And Eyes 6
Title: And Eyes That I Might See
Author: Dreaming of Everything, dreams_of_all
Series: Transformers (2007 movie)
Characters/Pairings: Amanda (OC) and Mikaela, Sam and Bumblebee, for this chapter.
Rating/Warnings: K+/PG to a low T/PG-13 for minor sexual references and the potential for mild language. Nothing more than that.
Summary: The Autobots get cornered in a canyon after a Decepticon attack, along with a handful of humans. Unfortunately, one of them happens to be blind... What's a girl to do?
Many thanks to my beta, mmouse15!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
At FFnet
“Sam! Sam!” Amanda heard someone yell excitedly.
“Mikaela!” Sam called out in return from in front of her. Thankfully, he’d bowed to Amanda’s (increasingly demanding) requests to pick her own way over the ground, even if it meant that they were moving somewhat glacially. There was enough of a trail now that she was doing pretty good when it came to heading in the right direction.
“Sam! Guess what? I got accepted! Great scholarship and everything! This is so cool!”
“Great! Oh, man-I can’t believe it! That’s so awesome! Did you tell your mom yet?”
“My mom? …No. She’s going to freak out, and I want to be there for her.”
“Really? I thought she wanted you to go to college…”
“Well, yeah, but we’d been talking about community college or even correspondence courses-because of my grades and stuff. But I guess my essay was really good, or something, or they’re looking for more ‘diversity.’ I don’t think she’s ready for me to go, though-I don’t think she thinks I’m ready.”
“That’s awesome, though! She’ll get over it, eventually. Your mom, I mean. I’ll miss you-”
There were the faint noises of a kiss. Right. Girlfriend, Amanda thought.
“Would someone explain what’s going on?” she called out, once she judged herself close enough to the two teens to be easily heard.
“Oh, okay. Amanda, this is Mikaela, my girlfriend-Mikaela, this is Amanda. She’s one of the ones who got brought in with us.” Sam was getting better at not twitching (verbally, at least) when he introduced her.
“You’re the blind one?” said Mikaela, being remarkably straightforward-it was kind of refreshing, she thought. In an I’m-tired-of-being-‘the blind one’ sort of way.
“I see someone’s been talking,” Amanda said by way of reply.
“It’d be easier to list who hasn’t,” said Mikaela dryly. “Sarah was talking about you-she likes your sense of humor-and I think most of the Autobots I’ve run into have had some sort of question relating to you and the fact that you can’t see.” Amanda sucked in her breath. That was… Pretty intimidating to hear, matter of fact. “I think it kind of bothers some of them, actually. And, uh, if Ratchet or Wheeljack try to convince you to go through with some idea of theirs, it might not be a good idea-”
“I’ve been warned but, more to the point, my sense of self-preservation doesn’t trust either of them,” said Amanda, shaking her hand in greeting. Mikaela had a nice grip: it gave off a distinct feeling of common-sense. Amanda could use a little of that, at the moment; it seemed like most of the world had decided to stop making any kind of sense at all.
“Good idea. Of course, I think the Autobots are also really unnerved by babies, so don’t take it too seriously.”
“…Babies?”
“Yeah. Apparently, they don’t really have a ‘childhood’ sort of stage (1) and instead they just come to life in what’s more or less the equivalent of the late teens for humans, or the early twenties-and then they age really slowly. But there’s no point where they’re totally helpless and dependant, or even when they can’t talk, so they just don’t know how to act. And then I think that they all think that humans are really fragile-”
“Which we kind of are, by their standards,” interjected Sam.
“-and babies even more so, which just makes them kind of skittish, too. Or that’s my theory, at least.”
“Huh. Weird… It makes a kind of sense, I suppose. Well, it makes as much sense as any of this has… Oh my God this is weird.”
“That gets better…” said Sam.
He wasn’t very convincing.
“Right, of course it does. Brrrr, it’s getting cold. Stupid mountains, not having indoor heating…”
“It was really cold last night,” said Mikaela.
“And there were raccoons everywhere,” said Sam, sounding highly aggrieved. “Wretched animals. God how I hate them.”
Mikaela giggled. “Well, I think they like you.”
“What?” said Mikaela.
“They were crawling on him.”
“They’re after me! They want to eat me, I swear!”
“Or they wanted to eat that granola bar you had in your pocket,” Mikaela said in response, but Amanda wasn’t listening. She’d thought she’d heard something-she shifted herself to one side to catch the noise, whatever it was-assuming that she’d really heard anything. She was kind of on-edge at the moment.
“What?” asked Sam, noticing her preoccupation.
“Nothing, I just thought I heard something… I guess it’s nothing. I’m a little twitchy right now…”
“No, you probably did,” said Sam after a minute. “I can see it-well, him, actually. It’s Bee-the one we hauled you out here to talk to in the first place, remember?”
“Riiight. Guess I wasn’t just imagining things…”
“You must have really good hearing,” commented Mikaela.
“Well, mostly I’m just better at paying attention,” said Amanda. “Humans are wired to have sight as their primary sense-which doesn’t work for me, obviously, so it’s kind of balanced out, because I put the emphasis on things like hearing and touch and taste and smell, instead of sight.”
“Huh. Interesting…”
The sound of an engine and tires on the rough terrain were loud and obvious, now. Amanda found herself tensing a little. From her (somewhat limited) experience, the Autobots were all kind of a little… Overwhelming. Just by virtue of being what they were, in several cases. Not so much when it came to some of them-Sideswipe, for example. Amanda didn’t want to meet him again, in particular, especially now that she had an idea of what they were and what was going on, and the shock and the disorientation of waking up in an unknown place had worn off. Knowing the full situation had made the situation both more and less frightening, simultaneously.
“Hey! Bee!” Mikaela yelled, loud enough to hurt Amanda’s ears a little. She got a brief sensation of wind as the car drove past her and pulled to a stop, and she couldn’t help herself-she flinched away a little, even knowing that there was no way that it-that he-was close enough to hit her. There were more of those strange shifting sounds, and then a response.
“Yeah?”
The words were clearly from the Autobot-Bee, or, no, Bumblebee, if Amanda was remembering the full name correctly, which she thought she was, even if it sounded hideously inappropriate for a 20-something-foot-tall (2) robot. There was that odd sort of mechanical almost-vibration to it, but it was thicker than it had been in the others, and there was a staticky quality. Other than that, the voice was a light tenor and sounded younger, closer to her age or maybe even the very late teens, instead of the more middle-aged voices of the others that she’d met. Of them, Wheeljack had probably sounded the youngest, but still older than her. Of course, it got harder to tell, with adult voices-up to about her age it was easier.
And they were giant alien robots. Who was to say that they followed the general rules she’d figured out for telling someone’s age by their speaking voice? Hell, she had no idea if they even aged at all.
“I got in!” Mikaela still sounded disbelieving and surprised and incredibly happy, all at once. Amanda could sympathize. She still remembered making it into colleges she’d thought she didn’t have a hope in hell of getting into. Of course, being blind had given her a distinct advantage… Colleges had been all about diversity, or at least the semblance of it.
“Great!” the Autobot replied, sounding genuinely happy. Amanda felt herself relaxing a little. So far, he was proving to be the least intimidating of the (heh) Cybertronians, despite-or maybe because of-the fact that he had yet to direct his attention onto her. Although, to be fair, Optimus Prime hadn’t really been that bad-it had just been luck, bad luck, that he’d happened to show up while Amanda was in the middle of a minor freak-out. Or a major one. Well, minor according to the circumstances. And Wheeljack had been trying-he’d just been kind of unnerving anyways, at least in part because she’d been inside him. And also because he wasn’t a neurologist or an optician, but seemed to be ready to dabble in it anyways.
Ratchet had been too intense for comfort, along with the same problems that Wheeljack had had. He’d also been kind of scary when he was threatening the other one, Ironhide, who had just kind of ignored her, except to laugh every so often. Amanda could deal with that. He actually reminded her of an uncle she rarely saw…
And the less said about Sideswipe the better.
Amanda snapped back to reality (well, reality as it currently was. That is, reality minus a considerable portion of normalcy and believability over bad science-fiction) as she caught her name. Sam was speaking.
“-this is Amanda. Amanda, Bumblebee-he’s my best friend.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Amanda automatically, feeling unprepared and stunned. For once-and she almost never did-she wished she could see; she felt remarkably naked, exposed, like this, with everyone (presumably) looking at her, and with no way to look back, except for picking up on things like the less-subtle movements and vocal clues and tones.
Thank God for manners and rote phrases to fall back on, and thank her parents for an upbringing that had made them automatic.
And at least she’d been right about the name. Even if it still seemed hideously inappropriate. (Because nothing said ‘transforming alien car’ quite like being named after a large, awkwardly flying and fuzzy hive insect that collected nectar and pollen to produce a sweet, sticky liquid collected by humans in turn for time out of mind. Also with interesting wiggling social dances-no, wait, that was honey bees.)
Maybe he was yellow and black, or something. Or fuzzy. Or he buzzed…? She bit back frantic giggles.
“Nice to meet you, too,” said that strange voice.
Amanda was struck by a sudden thought, and manners went out the window in face of still-present shock and something to say that wasn’t ‘Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?’
“-How on earth do you all speak English?” she blurted, and felt her face heat, which only made her embarrassment worse. She wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that she didn’t know what she looked like when she was flushed; the reality could be either better or worse than what she imagined it was.
“Internet,” said Bumblebee cheerfully.
“Jesus Christ, and you can still speak like a normal human being?” blurted Amanda. Sam, Mikaela and the mech all burst out laughing.
“More or less,” he responded. “Now, at least.”
Sam got over his laughter long enough to finish the story, but not quickly enough that Amanda didn’t have a distinct impression of Autobots saying something to the effect of ‘lol, i a robot!one!’
“Before he came to earth, his voice box-well, not really a voice box-was damaged really badly by Megatron-” again, Amanda bit back a truly inappropriate giggle “-and it took a long time for him to recover. It might have been the Allspark that did it, in the end, nobody’s really sure. But it was kind of awkward at first, because he couldn’t really explain anything except in radio clips and things like that, until the rest of the Autobots arrived and things could be straightened out. Kinda.”
“Yeah, I think I remember you telling me something like that,” said Amanda faintly. “Along with Phenomena.” It really was a pity that there weren’t any easy nicknames you could get out of the name ‘Phenomena,’ some part of Amanda thought.
There was a slightly awkward pause.
“It must have been hard, not being able to speak,” said Amanda at last.
“Yeah,” said Bumblebee. “It was. It was frustrating-Sam was right there, but I couldn’t really say anything.”
“You did a pretty good job getting through to me anyways,” Sam protested gently.
“It would have been easier.”
“Well, yeah, but from my point of view, it was going to be pretty crazy no matter how it went-you’re kind of a shock to get to know.”
“Yes,” said Amanda fervently.
“Still, I prefer being able to talk.”
“Even though it means that Ratchet’s always after to you to get you to stop?” asked Sam, a hint of wicked humor in his voice.
“Ratchet can’t follow me everywhere,” said Bee, voice equally sharp and amused.
“I think you’re underestimating him,” cut in Mikaela.
“Probably,” agreed Bumblebee easily. “Listen, though, I have to go take another shift on patrol duty.”
“What, again?” asked Sam, sounding dismayed. “But you just came back from one-”
“Optimus wanted the new guy for something else,” he said. “And I was free. It’s not a real problem-I was just hoping to get some time to spend with you two. And you, too, Amanda, although you were more of a surprise. See you later?”
“Okay,” said Sam. “Bye!” He was echoed by Mikaela and, belatedly, Amanda.
“New guy?” asked Amanda, turning to look in Sam and Mikaela’s direction as the sound of Autobot footsteps faded off into the distance.
“He arrived a day or two ago,” explained Mikaela.
“Bluestreak,” added Sam. “I haven’t even really got a chance to see him, yet-he showed up, then there was the battle, and he’s been gone since then, doing things. Coincidence.”
“Ah,” said Amanda. “Hey, um, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, because you’ve been wonderful, Sam, and you, Mikaela, but I’m a little overwhelmed. Do you think I could have some time alone…?”
“Sure,” said Sam immediately. “Uh, I can send someone to pick you up in an hour or so…”
“I understand,” Mikaela added.
“Thank you, so much.”
oOo
They left, the sound of their footsteps fading away into the distance, some of Amanda’s stress fading with it. She forced tense muscles to relax with a sigh.
A sudden thought filled her with warmth. Throughout that whole conversation with Bumblebee, the fact that she was blind hadn’t featured once. Maybe miracles did happen, some part of her mind muttered sarcastically.
Amanda gave herself in to numbness and relaxed, ignoring the slight chill of the rock she was lying on. The sun was still shining, the warmth soaking into her, and the air still smelled fresh and clean, full of promise despite the circumstances. The wind whispered through some near-by fir trees, rustling through their needles, and somewhere far off a bird trilled.
The world was still beautiful, despite how her perception of it had been completely shattered. That was somehow comforting.
oOo
(1) Yeah, I know. However, this fic is movieverse and this is what makes sense to me, so I can use it, because the movie never really addressed the matter. Therefore, it’s what we’re going with in terms of Autobot not-birth, for the sake of this story, at least.
(2) Bumblebee’s official height is actually somewhere in the middle to upper teens, but Amanda’s in no position to know this.
Author: Dreaming of Everything, dreams_of_all
Series: Transformers (2007 movie)
Characters/Pairings: Amanda (OC) and Mikaela, Sam and Bumblebee, for this chapter.
Rating/Warnings: K+/PG to a low T/PG-13 for minor sexual references and the potential for mild language. Nothing more than that.
Summary: The Autobots get cornered in a canyon after a Decepticon attack, along with a handful of humans. Unfortunately, one of them happens to be blind... What's a girl to do?
Many thanks to my beta, mmouse15!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
At FFnet
“Sam! Sam!” Amanda heard someone yell excitedly.
“Mikaela!” Sam called out in return from in front of her. Thankfully, he’d bowed to Amanda’s (increasingly demanding) requests to pick her own way over the ground, even if it meant that they were moving somewhat glacially. There was enough of a trail now that she was doing pretty good when it came to heading in the right direction.
“Sam! Guess what? I got accepted! Great scholarship and everything! This is so cool!”
“Great! Oh, man-I can’t believe it! That’s so awesome! Did you tell your mom yet?”
“My mom? …No. She’s going to freak out, and I want to be there for her.”
“Really? I thought she wanted you to go to college…”
“Well, yeah, but we’d been talking about community college or even correspondence courses-because of my grades and stuff. But I guess my essay was really good, or something, or they’re looking for more ‘diversity.’ I don’t think she’s ready for me to go, though-I don’t think she thinks I’m ready.”
“That’s awesome, though! She’ll get over it, eventually. Your mom, I mean. I’ll miss you-”
There were the faint noises of a kiss. Right. Girlfriend, Amanda thought.
“Would someone explain what’s going on?” she called out, once she judged herself close enough to the two teens to be easily heard.
“Oh, okay. Amanda, this is Mikaela, my girlfriend-Mikaela, this is Amanda. She’s one of the ones who got brought in with us.” Sam was getting better at not twitching (verbally, at least) when he introduced her.
“You’re the blind one?” said Mikaela, being remarkably straightforward-it was kind of refreshing, she thought. In an I’m-tired-of-being-‘the blind one’ sort of way.
“I see someone’s been talking,” Amanda said by way of reply.
“It’d be easier to list who hasn’t,” said Mikaela dryly. “Sarah was talking about you-she likes your sense of humor-and I think most of the Autobots I’ve run into have had some sort of question relating to you and the fact that you can’t see.” Amanda sucked in her breath. That was… Pretty intimidating to hear, matter of fact. “I think it kind of bothers some of them, actually. And, uh, if Ratchet or Wheeljack try to convince you to go through with some idea of theirs, it might not be a good idea-”
“I’ve been warned but, more to the point, my sense of self-preservation doesn’t trust either of them,” said Amanda, shaking her hand in greeting. Mikaela had a nice grip: it gave off a distinct feeling of common-sense. Amanda could use a little of that, at the moment; it seemed like most of the world had decided to stop making any kind of sense at all.
“Good idea. Of course, I think the Autobots are also really unnerved by babies, so don’t take it too seriously.”
“…Babies?”
“Yeah. Apparently, they don’t really have a ‘childhood’ sort of stage (1) and instead they just come to life in what’s more or less the equivalent of the late teens for humans, or the early twenties-and then they age really slowly. But there’s no point where they’re totally helpless and dependant, or even when they can’t talk, so they just don’t know how to act. And then I think that they all think that humans are really fragile-”
“Which we kind of are, by their standards,” interjected Sam.
“-and babies even more so, which just makes them kind of skittish, too. Or that’s my theory, at least.”
“Huh. Weird… It makes a kind of sense, I suppose. Well, it makes as much sense as any of this has… Oh my God this is weird.”
“That gets better…” said Sam.
He wasn’t very convincing.
“Right, of course it does. Brrrr, it’s getting cold. Stupid mountains, not having indoor heating…”
“It was really cold last night,” said Mikaela.
“And there were raccoons everywhere,” said Sam, sounding highly aggrieved. “Wretched animals. God how I hate them.”
Mikaela giggled. “Well, I think they like you.”
“What?” said Mikaela.
“They were crawling on him.”
“They’re after me! They want to eat me, I swear!”
“Or they wanted to eat that granola bar you had in your pocket,” Mikaela said in response, but Amanda wasn’t listening. She’d thought she’d heard something-she shifted herself to one side to catch the noise, whatever it was-assuming that she’d really heard anything. She was kind of on-edge at the moment.
“What?” asked Sam, noticing her preoccupation.
“Nothing, I just thought I heard something… I guess it’s nothing. I’m a little twitchy right now…”
“No, you probably did,” said Sam after a minute. “I can see it-well, him, actually. It’s Bee-the one we hauled you out here to talk to in the first place, remember?”
“Riiight. Guess I wasn’t just imagining things…”
“You must have really good hearing,” commented Mikaela.
“Well, mostly I’m just better at paying attention,” said Amanda. “Humans are wired to have sight as their primary sense-which doesn’t work for me, obviously, so it’s kind of balanced out, because I put the emphasis on things like hearing and touch and taste and smell, instead of sight.”
“Huh. Interesting…”
The sound of an engine and tires on the rough terrain were loud and obvious, now. Amanda found herself tensing a little. From her (somewhat limited) experience, the Autobots were all kind of a little… Overwhelming. Just by virtue of being what they were, in several cases. Not so much when it came to some of them-Sideswipe, for example. Amanda didn’t want to meet him again, in particular, especially now that she had an idea of what they were and what was going on, and the shock and the disorientation of waking up in an unknown place had worn off. Knowing the full situation had made the situation both more and less frightening, simultaneously.
“Hey! Bee!” Mikaela yelled, loud enough to hurt Amanda’s ears a little. She got a brief sensation of wind as the car drove past her and pulled to a stop, and she couldn’t help herself-she flinched away a little, even knowing that there was no way that it-that he-was close enough to hit her. There were more of those strange shifting sounds, and then a response.
“Yeah?”
The words were clearly from the Autobot-Bee, or, no, Bumblebee, if Amanda was remembering the full name correctly, which she thought she was, even if it sounded hideously inappropriate for a 20-something-foot-tall (2) robot. There was that odd sort of mechanical almost-vibration to it, but it was thicker than it had been in the others, and there was a staticky quality. Other than that, the voice was a light tenor and sounded younger, closer to her age or maybe even the very late teens, instead of the more middle-aged voices of the others that she’d met. Of them, Wheeljack had probably sounded the youngest, but still older than her. Of course, it got harder to tell, with adult voices-up to about her age it was easier.
And they were giant alien robots. Who was to say that they followed the general rules she’d figured out for telling someone’s age by their speaking voice? Hell, she had no idea if they even aged at all.
“I got in!” Mikaela still sounded disbelieving and surprised and incredibly happy, all at once. Amanda could sympathize. She still remembered making it into colleges she’d thought she didn’t have a hope in hell of getting into. Of course, being blind had given her a distinct advantage… Colleges had been all about diversity, or at least the semblance of it.
“Great!” the Autobot replied, sounding genuinely happy. Amanda felt herself relaxing a little. So far, he was proving to be the least intimidating of the (heh) Cybertronians, despite-or maybe because of-the fact that he had yet to direct his attention onto her. Although, to be fair, Optimus Prime hadn’t really been that bad-it had just been luck, bad luck, that he’d happened to show up while Amanda was in the middle of a minor freak-out. Or a major one. Well, minor according to the circumstances. And Wheeljack had been trying-he’d just been kind of unnerving anyways, at least in part because she’d been inside him. And also because he wasn’t a neurologist or an optician, but seemed to be ready to dabble in it anyways.
Ratchet had been too intense for comfort, along with the same problems that Wheeljack had had. He’d also been kind of scary when he was threatening the other one, Ironhide, who had just kind of ignored her, except to laugh every so often. Amanda could deal with that. He actually reminded her of an uncle she rarely saw…
And the less said about Sideswipe the better.
Amanda snapped back to reality (well, reality as it currently was. That is, reality minus a considerable portion of normalcy and believability over bad science-fiction) as she caught her name. Sam was speaking.
“-this is Amanda. Amanda, Bumblebee-he’s my best friend.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Amanda automatically, feeling unprepared and stunned. For once-and she almost never did-she wished she could see; she felt remarkably naked, exposed, like this, with everyone (presumably) looking at her, and with no way to look back, except for picking up on things like the less-subtle movements and vocal clues and tones.
Thank God for manners and rote phrases to fall back on, and thank her parents for an upbringing that had made them automatic.
And at least she’d been right about the name. Even if it still seemed hideously inappropriate. (Because nothing said ‘transforming alien car’ quite like being named after a large, awkwardly flying and fuzzy hive insect that collected nectar and pollen to produce a sweet, sticky liquid collected by humans in turn for time out of mind. Also with interesting wiggling social dances-no, wait, that was honey bees.)
Maybe he was yellow and black, or something. Or fuzzy. Or he buzzed…? She bit back frantic giggles.
“Nice to meet you, too,” said that strange voice.
Amanda was struck by a sudden thought, and manners went out the window in face of still-present shock and something to say that wasn’t ‘Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?’
“-How on earth do you all speak English?” she blurted, and felt her face heat, which only made her embarrassment worse. She wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that she didn’t know what she looked like when she was flushed; the reality could be either better or worse than what she imagined it was.
“Internet,” said Bumblebee cheerfully.
“Jesus Christ, and you can still speak like a normal human being?” blurted Amanda. Sam, Mikaela and the mech all burst out laughing.
“More or less,” he responded. “Now, at least.”
Sam got over his laughter long enough to finish the story, but not quickly enough that Amanda didn’t have a distinct impression of Autobots saying something to the effect of ‘lol, i a robot!one!’
“Before he came to earth, his voice box-well, not really a voice box-was damaged really badly by Megatron-” again, Amanda bit back a truly inappropriate giggle “-and it took a long time for him to recover. It might have been the Allspark that did it, in the end, nobody’s really sure. But it was kind of awkward at first, because he couldn’t really explain anything except in radio clips and things like that, until the rest of the Autobots arrived and things could be straightened out. Kinda.”
“Yeah, I think I remember you telling me something like that,” said Amanda faintly. “Along with Phenomena.” It really was a pity that there weren’t any easy nicknames you could get out of the name ‘Phenomena,’ some part of Amanda thought.
There was a slightly awkward pause.
“It must have been hard, not being able to speak,” said Amanda at last.
“Yeah,” said Bumblebee. “It was. It was frustrating-Sam was right there, but I couldn’t really say anything.”
“You did a pretty good job getting through to me anyways,” Sam protested gently.
“It would have been easier.”
“Well, yeah, but from my point of view, it was going to be pretty crazy no matter how it went-you’re kind of a shock to get to know.”
“Yes,” said Amanda fervently.
“Still, I prefer being able to talk.”
“Even though it means that Ratchet’s always after to you to get you to stop?” asked Sam, a hint of wicked humor in his voice.
“Ratchet can’t follow me everywhere,” said Bee, voice equally sharp and amused.
“I think you’re underestimating him,” cut in Mikaela.
“Probably,” agreed Bumblebee easily. “Listen, though, I have to go take another shift on patrol duty.”
“What, again?” asked Sam, sounding dismayed. “But you just came back from one-”
“Optimus wanted the new guy for something else,” he said. “And I was free. It’s not a real problem-I was just hoping to get some time to spend with you two. And you, too, Amanda, although you were more of a surprise. See you later?”
“Okay,” said Sam. “Bye!” He was echoed by Mikaela and, belatedly, Amanda.
“New guy?” asked Amanda, turning to look in Sam and Mikaela’s direction as the sound of Autobot footsteps faded off into the distance.
“He arrived a day or two ago,” explained Mikaela.
“Bluestreak,” added Sam. “I haven’t even really got a chance to see him, yet-he showed up, then there was the battle, and he’s been gone since then, doing things. Coincidence.”
“Ah,” said Amanda. “Hey, um, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, because you’ve been wonderful, Sam, and you, Mikaela, but I’m a little overwhelmed. Do you think I could have some time alone…?”
“Sure,” said Sam immediately. “Uh, I can send someone to pick you up in an hour or so…”
“I understand,” Mikaela added.
“Thank you, so much.”
oOo
They left, the sound of their footsteps fading away into the distance, some of Amanda’s stress fading with it. She forced tense muscles to relax with a sigh.
A sudden thought filled her with warmth. Throughout that whole conversation with Bumblebee, the fact that she was blind hadn’t featured once. Maybe miracles did happen, some part of her mind muttered sarcastically.
Amanda gave herself in to numbness and relaxed, ignoring the slight chill of the rock she was lying on. The sun was still shining, the warmth soaking into her, and the air still smelled fresh and clean, full of promise despite the circumstances. The wind whispered through some near-by fir trees, rustling through their needles, and somewhere far off a bird trilled.
The world was still beautiful, despite how her perception of it had been completely shattered. That was somehow comforting.
oOo
(1) Yeah, I know. However, this fic is movieverse and this is what makes sense to me, so I can use it, because the movie never really addressed the matter. Therefore, it’s what we’re going with in terms of Autobot not-birth, for the sake of this story, at least.
(2) Bumblebee’s official height is actually somewhere in the middle to upper teens, but Amanda’s in no position to know this.