A/N: Totally inspired by Evanescence's Even In Death, which they kidnapped when I was using it to write something else entirely. It may make a whole lot more sense if you know the song, or even just the lyrics.

Soft light from a bare sliver of a moon shone off white paint and soaked into black, glinting against glass panels in doorwings that hung slightly lower than usual, gently pointed tips angling towards the ground.

Prowl slowly, silently traversed the silvery lit path cut between the trees leading away from the Autobots' base, the road he hadn't been able to bring himself to walk up until now. It was too much like acknowledging that the hole in his Spark really was there. If he didn't do this, then maybe, just maybe he could pretend that...

It was that thought alone that almost made him turn back when the mausoleum came into view.

Almost.

However, he had already made his decision, and he was going to see this through and hope to Primus that he wasn't just losing his mind. Not that it really seemed to matter anymore. Sane, insane, what was the difference?

As soon as Prowl's group had made planetfall, he had searched him out, his shadow falling across the ground at Prowl's feet and a half-relieved, half-teasing, "Finally," as his greeting.

That had been confusing enough. Then came the moment when he realised that no-one else was seeing or hearing anything that he was. That everything that had come before, every moment of agonising pain, had been reality.

It had all gone horribly wrong after that. Prowl couldn't recall most of the things he had said, but he knew that they hadn't exactly been nice. That had been solar days ago, and he hadn't seen the silvery mech. The other 'bots hardly thought that was strange, under the circumstances. Prowl, on the other hand, had simply become more distraught than when he had arrived.

There were several mechs laying silently behind the walls of the crypt. All of them friends, all of them missed. But to Prowl, none were missed as much as one.

One white hand reached out to lightly brush the designation on the plaque before him.

Jazz.

"You gonna yell at me again?"

Prowl turned as the voice flitted in and out of his processor like the wind. Of course, there was no-one there, but when he dropped his gaze to the bare floor, he could clearly make out a very familiar shadow.

The tactician shook his head and the shadow of his bondmate sighed in relief.

"Good. Cos you know, I would never do this to you on purpose, ever, right?"

"I know. I'm sorry, I was just..."

"Surprised and upset, I know," Jazz finished for him. "I would be too. I'd kick your aft if you ever did something stupid enough to get yourself slagged."

Prowl couldn't help but give the silhouette a disproving glare for the flippant remark, and a light chuckle reverberated in the air in response.

"That's my Prowler," the smaller mech declared to the world in general. There was a shift in the wind, and the shadow melted across the ground, as swift and quiet as the saboteur had always been, and there was a sudden warmth closer to Prowl, a slight breeze of a caress lighting along his armour plating.

"Why are you here?" the black and white mech had to know. The question had been slowly, persistently chipping away at the back of his processor, like a neverending drop of water.

"Missed your voice, lover. It's been far too long since I heard your soft tones." The voice, still wisping through his audios like smoke, was definitely closer. If he thought about it, Prowl was certain he could pinpoint its exact origin.

"That's your reason?"

"Okay, so I missed all of you," Jazz admitted with a laugh in his tone. "Sexy as yours is, a disembodied voice would be a bit freaky."

Despite himself, Prowl felt the tug of the first smile in a very long time. Only Jazz... "Jazz, you are a disembodied voice."

"There's my smile," the soft voice murmured against his audio. Prowl wondered if he was just imagining the nuzzling sensation. And that thought in turn led him back to the question of whether or not this was even real, or if the pure agony of their shared Spark being ripped apart had simply created a very permanent glitch, one that the humans would have called insanity.

Prowl hadn't exactly been subtle when Jazz had first approached him. The thought hadn't even occurred to him. The stunning display of what could only be seen as a rather one-sided argument had been there for all the 'bots to see.

Ratchet had been watching him with a worried glint in his optics. Primus, even Bluestreak gazed after him sadly and silently. He knew they thought he was losing his previously solid grasp of sanity. He himself had been convinced of it at the very beginning. Jazz had told him to stop trying to look at things so damn logically and just accept that he was here and he was staying. That had been right before Prowl had heaped all of his own hurt on the saboteur, blaming his deactivation on his penchant for impulsiveness, and just what was he thinking taking on Megatron alone?

"I don't even know if you're real," Prowl told the air. "You could just be a figment of my imagination."

"That hurts, you know, right here," the shadow moved, and he could feel Jazz shift to tap a claw over his Spark, imagining a cheeky glint against that visor. Prowl's own optics dimmed the slightest bit 

and the shadow moved a bit closer. There was the lightest touch against his own Spark, as Jazz murmured in a far more subdued tone, "I know, lover. I know."

"Can't feel you anymore."

A warmth moved across his plating, the raindance touch of a familiar body pressing between his wings, arms encircling his shoulders.

"I don't know how it works. But I'll be here. Right here."

Hesitantly, Prowl lifted one hand to where he could feel Jazz's form, surprised that his fingers made contact. It was barely substantial, almost like a shifting sand, but it was there. Jazz was there.

The tactician closed his hand around Jazz's wrist, holding tight as those silver claws soothingly caressed his shoulder. Prowl tilted his head, nuzzling at that hand with his cheek.

Just slightly, he could feel the deep ache in his Spark, calling long and desperately for its missing other half, begin to subside.

"You'll have to go sooner or later," he realised out loud, barely murmuring the words to the air.

"No." The whispering touch tightened around his shoulders possessively. "I ain't ever gonna leave you again. Can't do that even one more time."

Relief washed through Prowl's frame. If Jazz was only going to disappear, he would rather he just do it now, without all the teasing of his presence. No doubt, the others were definitely going to conclude that he was out of his processor, and the black and white mech decided right then that he didn't care.

Jazz. Was. Here.

People die, but real love lasts forever

I don't know where this came from. I take my Jazz very much alive, thanks.