The darkness held them like a cradle, the thrumming of the ship’s powerful engines a lulling vibration around them, thickening the air. So much different, Perceptor thought, than Cybertron.  That had also been dark, the darkness of an unloving place, air thin and sharp and acrid, like foul, ragged claws.  On Cybertron, they had huddled together at night, the Autobots, as though they needed to keep others in their sight.

Or, no, Perceptor thought, his systems humming down slowly, the need to be seen, as though to go beyond the company of others would somehow cause them to fly apart, as though invisibility was annihilation.

And though they huddled together, then, each was a tiny, isolated knot of misery and regret, knowing that the end was bearing down upon them like a bombblast, knowing their deaths would be ummourned, their stories left without ends, without memories.

But that was the darkness that had showed him this light: Drift’s dense weight pressed upon him, the hum of his system, almost defiant, insistently alive, even then. He’d been shy, embarrassed, but Drift had prevailed, saying, in his quiet way that if they were to die, there was no point in shame or regret.  And it had felt like courage, boldness to recharge with him as though they were tempting fate itself by this physical connection.

And now, Omega Supreme held them. It wasn’t the Trion, but it was a real, living safety, even as they hurtled toward an uncertain future.

A glimmer of light caught the reticle of his enhanced sighting optic, white and misty.  He turned his head. “Wing.”

The ghostly shape coalesced, into the familiar blurry contours of the white jet, whom he’d never met in life, but who had given him, in death, the biggest gift of all.  He felt a ripple of warmth, the jet’s manipulation of his energy field, soft and warm like sunlight.

Atop him, Drift sighed, frame softening against his, turning his helm to press his cheek on the flat expanse of Perceptor’s reinforced chestplate. 

“Where were you going?” He rheo’d his vocalizer’s volume to barely audible, the sound barely penetrating the plush darkness. But Wing heard, incorporeal, silent himself, as though he could read the shapes out of the air. 

Wing floated closer, hovering over the edge of the berth, his optics, diaphanous, roaming over what he could no longer have: Drift, a body, an embrace. The envy washed over like a bittersweet wave.  “Music,” Wing said, without a voice. He’d become enamored of it, as though, soundless himself, the idea of melody was a fascination to him. “I was hoping for music. It makes me feel less…,” the sentence trailed off, and neither of them were certain if that were the end, or if there was an unspoken lacuna , ‘alone’. 

Perceptor shifted his shoulders, lifting one hand off of Drift’s upper arm, stretching it in offering, a black palm holding nothing, but offering himself. 

“You don’t have to,” Wing said, and the gold-white fuzz of his aura seemed to wash back, like an ebbing, eddying tide. 

“I know. I am.” A beckon with one finger, the hand the cup of life itself. 

And Wing could resist no longer, pouring himself into the hand, his phantom presence sliding along Perceptor’s circuitry, the ions of his being, the ghostly echo of his core resonance, deepening Perceptor’s own, giving them both depth and substance and richness. Perceptor felt his awareness fade, under a gold-washed tide, as Wing filled him, and took him over, simply to hold, for a few hours, his beloved in the dark stretch of night.