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This morning was like any other at what Danny called "place of collection antique", in other words on junkyard.Forest that surrounded the junkyard buzzed with wild life. It was an aftermath of yesterday's evening downpour. Strong smell of fresh grass and leaves in the air.Also, surprisingly, there weren't problems with the team. Grimlock wasn't doing anything wrong with local animals, Strongarm has not fixate on anything new yet, Drift was just quietly meditating with Jetstorm and Slipstream and Sideswipe... he was just resting after his night patrol."Better Saturday morning couldn't be possible to imagine!"- thought Bee, while sitting on reclining garden chair, in his blue bathrobe, reading a newspaper in peace and drinking coffee.Bee noticed that Russell was staring at him surreptitiously from behind the metal junk. The boy looked like he suddenly was having an internal conflict, to approach him and talk. Be sighed loudly at this sight."Russell... you know that I can see you from there, right?" he turns his head towards him, placing his newspaper on the table.Russell didn't expect to be seen in his hiding spot, but how he finally found some courage, and went to him."Hey Bumblebee, sorry for that...! I didn't mean to make it so weird... and because Sideswipe isn't available now, neither Strongarm... nor anyone else, so I thought that talking to you would be alright. That is why..." the boy was looking at the ground and playing with his fingers, it felt so awkward to want to talk with Bee about this, after all, at this point he was like his second father.
"Why is that so?"
"I know, that as a cybetronians you make children in a different way than we do and that you have two fathers- Optimus and Ratich-"
"Ratchet"
" Yes, him..." Russell leaned against the wooden table, where Bee's coffee sat. The boy took several deep breaths before continuing again. "But did you have a mom Bee?"
"A mom? Why do you ask"- Be was quite surprised with this sudden question. He didn't even know what he should tell him, the closest thing he had to a mom was Ratchet.
"It's not big deal, I'm just having weird thoughts lately." He immediately turned his head away so he wouldn't have to look into Bee's eyes.
"You know..." Bumblebee paused for a moment to think carefully about what he's should say." Do you want to tell me about those thoughts? I promise I won't tell your dad, this talk will be our secret." he smiled at Russell and the boy quickly turned back to Bee.He instantly felt ashamed when he looked at Bee's face."Come here now." Bee pointed at his knee.
He sat on Bee's knee. It was a quite odd situation to him especially after he stopped getting close to him (at least for 5 meters), when he noticed that Bee smells like a den.
"Bee, do you know why I live on this musty dumb junkyard with only my dad, far away from my friends and any civilization?"
"Actually..." Bee scratched his head." I never thought about it. I thought it's quite a normal situation... but when you put it like that... sound weird.
"My mom left for a sake of a new job and... her new family in Demark. Leaving me and forcing me to move here when she wanted to start her new life all over again... She left my dad first and then me...! What have we done to make her choose her new life over us?! She doesn't even want to talk with me anymore! Do you know when was the last time we spoke? One week before your arrival on Earth! It was over a year ago...!" he fell silent for a moment and wiped his watery eyes with his sleeve." Why doesn't she love me anymore...?" He whispered.Bumblebee hugged Russell, fully understanding his feelings and fear. The boy was still for a moment, but gently returned Bee's hug after getting used to it.Bee ran out of ideas on what to tell him, he didn't even know what to think about it."It's... not that easy to say whether that she loves you or not..."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that when you are an adult sometimes you are make very stupid and horrible decisions, while thinking that is only way to make you happy again... and later, you pay for years caused by the consequences of your own actions. Trust me, I know a thing or two about it."
"But unlike her, you were really hurt and you changed, you are trying to make everything good once again! She just dropped everything and disappeared from my life in one day." Russell began to gesticulate." One day you just can't handle your own life and..." he stopped for a moment and thought about what he just said.
"Sounds pretty similar to me, huh?" he smiled softly at Russell, who, embarrassed, quickly shifted his gaze to something else.Bumblebee hugged Russell, fully understanding his feelings and fear. The boy was still for a moment, but gently returned Bee's hug after getting used to it.Bee ran out of ideas on what to tell him, he didn't even know what to think about it."It's... not that easy to say whether that she loves you or not..."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that when you are an adult sometimes you are make very stupid and horrible decisions, while thinking that is only way to make you happy again... and later, you pay for years caused by the consequences of your own actions. Trust me, I know a thing or two about it."
"But unlike her, you were really hurt and you changed, you are trying to make everything good once again! She just dropped everything and disappeared from my life in one day." Russell began to gesticulate." One day you just can't handle your own life and..." he stopped for a moment and thought about what he just said.
"Sounds pretty similar to me, huh?" he smiled softly at Russell, who, embarrassed, quickly shifted his gaze to something else.
"It's still not the same... You didn't make any commitments you couldn't meet and you were younger than her."
"Unfortunately for me, the same can't be said about my biological mothers, Rusty."
"Mothers?" he was quite stunned by this news." From what Strongarm told me about you... you only had two fathers and an older sister."
"Two adoptive fathers, that's an important detail." he emphasized." Can you wait here forna moment?"Bee took Russell off his lap, then quickly finished his coffee and walked towards the Alchemor. The boy just sank into a chair and waited for Bee, staring at the ground and thinking about this situation.After several minutes, Became back, wearing his normal clothes and took a second chair with him. He put it next to Russell, then took out his black leather wallet from his jeans and from one of the tiny pockets it he pulled out an old, slightly yellowed photo. He gave it photo to him."Look." he said."On the photo were two women in suits, a young girl in a nice looking blue dress and an even younger boy who have yellow dungarees and pacifier in his mouth."This photo was taken a week before my mothers gave me and Arcee to Optimus and Ratchet."The boy was quite bewildered by it all."Why had they given you away..? You looked so happy together! Even with war happening. "Bee sat down next to Rusty on the chair he brought before."From what Ratchet told me, they couldn't stand the pressure and under the pretext that our city was in flames they gave us away." he sighed."... and they fled to the other end of galaxy and no one has ever heard of them again."
"Oh... that sucks"
"Yeah, I know! Because of that I had many thoughts about it! I thought I will go crazy! Usually they were like; "what have we do to you?", "were we so useless to you?", "why didn't you love us?"... and I've had them over and over again since i was really a little boy. And then Tygerpax happened..."
"Tygerpax?"
"The place on cybertron... where Megatron killed one of the very important autobots- Jetfire and almost mortally wounded me and took my ability to speak for many years..." he gently ran his fingers over the wound on his neck. He stayed silent for a moment, then quickly cleared his throat seeing the worried look no the boy's face." Anyway! I stopped having these thoughts aftter that day, you know why?"Russell listened in silence. Then Bee took the photo back and gave him another one. On it, his teenager self and with him were Optimus, Arcee, Bulkhead and Ratchet."Because I had a new family already that I could worry about. Of course in the beginning it was only me and my dads, but with time our family started growing! Heck, even Arcee came back after she ran away from the main autobots camp to work on her own. It gave me the illusion of normality at least... I just... I just want to tell you that you shouldn't care about people who abandoned you, if they really care, then maybe one day they will come back to you... Maybe even I will one day have enough strength to come back to my family.Russell stand quietly, staring at the photography. He felt lost, but at the same time he was very reassured by what Bumblebee had just told him. He took a quiet but deep breath."Bee...?" he whispered.
"Yeah Rusty?"
"Let's take a photo too."