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About a week had passed since Bumblebee was found. He spent most of his time in the medbay where Ratchet was checking him over to ensure that no lasting damage was made to him. Optimus had filled out a report to Cybertron explaining the whole ordeal and requested for better suited comms. The cave incident can't happen again.
Meanwhile, Bumblebee had been productive with his recovery. That's something wonderful for the team. They don't know why but it was almost as if they didn't expect him to follow Ratchet’s orders.
However, they were all patient with him and had forgiven him after he apologized for running off, ensuring him that what happened wasn't entirely his fault. He was just trying to do the right thing.
They all felt guilty of course. They could have ensured that the comms would be able to stay on while underneath the Earth’s surface before he and Prowl descended down. They could have done a better job trying to locate him, especially when Sari was able to provide them with a map of the cave’s inner workings.
Out of everyone on the team, Prowl felt the most guilty. He was the one there with Bumblebee, he saw him disappear into that pathway, yet he was unable to find him (it was odd how he suddenly just disappeared like that. Nothing seems to have changed, so how-). He should have done a better job making sure he was kept safe. If Bumblebee wasn’t able to find his way out, then not only would he have lost a teammate, but also a friend. He would have failed like how he failed Yoketron and the protoform.
It was these thoughts that had kept him awake that night. He was unable to fall into a recharge. Every single possible scenario was filling his neural processor. At this point, he gave up on recharging and decided to grab some energon as a late night snack.
As he made his way towards the energon storage room, he heard something coming out of the living room. It was soft, barely noticeable but it was definitely voices. Prowl was a bit shocked. He could have sworn that everyone was still recharging and Sari was back home.
He quietly and slowly made his way to the living room. Armed with his shuriken, he carefully took a glance inside. He saw that the T.V. with a nature documentary about bees on. And there on the couch, was Bumblebee himself. His eyes glued to the T.V. (Did he like documentaries?)
“Oh, Bumblebee!” Prowl lightly shouted at the bot, who spring up in surprise.
“Prowl? What are you doing here?” Bumblebee asked.
“I was going for an energon when I heard the T.V. on, so I came to investigate.” Prowl explained, “You should be resting by now in the medbay.”
Bumblebee at least was able to look guilty as he scratched one of his long, dark blue horns. It was a quirk of his whenever he was nervous, one that the Autobots knew for as long as they can remember. But, that’s besides the point. Prowl was still waiting for a response.
Bumblebee, upon realizing that he won’t be set free, started explaining, “It’s just that when I was in the cave, one of the only things that kept me sane was your facts from the nature documentaries. So I'm watching them for some comfort.”
Prowl felt his spark melted a little. He remembers the moments when Bumblebee would at times eagerly hear the things Prowl heard about the planet. (Or was it annoyance?)
Prowl wordlessly sat down next to Bumblebee. The others might later yell at him for not bringing Bumblebee back to the medbay immediately, but that was beside the point. Prowl was just happy to be there for his teammate.
(All the while he was unknowingly, sub constantly beating back a small voice in his head that says “Something is wrong.”)