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“Punch is back from Altihex.” Mirage’s statement was so matter of fact that it immediately aroused Bumblebee’s suspiscions.
He took the energon cube from the taller mech as Mirage sat down next to him and sipped at it before asking, “Did he bring back anything good?”
“He found out what happened to Quirk.”
Oh. Bumblebee took a larger drink from his cube, gathering his thoughts. He had a hundred more questions, and the commissary wasn’t the place for any of them. “Jazz want us in on the debriefing?”
“Yes, at the usual place, after second moonrise.”
Bumblebee nodded. Then, he sighed and leaned against Mirage, both giving and seeking comfort.
-_-_-_-
“Was beginning to think you weren’t going to make it, mechs!” Jazz’s smile was wide, but strained around the edges. Whatever had happened to Quirk had been ugly, then.
“Got held up by Cliffjumper, you know how he is.” Bumblebee climbed through the hatch onto the roof and took a drink from Hound as Mirage followed. “Would have taken an act of Megatron to keep me from showing up tonight, though.”
Mirage nodded in agreement. “Quirk deserves his remembrance.”
“Yeah.” Jazz sighed. “We’re just waiting on Punch now, and he was kinda rattled so I made him visit Rung before he could come up. Could be a bit yet.”
“That is understandable. His health must come first.”
“Yeah, but you ain’t gotta wait any longer.” Punch climbed through the hatch, pulling a crate up behind him. “I brought back what I could, so we can lay him to rest, right.”
“That would have meant a lot to him.” Bumblebee stepped away from Hound to grab one of the crate’s handles so that he could help Punch carry it to the small fire Jazz had burning in the center of the roof.
The other members of Autobot Intelligence followed them, and took seats around the fire as they hoisted the crate up on top of the grate over the fire pit. The metal began warping with the heat fairly quickly, and Mirage began singing the litany of the dead in a shaky voice. The others joined in a moment later, and the stars shone down as they mourned the loss of one of their own.
When they finished the litany, with Quirk’s name added at the end, Jazz stepped forward with the molds, ready to press their lost mech’s remains into them. The charms made from the molds would be incorporated into the frames of each intelligence agent and any of Quirk’s other friends who wanted one–with any remains being entombed in the basement of the Celestial Temple with the other victims of their eternal war.
They drank and sang other songs as Jazz worked, with the heat from the fire leaving bubbles in their paint that stung like the pain in their sparks. Ratchet would scold them all in the morning for their blistered paint, and their hangovers, but he would also help them affix whatever memorial charms they made from Quirk’s remains and comfort those who wanted it. But tonight, the stars and moons watched as they grieved.
Bumblebee laced his fingers in with Punch’s, and hoped this would be the last of these starlight funerals.