Drift didn't want to be here, even though he knew he wanted to. Ridiculous paradox, and Drift was no good with paradoxes. He'd never liked complexity; he always wanted things simple, clear, direct.

Life…didn't work that way. Never had, and fighting that had only gotten him into trouble. So he swallowed his discomfort, and let Axe close the doors of the crypt behind him, locking him in with Wing.

Or what remained of Wing.

Even in death, the jet was beautiful, untouched by time, carefully unravaged by decay and rust and corrosion, his armor polished sleek and gleaming in the dim lights, optic shutters closed, mouth in that characteristic enigmatic smile, as if he were just…joking, as if this were another tease between them.

The hole in the chassis spoke otherwise, riven and charred and horrible. Another paradox—he couldn't choose one without the other—when he focused on the one, his gaze slipped, until his voice rasped from his vocalizer in a strangled sort of sob.

"…Wing." The word, the name, hurt to say, like some glass bubble pushing out of his chassis. The word seemed to catch in the air, echoing off the reticulated vault.

One hand hovered over the shoulder nacelle, even now, not quite daring to touch it. He shook his head. "I…don't know," he said, finally. "I don't know if I've done what you wanted. I—I've tried." The hand lowered, the metal cool under his touch. "I dream about you. Not every night, but…enough. And I wonder if you…if you had the chance to do it over again, would you?"

The dead metal said nothing, the smile hiding secrets in its creases.

Drift snorted. Of course there was no answer. Wing was dead. He knew this. He was looking right at him. But the echoing silence seemed to summon words from him, pulling them from under his spark.

"Unfair question. I couldn't answer myself. I mean…how do you do something over? How do you know where to start? What to do differently? When every step you've taken is wrong, one right step doesn't…do anything, does it? At least, not enough."

He turned, tearing his gaze off the too-inert white frame. It was so familiar, but so much time had past that his cortex was hungry for reminders: that exact angle of the red flashed stabilizers, the sleek shine of his silver thighs. Memories seemed to hide in the shadows, the seams of the armor, as though begging touch.

"It hurts," he whispered. "It hurts, Wing. Missing you. Seeing you. It…hurts. But I don't want it not to hurt." A ventilation hissed between his dentae. "As long as it hurts, you're not…really gone. It reminds me, somehow, that I was worth something to someone. Worth a lot." His optics prickled with charge. "Shouldn't have. Not for me, Wing. I…can't live up to it. Primus knows I've tried."

He drew his Great Sword, Wing's sword, laying it down for a moment on the mech's chassis. "Should give this back to you. But then I'd have nothing. Nothing. And I'm…trying so hard." He bowed his head, feeling pathetic and small in the large, closed white space.

"We won the war. I guess. It's over. And Cybertron's coming back to life. It's beautiful. I guess. It's not home, I don't think. At least not to me. It's not the gutters. It's not here. I don't know if you'd want to see it. I don't know…anything, really." He sighed, resting one hand on the palanquin, the metal cool beneath his palm. "I couldn't stay. And I didn't think I'd come back here. And I don't want to think that this is an ending, but it feels like one."

His optics found the corner of the room, the edge of the plinth, anything but those shuttered optics, that too-still body. "Wing," he whispered, and found himself leaning over the plinth, taking one of the inanimate hands, folding it around the sword's hilt, pressing the crest of his helm against the cool knuckles. "Wing." No other words would come. He had exhausted a storehouse of words, and they had done nothing; they had failed to express, much less alleviate. He bowed his head, ribstruts wracking with sobs, the white shadows of the room pressing down upon him like downy fingers.

[***]

"Drift." A bass rumble, echoing across time, hauling Drift from the uneasy recharge he'd fallen into, hunched over Wing's body. He blinked his optics, thick with exhaustion, hands clasped over Wing's, as the massive storm blue frame of Axe stood over him as though he'd expected to walk in on just this very thing.

"Sorry," he mumbled. Words were dry again, a parched desert.

"Don't be, lad. I hope you have attained some measure of peace."

Drift shook his head. "Still hurts."

"That's the way of grief. You close it off, and go numb, or it hurts."

Drift nodded. Gasket: he had refused to feel. He had buried that so deep that it took millions of years to burst forth, to rupture open. "Don't want it not to hurt."

Axe leaned over, plucking the Great Sword from Wing's body, reverently laying the hands down by Wing's sides, before holding it out to Drift, offering. "What moves the sword, Drift, is the hand. But what moves the hand?"

Drift met Axe's gaze, hands wrapping slowly over the sword again, like a ceremonial reclaiming, the words a new catechism. "The spark."

Axe nodded, optics glinting as though Drift were clever indeed. "The hand needs the hilt," he wrapped Drift's hand over the beaded metal of the hilt, "and the spark needs that pain."

He took the sword, swinging its heavy weight in an arc to rack the blade into its attachment points between his scapular struts. It was a wisdom he didn't understand, but, in that way of paradox, he knew nonetheless.