Title: Through the Thin Place
Fandom: Transformers 2007
Part: 1-2
Rating: R, for language and mentions of nudity.
Summary: Sam and Bumblebee manage to fall through a hole in the fabric of space/time, finding themselves in a world where their lives are a blockbuster movie.
Word Count: 4,679
Disclaimer: Yeah, Transformers? Not mine. No profit being made, it's all in fun, etcetera, etcetera.
A/N: Yeah, yeah, I know. It's a self-insert. Crime among crimes, as bad as Mary-Sue, except in this the author acknowledges what she's doing. Just...give it a chance, 'kay? "Anything can be pulled off by the right writer," right?

~*~

Janella had stripped and dropped into bed almost as soon as she’d gotten home from her little excursion to Shades of Death Road. Jess and Travis she’d left at Jess’ parents’ house down the road, and her younger sister was out with some of her own friends, and who knew when the hell she’d be back. She’d lingered long enough to get her cat up from the basement, and then she’d gone to bed.

Now she was staring at her bedside clock over the ear of the stuffed giraffe in her arms and wondering why she was awake. Hera was curled against her hip, but her head was up and her fur was standing on end—awake and alert. Shit. Why?

The screen on her bedroom window bonged hollowly, the sound it made when a particularly large moth bounced off it. She blinked, and wondered if there was a bug out there trying to get in. She curled her giraffe, Freddie, closer, and tried to fall back asleep, telling herself it was nothing. The screen bonged again.

“The hell?” she muttered thickly. She rolled over, and shrieked at the sight of a face peeking in the edge of the window. Hera yowled a protest and jumped off the bed.

“Please don’t freak out,” the face in the window pleaded.

She scrabbled at the covers, bunching her sheets against her chest. “I’m naked!” she squeaked—not at all what she’d intended to say, but that was what came out when she opened her mouth.

He flushed red and looked away. “Sorry, sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t know.”

Janella slid out of bed and into the crack between the bed and the dresser, out of his sight. She groped around, scrabbling to find something to wear, and pulled a big T-shirt over her head. It only fell far enough to cover the obscene bits, but it was definitely better than nothing.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she demanded, standing up and keeping the bed between herself and the window.

At least he had the good graces to look ashamed. He held something up. It wasn’t until he said, “I found this in the Mickey D’s parking lot,” that she realized it was a cell phone.

“Is that mine?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I figured.”

“Huh.” She reached out to turn on the lamp and then edged around her bed and walked over to the window. He tilted the phone so she could see it better. It looked like hers. She shoved the window open as wide as it would go and unlatched the screen quickly, setting it aside and sliding out. He handed the phone over. She only had to flip it and see the swatch of masking tape on the back to know it really was hers.

“Huh,” she said again. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

She planted her feet against the angle of the roof and put the phone in through the window and on the dresser. She looked back. “Was I right?” she asked.

He looked blank. “Huh?”

“You are Sam Witwicky, aren’t you? Or am I just crazy?” she asked.

“You’re…not crazy,” he said after a minute.

She let out a staccato laugh. “You don’t sound exactly sure about that,” she said, craning her head and trying to see down over the eaves of the roof and into the driveway. She could just make out the curve of her Camry’s trunk, but nothing else out of the ordinary. But she realized she could hear something over the muffled rushing sound of wind in the trees, something other than the summer night-sounds she was accustomed to.

Around the edge of the house came a shape, tall and bipedal, yellow on black and silver even in nothing more than the light of the moon. Further attempts at banter were stalled by his appearance, which was disorienting enough to send Janella reeling back against the siding. Her bare feet slipped on the shingles covering the roof, and she fell.

She fell, but she didn’t go anywhere. Almost as soon as she hit the roof there was a giant hand in front of her, arresting a slide that didn’t even get started. For a minute, she didn’t move; she only stared at the gleaming metal fingers. It wasn’t disbelief, exactly, that stunned her, but something closer to awe.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you all right?”

She looked up over the fingers and into his face. In the dim moonlight, his eyes glowed with particular vibrancy. “I’m…fine,” she managed, after swallowing to clear the knot in her throat. “Just, um…um.”

How many times had she imagined a situation like this? Meeting a favorite character, or an author, or an actor, and wowing them with her suavity, her absolute, undeniable coolness. When this happened in her head, it went a lot more smoothly…and she usually wasn’t half-naked, with an ass stinging from the impact with the shingles.

“Your vital signs are abnormally elevated,” he said, bending in for a closer look. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, you don’t look too good,” Sam added.

Had she been rational, Janella might have wondered how he could tell what was “good” for her, since they’d only met twice, and both in bad lighting situations. Unfortunately, she wasn’t feeling very rational right now. Her breathing was shallow, and she didn’t trust that her legs would support her if she got to her feet. She clutched at the big hand supporting her, and managed to mutter, “Dizzy. Dizzy. Ground, please.”

Carefully, Bumblebee caged her in his hands and lowered her to the ground, retaining his hold on her until she was steady on her feet. She tried to smile her thanks, but opted instead to lay out flat on the grass of her yard—heedless of the night-chilled dew—while the robot straightened up to get Sam down from the roof as well.

“Jesus, you look terrible,” Sam declared once he’d been returned to the ground. She blinked and deliberately closed her eyes.

“You identified us by name, yet still seem to be shocked at our appearance,” Bumblebee commented. “Why?”

“That might have something to do with the fact that you’re characters from a movie,” she said, her voice monotone. She was too nauseous for acerbity (though she probably wouldn’t have been able to snark to them even if she were feeling well).

“A movie?” Sam repeated.

“Characters?” Bumblebee asked.

She groaned, and carefully propped herself up on one elbow. She could see Sam leaning over her, and Bumblebee crouching behind him. Sam took a step away as she watched.

“The live-action Transformers movie was based on a cartoon that was big in the eighties,” she explained, “which was, in turn, based on a line of toys for little kids.” She took a deep breath, trying to curb the whirling in her head and the pit of her stomach, and said mildly, “Can’t you just hack the Web and find out for yourself?” She looked straight at Bumblebee as she said it.

He looked sheepish, an effect not so much of facial expression as of posture. Sam and Bumblebee exchanged a look, and Sam shrugged slightly. The mech leaned back on his heels and was silent, except for some muffled whirring, for about a minute.

Janella welcomed the silence. It gave time to lay back and try and organize her thoughts, which for a large part of the night had been an endless loop of Camaro—Yellow—Sam—Camaro—Bumblebee! She wasn’t able to arrange her mind that much in the brief respite, but at least she stopped her mental record from skipping.

“She’s right,” Bumblebee reported in a low voice (for a giant robot). He straightened up and looked down at Sam, before playing a sound byte in a familiar little girl’s voice. “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

Sam laughed, then frowned. “Wait,” he said. “What do you mean?”

“I think we moved more than geographically, Sam,” Bumblebee said. “I think we went through some kind of spatial-temporal anomaly.”

“Spatial-temporal…what the hell are you talking about?”

“Wormhole,” Janella muttered, still flat on her back.

“I don’t think so,” Bumblebee said. “At least, if it is a wormhole, it’s not of a type I’ve ever encountered.”

“Like the ones in space, right?” she asked, sitting up again. The world didn’t lurch the way it did last time. “The ones you use for travel.”

“Yes.”

“How d’you know that?” Sam asked her.

“Ghosts of Yesterday,” she said. “Prequel novel for the movie. You guys aren’t supposed to be here.”

It was a non-sequitur; she knew it, and she could tell that they did too. “No,” Bumblebee said, “and I’m not sure how to get us back.”

Sam gaped up at the mech. “You’re serious,” he said.

“I wouldn’t joke about something like this. Much.”

“Okay, so…we’re in another dimension or parallel world, or…whatever,” Sam said. “Does this change our plan?”

“Not really.” Bumblebee crossed his arms. “We know where we are—kind of—and how we got here—hypothetically. We still need to get back. The only thing that’s changed is—”

“You’re recognizable,” Janella interrupted, getting to her feet. “Hell, you’re practically icons right now…though I suppose most Transfans wouldn’t automatically think of you when they saw a Camaro…” She paused, and shook her head. (Not a good idea, but at least she didn’t fall down.) This wasn’t classic Bumblebee, it was Bay Bumblebee—the one she knew best. “Whatever. You’re recognizable. I’m not going to be the only one who wonders why the hell Shia LaBeouf is driving around rural New Jersey in a car that hasn’t even been released yet.

“Which is why you can’t stay here,” Janella continued, shaking her head and fisting her hands on her hips. “My sister will be home any minute,” she said before either of them could react, “and while she will probably not automatically jump to the weirdest possible conclusion, like I did, she will be suspicious if she finds you.”

“You mean we have to leave?” Sam asked.

“I mean I will not be held responsible for any reactions—or overreactions—on my sister’s part,” she said.

“We can’t risk being seen by too many people, Sam,” Bumblebee said, “especially if they’re likely to know—or figure out—who we are.”

“Where are we gonna go?” Sam turned to Janella. “Where can we go?”

“Um.” Janella took a deep breath and closed her eyes, unfolding her mental map of the area and looking it over. “Um. Route 80? One of the truck stops?”

“No good,” Bumblebee said immediately. “I want to stay close. The phenomenon that brought us here is probably localized, and if the others come for us, it’s more likely than not that they will arrive in the same place we did.”

“Where did you guys come through, anyway?” she asked.

“On the road where we almost hit you,” Sam said.

She laughed out loud. “Shades of Death. Of course. Of course!”

“Why is that funny?” Sam asked.

“Weird shit always happens on Shades of Death,” she explained, then sobered. “Listen, you guys’ll have a problem if you want to stay in the area. There’s really nowhere around here that a car can park overnight without getting busted.”

“Nowhere?” Sam repeated.

Janella shrugged. “Not to park. The cops are pretty strict around here.”

“What do you suggest?” Bumblebee asked.

She thought about it for a minute, but now that the shock had worn off, she only felt tired. “Drive around all night?” she suggested. “No! Drive around ‘til my sister gets home, and then you can park in our driveway until dawn.”

“Dawn is only 5-point-33 hours off.”

“Would you rather drive around that whole time?” Janella asked.

Sam sighed. “All right,” he said. “If that’s what we have to do, that’s what we have to do.” Bumblebee took the cue, and began to revert to Camaro mode. Janella felt shaky at the sight, and knew she was probably gaping like a moron, but she managed both not to babble like an idiot at the sight, and to remain upright. In less than a minute, the sleek yellow car was sitting on her lawn. The doors popped open invitingly.

“Thanks,” Sam said to her, smiling thinly, before jogging the few steps and swinging into the driver’s side seat. He pulled the door closed, but the passenger side remained wide open.

She didn’t dare say anything, for fear that what her mind was suggesting wasn’t true…or was it that she was afraid it was?

The window buzzed down and Sam leaned out. “I think he wants you to come too!” he called.

“Me? Um. Why me?”

“An indigenous navigator can be invaluable, especially, if trustworthy, in times when stealth is essential.” Bumblebee’s voice issued with some slight distortion from the car’s speakers, and it had the air of recitation. There was a pause, and then, “Will you help us?”

“Um,” she said, knowing she sounded absolutely idiotic. “Can I put some pants on first?”

**

“Some ‘indigenous navigator’,” Sam muttered, looking over at the girl who’d eventually gotten around to introducing herself as Janella. She was fast asleep in the passenger’s seat. “You want me to wake her up?”

Bumblebee answered by lowering her seat back slowly to near horizontal. The chick murmured something and rolled on her side, drawing her legs up into the seat.

“I thought the point of bringing her was so she could keep us away from the cops,” Sam pointed out.

“Did I tell you Ratchet’s determined a set of physiological reactions that, generally, indicate when humans are lying?” Smoothly, the Camaro decelerated and took a sharp curve like it was nothing. “She didn’t know what she was talking about.”

“Seriously?”

“She wasn’t lying outright, but enough of the signs matched to indicate discomfort when she was instructing us.”

“So she was bullshitting.”

“Yes.”

“Then I guess it’s all right to let her sleep,” Sam said, looking over at her again. Mikaela appeared in his mind’s eye, and this girl with his and his friends’ names on her tongue suffered for the comparison. He leaned back in his seat, stretching his legs in the foot-well, and tried to look like he was paying attention to the road.

“I still haven’t been able to detect anything that resembles a Cybertronian signal,” Bumblebee said some time later, his voice low.

“Well, what d’you expect?” Sam asked, surprised at the bitterness in his voice. “We’re characters from a frickin’ movie.”

Bumblebee was silent for a moment, and when he finally spoke, it was with a stiffness rarely heard. “We managed to come through. It’s not impossible that the other Autobots will be able to track us and come through themselves.”

“You don’t sound too sure about that,” Sam pointed out.

“It’s hard to be sure about something I don’t understand myself,” Bumblebee snapped, the engine revving as he said it. In the other seat, the girl stirred.

Sam sighed, and rubbed his hand across his eyes. “All right, all right,” he said. He didn’t want to open his eyes again—he was tired. He was so very tired. “Listen, let’s head back to this chick’s house,” he said heavily. “See if her sister’s back.”

Bumblebee’s acknowledgement came in the form of a very deft and very illegal u-turn.

**

The sun was in her eyes, and it was annoying as hell. Janella groaned and rolled over, snuggling into her—

Her pillow was gone. In fact, she realized, her entire bed was gone, and it had been replaced by a seat upholstered in yellow and black leather. She blinked blearily and lifted her head, and all of a sudden she remembered.

Typically, Janella was neither a fast nor an early riser. She tended to set her alarm clock more than an hour before she needed to be up, simply so she could lay around in bed and wake up at her own pace. She was capable of waking up fast, though, if she had to, and this was one situation that warranted it. She jerked upright in her seat and looked around.

She was still in the car…Bumblebee.

Sam was asleep in the driver’s seat, which was reclined, like hers, as far as it could go. He was facing away from her, and snoring quietly. She could see her Camry parked next to them, and beyond it her sister’s, a year older and with a green paint job instead of blue.

“Holy…what time is it?” she asked, scrubbing at her eyes.

The response was immediate and low-pitched. “Six-fifty-three a.m.,” Bumblebee said.

“Good,” Janella said, sighing. “Okay. Good. Let’s get out of here before she leaves for work.”

“Before who leaves for work?” he asked.

“My mom. She’ll flip her lid if she finds me asleep in some stranger’s car in the driveway.”

“And where should we go?”

“Back to the McDonalds, I guess,” she said, shrugging. “I don’t know. Somewhere away from here.”

“But not too far,” he said.

She laughed. “Right. Not too far.”

Leaning over, Janella poked Sam hesitantly. “Hey. Um. Wake up,” she said. He muttered something incomprehensible and drew away. “Up!” she urged. “Come on!”

“Wha’s goin’ on?” Sam muttered.

“Come on, switch seats with me,” she said. “You can keep sleeping, just move over first.”

That must have registered. He rolled over and pushed himself half up. Janella opened the door and slid out of the Camaro, leaving the passenger seat open for him. She hurried around the front of the car and got into the driver’s side, moving with some hesitance. As she sat, the back of the seat came up. Sam had hauled himself over into the passenger seat and was already asleep again.

She pulled the door closed as the engine started up, buckling the seatbelt almost by instinct. Bumblebee reversed, backing around the twin Camrys and pulling down the driveway. “The McDonalds?” he said once they were on the road.

“Mm. No, you know what? There’s a Burger King down the road from it. They—” She interrupted herself with a yawn. “They have Mountain Dew there.”

“Fine.”

She couldn’t think of anything else to say. She was almost vibrating with the thrill of being here, sitting in this seat. It was kind of awkward, though—okay, a lot awkward. She was unusually conscious of herself, the way she was sitting, and knowing that he was aware of it. Her body wanted to slouch in the seat, her feet stretching for the pedals and her hand casually guiding the wheel; instead, she sat erect with her feet flat on the floor, trying to figure how much pressure to put on the steering wheel.

“Won’t your sister be suspicious if she wakes up and finds you’ve been gone all night?” Bumblebee asked a while later, catching her (of course) in the middle of a yawn.

She clacked her jaw closed, tried to swallow her embarrassment, and said, “I, uh, left a note. Said I was sleeping over a friend’s house.”

“Ah. This is a valid excuse, then?”

“Most of the time, yeah. She probably won’t question it.” She ran the hand not hesitantly touching the wheel through her hair, back to front, and added, “Wonder why the friend didn’t sleep over at my house, maybe, but no. It won’t bother her.”

Silence fell again, and Janella couldn’t help fidgeting a little. If the ride into town wasn’t like, three minutes long, she would have asked Bumblebee to turn on the radio, but she didn’t want to seem rude. The awkwardness was broken soon enough by the mundanity of ordering breakfast at the drive-through anyway. The Burger King didn’t have a massive parking lot like the McDonalds did, but he parked them in the most secluded corner anyway.

She unbuckled her seatbelt and applied herself purposefully to her food. Sam continued to sleep in the passenger seat, and she was still feeling tired herself; hopefully, the Dew would help that.

“Okay,” she said after a while, crumpling the last of the paper wrappers into the bag. If she were in her own car, she would have chucked the garbage into the backseat or the footwell for later. Here, she just held it in her lap. “So you two came through at Shades of Death Road.”

There was a silence before Bumblebee answered. “Yes.”

“What were you doing back, er, in your world?” she asked. “Anything, like, special?”

“Special?”

“Evasive maneuvers, fancy driving?” she elaborated. “Anything that would be difficult to recreate accidentally?”

“Why?”

She leaned back in the seat, picking up the Mountain Dew and taking a long drink to give herself a second to organize her thoughts. “’Kay. Shades of Death Road—where you came through—is a haunted place, where the worlds are said to intersect.”

“The worlds?” Bumblebee interjected.

“Yeah. Like, the living world and the world of the dead,” she said, “or the human lands and the realm of Faerie. The mundane and the supernatural, basically.”

“You’ve had experience with these other worlds?” he asked.

“What? Uh, no. Well, not a lot,” she admitted, thinking that now was probably not a good time to start talking about Edward, their Ouija buddy, or the ghost car, or any of the other weird things she’d seen. “But I’ve read about it. A lot.

“The thing that some of the stories say is that, to cross between one of these worlds and the other, you need to walk a specific path,” she explained, clasping her hands between her knees and leaning forward. “Most of the time that’s a euphemism for death, but I think sometimes they mean it seriously—a person has to physically walk a certain path to make the crossing. So what I’m wondering is if you guys ‘walked’ some specific path on your way here. Do you…um, remember?”

“We were driving,” Bumblebee said, “through a thunderstorm. I…lost control, and we went off the road. I’m afraid I don’t remember exactly what happened.”

“Hmm. So there wasn’t any zig-zagging or swerving or anything?”

“Not really.”

“Well, that’s good,” she said, leaning back again. “Easier for someone else to follow you through.”

“Is that likely?” he asked. “That others will be able to repeat what we did and come through as well?”

She shrugged. “I don’t really—I mean—I know what I’ve read, but I don’t really have enough first-hand experience to say.” She tapped her fingers nervously against her knee, and continued in a rush, “I’m inclined to say yes. If you guys did, others should be able to do it, too, and maybe even go back the other way. But I…I don’t know for sure.”

“You know as much as you know,” Bumblebee said. “And it was more than I knew about what happened, so I thank you for sharing.”

It wasn’t exactly glowing praise or effusive thanks, but Janella knew she’d offered scant comfort to someone who’d rolled out of everything familiar and into a very real danger. “I’m just sorry I couldn’t help you more,” she said quietly.

“Better little than nothing,” he said. The car shifted on its axels slightly, and she couldn’t help but interpret it as a shrug.

“So,” she said, after five long minutes where the only sounds came either from outside or from deep within the Camaro’s engine compartment. She meant to continue with, “What do you plan to do next?”, but Sam cut her off by snorting loudly in his sleep and rolling over into the door. It was enough to wake him up.

“Wha…?” he muttered with striking wit and intelligence, pushing himself up and blinking at her.

“Wake up, Sam,” Bumblebee said gently, though firm. “We need to decide what to do.”

It took him a few minutes to turn coherent enough to speak, and then it was only to hint with all the subtlety of a rhino on fire that some coffee would really go down well. Janella grinned wryly and went obediently into the Burger King to oblige. When she came back out, Sam had gone from reclining in her seat to sitting vertically, talking with clear animation to Bumblebee.

As she approached, she realized that his voice was overloud in the nearly-empty parking lot, and that maybe the talk wasn’t so much a talk as an argument. She stopped halfway across the lot, torn between delivering the cup in her hands and giving them privacy they were due. She compromised with her sense of propriety by averting her eyes when she leaned into the Camaro, conscious of the sudden silence, and withdrawing as soon as Sam took the proffered coffee.

With nothing else to do, she slipped back into the restaurant, buying another little something as an excuse to sit at one of the booths and try not to look suspicious. (It wasn’t that she was doing anything wrong, but she knew that if she looked like she was, the Burger King staff might not hesitate to call the police, which would raise a lot of questions she had no good, ready answers for.)

Without a watch to monitor the time, she couldn’t have said how long she’d sat in there while they…did whatever it was they were doing out there. Finally, though, Sam stuck his head in the door, saw her, and gestured. “Come on,” he said when she stood. “We need you to direct us to the nearest motel.”

“Motel,” she repeated blankly.

He nodded. “Somewhere cheap, that we can stay without having to worry about cops or sisters or anything.”

She couldn’t detect any censure in his voice at the comment, but couldn’t help deflating a little. What kind of fan was she that she couldn’t provide appropriate shelter for these idols of hers in their time of need? She tried to shake the thought from her head, forcibly making room in her thoughts for that mental map. She didn’t have a lot of suggestions for them, but there were some cheap motels in the area that she could direct them to.

She didn’t expect to be dropped off at her house before they went hotel-hunting. “Um.”

The door swung open. “Your help so far has been invaluable,” Bumblebee said (and did his voice sound a touch subdued, or was she imagining things?), “but we’ve taken up too much of your time. We can continue from here on our own.”

“Oh,” she said. She glanced at Sam, who shrugged. She unbuckled her seat belt and slowly got out of the car.

“Thank you,” Bumblebee said. “Your assistance so far has been invaluable, but we can proceed from here on our own.”

“Okay,” she said, knowing her voice sounded faint. She took a step back, thought about it for a second, then lunged forward just in time to catch the passenger’s door, holding it open and holding the Autobot up. “Um. What are you going to do…after that?”

“We’ll see when we get there!” Sam said with a grin.

“Oh. Okay. Um.” God, she just couldn’t talk today! “Listen, if you guys need anything—anything at all—you know where to find me, okay?” I’d do anything for you. “Please. Don’t hesitate to come and find me if you need me, okay?”

“Thank you, Janella,” Bumblebee said. She shivered to hear him say her name.

“And I’ll keep looking. Um. Researching, you know? And I’ll let you know if I find anything out, okay?”

“We would appreciate that,” Bumblebee said; she could see Sam nodding in agreement.

“Okay,” she whispered. Take me with you. I want to help you. She pried her hands off the door and stepped back. The door swung gently closed. “Good luck.”

It wasn’t until they were gone that she realized that, even if she did find something new out, she had no way of getting in touch with them again, short of tracking them down physically. Damn.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try.

~*~

Clearly, I lied about the incipient posting of legitimate fic.