TITLE:
Snowbound
Imperfection Deviation
SERIES: Imperfection
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned by
people with a lot more money
Author’s Voice of Warning (aka Author’s Note):
English is not my first language; it’s German. This is the best I can do. Any
mistakes you find in here, collect them and you might win a prize
FEEDBACK: Loved
Requested by Laura B who wanted Sam and Bee in a snowstorm. The bunny dropped
on fertile ground :)
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
“Just our luck, hm?"
Sam watched fat white flakes of snow blow by the window. The sky was a leaden
gray and it looked like it would get worse before it might get better. The
forecast, just before the radio signal had died, had been rather vague. The
snowstorm had come in unexpected and it had gained in strength in the last two
hours. It would reach its peak tonight and should be over by tomorrow.
“So much for weather,” Sam muttered. He knew forecasts weren’t always precise,
but there hadn’t been so much as a snow warning, let
alone storm.
“I think it was a change in the winds, Sam,” Bumblebee tried to explain
helpfully.
“Whatever it was, we’re stuck in it. Man…”
It had been his idea to take Bumblebee for a cross-country drive, show his
friend the countryside and visit some of the places Sam had always wanted to
see for himself. Winter break had seemed like the ideal time. Recovering from
the stress of exams, having some alone time with Bumblebee, working on his technopathy, had sounded great.
So on December 13th, they had set off for ten days of vacation, to be back in
time for Christmas at the Witwickys. The plan had
been to go north, head for
No one had expected the snowstorms to hit so fiercely and so suddenly. The
Roads were closing down fast and they had already been detoured so often, he no
longer had an idea where exactly they were. They might already be in
Bumblebee had never seen snow before. At least in such
amounts and in person. In his time on Earth he had learned a lot through
TV and the internet, but he had never battled gales and thick snow. Sam could
feel the fluctuations in his friend’s mind. He wasn’t consciously keeping tabs
on him with an open uplink. It was by now simply natural.
“You okay, Bee?” he asked.
“Yes. I seem to be losing traction sometimes, though.”
“It’s the snow and the icy roads. I think we should take it slow, maybe find
shelter,” Sam suggested, squinting through the whiteness to find the tail
lights of the vehicle in front of them.
There was nothing.
“Bee?”
“Yes.”
“Are we still following the guy before us?”
There was a momentary silence as Bumblebee scanned. “No. I think he drove off
somewhere. I can’t find anyone either before or behind us. The snow is starting
to block my scans, Sam. It seems to be the molecular make-up of the frozen
precipitation. The hexagonal ice crystals apparently reflect my own emissions.”
“You can’t see?” Sam translated.
“Not well,” was the confession.
He groaned. “We better stop somewhere. Do you have any idea where we are?”
Another momentary silence. Then, “We have apparently
left the main road three miles back and have entered a small forest. The road
beneath me is no longer paved.”
Sam felt first flickers of panic. “W-what? Bee, stop!
Just stop! We have no idea where we’re driving!”
The Autobot obediently stopped and Sam watched the whiteness outside. He could
make out tall trees to his left, but only just. Ahead and behind him was
nothing but whiteness.
The panic started to grow.
They were lost. In a snow storm.
He knew what happened to people who got lost. He had read about it in papers,
he had heard and seen it on the news. People got killed in snow storms! Just
last year…
He pushed away those thoughts, but they returned unbidden.
“Sam? Are you all right?” Bumblebee sounded worried.
“No,” he whispered truthfully, hands clenching around the steering wheel. “We’re
lost in a snow storm, Bee. This is really, really bad.”
“We can outwait the weather,” the mechanoid suggested.
“You maybe. But it’s going to get really cold…”
Sam felt Bumblebee’s presence through the uplink and he grabbed for it, his panic
having him cling to his only support.
::Sam? Why are you worried?::
::Because people freeze to death in snow storms!:: he
blurted.
The wind was howling outside. It was a rather unsettling sound. Sam would have
loved to sit in a cozy little cabin or motel room,
with some hot chocolate or a tea, watching the storm. But sitting in a car in
the middle of it? He shivered. Not in cold, but in fear.
::You won’t freeze:: Bumblebee interrupted his
thoughts.
He swallowed. “We don’t know how long this’ll last.”
“I’m not a car, Sam,” Bumblebee gently reminded him. “I can sustain the heat
inside me without using up fossil fuel.”
Sam blinked. “Oh…” he finally said slowly, understanding dawning.
Not a car. Of course Bumblebee wasn’t a car! He was an alien life form that
transformed into a car shape!
“Bumblebee…” he stuttered, embarrassment rising. “I… I didn’t mean… it’s just…”
“I know, Sam.”
Through the uplink he felt something akin to a hug and he returned it. They had
taken huge steps with this form of communication and Sam had found it easier
each time. His technopathy was working very smoothly
when it came to Bumblebee.
“So… how long?” he probed carefully.
“Judging by the outside temperatures and adding a safety margin, bringing in
your relative size and weight and the space that needs to be heated, I’d
estimate several of your planetary months.”
Sam gaped. “Really?!”
“Yes,” came the patient reply.
“Wow. But… what about you? Won’t the cold hurt you?”
Bumblebee chuckled. “We traveled through space, Sam. Nothing
is as cold as space. My body can take this.”
“But Megatron was found frozen underneath the ice,” he argued.
“According to the data from Sector Seven, Megatron had spent all his energon on
reaching Earth, shielding himself from the heat stress of atmospheric entry,
and he couldn’t recharge fast enough to ward off the effects of the ice. He
chose to protect himself by going into stasis lock. He froze because of a
critical failure in his systems.”
“But you won’t?”
“No.”
“But when they caught you…” Sam stopped, still somehow distressed by those
memories. Bumblebee’s cries had been heart-wrenching.
“It wasn’t the same as caught in this cold,” his friend told him calmly.
Sam snuggled a little into the seat, hands playing over the steering wheel. ::Good to know::
::I doubt we’ll be caught here for long. And you still have sustenance in your
travel bag for yourself.::
That was at least something.
The wind hadn’t lessened and Bumblebee’s car form was shaken by gusts, but he
still stood firm and the warmth inside was nice. Sam watched the snow outside.
Sometimes he thought he could distinguish the forest outside, but mostly it was
just a mass of flurries.
°°° °°° °°°
They passed the time playing games. It was actually a
training program designed for the young mechs
entering the academy and Bumblebee had great fun explaining it to Sam. The technopath found it challenging to his mind and he happily
immersed himself into the surreal world of Cybertron academy training. It
wasn’t about fighting, it was a strategy game,
challenging the mind.
And he learned fast.
Bumblebee had as much fun as Sam and the time passed quickly. It was getting
darker outside and while the snow was still driven across the land with immense
force, it was kind of peaceful.
“You didn’t know about snow?” Sam asked as he leaned back, the game for now
paused.
“No. It’s an interesting new experience.”
“But you were here on Earth for years, Bee.”
“I followed the traces of alien sightings all across this continent. For some
reason it never took me into snow storms.” There was a teasing note to
Bumblebee’s voice. “I had a lot of wheat fields and very empty country-sides
instead.”
“It’s hard to imagine what life’s like on other planets,” Sam mused. “I always
thought there’d be weather like here. Snow and sun and rain…”
“There is, but not like on Earth. Every planet,
inhabited or not, is different. Different circumstances led to its existence,
to how it was shaped, and whether life developed or not. There is life out
there in the universe, but it’s not like here on Earth. You’d find it as alien
as it would find you.”
“Probably.”
“I’m alien,” the mech reminded him. “And I had
difficulties getting to know your kind, growing used to it.”
Sam nodded. “I thought you were really strange when we met. I couldn’t really
think ‘alien’, more like ‘strange machine developed by, say, the Japanese’.” He
patted the dash. “No offense, Bee.”
“None taken. Your kind can at least reference our
makeup to Earth machinery. We hadn’t met human life forms until we discovered
the Ghost 1.”
Sam slid deeper into the passenger seat, feet up on the other. He had stuffed
his jacket behind him as a pillow and taken off his shoes. It was actually
quite comfortable in here.
“Tell me about it,” he requested softly.
“I could show you,” Bumblebee offered.
Sam hesitated a moment, then nodded. While invading another mind had backfired
several times, sharing memories with a willing ‘host’ was something very
pleasurable. Even violent images weren’t so scary when he wasn’t an invader,
tearing through memories.
::Relax:: Bumblebee only said as Sam linked.
And then he was fifty years in the past, in another galaxy, aboard the
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Sam had fallen asleep and Bumblebee had started to work on his radio system,
boosting reception through the interference, picking up all kinds of news on
the weather while keeping an eye on his charge. There was talk about arctic
fronts and more than two feet of snow in the northwest area of
Throughout the night the snowfall lessened and the howling winds and rattling
gusts calmed down. Sam had woken throughout that time, sleepy and still
frightened, but Bumblebee wouldn’t let him fall toward panic. He would protect
Sam with his life and keeping him warm and safe was easy enough.
It was when the snow finally stopped and the winds were down to a for human bearable level that Bumblebee gently woke his
friend. Sam yawned and stretched, hands banging against the roof.
“Bee?” he mumbled.
“It stopped snowing. I think we can now start to ascertain our position.”
Sam rubbed his eyes and yawned again, then peered through the side window. The
driver’s side was mercifully uncovered, but all he could see was snow.
Grabbing his coat, Sam started to dress. He was already wearing two sweaters
and had thick boots. He added a woolen scarf and
gloves, then unlocked the door.
Icy cold air had him yelp and shiver. “Man!” he exclaimed. “It’s like the
Bumblebee chuckled and waited until his charge was outside, then transformed
smoothly.
It was what humans called a winter wonderland. Everything was underneath a
thick blanket of pristine white snow. Bumblebee’s scans informed him about
density and makeup of the cold mass, but the part that had been and was still
influenced by Sam appreciated the beauty. He had never seen snow like this
before. Cybertron had no weather to speak of and other planets hadn’t been like
Earth.
Sam stomped his feet. He was knee-deep in snow, but his eyes were alight with
the same appreciation of what the snow storm had created around them. For a
moment he seemed to forget that this beauty was also deadly, had killed people
caught unawares, had plunged others into darkness as electricity failed and
heaters died.
Bumblebee got his bearings and calculated the best way to get back onto the
road, though reports coming in over the news channels showed little to no hope
of traveling anywhere any time soon. Conditions were
bad and it would take a few more days until normalcy might return.
He informed Sam of that.
His friend’s face reflected his indecision, shadowed by renewed fear. “So what
do we do now?” his charge asked.
“We’ll find you a warm place to stay,” Bumblebee only said. “Then we wait this
out.”
“But with power down and the possibility of a state-wide state of emergency…
there might not be anywhere to stay.”
Bumblebee knelt down and gently touched his friend. ::Let
me do the looking. You just sit back. If all else fails we just continue
driving as best as possible. I won’t let you come to harm::
Sam closed his eyes, shivering again. Bumblebee understood the need to know
about food and shelter. It was survival instinct and Sam, despite being in the
company of someone who could actually protect him from the cold, still feared
what might come.
::Sam…:: he probed.
Brown eyes looked at him.
::We’ll make it back, okay?::
::Okay. You know, as a kid I would have loved to be in snow like that, have a
snow ball fight, build a snow man…::
The mech regarded him curiously. All of that was
alien to him, like so many things. Sam laughed and shrugged.
::You never outgrow those things, but I’m not really
in the mood. It’s too damn cold anyway::
Bumblebee rose and scanned the area. “I can’t drive in these conditions. We’ll
have to walk until we get to a clear road.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Sam wasn’t surprised when Bumblebee opted to carry him. Being much smaller than
Optimus Prime, Sam’s perch on his friend’s shoulder was different. Bumblebee
adjusted for the human’s position and easily strode across the wintry
landscape. Sam mused about the easy but strange trail they were leaving behind.
Anyone finding these footsteps would probably think prank or alien invasion.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Their first stop after getting back onto the road was
a small town called Forks. It showed Sam just how far off course they had been.
Snow plows were everywhere. Snow piled up left and
right and people were trying to free their homes from the excessive white mass.
Sam’s first hot shower was bliss. He had found a Bed&Breakfast
place where a nice woman called Carol was only too helpful. She had only one
other guest, a tourist from
He was glad to finally cross into less snowy countryside as he came closer and
closer to
Sam had called his parents after the storm, calmed his mother and reassured her
that he and Bumblebee were fine, that everything was okay, that he wasn’t about
to freeze to death. Bumblebee had given her his oath as Sam’s guardian that he
wouldn’t let anything happen to him. His father had suggested come home. The
area was expecting more bad weather. It had sounded like a really good idea.
So now here they were, almost home, and Sam watched the landscape fly by. There
was more traffic than he had seen all day yesterday and he actually enjoyed
being back where there was no snow anywhere. He had had enough of that for long
time.
At least they were on time, so to speak. Tomorrow was Christmas and it was a
tradition in the Witwicky home to spend it together, have too much food, even
more dessert, watch old movies, get all nostalgic, then fall into bed and sleep
until almost noon the next day. While Bumblebee had read everything there was
about the traditions on Earth, especially in this country, he didn’t get into
the spirit of things. It was hard to explain to an alien life form, Sam had
found out. This was a matter of being raised with these traditions, not just
knowing the hard facts and the myths surrounding Christmas.
Like Halloween. That had been hard to get across to his friends, too, and while
the Autobots understood tradition, it wasn’t that they joined in the
celebration. Which was fine with Sam because Ironhide playing
trick or treat was really not something he wanted to experience.
°°° °°° °°°
They arrived in Tranquility in the late evening
hours, three days after their snow adventures, and after Sam had stopped by his
apartment in Mission City. He had showered, changed, and packed some fresh
clothes. Bumblebee had waited patiently, then they had
finally concluded their ten-day trip in Sam’s hometown.
“It was fun,” Sam said as they parked next to his parents’ house.
“It was a new experience.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. Thanks, Bee. For
everything.”
“You are welcome. I enjoyed it. We might want to take another trip some
time. ”
“In summer,” Sam said quickly.
A chuckle. “Agreed.”
Sam patted the hood and grabbed his bag, walking up to the house. He felt
Bumblebee power down into passive mode. Smiling, Sam pushed open the door and
was engulfed in a motherly hug.