this doesn't exist, you fool!
Sam came home that night looking unhealthily wan and haunted. Well -- more than usual. Judy wasn't blind, she had noticed just how jump he'd become and the hollow haunted look in his eyes. He looked healthy, as long as she didn't look at his eyes -- tanned. He spent a lot of time outside. He'd even begun to eat healthily, drinking plenty of water, even gotten muscle definition!
Okay, so she had been worried he'd been taking something like steroids. After all, his temper had become disturbingly short. But no, the government swore, he'd just been through a battle. No, that nice young captain had said, everyone who had been there in Mission City had changed, and they hadn't been directly targeted by the extraterrestrials like Sam, either.
Her Sam. Aliens.
Then he'd come home that night after that prolonged absence, pale as death under his tan and showing dark circles around his eyes and eyes glassy-blank. Then he said, "so, um, turns out ancient alien artifacts aren't as harmless as we thought. I'm sorta ... um. Well, I'm gonna have more in common with Bee than just Mission City and being friends with Mikaela."
Oh, she hadn't understood at first. She and Ron had to ask for clarification (she wished they hadn't).
"I'm --" a restless shift of his eyes, a listless gesture, "Um ... well, I'm going to be one. I mean, turn into one of -- them. The Autobots. Like Bumblebee. I'm -- er, part metal already. We didn't know."
Then she'd opened her mouth and for the first time practiced the same foot-in-mouth disease she thought was cute but unfortunate in her boys. Then she had swore up and down that she knew people in Sector Seven who'd be able to help him. Then --
She didn't know what that little prick Reggie had done to her baby, but she was going to murder him the next time she saw him. She knew Reggie was going to be put in charge of S7, just like his daddy, and she wanted out before that happened. Ron was just a little extra incentive, that was all. Whatever Reggie had done to her baby, the moment she said she worked for S7 at one time, Sam had just gone so quiet.
His eyes hadn't been glassy or distance to hollow or haunted, then. To see that sort of disbelief and ... and horror and helpless hatred in the eyes of her own son --!
It had been sort of like staring into the pits of hell, if she was the poetic type. Either way, it had cut her to the quick, and while Ron was losing it as well because she never told him, Sam disappeared.
Sam disappeared, and she regretted ever hinting that the aliens didn't have a soul, because when that sweet girl, Mikaela, looked at her with miserable red puffy eyes and a tear stained face stretched all out of place with such hurt, and said, "Sam's dead," --
... the injured wail that emitted from the yellow Camaro cut straight through even her numb denial, tires squealing as it tore out of the driveway and fishtailed as it sped away. Then Mikaela had made her own agonized noise, so so similar and Judy had thoughtlessly wrapped her arms around her.
The world just didn't make sense, anymore.