless files, anything that could be of use stored away in his processor for later, whilst he continued to search for a potential door opening command. His optics landed on a file titled ‘Escape’. The Autobot blinked and smirked as he clicked the file.
Except the file didn’t unlock the door, but instead was about a dirt planet, ironically labeled as Earth by the Decepticons. Bumblebee, despite being fully aware of each tick that passed, had always been too curious for his own good and continued to read the file. There was a report filled out by some Decepticon with the designation Knockout (hooray- he sounded like a delight) that went into immense detail about how some mission to hide plentiful amounts of energons on the organic planet was a success. No Autobot had figured out that the Decepticons were hiding so much of the valuable, life sustaining substance on a planet that was so very primitive, but Bumblebee wasn’t surprised. The Autobots didn’t want to involve other sentient creatures in this endless war, but the Decepticons were more than happy to drag them into the fight.
This planet was in its earlier stages of life, so the indigenous life forms were of no concern to the Decepticon forces. However, despite their superior nature, they still hid in plain sight to avoid attracting attention. Robots in disguise, Bumblebee internally chuckled.
Bumblebee was so focused on this file about Earth, that was turning out to be juicier than anticipated, that he had almost completely forgotten about finding a button or some code to open the door that was the only thing he knew of currently blocking his way to freedom. Sure, he had no idea how many guards there were outside, but it wasn’t like he had any choice. There was only one road to freedom from this room.
The scout’s attention was finally recaptured by the sound of a door opening- the door.
Scrap .
“Scouts are always such resourceful little pests,” a far too familiar, gravelly voice hissed from behind the scout.
Bumblebee swung around, doorwings fluttering as he backed up against the computer behind him. The tactic to try and not have to look up at the towering Decepticon was proven pointless as he only managed a single pedestep back before hitting the computer. Bumblebee scowled at the other Cybertronian, reluctantly craning his head up to meet the overlord’s optics.
“Megatron,” Bumblebee hissed out or, at least, tried to. Nothing but static spluttered from his voicebox, leaving his audio receptors to reset, plunging the Autobot into a world of silence for a few blissful seconds where the pain was so overwhelming, his pain receptors refused to process the feeling.
Then, all at once, it hit the Cybertronian, the grating of messily welded gears grinding against each other as they tried to force immovable metal to give way. Servos scraped and clawed at neck plating, trying to dig into the empty void that somehow was the source of every hurt, every ache, every injury so make it stop please makeit stoppleasepleaseplease-
“Attempting to scream will do you no favors.”
Bumblebee rose his optics from the floor, glaring up at the Decepticon leader from his spot, kneeling at the metallic murderer’s pedes- when had that happened- feeling the floor vibrate as Megatron himself moved across the room, clearing the distance in only a few short steps. He didn’t say anything, just watching as the scout sat there, vents heaving and rattling away within his chassis, optics locked in an impromptu staring contest.
The scout looked away first, optics glancing at the shut door behind the Decepticon warlord.
Megatron stepped to his right, exposing the door to Bumblebee, a straight shot if he would just run- he was fast, one of the fastest Autobot Scouts- but the Autobot remained on the ground, glancing between the warlord and the door. The Decepticon leader tilted his helm and gestured from Bumblebee to the door with a servo, a seemingly open invitation to leave, nothing more than an offer that pretended to be a choice.
A choice he might not be offered again and took with no hesitation.
Bumblebee immediately heaved his aching body up and ran for the door, almost tripping over himself in his rush. However, before he was even a few pedesteps from the warlord, he was hit with an overwhelming amount of pain. He fell to the ground, body convulsing as he grabbed for the source of his pain.
This time, it wasn’t his abused neck plating. It was his seemingly mostly undamaged chassis.
The pain was like nothing he had ever experienced before; it was like the tingling you felt when your pede fell asleep, but dialed up to a thousand and one. Bumblebee forced his arm out, away from his curled up body, and reached for the door, his optics flickering on and off. The pain faded slowly, a residual numbness replacing it.
Bumblebee could hear Megatron walk over to tower over him and click his glossa. “Being electrocuted is excruciating,” he said, looking down at the yellow bot on the floor, a softness in his tone that Bumblebee wasn’t sure what to make of.
The scout blinked, realizing that Megatron did this- this- whatever this was. There was something in him, something in his chassis, so close to his spark- oh Primus was it attached to his spark? Surely not- Megatron was cruel but he wasn’t that ruthless, right?
But the truth was in the way his body wouldn’t move, no matter how much he willed it to get up and punch the presumably smug look off Megatron’s face, get this mind game over with. He was stuck, in an unforeseen situation with what was probably an unknown device somewhere in his chassis that Bumblebee had no control of.
As the Autobot’s optics flickered off, no longer registering the closed door in front of him, Bumblebee fought the urge to shudder at the silent threat that was being issued with those four words, his stuttering vent the only giveaway of his current internal distress.
Disobedience means pain.
Bumblebee was going to die here, wasn’t he? Alone and in pain, at the mercy of the Autobots’ greatest enemy.
How pathetic was that? He just had to talk his way into a painful prolonged death.
Or- well, he really couldn’t talk anymore, could he?
If the extreme pain that had been constantly flowing from his neck or caused by his failed attempt at speaking meant anything, something happened to his voice box; something that was making every movement send burning hot fire down his throat panels.
With every passing moment, he felt the pain infecting his body, flowing but never ceasing. Everything hurt and Bumblebee wanted nothing more than to go home, than to be safe within his family’s grasp, to be healed by Ratchet, to laugh with Cliffjumper, to just see Optimus, to just do anything with his family and escape this horrid place.
But he knew that wasn’t an option, it had never been. Not until he found a way out, a way to deal with whatever tricks Megatron had installed inside him (and that just made Bumblebee feel gross thinking about it) at least. However, the future didn’t look very bright for the young, brightly colored scout. He knew that with Megatron’s hand on the wheel he wouldn’t find that escape for a long, long time….
Bumblebee’s optics flickered back to life, the numbness that had spread throughout his body finally letting up. He could feel his back against the table again, his optics only able to see the dark ceiling above him. He couldn’t remember being moved from the floor back onto the Decepticons’ torture table, nothing coming to his processor as his body continued to slowly regain feeling.
“I sincerely hope that you had a good rest,” Megatron's form encroached on Bumblebee’s vision, though he was a bit blurry. Bumblebee could still see the everpresent sadistic grin on the warlord’s face and forced his body to remain completely still as the overlord’s sharp stare pierced into his spark. He wanted to back away from him, but he would not show any more unnecessary weakness. “You will definitely need it.”
As Megatron’s pedesteps drew farther and farther away, the door closing behind him, Bumblebee was once again subject to silence as he contemplated his situation. He was stuck alone in a sealed room with unknown injuries to his voice box that he did not want to test again and some sort of device inside his chassis that limited his already limited options.
He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t disobey Megatron again and he couldn’t escape.
What could the poor scout do?
There weren't many options available to him, but he could do what a scout did best, following orders, although Bumblebee preferred to think of Megatron’s so-called orders as impossible to turn down requests or advice. Rest seemed like a good thing right about now, especially since his pain receptors had decided to begin to boot up again, his metal plating beginning to ache all over again. He closed his optics, his internal systems finally taking a break as his other senses were forced to become one with silence that was already surrounding him, consuming him. The silenced scout was both comforted and terrified by the rare quiet, but it didn’t stop his body from slowly drifting into a nightmare-filled recharge.